Seolin sighed and buried her face in her hands.
This was it.
Her life was //over//.
[[End it all->allthingsdevours]]Seolin raised the knife shudderingly to her arm. It was already full of hesitation marks. The skin throbbed dully from where she had cut herself already.
She'd had to cover them with removable sleeves while the cuts were still red and inflamed and fresh to keep other people from finding out.
[[Everything...->allthings]]Time makes fools of us all, and herself the biggest one she'd ever saw.
She just couldn't see a way out of this without her pain increasing, with no end in sight.
How could there be a future when the moon lay split in twain in the sky and earthquakes daily rocked her house? When manaflow spilled freely and invisibly through the streets like a sticky heavenly choir?
Everything was wrong now, and there was nothing she could do.
[[Go through with it->bleed]]She put the blade to her skin again. Pressed. Sliced.
The blood began to ooze out. It hurt. A lot.
She grit her teeth through it.
What was she thinking about?
[[Friends->friends]]
[[Future->future]]
[[Pain->physical]]Seolin thought about the friends, the ones she might be leaving behind and her cousin, another close friendship she held dear.
Would she be hurting them if she killed herself, here and now? But that wasn't right, right?
It was about how she felt, her decision.
And she made it as she lay the sharp knife down. She could always make this decision later, when she wasn't hurting inside so badly.
[[Hurting because...->hurt]]She thought about the future and what it held for her. The world, Pevrea, was doomed. She was doomed. Everyone was probably doomed. If there was life after this, she couldn't imagine what form it would take or if it would even be nothkin.
Did she have a future?
She couldn't really picture herself happy or healthy in such a place.
[[Then there was the other matter...->hurt]]It really fucking hurt. She pulled the blade away, dripping. She felt dizzy.
It brought her back to the present. She chickened out again, hurling the knife away from her.
The world might be going to hell, might be a literal hell and she couldn't just give up like this already. She couldn't stomach it right now. A huge coward... that was her.
Then there was the other kind of hurt.
[[The hurt of the mind->hurt]]She hurt because she had seen her father die painfully, trapped in the wreckage of their home and then burn to death by a manafire. She hurt, and she didn't want to have that kind of end or watch her other friends die.
Her father was all she had left, her bedrock and now, he was **gone**.
She pinched her nose tightly, feeling her eyes burn.
//Not gonna cry. Not gonna cry.//
[[She decided to visit Gerald->alpaca]]All things devours.
She kept waiting for the pain to stop.
That thing that ground stone to meal, to come for her and remove the pain.
[[Time->Time]]Gerald lived just down the street. He was a tall alpaca, and she was a giraffe and they both got bullied for their height and had bonded over that.
She couldn't wait to see him. Her heart beat a little faster.
Maybe the hurt would subside some inside her.
Seolin knocked on the door.
//knock knock knock//