# 20200509

#### song: "graduation" by creative_reality17

there's a weird smell in the air. like a restaurant, but worse. like the stench permeating host's clothes after a long shift at work. it persists as she crumples them up in a pile and waits for a stretch of days off to bother putting them in the wash. but this smell... maybe it's from outside. the physical space outside my window, not the outside. maybe it's from one of the neighbors.

floating in unwanted, just like me.

today was my first day at my new job. marched upstairs to the break room with mask on. given a stack of paperwork, done one sheet at a time. the standard first-day training tape, eyes wandering from the screen, always preferring the written word instead.

sing to me, cathedral, of how you believe you're so worthy of worship. inform me of my impending salvation if only i worship hard enough, be faithful enough. tell me i need to be saved.

"welcome to the start of a successful future!"

one in a sea of faceless. made faceless myself.

you would understand, wouldn't you, patron-saint of passage? the crushing weight of necessity. the guilt of knowing you can't save everyone. the pain of knowing you have to try anyways.

and no one can know who you are the whole time.

my co-workers were nice, though. boomer central advantage. unlike my previous job, where i was shoved away in a corner with a cheap laptop and made to watch videos the whole shift. watching a cashier scan things and type away on the outdated interface, bagging things, slowly taking over the reins from a woman approaching the elder years.

she had a mask on with the words "faith, hope, love" embroidered in pastels.

the faith of a devout father. the hope of a protective mother.

the love of a blade wedged between the ribs.

would chronos have sent out a plague onto the land through my family had i not died? was i supposed to sacrifice myself here too, and because i was too cowardly to reject life, my curse has followed me to this timeline?

i would hope that chronos did not follow me here. or maybe this is the same timeline. maybe this is ceuta's curse of decay that host told me about, and it has nothing to do with me. and in a hundred years, almost all technology will have been lost, the population cleaved, those remaining clustered in villages few and far between. (as it turns out, i am not alone in believing this.

one central kingdom.

one central church in the capital.

maybe, as i scan the groceries that i never expected to be available in a hardware store, i stand on the site of a future leithtemple. i stand on holy ground.

i will not sing in this cathedral.

i will not sing the praises of those who would destroy me.

- マルス (marusu)