I Want To Make You Cry, I'm Nothing Like You

[MethodicalSlacker]

Violet wasn't actually chasing after Lorenzo anymore.

[Violet Schmidt continued from Starting Point for G007.]

She had tailed him for a little while, or at least where she thought he had been. Footprints, depressions in the mud, branches seemingly swatted aside. All of these factors pointed to a path where he had cut through the jungle, out and away from the group on the dock, but either she was too slow or he was too fast because she hadn't caught sight of him since. Violet figured it was, what, two minutes of chasing, all told? Enough to say that she made an attempt, but not enough to say that she really tried. She probably would have kept going, too, if not for the fact that her adrenaline rush was running out.

Taking careful steps around branches and over tree-roots, Violet found a spot in the dirt next to a tree, threw her bags down, took a seat and covered her face with her hands. Any moment now would come the tears, she thought. The spot where Camila had touched her on her back still stung with the faint imprint of fear. Violet had slammed her with the gun and taken off—she was lucky she had the wherewithal to go for her bags and dodge Blaise's drunken stumble—but that hadn't made the feeling any better. It was a reminder that here, everyone needed to be kept at more than an arm's reach. She couldn't let anyone get that close to her again. Goosebumps danced on the corners of her skin—it was almost like they already were.

The floodgates opened, but nothing came out. No tears. Maybe it had been long enough. Maybe she was just too frightened by everything else to get around to crying. Violet took her hands off her face and stared down at them. Spotless, but almost dirtied. If she hadn't been pushed—

"What have I done?"

Something in front of her caught the light and made her jump. Violet reached for her gun, but saw that it was just a camera and eased up.

"Oh, good."

In the distance, she heard some birds lift off a tree branch and take flight, the flap of their wings echoing through the jungle. It was all very noisy, she thought.

"It's all very noisy," she said.

"I, um, I think vocalizing what I'm about to say, aloud? I think it'll make what I'm saying more clear. It'll make the words more powerful, to the will of the world. To will itself. To shape my own, um, will. I don't know, um, if that's something I learned in a magick book, or in therapy, but I think it's something, it really is something worth knowing, and putting to use.

"I shot someone today. And then I almost shot someone else. And then I hit someone and made them fall. Then someone tried to rush at me and knock me over and I got out of the way and made them fall too. That's also my fault. Um. A lot of bad things. I've done a lot of bad things. I get the feeling I'm going to keep doing bad things, and, um, that's going to mess up my karma a lot. If I really caused this, then I will never be able to overturn my karma.

"And, um, you know, I know, know what that means?

"It means that if I die, my suffering won't stop there. I, um, I know what I believe in more than anyone. That doesn't make sense. I know bad times are coming because I put bad energy out there. If, speaking logically, if I fall to those bad times, then I have sins to atone for. If I overcome those bad times, then I add to my overall debt, but I put off punishment. That makes sense, right? Um, I know it doesn't, but it's how I feel."

She looked the camera right in the lens.

"I'm not talking to you. I'm talking to myself. My words aren't for you."

And then, she stared back off into space.

"I wish I could help people. I want to be able to help people. If I started somewhere else, if I, um, woke up in a different spot, I'd be able to do that. But fate had other ideas. It was synchronicity that gave me the gun. It was the spirits that warned me about the trip. Synchronicities, um, once you start noticing them, you don't really stop. I've seen so many already, and it's freaky."

Finding nothing else to say, she sat for a moment, taking in the air around her. Then, with a sudden start, Violet stood up from the tree, picked up her stuff,

and tripped straight into and ultimately through a low hanging tree branch.

"Ow!" she yelped as she fell over onto the ground, landing face first. Scrambling upright, she reached up to her forehead. Her fingers felt a scrape, a place where her skin had been loosed open. Briefly, she removed her hand, brought it down into her eyevisionsight, and saw her palm was running thick-red with blood. If she had just bumped the branch and kept going, she'd be fine, but she had fallen forward and scraped her head against it and then bumped again into the floor, the first sign of left-hand skewered karmafarthings. Now she was wounded really ugly, and she was startled, and confused, confuzzled, and at this point all she knew how to do when she was startled and confused and confuzzled was start driftwalking. Violet gathered up her bags and went back for her riflegun—which, clumsily but incredibly fortunately, she had left leaning against the tree—and started really walking this time, extra alert for willowbranches or snaggleroots, or critters or vengefoes or friendpeople or any whichwaymixmatch there was.

[Violet Schmidt persists in Don't Stray Off The Path.]