don't wait for a knight in shinin' armor, your savior's reflected in the mirror

[perpend]

[That sure was a fucking thing. That execution was a fucking thing. Those secrets are a fucking thing.

Cabanela retreats to his room, but not for all that long. Everyone will get a note eventually, written in very neat handwriting

I do not plan on bowing down to threats and intimidation. If you did not act, it means you were, like me, aware of the risk, but decided against it. Your reasons are entirely your own.

Join me in the dining room if you agree enough is enough, and that you won't acquiesce to threats. I don't plan to let this stop me, and neither should you.

-C

In the dining room itself, Cabanela has set up coffee and tea for those who want it-- there's no food, because to be honest, he doesn't know how to cook. Two more candles have been lit-- he wasn't really sure what to do about the whole... parasite thing... so Fern's candle will have to make due.]

Comments

[ninehundredlives]

[That's fine, Susan is perfectly fine moving on from that. She just...wanted him to know that it wasn't like it sounded.]

A lot of these make people sound like they wouldn't regret it. But then, so does mine. I'm sure some of them are just phrased in the worst way possible...

[But some of this, god. Some of this is unspeakable. What is there to do about it, though?]

[perpend]

...For most of these, I'm sure you're right. It's worded to make us sound untrustworthy to each other. It's a remarkable plan to keep us all paranoid and wary.

[ninehundredlives]

And then there's some that I'm not sure you could find a way around.

[If the bare facts are true, then there's not a lot of way around things like "trying to end the human race" or whatever.]

But I don't...really know what we can do about it.

[perpend]

[Thanks, Kimblee.]

...Maybe there's nothing we can do about it. It's something they can hold over us, without us being able to do anything about it.

[ninehundredlives]

We just have to deal with it, as long as they don't try to hurt us in particular. [She sounds dissatisfied with this.]

[perpend]

...Well. They haven't acted so far. Who knows what secrets the dead have buried with them.

[ninehundredlives]

True. I wonder what White was so worried about...

[perpend]

It's a good question, isn't it?

What exactly was it that was so important for him to protect that he resorted to murder.

[It seems like whatever it was must have been mundane in comparison to the multitude of people who have caused the death of thousands or more.]

[ninehundredlives]

I guess we'll never know.

[But...yeah. He probably killed for a lot less than some of this.]

They really went for what would hurt us the most. We've all got more than one secret, I'm sure...

[perpend]

They did. It really hammers it home, how much they know about us.

[ninehundredlives]

I've known Alena knew for a while. We...well, we didn't really talk about it. Something came out of the machine, and I went to yell at her about it.

[perpend]

...I have had a conversation about personal items coming out of the machine. The first one was a little strange, but then I got something that was actually mine. It was... strange. Unnerving.

[ninehundredlives]

I haven't...really gotten anything that was mine yet. Was it something you were carrying, or have they just been robbing our houses, too?

[perpend]

It wasn't something I was carrying, but it was my umbrella.

[Which is bizarrely mundane? Seriously, who steals an umbrella and then shoves it into a vending machine.]

[ninehundredlives]

.....I'm not sure I'd recognize my umbrella if it fell down and hit me in the head right now.

[perpend]

....It's bright yellow. It's not easy for me to mistaken a random one for mine.

[ninehundredlives]

It's still kind of a strange thing to steal, isn't it? What came out for me...it was the flowers. From before.

And then an umbrella. [Are you lucky, or is she the only person with horrifying memories coming out of there?]

[perpend]

It is, I agree. If there's some sort of pattern behind it, it doesn't look like I have enough information to go by right now.