[Action]

[knightofratatosk]

[Morning finds Emil lugging a bulging knapsack up the road to the bridge near CH #1, the ends of what look like a couple of glass bottles sticking out of it. Whatever is inside it seems to be rather heavy-- he has to stop every few yards to rest, but he's determined to make it to his destination despite this.

Once he gets to the bridge, he unzips the knapsack and begins unpacking the contents. Inside is a whole array of glass bottles, each one containing a letter addressed to a friend who has left Luceti. Richter, Marta, Tenebrae, Horatio, Luke, Faize, Lloyd, Genis-- each one of them (as well as several other people) gets a letter. He figures that with all of the creepy supernatural stuff going on lately, maybe, just maybe, if he drops these bottles into the stream now, they'll somehow reach the intended recipients. It can't hurt to try, right? If nothing else, it might make him feel a little bit better about hearing voices and seeing things.

... or so he hopes.]

Comments

[herotypical]

[She begins to scribble a letter. Dear Jim. She pauses, continuing only a few words at a time.]

Did he ever get rescued? The boy?

[knightofratatosk]

Yeah, a fishing boat found him and took him back home to be reunited with his family. The story was mostly about what he did on the island, so we didn't get to hear much about what happened when he got back home. It ended with his family all hugging him and saying how glad they were that he was alive.

[He stares into the water.]

[herotypical]

[She rolls the note up.]

Sound like a pretty happy ending, if I've ever heard one.

[knightofratatosk]

[Emil nods.]

He was really lucky.

[herotypical]

[She slides the message into the bottle, corking it with a healthy push.]

It was pretty good of the author to chuck that happy ending, in there.

[knightofratatosk]

Don't most books have happy endings?

[herotypical]

N-no. Not all of them. [Pause.] Not many past the twelfth grade, either.

[knightofratatosk]

But why would anybody want to read something that doesn't have a happy ending? I thought books were a way of escaping from real life, not repeating it.

[herotypical]

I think it's called catharsis.

[knightofratatosk]

What does that mean?

[herotypical]

It's all about getting the not-so-great feelings out by reading something horribly sad and having a good, healthy cryfest over it.

[knightofratatosk]

I guess that makes sense, but what if crying over it doesn't make you feel better? What do you do then?

[herotypical]

[She shrugs. This really isn't her strongest area of expertise, despite all of her experience.] You wait, y'know. To heal.

[knightofratatosk]

[He's silent for a while as he considers this, then:]

... how long?

[herotypical]

Depends on the who.

[knightofratatosk]

... if these really are spirits we're seeing and hearing, I wonder if they can hear us talking right now.