Episode 18 - Words

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I haven’t been on the internet much, lately. If at all. And I don’t know why. I just… I just want to watch Netflix and write stories again. And also bake. 

I’m just doing what I’m doing to get through it all, I guess.

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I might have alluded to this fact last episode. Or that might be a bit generous to say about me by me. But if there were rules on the platform, then there had to be moderators on Symbolic Myst, right? There had to be someone to wield the ban hammer when anyone stepped out of the admittedly few lines. Most forums and the like have them. Sometimes you never realize it either because that team is really good or really bad at their jobs. Both create a sense of invisibility. And I’m not quite sure if there is an in-between in all of this. Well, I guess… I guess if the job is particularly easy. Either because the rules are so few and far between or the group is fairly good at self-policing.

To a great extent, Symbolic Myst was in the latter category. Yes, there were hardly any rules, but the rules we did have made it is easy for the group to moderate itself. If you think someone’s terrible, you take it to the reviews. And if you’re in the wrong, it would show up in your reviews. Also it never feels great to be criticized, even when it’s justified or necessary. 

Even if you do want the comments it still stings a bit. Or is that just me? Regardless, you never taunted fate. You tried to not poke the proverbial bear, as it were. For your own sake.

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Anyway, there wasn’t a competition to be top dog or anything like that. This wasn’t a Game of Thrones situation where everyone was scrambling to get to the top of the social prestige ladder. Far from it, but I’ve heard of some forums, some boards, or some… whatever have that problem. And that didn’t happen with us. It was more like a “lobsters in a bucket” situation. Basically, if you put a bunch of lobsters in a bucket together, the bucket does not need a lid because the lobsters will keep pulling each other down when it looks like one of them is going to make it to the top and crawl out. Or maybe that’s with crabs. I don’t quite know.

Regardless, I don’t think anyone from that board ever pursued writing professionally even. I think we took that will out of ourselves. I don’t think any stories made it out of Symbolic Myst. From what I can remember anyway. I mean, I could maybe check.  I think I might have some printed out stories tucked in that box of journals I left home with. On days when my home didn’t have internet, maybe because we had just moved, I would go to the public library and not quite steal a bit. Maybe it was stealing, I don’t know, but I could always go digging for them, at least. To what end, I don’t know. 

But that’s not the point. I’ve been watching the fantasy genre. Not just the releases from the big publishers, but I’ve been scrolling through as many indie boards as I can for self-published releases as well. And nothing seems familiar. No book blurb, no plot, no characters, no profile picture, no style, no typing mannerisms, nothing feels familiar. More like everyone on that board just disappeared. 

Or I’m being dramatic. Maybe. Probably. I mean it was a small group, and I’m the only person looking.

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I do know that one of the moderators never… Well, she never published anything. Never tried to and never had any interest in trying. One time, when we were talking, she told me that she kept everything on an easy to find disc with some hard copies in a locked drawer. I don’t know if that tech set up made any sense to you, but her plan was that her kids could get everything published after she died. Not in lieu of a life insurance policy, more like a supplement to it. 

Who knows how feasible that would have been, but I guess not finding anything she wrote is somewhat comforting then.

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The citizens eagerly awaited the wedding of the prince to the general’s daughter. But there was no wedding. 

There could never be a wedding, the princess knew. If there was a wedding, she would matter less and less. She would fade into oblivion with every second born royal child. Maybe she would be married to the first born of another kingdom, some would think with every intention of being comforting. But that’s not what the princess wanted. She had a glamorous apartment in this castle. She took gold and jewels from everyone, whenever it would please her. She stole from the treasury, even, and all the while, her father said nothing. Certainly a father-in-law would not be so permissive. Certainly a new kingdom would not come to fear her as everyone else had. And it was that fear that gave her power. 

As long as her brother had no children, the princess was needed to secure the throne. And as long as her brother had no wife, he would have no children. 

The wheels kept spinning in the princess’s head as the crowd cheered below, cheered--as it were--for anyone but her.

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I’ve been including snippets from one of my stories in these episodes, if you haven’t noticed. You have noticed and I will readily admit that this story is not very good. It’s dry. Skeletal even, but it was a story I needed to tell and still a story I need to tell now. Some things don’t ever change, I guess.

I say or think that phrase a lot, and from the mileage I get off of that expression, you would assume that it was an original thought, but of course it wasn’t. It wasn’t even directly pulled off of the proverbial tree by me. I heard someone say it once. One of the moderators of Symbolic Myst, and she went by the name GiftedDuckling with some numbers on the end. The numbers were actually her birthdate, so nope, no reason to include them here. And yeah, if you couldn’t tell, we talked a lot on Symbolic Myst. 

You see, she found my stories intriguing. Some of the choices I made that bothered other people, like how many of my characters don’t have actual names. These were things that she wanted to know more about. She knew I had some intention behind the choices I was making. And she thought that real constructive criticism needed to be guided by my intentions. Fair enough on that. (Pause) Fair enough was also something she would say a lot.

Gifted Duckling also figured out I was supplying Aishi with their stories, but she wasn’t mad about it. She wanted to know why. And it’s a shame I couldn’t tell her the whole story. After all, she really did seem to like my stories.

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The general lives in a grand estate on the edge of the kingdom, and though his daughter was to be a bride very soon, he would hear none of it and insisted that she remain on that grand estate unless the king and queen called upon her directly. He thought it was more proper for her to live there, after all. Away from her betrothed before the wedding to keep any touch of scandal from her name. 

And this is where the princess’s plan could have gone awry. She could not harm the girl if she was so far out of reach. Or out of her reach. 

Gold jingled in her pocket, and it caught the attention of a set of eyes in the shadows. The princess knew those eyes. And so she gave them a knowing nod. Maybe scandal could be kept at bay, but some other  things could not be.

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The GiftedDuckling was much like the Queen was on the Forum. In fact, for a while, I thought they were the same person. Or that’s what I feared. They just brought the same reaction out of me. Hopefulness, a sense of trust, things that I rationally knew were ill advised. The Queen could spin me a thread that looked like the most precious silk in the right lighting. She could spin me tales of a paradise that even my desperate soul could not imagine. She lured me in with promises that rationally I knew she couldn’t keep. Even before her grand rescue plan fell apart, I knew she couldn’t help me.

She thought she could, but the Queen--Your Majesty I know you’re here and listening--could not help me. I think recent events have been just another reckoning for her. That she was unknowingly limited in what she could do for me, and she has to see that again now. But back then, she was particularly naive. And so was I. Just more so, maybe. Or my cynicism and fear and my naivety were struggling to coexist rather than intermingle and blend like they sometimes do. 

I still had the presence of a certain mind to think the GiftedDuckling might be a persona of the Queen--a character she played in the same way we all played characters online. But I wanted to be wrong. It was easy for the GiftedDuckling to prove me wrong. And I’m not even kidding. The main difference, as far as I could see, was in their typing. The GiftedDuckling’s typing just seemed more meticulous than the Queen’s was. The Queen’s typing was super quick and often had more than a few typos in it, but the GiftedDuckling would take longer to send a message, but those messages never had a single error. Never. They were pristine.

She told me she was a teacher: a middle school teacher who taught Language Arts, as it was called at the time, though I always the title varies by location. It was like she was an English teacher, I think. That’s something comparable. Maybe. Hopefully. But it made sense that she understood symbolism and language. A great deal of her work was based on this notion, after all. It was what she taught and what she thought about. It was the minutiae of her life. And apparently, this was more a predisposition on her part than it was an obligation.

When it came to me, she had questions, and she meant well. She had a nice disposition. However, I still struggled to explain everything.

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The prince was beside himself when he heard the news about his bride. The rumor, one of many that were circulating, was that the king and queen had to assign guards to him, to watch over him at each and every moment. No one was entirely sure why. Whether it be that the young bride had indeed been murdered, as another rumor would say, or if the prince was in a different sort of danger. Was it a curse? Literal or otherwise. No one seemed to know.

The prince wept for hours and hours on end each day. His grief could not be matched by his subjects. While, they wallowed in the air of misery that wafted off of the castle, that seeped into the streets, and sunk into the water, there was a more powerful sense of dread that accompanied the death of the prince’s bride. 

Once again, as the subjects knew, their future was in turmoil. Once again, destruction awaited. In the eyes of the princess who was looking down at them beneath her mourning veil. They could not see her smirk, and yet, they seemed to feel that it was there. It and all the intentions oh so nefarious.

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The GiftedDuckling liked to teach me new words. Nefarious was one of them. I really liked that word. I really liked that she taught me words instead of asking me what was wrong. Because something was wrong, I just couldn’t tell her what. And I liked that she didn’t try to make assumptions about my behavior like other people did. I like that she was content with just me, however I was.

And she had a nice smile. Or so I imagined.

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Aishi Online is a production of Miscellany Media Studios. It is written, edited, produced, and performed by MJ Bailey. With music from the Sounds like an Earful music supply. If you like the show please consider leaving a review or posting about it on a website that might not be around in five years. Make the post vague and somewhat mysterious but still compelling if you want. Up to you.

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