July 7, 1204
"No, I can see that Oswald means well, but I do agree with you." It was odd, perhaps, that Eldona knew her sister-in-law's betrothed better than she did her sister-in-law herself. Oswald, possibly to make up for Agathe's reservations, had indeed made much more of a point to get to know Searle and herself, despite not having much reason to do so other than the family connection. But Agathe, Eldona had determined, didn't keep her distance for sheer lack of interest--and in Searle's case, plenty of space was indeed crucial to his well-being. "Unless the journal contains something he might find comforting or interesting or important, I don't see why Searle needs to trouble himself with it."
"Exactly. That, and... well, you know Searle and I don't exactly know each other like most siblings." Agathe broke their eye contact for a second to wave as little Celina turned her head and shot her aunt a toothy smile. The circumstances dictated that Agathe probably knew Searle's daughter better than she knew Searle himself, just because there was so little baggage to navigate when it came to a well-loved toddler as opposed to a grown man of harsh roots. "You'd be a better judge of whether it's relevant to him anyway. You don't think there's any chance of him finding it, though?""I doubt it. Searle's respectful of my study. He won't go through my drawers or anything, if that's what you're worried about."
"Good." But reassurance about her brother's security did little for Agathe's overall mood. From what Eldona could gather, her sister-in-law had escaped enough of her mother's scrutiny to lead a happy enough childhood, but her father's death had seen her transferred to the care of Maeja. Maeja was a lovely woman--but she was a lovely woman with much knowledge and therefore much well-informed hatred of Searle and Agathe's mother. Agathe wouldn't have grown up without more unanswered questions than any child needed."Thank you for helping me. I doubt it's anything more than her own madness, but we can all move on once that's confirmed."
"Indeed." Agathe, Oswald, and Searle too. Searle had a new life. That didn't mean the old one had never happened, that there wasn't still healing to be had even if it could never be complete. "You're a better sister to Searle than I think you know."NEXT CHAPTER:
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Progress report for Operation Fixing Shit:
-Imgur's interface makes it easier to go by story years (what I've been filing by--alas, without subfolders, kill me now!) than by real-world post dates as originally planned).
-Images from the beginning of the story until partway through 1161 weren't hosted on Photobucket, so they're safe (but tiny).
-Years that have now been fixed include:
1. The "current" 1204.
2. For shorter-term catch-up purposes, 1203.
3. For "completing-folder-by-folder-to-avoid-confusion-and-also-taking-preview-pictures-into-account" purposes, 1161 through 1163.
-So, if we're going to use years as the unit here (which we really shouldn't since they vary quite drastically, but whatever), then replacing story pictures five forty-fourths done. *facepalm*
-As for profiles, if a character I'm updating has a potential profile pic already uploaded, I've been using that. For everyone else I've had to update since Photobucket decided it no longer liked having users, their shameless-Lothere-ripoff family tree pictures are acting as placeholders for now. Also, profile pictures are now fucking huge due to lack of resize ability on ProBoards and no real need to resize on Imgur, so I might just cave one day and replace them all with the SimPE extracts.
-And heeeeey, fun fact: apparently Imgur's TOU actually prohibits third-party hosting, to which I say "Wait, so the intended sole purpose of this site is the insular sharing of inane memes for the sake of some half-imagined frat boy popularity contest? Also, your user interface offers links that are pre-formatted for Reddit?". But honestly, I'm not too worried because lack of much outcry over this suggests to me that Imgur has better things to do than harass blogs.
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