This is my time. My time to create.

To create a story, a story through movement. a story of the lessons my body has been taught to extend through sound.... to understand the production of a feeling I have to let go.

Enable me. Give me strength. Determination... yes, determination.
Determined and focused for the first time, I am.

I live. I breathe. I lead. I believe.

And no one will die if I find the right dance to dance, I'm sure of it.

I just put my pointe shoes on for the first time in a couple months. It actually didn't hurt quite as much as I was expecting. I did about 10 minutes of pointe work in which time I managed to crack the toenail on my left big toe. Oops. It's a horizontal crack about 1/3 down from the top of the nail. This is (at least) the third time I've done this since starting pointe, but this time I don't think the crack is deep enough to go all the way through the nail?

Yes, I know. So many more important things than my toenails.

That girl finally woke up. The annoying one, always mooning over that doctor.Why does everyone and their mom want a boyfriend? Good god, what the hell is wrong with everyone? It's so incredibly annoying. I mean, if you're lonely, alright, I'm terribly sorry for your woes. But desperate to the point you find something to like about everyone? He's so old, at least late twenties is my guess. And anyway, the girl annoys me. I hate overly flirty people. Another stupid little giggle or ditz move and I'm going to tear my hair out.

Or perhaps hers.

Seriously. Last thing I need is for that to rub off on Duck and Rue. They're already out of control badly enough...I want nothing more than to be a good example for them to follow, PLUS...I want them to respect me. I know that's a little ummm..what can you call it? whatever...it's the truth.

People ask me sometimes why I took to dancing. I suppose it keeps me out of trouble, more or less. I'm notorious for the temper I used to have. And I do have a temper. It's really quick and really intense, but I've learned to control it extremely well. I used to get in fights and be absolutely vicious and ruthless. I'm not like that anymore, and I don't ever want to be like that again. But sometimes it takes a lot of
self-restraint and willpower and sometimes I just feel like I can't handle it.

Why is the world so full of numbskulls, anyway?

I can't write myself out, the way I used to. And this, this tortures me. Why can I not lose myself in my words, what turn of life is this that I am thus abandoned by the one thing that used to keep me safe and confident.

And that's how I know I am alive in a life that exists separately besides me. The sea is sprinkled with sailor bones and the sun is the fire in which dead souls burn. Home. I can barely say the word anymore. Maybe it burnt itself out of my system. A cold fire, if ever there was one. I was always the knight in my legends and my dragons were my princes. What if we were changing along with the world and with the climate? Would the colour of my dreams change? What if a tulip fever stained me red? Do you think I could continue living, breathing, working, pretending? The words I don't understand resonate inside of me, it makes no difference I don't understand them, they communicate with my soul in a manner nulling the importance of a language. Maybe I should have looked back. I have been storing silence inside of me. And now, I just might be drowned by the one thing I craved above all. It bleeds from my eyes and into my hands, and my fingers forget the taste of ink. I flail helplessly. Why do I have to grow up? And give this up.
Silent Hill will break your heart, in ways that you did not know it could be broken.

Some nights I dream of Drosselmeyer.

He speaks to me in the high wind and and dark places. He tells me secrets I do not understand and holds out a great strong hand. I do not know, do I take it? or do I run? Are you God or be you Devil? What now? Where to? My stepping stone is slowly sinking under me but what stone do I jump to next?

I must protect the girls. I must protect the girls. I must protect the girls.

I must protect the girls at all costs. Like I couldn't protect Mytho.

I wish there was something I could do that could give me back my old persona. That would be lovely. I can't even remember what it was to be so optimistic, jovial and downright stupid.

I had a present for you, haha ... it was all wrapped up and waiting, from just a few weeks back. What would you have me do? I think you would have liked it. I was reminded of you when I saw it. It's a necklace, maybe, or a sun catcher. The crystal is yellow ... it just seemed to gleam all over. You would be able to lift it up, and watch it catch the light, watch it dance ...

You would have liked it, I think.



... and now all of this. We still haven't reached the climax of why we are truly here, and that cannot be too far away, even now.

I hope you're safe, somewhere Mytho. Far away from this awful Silent Hill.

Sitting alone forces me to think about my lonely self. And I really, really hate it. Maybe I've gone crazy? Maybe this is just another bad dream?

I need to rip off my skin and be released from my numbness, my pain, everything.

I'm safe, Duck, if you were wondering. I'm with Chiana.

I need to know what's happening to Rue. Do you need me to come right back? I probably should, that little nitwit will never be able to take care of Rue by herself!

I don't trust that angel thing that posts weird poetry all the time. He was saying something about the 'Raven voice of fate' talking to its 'hostess'.

Make sure Rue stays safe or I'll pluck you.

who:Duck princess_ahiru, Rue ruesravenblood and later, Fakir harddays_knight
( Once upon a time... )

How could I have been so stupid?
I thought this god thing would kill Rue. It probably would have, except I wrote that it wouldn't, and now the Ravens are loose. It's all my fault... how come I assume I can get anything done? I am the most useless knight there is...

Mytho is gone. Dead. I never saw such a look of terror on anyone's face before. I did not know he was the sort to possess or watch such filth...perhaps that is what did him in.

Mytho is gone, Rue is with that evil cult that lives in the church, and I don't know where Ahiru is.

I'm in this building. It's near the end of one of the roads, and beyond this there is nothing, just a sheer cliff.

Those pale monsters from below ground are nearby. I cried out at one and drove it away with my sword, but I'm thinking there are probably more of them.

I don't care. I'll destroy them all. This is perhaps my last stand. My prince is gone, and I was useless, unable to defend him.

Maybe I can still go out like a knight...

Kylie? was that your name?

The girl we saw at the church with the odd backpack for a weapon.

Is it true you hunt ghosts?

Can you find heart shards as well?

Do you remember that tale I posted? It's like that. My dreams. I think of all those stories mixed up and searching to be put right, for how can they end with their elements mixed up so willy nilly? Not happily. Never happily. But to be drawn back together is not what it seems. Perhaps they think if they were to join back they could be locked in their treasure trove, quiet. safe.

It would not be that way. To come back together, would mean the thousand stories made one again. One long sordid tale, and no one living happily ever after. For if there were dozens of villains, all striving to be evil, how would that be? Would they ally, or would they fight, bitter enemies? Dozens of princesses- would they be happy with their own prince, or bicker, trying to steal each other's? Would it not become as a great henfight? So many witches, goblins, dragons. Wizards vying for the kings' crowns. It would be chaos. It would be....

it would be Silent Hill.

A long long time ago, in a northern country where snow fell eight months of the year, a boy lived alone with his mother in a little wooden house at the base of a steep hill. There they lived a decent, purposeful, hardworking life. There were forever chores demanding to be done, provisions to be salted away, cords of wood to be cut and stacked. There was endless work, and precious little of what a child might consider fun, but there was endless joy, for the boy was happy with his mother and his life. His entire world consisted of the wooden house with its fireplace and its waxed floors, the animals he cared for, his mother, and the land they inhabited.

One day the boy's mother told him to go and play in the snow while she did her baking. I imagine she did not want him dodging around her skirts, pestering her for a taste of what she was mixing. She dressed him warmly in heavy sweaters, socks and mittens, a blue coat and a woolen cap, and then she said "Go out now and play for an hour."
The boy asked, "May I climb the hill?"
"You may go all the way to the top if you like," his mother replied, "only give me an hour to do my baking."

So, out he went. He loved climbing the hill, although at times his mother decided that the possibility of marauding animals made it far too dangerous. From the top he could see his little house entire, its chimney and roofs, and the whole valley in which it was situated, where the firs grew straight out of the snow.

It took him a half an hour, but finally he had reached the top of the hill. Looking one way, he could see hill after hill stretching away into the cold northern infinity- and who knew how many of those hills held identical houses snuggled away beneath them? Looking the other way he could see right down into his own valley. There now, looking like a dollhouse, perfect and miniature, was his home. Smoke puffed from its chimney, and drifted and blew, was lost on the currents. His mother was sometimes visible, crossing and recrossing the light patch of the window, carrying mixing bowls and pans for the oven. It looked so warm and inviting, that little house with its busy woman and its drifting, blowing column of smoke.

The boy alone on the snowy hill decided to dig. Perhaps he thought he would build a fort under the snow. He scooped out a handful of snow, and then another and then another, and all the time he was so conscious of what moved down in the valley below him- the warm house, his mother moving back and forth across the window.

He dug for a time, looking back and forth from his hole to the house and his mother, and soon he realized he had very little time left in which to play.

It was time to head back. He watched a curl of smoke lift from the chimney.

Then, an odd thing: he seemed to hear a voice within his mind. Go on, it urged, just dig out one more handful.

He looked back at his warm house, and he reached into the cold snow one more time.

His fingers touched something hard and smooth and colder than ice. He looked back at his house, where his mother was taking the cakes from the oven with a long wooden spatula, and then he looked back at the hole he had dug, and began feeling around for the edges and sides of what he had found.

It was a box- a silver box so cold it burned his fingers right through the cloth of his gloves. That voice in his mind, which was his own voice, said Where there is a box, there is a key.

So he looked back at the house and knew its warmth, saw the smoke lazing from the chimney, saw his mother glance towards the window. Surely by now she would be wondering about him. And he took one hand and scraped his fingers across the bottom of the hole.

His fingers turned over a little ornate key.

Where there is a key, there is a lock, his voice inside his head said.

He revolved the cold silver box in his hands and saw how the keyhole was set in an ornate scrollwork just before the lip of the top. He looked back once more at the warm house, his mother wiping her hands on her apron as she came to the window to call for him. And he put the little key in the lock.

The box clicked.

Then, for the last time he looked back at the house and at his mother, at all he had known, and then he raised the lid of the box.





Every story in the world ever told, all the stories you will ever know or have known, blew up out of that box. Princes and princesses, wizards and foxes and witches and trolls and wolves and woodsmen and kings and elves and dwarves and ravens and a beautiful girl in a red cape. For a second the boy saw them all there, perfectly, spinning in the air, and at once they beckoned to him to take wing and join them there.

And he did. The boy was in the stories, and of the stories, and at once the wind caught hold of them and sent them blowing, some of them this way, and some of them that.


And that, of course, was that- the story of all the stories. Some of you had already known it, but to some of you it is new. Still. I cannot help but think, especially now, after what I have seen in Kinkantown, and especially here, in Silent Hill, I cannot help but wonder if some of those stories might have blown into other stories, gotten mixed up in the blowing of the wind. Maybe the wind tumbled some of those stories together, switched the trolls with the kings, and put fox's heads on the princes, and mixed up the witch with the beautiful girl in the red cape. I often wonder if that happened.

I probably shouldn't be risking this but... the madwoman IS in the church. I can't get out past her. Be careful! Don't come here!

There's....there seems to be no one in the church.

Hello? Ahiru, are you here?

Heather?

...anyone?

I can't find Ahiru in all this fog!

I better head back to the church in case she's gone on ahead.

If anything happens to her I'll never forgive myself have to scold her for a month, that dunderhead...

I have been told there is no way out of this city. All the roads are closed or gone, and even those who can fly become lost in the fog and fly back in.

I tell you, I have seen this before! When Drosselmeyer's terrible story neared its climax no one could take leave of Kinkantown until it had been completed.

We had all been cogs in the wheels of his terrible machine. Puppets in his hideous dance, a dance he wished to have ever end in tragedy.

So angry was he at the people of the town that he was dead.

Do you think perhaps it is the same with this Silent Hill?
If we could piece together all that this town's story requires, we could rewrite the ending.

Am I the only writer here?

I was sure a long long time back I saw something about another writer....he had an obsession with numbers and a tendency to come down with terrible headaches.

Perhaps whoever has written this town's story wrote him that way?

Where's Duck?
Where's Heather?
Where is that priest?

Am I here all alone??

Why is it so dark?????

No one should know I dreamed of Drosselmeyer

The man who hosts us here, this Vincent person, is quite mad.

A few nights ago the other man who was here, the long haired fellow who never left his room, went away.

Since then, day in and out, Vincent has been cleaning the building, talking to himself.

Perhaps he startled Ahiru and that is why she left?

I cannot bear the sound of scrubbing, his obvious tension.

Someone must speak to this person, for I certainly shall not!

I can't find Ahiru!

I hope she's still in the church.