"Heavy, humid night. Corner of Park and Main.
Cast that first glance,
Your smile, my veins.
At maximum capacity, blood pumping so fast,
My girl, if looks gave heart attacks."
The Taxpayers
Friday, April 5th, Year 1
Friday, at long last.
The fluorescent lights that line the ceiling of the friendly neighborhood JojaMart feel like ice picks shoved into Shane's skull. Doing his best to avert his eyes from their glare, he pulls the lid of his hat down, and focuses on the task at hand. Today, it's stocking shelves, which is just fantastic. At least he's not working the registers. That would require a base level of social interaction.
The day ticks by, and he can't help but find himself focusing on the location of the arms of the clock on the side of the wall, wondering why the hell his Fridays always seem to drag on the longest. He shoves a sack of JojaSugar into its place on a dirty shelf a little too roughly, wanting his headache would go away, longing for 5 o'clock, wishing he was literally anywhere else.
JojaMart is a hellhole; anyone paying close enough attention would know that. But it is an efficient hellhole, Shane had to give them that. They are impossible to avoid, and it doesn't matter whether you live in the big cities or even in deadbeat residences such as Stardew Valley. They crop up everywhere, like some sort of parasitic plant, and folks flock to them, even if they pretend to morally oppose the company and all it stands for.
Not that Shane is any better than the rest, though. He does work for them, after all.
As shitty of a job as it can be, it pays the bills. Marnie may not charge much, but with his expensive habits to think about, it was really the only way to make even a mediocre wage in this town. And even if he had the motivation to leave, to try and find better work elsewhere, where would he turn? No one is hiring; most of the shops around here are mom-and-pop businesses and won't hire anyone unless they're family, and even if they did, it probably wouldn't be more fulfilling work anyway. Work is work, in the end; tasks to finish for the promise of payment in return. And even if JojaMart is the scum of the earth, then maybe it's only best that Shane is employed to them. He's right at home.
There are two benefits to working at JojaMart, in addition to the scarcely livable paychecks it offers him. One, there is a slight discount to their products. That means that the cases of beer and the junk food he brought home with him would be more expensive if he wasn't an employee. It may only be a 5% deduction, but that must add up to something in the long run.
The second benefit, ironically, is his boss. Shane's line of sight shifts upward towards at the front of the store, catching sight of Morris standing pin-straight at his front desk, his eyes glued to the door as he waits for potential customers to walk in. With the devoted fervor that Morris presents day after day, Shane is half convinced that his manager believes the bullshit he peddles. And even though Morris almost acts like a cartoon moustache-twirling villain with only half of the subtlety, Shane had to give him credit for one thing, and one thing only. Morris, along with the rest of the damn town, is surely aware of Shane's drinking and his shitty attitude towards customers, but his manager never seems to care. As long as Shane punches in and out at the right time each day, Morris is willing to turn a blind eye to his demeanor, and he couldn't care less about what he did outside his shifts.
But Shane still drank in secret on the clock, anyway. How else is he doing to deal with this blue-tinted nightmare?
Shane hears the distant sound of muffled music, hard rock to be precise. He turns his head to see one of his co-workers, nodding along as he swept the floor. Sam. The kid was absolutely an irritant when he first started working there at the age of eighteen, but he is not so bad now. He mainly tunes Shane out, preferring his headphones to Shane's company, and that's exactly as it should be. It is the same deal for the majority of the citizens of this town, more or less. Shane had managed to scare off most of the folks, who would rather give him polite pleasantries to his face and whisper about him while his back was turned. But again, this is as it should be.
Sam slips away from his position, dragging the broom on the floor along with him, a loud squeaking sound against tile flooring. He must be getting off before Shane does. Lucky bastard. Shane pauses briefly, staring at a sack of JojaSugarZero in his grip. Damn. I really am being negative today.
And it is Friday, after all. He should be happy.
The day drifts on listlessly, like a lifeboat lost at sea.
When the clock finally strikes five, Shane finds himself yanking his JojaCap off his head immediately, briskly walking to the backroom to punch out. Morris turns his head in Shane's direction, but he doesn't say anything, and quickly returns his sight back to the front door, wired eyes scanning for new customers. Writing the time down, Shane grabs his heavier coat and pulls it over his uniform, and heads right to the front door.
"Have a great day, Shane." Morris says from behind him, cloyingly sweet, as artificial as the zero-calorie sweetener that he had been stocking.
Shane gives his manager a curt nod without breaking pace, letting the automatic doors of the JojaMart pull open in front of him, as if to welcome him to the weekend.
The air is crisp with a harsh bite, far colder than it ought to be in early April. The chill reminds Shane of the fall, and he places his hands in his coat pockets, picking up the pace to maintain his internal heat. The clouds stretch onwards above him, heavy and looming, and he wonders if it's going to rain tomorrow. Admittedly, he doesn't mind the rain too much. It's far more soothing to fall asleep to the sound of tip-tappa-tipping against the roof of Marnie's farmhouse than it is to toss and turn in dead silence. But rain tends to bring despair, too, a current of thoughts running alongside the storm. How could it not?
The walk to the Stardrop Saloon feels longer than it should, with too reflection and contemplation churning in his head. But when he finally arrives, he pulls open the door, and inwardly cringes at the crowd he is confronted with. But it is to be expected. The reason why Friday is always the busiest day at the bar is because all drinks are half-off, until as late as nine PM. So, naturally, everyone gravitates to the scene, because no one wants to miss out on a deal. It's the same reason why JojaMart does so well, wherever they are.
But this is just Shane's routine. It's only convenient that he gets such a hefty discount on this particular day. Tomorrow is his day off, and there is no better time to drink himself into oblivion.
He makes his way to the bar counter, only giving the slightest nods of acknowledgment to anyone who notices his entry. No one tries to make an effort to say hi to him, at least, not yet. He spots Emily behind the bar, blue hair and dressed in red, her back turned as she pours Robin a foaming glass of the house ale. Emily always works Friday, while Gus works in the backroom, preparing food for the guests. Shane knows the saloon's day-by-day routine as well as he knows the backs of his own hands at this point.
Emily, surprisingly enough, is the person that Shane probably minds the least in the entire town. She seems to have all the qualities that he would typically detest in any human being. With her eternal upbeat attitude, belief in higher powers (no matter how odd), and incurable kindness, she seemed to be one of those girls from those bad movies written by men where the girl swoops in and rescues the lead character from himself all with the power of positive thinking. She even looks the part; tall and attractive with scruffy hair dyed blue, always dressed in hand-made dresses that she sows herself. But, strangely, Emily isn't really like that, not at all. She doesn't try to force her way into other peoples' lives. She serves Shane drink after drink, no doubt knowing his affliction, but she never pries. She's only kind and accepting, welcoming him whenever he walks through the door, just as she does now as he reaches the counter. Sometimes, when he's under the influence, he'll even talk about the hens back at home, the chickens he cares for at the ranch, and she listens with genuine interest and can even recollect the details he shares at a later date. In turn, he tries his best to listen to her babble about power stones and vibes and auras, not wanting to dismiss her interests in the same way that she has never diminished his. Emily isn't his friend, not truly, but when he's at his lowest she almost feels like one, and sometimes that is what he clings to, even if it's just the idea of connection, of understanding.
"Hey, Shane." Emily says, smiling wide. He's almost tempted to smile back. "Usual?"
"You know it."
She turns back to the kegs, pouring a golden liquid into an ample mug. She is typically very careful when she streams beer but today she just lets it the spout run into the center of the glass, leaving him with an inch of froth near the top of the rim. He's not about to complain. He has had some suspicions for why she's seemingly out of sorts on Friday evenings. She places it in front of him, and he slides her the coin, half the amount of what its typical cost.
So he can get drunk for half the price.
He prefers to sit at the table next to the giant taxidermy bear, away from anyone else. If he sits at the bar, then other people might sit next to them and he might risk bumping elbows with someone he isn't keen on conversing with. Some Fridays, it gets so busy that he has no choice but to slump against the wall near the fireplace, wanting to sit but with nowhere to go. Unfortunately, tonight is shaping into that sort of night; he catches sight of Pierre alone, drinking alone, occupying his spot. Luckily for Pierre, Shane would rather yank his own teeth out with a pair of rusty pliers than make casual conversation with the guy, so he leans his back against the wall on the right of the roaring fireplace, the heat reaching him almost instantly.
He sees the youth of Stardew grouped around the pool table on the right of where he's seated, chatting and remaining away from the rest of the crowd. Sebastian and Abigail, the town's resident goth kids, are talking closely about something or other. Sam is there too, hooting at his hopeful victory. Shane has never been that good at pool, and even if he did have an interest in playing a round, there is something about hanging out with a younger crowd that repels him even more than he can describe.
Demetrius and Robin, the botanist and the carpenter who lived up near the mountains, are slow dancing beside the saloon's worn-out jukebox. Their steps are uneven, weighed down by drink, and the sound emitting from the speakers is filled with static and erratic pauses. But there was something to be said about their closeness, and Shane turns his head away, not wanting to think about it.
The doctor of Stardew Valley, Dr. Harvey Hoffmann, sits alone in the middle of the bar, nursing a glass of white. Shane has seen him for his yearly check-ups, but it's typically not a pleasant conversation, so it's not worth recalling. A fellow loner, the doctor keeps to himself, occasionally glancing absentmindedly at his watch as though he has somewhere to be.
Pam is not here, thankfully. Judging by the misplaced bar chair at the counter, she had been here earlier in the afternoon and merely got too wasted to continue drinking into the night.
Willy is there, the grizzled fisherman who lives in the shack by the sea. The trawler shop has been there since Shane was a child, and it has not changed in the slightest over the years; run down and grimy, it really is a wonder how his meager business stays afloat. Perhaps it's because fishing bait might be the cheapest thing in the entire world. Willy, smoking his pipe, chats with Elliott—and that guy is really something else—while Shane's neighbor Leah sits by idly, sipping a cup of red from a pretty glass. Elliott says something too far away for Shane to hear, and Leah lets out a laugh.
Shane glances over to the bar, and catches sight of Emily looking up sharply. She quickly diverts her attention back to the glass and cloth in her hand.
Marnie is here, too. Jas is old enough now where she can stay in the ranch house by herself, provided that she keeps the doors locked and stays put. He half-heartedly considers joining his aunt beside her table. But Shane sees Lewis there beside her, while the two talk closely with mugs of beer in their hands. It is just odd and uncomfortable to see them out in the open. Everyone in the entire town is aware of how dysfunctional their relationship is, but no one asks and no one cares, so it's not worth even thinking about. They are old news, stale for so long, way before Shane had arrived in the valley; even a town as starved for gossip as Pelican Town has gotten bored with them at this point.
Shane especially doesn't want his own thoughts tainted for even a single moment with any sort of reflection on his aunt's affair with the town mayor. He doesn't want to interrupt her, and she doesn't want to be interrupted. So he lets his aunt continue on with this farce of a relationship, because it doesn't concern him, not at all.
Shane thinks of Jas again, sitting at home, likely playing with her dolls. She has started making up stories for them, like characters in a book. Three weeks prior, he found a father character placed on the floor of the dollhouse, and Jas explained to him that he was "sleeping it off".
He doesn't realize that the glass is empty until only foam drifts into his mouth.
No need to stop now. He returns to Emily, who greets him with the same accepting smile. She doesn't ask him if his preference has somehow changed in the last twenty minutes. A little less frothy, she returns the glass to him, and he nods his thanks, but she isn't looking at him. She glances at the table where Willy and his companions are sitting, and she shifts her gaze down, again busy with dish cleaning.
Shane doesn't blame her. But he also wishes that maybe she could open up to him, tell him what she is thinking. Just to confirm it, even if it's written plain across her face. He understands feeling small in a small town. Who knows how the residents would react? But she's really not his friend, not really. She's just his bartender, and perhaps the kindest one he's even known. Disrupting this flicker of a bond almost feels like life or death, and it's just not worth the risk.
Shane returns to his spot, and drinks deep.
By the time his second glass is nearing finished, the door pulls open, and the town's blacksmith shuffles into the room. Clint. Aging, awkward, always sweating, even if he's nowhere near a furnace. Somehow, he is also one of Shane's "friends", but it's more of a one-sided relationship. There is something about the man that truly disturbs Shane, but he's not nearly drunk enough to confront that thought right now. Clint pauses at the door, staring straight at Emily, his hand still on the handle.
Just walk in, coward. Shane thinks to himself, finishing off the last of his drink. You know you're going to anyway.
Clint paces unsteadily to the front of the bar. His sight never leaves Emily the entire time; it would almost be funny, but it's not, not yet. Shane finds himself joining Clint at the edge of the counter, awaiting Emily's service, his arms as close to his sides as they can possibly be.
Shane can't stand Clint for a multitude of reasons. The chief among which is his constant obsession over Emily; his steadfast belief that they are soulmates, even though Emily hasn't even given any sort of hint of actual affection. But Shane can't be bothered to care, mostly because Emily didn't seem to care either. Either she's never picked up on it, or she chooses to ignore it. Either way, this is her deal. Shane would step in if she ever needed him to, but she doesn't treat Clint like any other client. The same smile, the same kindness. Shane recognizes that this is just a pleasant person doing her job, while Clint would rather believe that Emily is the person he is destined to be with, red strings lacing them up into pretzel knots. As if fate is even a real phenomenon.
But Clint likes Shane, and sickened to his stomach at even the thought, they might have more similarities than he would like to admit.
Not nearly drunk enough yet. The third drink runs down his throat, quicker than he even expected.
Clint tries to make pleasant small talk, but his variation of such is mainly griping about his job and questioning his chances with Emily while she is at the other end of the bar, though he's talking loud enough to be heard. Emily is still preoccupied though, stealing glances over at the distant table, far away from the two men. Shane has had enough, and orders one more, giving a half-hearted goodbye to Clint while returning to his place by the looming bear next to the other end of the bar. He hears the teens laughing over their game of pool, and downs his glass in only two gulps.
When he brings the glass back down, he catches Marnie's eye.
The clear disapproval in her look catches him off guard. She typically doesn't interfere, but perhaps she's been emboldened by the booze within her. The expression on her face is equal parts angry and upset; how distinct these two emotions are, and yet when combined they have the power to convince anyone to pause for a moment and look inward. But not Shane. He merely raises his empty glass, refusing to break the stare. What is she going to say? He may be fucked up, perhaps in more ways than one, but he wasn't hurting anyone. Only himself, but that is its own conversation. And besides, it's Friday, right?
Lewis places a wrinkled hand on Marnie's wrist, and she diverts her attention back to the mayor.
Enough of this. The people-watching was beginning to feel overwhelming. Too many glances on him now; even if he is merely imagining them, he needs to seek shelter from their glare. Suddenly it feels as though the space of the saloon as grown smaller, and he walks to the edge of the bar, reaching Emily's side. "I'm through with tonight."
Emily looks up at him, smiling. "I'll see you tomorrow."
At least she never asks questions she already knows the answer to.
Shoving the door open, he's greeted with the frosty night, as cold and as silent as the void. The clouds above him were beginning to break apart, sneaking glimpses of the moon and the stars.
He walks home, his thoughts all a blur. He's not nearly drunk enough yet, and he has at least seven beers left in the mini-fridge of his bedroom. But he starts wondering if that will be enough. It is Friday, after all. The JojaMart in this town isn't a twenty-four-hour location like the ones in Zuzu City are, shutting their doors at eleven, just an hour short of midnight. He should be able to make the trip there and back, before Marnie is even back home from the bar. He thinks about the way she looked at him, and feels an equal mix of disgust and irritation. Four beers is nothing. She will likely have the same amount by the time she leaves the saloon. Who is she to judge him?
He decides against trudging to JojaMart. It's not worth his time, perhaps seeing Morris again and risking stares thrown his way by the evening workers. Not that it really matters, though. Almost all of the businesses in this town run on skeleton crews, and everyone has seen Shane at some point, shuffling in to get his fix. But after all of the social interaction he was subjected to today, he's had his fill, and he's ready to call it quits. Hopefully Jas is asleep at this point, and he can find some alone time in his room with his game station, where he can focus his thoughts on some mindless task in one of the games among his collection. It's a milder way to start the weekend, but it is perhaps the safer option.
Shane arrives at the entrance of Marnie's ranch, a distant wind ruffling through the trees surrounding him. The cattle have gone inside, as though they can anticipate the coming rain. Shane read somewhere once that animals are smarter than people give them credit for, that they are able to sense things that humans cannot. He has no idea if that's even true, but sometimes it feels like it is. Gently opening the door, he steps into his home, trying to not make any noise.
There is no flurry of footsteps to his left, no door opening suddenly at his arrival. Jas must be asleep. He thinks of his game station sitting at the floor next to a staticky television, in his stuffy bedroom with star shaped stickers staring down at him, and then he decides to do something else. He takes three of his beers with him from his mini-fridge, stuffing one in each pocket and one cracked open in his hand, and steps back out into the brisk of night.
The pier by the pond is always open, twenty-four hours a day and seven days a week. No one really comes out there to fish anymore; perhaps in better times they did, but this must have taken place before Shane moved to Stardew Valley. Now, it sits abandoned, creaking and daring to break at any heavy step on its planks. Shane is fond of coming here, sitting on the edge of the dock with his feet just barely missing the surface of the water, drinking and thinking, alone. His secret has been out to Marnie for a long while evidently, and he doesn't want Jas involved, so he finds that the dock is the best place to go to avoid social interaction while also dodging the dynamics of the family that he holds so dear.
There's another place that he finds himself drawn to on some nights, as well. Down past Leah's cottage, a decent walk away from the ranch, past the maple trees and the wild scallion clusters. A different sort of view.
But he is not going to visit there today.
After all, it's Friday.
The fifth beer is down his throat by the time he's only five paces from the door. Somehow, he drinks faster when alone. Yes, he doesn't care what others think, but their stares of silent judgment still stifle him, and again, it's just easier this way. He turns back, stumbling slightly, and grabs another can from his fridge, ignoring the two in his pockets, and makes his way to the dock, to his place.
The road up north leads to the old Wright Farm, but Shane doesn't pay it any mind. Distantly, in the fog of alcohol, he remembers the girl from last night, trying her hardest to make new friends. He wonders if she's still there, or if she's given up, leaving the land to be eventually be bought up by JojaCo to create some sort of new mega warehouse.
Drinking from his sixth can, he justifies the third of whiskey he sipped on during his bathroom breaks at work. Those drinks are just to make it through the day, to make working at his dead-end job even a bit more tolerable. He's walking a bit lopsided now, but he determinedly makes his way to the dock. He's almost there, a few paces away from the pond. Just a bit of peace, just him and water and stars.
He hears a distant mumbling, an echo of the wind.
"Three, two, one."
He freezes in his tracks, looking around. He doesn't see anyone. There's no one around. He shifts a bit in place, feeling slightly spooked. If someone was trying to fuck with him and give him a jump scare, he might flip his lid.
"Three, two, one. You're fine."
More confused now than frightened, he reaches the source of the voice, located north of the dock. He stops again, seeing a silhouette pressed up against the bark of the largest tree in Cindersap, his mind whirling to try to determine if it's just a shadow or something real.
"Three-"
The shadow collapses onto the forest floor.
Half-drunk and bewildered, Shane paces steadily over to the trunk. He finds himself shaking, and not with withdrawal.
The body before him is the new farmer. Dani, he recalls, rubbing his mouth with his hand. Somehow he remembered that. He hadn't even looked in her direction when she sauntered up to him at the saloon. The girl who has fallen at the edge of the tree is not someone he knew, so perhaps that's where the pieces came together. It's hard to say. He looks around, hoping that he would see someone come out of nowhere, the doctor maybe, or anyone that might magically know what to do. But no one manifests before him, and he's left with the girl at his feet, breathing steadily but otherwise unconscious.
What the fuck am I supposed to do?
His pockets press against him, cold, weighed down by the chilled cans he brought with him. A scrawny frame linked around an ancient trunk, needing help. Shane kneels down and, hesitantly, nudges the girl with a closed fist against her shoulder. She does not stir.
What the fuck am I supposed to do? What the fuck...
Farm labor is taxing, yes. But why the hell is she passed out in Cindersap? The farm is north. The minute that has passed feels like an hour; she still hasn't moved, nothing except for the rise and fall of her chest. The panic within him rushes forth, making his thoughts even harder to manage into coherent solutions.
Finding the doctor is the only option. But that means leaving her here, in the middle of the woods, and that just doesn't seem like a safe course of action. Should he carry her into town, drop her unceremoniously at Harvey's feet onto the floor of the saloon? Is he even still there? What is the right way? This is too much to think about, not while he's half-way drunk, and it's just too much, it's all too much. He shakes the girl's shoulder roughly, trying to yank her awake.
"For fuck's sake."
Two gray eyes open, meeting his own.
Shane pulls himself back up from his knees, unsteady. It's only after he's on his feet that he realizes how painfully uncomfortable the twigs and roots of the tree felt on his skin, marks likely left as blemishes.
Dani lays splayed, gazing up at him, blinking. She screws up her face, as though pissed off, but it doesn't seem to be directed at him. "What's going on?"
Shane stares at her, not knowing what to say. So he answers with the truth. "How should I know?"
The girl, trembling in the evening's wind, pulls herself up to her feet, clinging against the bark of the aged tree the entire time. She stares at Shane, but at his midsection, not meeting his eyes. "Fantastic." She leans against the tree, staring and blinking, now fixated on the labyrinth of roots beneath her feet. She closes her eyes once more, muttering the same words he had heard when he trekked through the forest. "Three, two, one. Three, two, one."
Okay. What the fuck.
"Can you stand?" Shane bluntly cuts in, interrupting her. The beers in his pockets were sweating now, the condensation beginning to weep into his skin.
Dani shrugs, her face pressed against the wood. "Probably not," she answers quietly.
She doesn't seem drunk. That is the strangest thing, seeing her list against the tree, seemingly aware but also completely lost to the world. Intoxicated, but if it is from booze, she's not acting like any drunkard that he has ever known. She focuses on one of her hands with narrowed eyes, slowly wriggling her fingers, oblivious to all else, still shaking like a leaf. He catches a glimpse of what looked to be a music note tattoo, right on her left wrist, and he wonders what that's all about when he sees her eyes flutter back closed.
"You there?" He finally says, louder than he intended. She flinches, clenching herself against the tree, and he feels a pang of guilt. It wasn't fair to be so shitty, not right now, even if he wasn't trying to be. Whatever this kid was going through, it is a dick move to try and shock her to awareness. He's been through that before. And even if it was from drink, or from exhaustion or whatever else, it's probably going to do her more harm than good.
With her cheek pressed against the bark, she murmurs, "You never told me your name."
"What?"
"You're that guy from the bar." She looks down at her feet, edged up at the corners of the stump. She shifts her weight to her left foot. "Remember?"
"It's Shane."
"Yeah?" The girl tilts her head up, focusing unsteadily on his face. "I'm Dani. We've met."
The adrenaline of this ordeal has sobered Shane up a tad. He finally gets a good look at the girl, the new farmer up north, who still looked to be rattling in the wind like the leaves of the tree she clings to. She is very pale, with long dark brown hair that looked to be half-tied into a ponytail, with the rest fallen bedraggled across one shoulder. The style does not appear to be intentional. A pretty face, though gaunt, looking up at him. Suddenly, meeting her eyes becomes oddly difficult. "Look... Do you need to get to the clinic, or something?"
"No." The response is immediate, and her expression unreadable. "It's low blood pressure. Nothing serious."
Somehow, passing out in the middle of the fucking forest seems a bit more serious than nothing. But he doesn't voice his thoughts. She appears to be a bit more stable on her feet, but she still keeps one arm against the tree. At this rate, the tree's like to start charging her rent. All he can do now is trust her word.
Holding out one hand, he tells her, "Well, come on, then. Let's get you home."
(A/N: Good day, good day!
When I wrote this chapter, I remember coming to the realization that I really am just winging this project. But I really did put a lot of love into it. Some days, I feel as though this story has been inside of me for a long time, but now I have the outlet and the health to make it happen.
At the end of the day, I am having so much fun. And that's what's really special about it all, at least to me. There was a good chunk of years in my life where I found that creative writing felt almost impossible at times. I would try to pen words to paper but none of it seemed to fit together. And honestly, that really hurt; I felt like a part of me had been lost somehow. But I'm finding that maybe right now is the perfect time to finally come back to what I loved to do when I was young. And it feels good; it almost makes me emotional.
Sorry for this self-indulgent author's note. But I have a lot of happiness inside me right now and I just wanted to spew it out somewhere. Fortunately, fanfiction is always a'waiting!)
This chapter's song lyric is brought to you by I Love You Like An Alcoholic - The Taxpayers. Great song, I highly recommend it. I would highly recommend any song that I pull the lyrics from, but most of my music preferences are pretty basic. What I am trying to say is that as far as music is concerned, my opinion is probably questionable at best. But if I like the lyrics and the rhythm, I'm likely to recommend it. Nothing groundbreaking here; I am just splattering words onto the internet after all.