#& ㅤ * ㅤ watchdog ㅤ / ㅤ mission season.

[cruelsfate]

‘ cross my heart. ’  ——  marianne&kris

A new trend has swept over Garreg Mach in these early autumn days of the Horsebow Moon. Various notes have been springing up around campus. Some claim to be looking for love. Others simply want to yell into the void about a frustrating assignment they’ve been given. And yet others might bemoan the presence of ghosts in the monastery’s halls… The letters are many and varied. The one thing they have in common is the fact they are all anonymous, and there is an implicit understanding that discretion is required to play the game. Will you take up a mystery pen pal?

Trends come quickly and disappear just as a fast in a place like Garreg Mach, the gathering place for more people than she can count, all just as different and unique as the next. Some are short and quite fleeting, others cling desperately for purchase before slipping away, but the fact remains that they never remain for long.

Marianne herself has no interest in the constantly shifting interest of the monastery’s occupants. Really, it is the least amongst her numerous worries and she doubtless would struggle with the continuous changing of trends.

This one, however. She thinks that she can settle with this one for a while.

When she had awoken one morning to discover notes scattered across various places on campus, she’s first thought herself mad. Some were hiding in the most obscure of places, where the parchment might instead be a simple trick of the light. Others were more out in the open: a letter left on a bench, a note abandoned on a classroom table, a piece of paper on a dining hall chair. A short trip to the dining hall later that day had soothed her worries. She had not gone mad. No, the residents of Garreg Mach had simply taken up a new trend.

In any other situation, she might have felt a little foolish, clutching the folded piece of parchment in her hand as she looked around for a place to put it, but there are notes hidden in all sorts of little cracks and crevices around the monastery. Certainly no one would mind one more.

At last, she simply decides to pin it onto the bulletin board by the academy’s classrooms. Hidden in plain sight, and how many people truly went and checked all the notices posted upon it to begin with?

With one final glance at her note, she turns and starts back toward her dorm room, her heart lighter than it has been in weeks.

May I admit something to you? I am afraid.

I have always known fear, but the more days that pass, the greater it grows. I fear friendship; crave it all the same. I desire companionship and yet I do not know where to begin. I am afraid of hurting those close to me, so I shut myself away. I shut myself away so that the only misfortune I bring is to myself.

Is it better this way? I do not know, but I do it all the same. If mother and father had never died, if this awful Crest had never manifested, if I never inherited father’s cursed blood...

Where would I be now? Who would I be?

I do not know. I wish I knew. Would it be worse to know and never be able to live that life?