Theodore Nott

I'm told my stitches can come out in just under a week. I've nearly convinced my house elf that I'm perfectly capable of limping on my own even with the stitches in my leg. I'm also no longer delirious on potions either. Though I suspect my elf is trying to be overly helpful. Particularly when I had to assure her multiple times that I am capable of bathing all on my own before she'd leave the bleeding room. That was a little disturbing, I'll admit, but I'm attempting to purge it from memory entirely.

Lisa's been stopping in and getting Prinny to leave me be for a bit. Human company, how novel. There very well may be more yams than even I am capable of eating at this point, however. Merlin knows Pritch isn't going to eat them. I find myself rather more well fed lately than usual. It's enough to make one wonder if injury and the correct sorts of acquaintances aren't the way to survive the world, almost. I wouldn't suggest it, however. The stitches itch. At least the dogs seem happy. Hannah's been coming by to check on me as well and her son's been walking the dogs for me. I don't think I've ever had so many people hanging about to make sure I was alright before. Then again, I don't tend to get injured or ill very often either.

((OOC: writing is scrawling and a bit sloppy))

( Private to Hannah )

Three more days of this. I think the dosing comes down tomorrow morning. By a lot.

Theme of the Day: Sleep (Take that you wankers, you know how you are)
Secondary Theme of the Day: Cold Bed

I do not approve of that last bit. The bed was so much more comfortable with her in it. And warmer. I wasn't actually serious when I told her the best would get cold but then it did. To spite me. Or spite her? I'm not sure but it's spiting someone. That makes me sad. Evil, spiteful, good for nothing bed.

I take that back. It's good for sleeping. So much sleep.

You know what's sad? I took advice about a woman from a gay man. And he was right. Merlin save me, bloody Finch-Fletchley was fucking spot on. That's just...wrong. I mean, doesn't he have a husband? (Can you have husbands in England if you're a man? Don't they stone people for that? Or is that just the polygamists?)

Deity preserve me, she's feeding me more bloody potion. I swear to all that is whatever, the elf is trying to keep me doped up for a reason. She's going to kill me and then pin it on Hannah just because she really, really dislikes Hannah. I don't actually remember why, though. Maybe Hannah bit her nose.

Wait, no, that was Sharif.

I'm just lucky Prinny hasn't bitten Hannah yet. She gets that look whenever she's about. Like the elf is picturing how Hannah would look with an apple in her mouth and being turned on a spit. Is spit the right word? I can't remember.

I am strongly opposed to Hannah being roasted. For the record.

((OOC: Theo's normally very neat, orderly script is sloppy and uneven))

The theme of today is clearly stupidity.

-My house elf is sort of stupid just because she loathes Hannah and thus awkward ensued.

-I had a conversation with a woman in which I'm pretty sure I was a complete and utter arse and a fair bit more stupid than I ought to be. Only I really am fairly stupid over her so that makes sense. That ended poorly. Again. I'd rather not think about all the blatant act of stupid going on there.

-Then I went off to rescue my best friend from his brilliant act of stupidity. Well I went to get him out of the first one and arrived in time to get him to not commit the second one. Knowing him it might have been the fourth or fifth act of stupidity he was on.

-Cue me going and doing something really bloody stupid so he doesn't. On the bright side I finally got rid of all those bleeding enchanted balloons. We also acquired said best mate's brother. That should take off a point of stupid, actually. Except for the next point.

-Cue me putting myself in the path of a whip that had something other than just leather on it so it didn't hit said brother of best mate.

Now I've got more stitches than I can remember in three different parts of my body; I'm pretty sure I'm actually on even worse terms with a woman who is frustrating and confounding and who I'm entirely smitten with against both our wills; and I'm pretty sure Morag gave me far stronger painkillers than I needed. Maybe she confused my dosage with Graham's.

I really need a new theme for tomorrow. Suggestions anyone?

Am I supposed to be able to feel the fingers of the hand that's attached to my shoulder that didn't need stitches? They're all tingly.

Do we have any Healers who still make housecalls?

I have four men who need medical attention for open wounds. The worst of it is a gunshot wound, the least of it is lashings. At least one may be a terrible patient.

Form of medical treatment (magical or mundane) doesn't matter so long as it is effective.

Payment will be negotiated with me directly and no one else.

I've never enjoyed Society functions. I ended up dragged to a number of them when I was a child by my mother. People liked her. They respected her. I'm sure a fair few of them wondered what she was doing with my father even with the consideration of arranged marriages. It was my own personal hell as a child. Lunches. Teas. Dinners. Balls. I was perfectly behaved, don't get me wrong, but I despised every moment of it and I only didn't make too much of a fuss over it because it was my mother who wanted me to come along. After she died I out and out refused to attend any of those things. My father managed to convince me a handful of times through his own special brand of persuasion to attend after her death.

Yet for some reason I still chose to attend that bloody masquerade. I'm fairly certain Christopher Warrington and Lisa Turpin were the only legitimately enjoyable parts of that evening. Unless you count the Scotch but I don't think I rightly can claim that a part of the evening without actually being an alcoholic. Since I'm not one it'll have to be left with the pair of those people. And I suppose Pritch for escorting me to the bar. You really need to wonder what sort of influence that man is on me. I'm sure he would have dragged me home bodily if need be, though. That's what mates are for. He didn't have to, though. Next time I will remind myself that I despise these sorts of events. If I fail in that reminder perhaps I should just give up and spend the entire night at the bar. Scotch always improves any function even vaguely related to Society.

Though I suppose Society proper doesn't really exist anymore. Perhaps I should thank the supposed apocalypse for that.

Apropos to nothing, it's interesting how people contradict themselves all the time. Myself included. It's interesting the lies people tell themselves and the lies they tell others and how many of those are said out of some sort of self-preservation. If someone walked up to you and offered you absolutely anything you wanted would you ask for what you wanted most or be too afraid that it wasn't real and you'd set yourself up for disaster? Should impossible things be pursued even if they are just that? Where does the head stop and the heart begin and vice versa? And why are they separated?

And why am I writing all of these inane thoughts down? Merlin, I don't think even I want to read any of this. I'd ward it if I could think straight enough for it but it's that hour of the night and I can't really. Perhaps I'll ward it in the morning if I remember. It's unlikely.

It seems like good advice to go after what you want. In theory it's the way to go about things. But when that thing doesn't want to be had that advice gets a bit sticky, doesn't it?

I'm not sure I know how to intentionally pursue a friendship. One develops or one doesn't in my experience. I've never actually sought after one before. Oddly enough I think I do better being appropriated as such than trying to figure out protocol consciously.

I think too much. That's always been my problem.

There is a place where the sidewalk ends
And before the street begins,
And there the grass grows soft and white,
( And there the sun burns crimson bright, )

I haven't been able to get that out of my head the past day or so. I'm not entirely sure why and I'm not entirely sure where it's from either. I know my mother used to recite it to me but I haven't any idea from where she found it. It doesn't register quite right in my mind when it repeats, though, as if some meaning is being ascribed to or associated with it which I know isn't correct but that I can't think past. It's interesting how a mind can do that.

Memories are fascinating things. Fluid and and full of deceit. There's a reason eye witness accounts don't tend to hold up too well in court. One person saw a white man, one person saw a chinese man but it was actually a doberman on its hind legs or some such rot. Nothing conforms to what a person wants, whether good or ill, quite so quickly as a memory does.

I don't even know why I'm on this tangent, actually.

( Private )

It's a curious thing, I find, the differentiation between magic and wild magic. It's the same differentiation one may make between cats and wild cats, for example. A cat will revert to its true nature if it must. They are highly adaptable creatures. If left locked in the home of their owner who has died a cat will often times begin to consume the body of the deceased for sustenance once there is none otherwise available. What I find so interesting about that is that they are perfectly capable of and willing to be civilised about the whole affair until their lives are put on the line, at which point they revert to their natural, feral nature.

Magic, I suspect, is much the same. Humans took centuries to domesticate all manner of creature, but there is no creature which has been domesticated completely. There are still wild horses, wild dogs, wild cats and so on and so forth. I admit to never having witnessed such a thing as a wild bovine but I've no doubts such a thing indeed exists. Therefore, why can magic not be the same thing? Over centuries humans once took the care to domesticate a breed of it, so to speak, but it happened so long ago now that no one understands how it was done.

How many people understand how to truly domesticate a wild animal? How many people know how to win a creature's trust? People speak of "breaking" horses but I don't think breaking the spirit is mandatory for domestication necessarily. I just think that's the only way they can think of to do it. There are legends in certain cultures of people who could speak with animals, commune with them and even become them. Not in the way a wizard who is an animagus shifts physical form into that of an animal but more in the way a werewolf becomes a wolf. The difference being that werewolves don't precisely act as natural wolves do and the legends speak of those who became the natural animal, indistinguishable from one born as such.

There are volumes upon volumes which speak of spellcasting and potions brewing that very few, if any, can make heads or tails of anymore. Part of it is a language barrier, and part is that it simply makes no sense to us. It was an entirely different manner and use of magic. Once wizards didn't need wands. They tapped into something both stronger and more unwieldy. Yet they learned a way to channel that, which is something we've long forgotten.

I don't think there's any difference between the magic we're used to using and the wild magic which has reclaimed the islands, honestly. I think it went mad with being chained up and when the domesticated variety met its more feral cousin it reverted as well. There is, of course, magic which still obeys the wand the way it always has just the way some dogs never go back to being wild but die of starvation when left on their own. Some creatures are naturally submissive and need a master, others are not and do not.

I wonder if a natural leopard or wolf was sentient and aware in the manner in which humans are how they would feel about housecats and pet dogs. I imagine it would be quite the range of emotion that humans conveyed in their reactions to human slavery. Some don't see the slave as the same as themselves, others look at the similarities between them first. What if magic is sentient in a way that it reacts to that observation? What if its malevolence has less to do with its natural state and more to do with rebellion against its captors who kept is chained for so long and who did so to its relative as well?

Sometimes I think we need only to relearn how to speak with magic, to commune with it and allow it to fill us. I wonder if the human need for control and dominance over all else is what causes our failure to understand. Perhaps learning to coexist with feral magic is no wiser than living among feral cats, but if we're to die at its claws one way or another at least the former holds an existence filled with less fear than the latter. I am so very past my tolerance for living within a society built on terror. Fear of magic, of the night, of the unknown, of a thing which is different, of people. I'd rather have the beast beside me then worry it will come out of nowhere and lunge for my throat. The trouble is in figuring out how to convince it to allow me to walk beside it.

I see that our glorious newspaper has gotten itself off the ground, though I'm unsure as to whether or not you can rightly call it a newspaper when it's not a distributed paper. Newsjournal sounds daft. Considering the man at the helm, however, a daft term is quite fitting. I find it peculiar, however, that the article on the militia treats it more like a military. Let's be honest, those who serve in the militia rarely do it out of a sense of duty or desire to do so. They do it because they are required to and if they refuse they will be escorted out of York. You'd think the journalist in question could find a source for the article who understood the state of the militia and the resident obligation to it more clearly. Apparently not.

The dogs are scratching at the doors. I suspect they are as restless as I am these days, which is saying something really. They've always been much more content to lie in one place than I. I ought to take them for a walk around the walls or something of that nature. Perhaps I'll manage to find an interesting shop somewhere with something worth trading for, though I doubt it.

I don't think the dogs quite realise that the cat doesn't want to play with them. They keep trying to sneak up on Pester, play tag, nudge toys at him. They keep making utterly pitiful faces whenever they get hissed at. Shouldn't they be programmed to understand that the kitty is not a playmate? Sometimes I really question the intelligence of those four.

It was declared to me today by a woman of approximately forty-five years that the world was ending. How would we know if the world was ending, I asked her, since we haven't any idea what is going on in it or even if it's still there at all. She told me it must have been if chivalry wasn't dead. All I had done was hold the door for her. Perhaps the world really is ending if that is what passes for chivalry these days. The landscape certainly has changed.

( Private )