Trigger warnings for death and suicide mentions. Don't worry, I won't do anything. See you at the bottom of the page.


Chapter 39: How to Mourn a Life

Frisk sat next to The Author. She was wearing her light pink #2 Sister shirt, as always, though now it was accompanied by a black coat and gloves. She rarely smiled anyway, but she definitely wasn't smiling now.

Frisk equipped the purple notebook they had found in the Underground and wrote something with a red pen, then passed it over to her. It read: "Are you okay?"

The Author read this silently, then sighed. "I honestly don't know," she replied.

Frisk took back the notebook and wrote something else: "Do you want to talk about it?"

The Author thought for a moment. "Sure," she nodded, "It hasn't made me feel much before, so what's the harm?"

Uh-oh, Frisk thought. That sounded a lot like a certain flower they could mention by name. They noticed The Author was staring off to the front wall of the classroom. They had noticed her there on the way back to the PTA meeting room from the bathroom (rather than gendered bathrooms, the school had been constructed with multiple single stall bathrooms scattered throughout the building). She looked neutral, yet a bit sad. Neu-sad?

"…Where should I start?" She finally asked, turning back to the ambassador.

"Not counting previous bouts of sadness, what's troubling you?" Frisk wrote.

"Well…" The Author shifted in her seat. "Back at the end of December, my cat—we'll call her The Cat, for privacy reasons—came down with an upper respiratory infection, and when we took her to the doctor, they said she also had a scratch on her eye from rubbing her face so often and would need to wear a cone for a while. Since it was the end of December, I had to go back to college a few days later, so the last I saw of her before I left was her in pain."

"Did she get better?"

"Relatively speaking. She got the okay to have the cone taken off after a week or two, but… she wasn't really the same. She wasn't going in the litterbox all the way; she was hungrier than usual and losing weight... Then, February 14 rolled around, and my parents and my little sister The Deviant came by my school to drop off some medicine I needed, and Mom dropped the news: The Cat had kidney disease and was going blind. She wouldn't get better. She had to be put down. The next day." The Author gazed at the wall again. She seemed calm, but her tone was less so.

"I'm sorry," Frisk signed, then squeezed her hand. The Author squeezed back and smiled sadly, even if she wasn't entirely positive of what they said.

"When I found out, sure, I was shocked and I cried a little… but I didn't feel as strongly as I thought I would have at the news. My little sister seemed more torn up about it, visibly. So we went home and spent as much time with her as we could, taking pictures and videos and petting her and stuff… Then Saturday, February 15, 2020 came, and at five PM we drove to the doctor and… put her to sleep. Again, I cried… but not that much, considering how much weight I had put on the idea of her being gone. We took her home in the little box they gave us, and Dad spent the night building another box for her. 'Over-engineering it', as Mom put it. Then Sunday, around one PM, we buried her. And I didn't cry at all."

Frisk hummed, then wrote again: "why had you put so much thought into her death?"

"To be honest, we kind of saw this coming. She was an old girl, about fourteen, and during January before she really went downhill, Mom would text me about how she couldn't reach the litter box as often and was possibly getting kitty dementia. So I knew it would probably happen soon, but… not that soon. And, um, to tell you the truth, Frisk… I put a little bit of thought into what I'd do to myself after she died."

They got out of their chair and hugged her. The Author put a hand on Frisk's arm, but didn't hug back. "I'm not going to do anything. I promised Devi I wouldn't, and once The Cat was gone, I realized I didn't feel broken up enough to warrant trying anything. I think that's kind of what's been getting at me. I'm not feeling a lot. I don't know if I'm feeling enough. I don't know if I'm feeling at all."

Frisk looked up at her, and she tensely looked back. Her face was neutral, but her eyes were a bit shiny. They snapped their fingers suddenly, startling her, and wrote down one word: "laptop".

"…What?" The Author looked confused.

They wrote again: "I need your laptop. Can I borrow it, please?"

"Um, sure, I guess… I was going to try to do some homework in a bit, but it can wait. I have all weekend." She handed them the laptop from her backpack after turning it on and letting the screen load.

They opened the internet and did a quick search, clicking a few links before beginning to type.

"What are you writing?" She asked. They didn't respond, giving her a small glance every so often. After a few minutes, they nodded and clicked a button. A robot voice began to speak, more clearly than most sites The Author knew of.

It said: "When Asriel and Chara died, Mom and Asgore were very upset, but they showed it in different ways. Asgore bottled up his feelings and declared a war, and Mom ran away from that war. They were both mourning, but they didn't do it the same way. Sans is always afraid something will take away his happy ending on the surface and everyone he loves. You might not know it, but it makes him very scared and sad. He hides it with a smile and jokes. In a way, he's mourning, but he's doing it differently from Mom and Asgore. And Flowey doesn't have a soul and lost his best friend. Even if he claims he can't feel anything, I know he misses them and mourns them; he just does it in a different way. There isn't a correct way to mourn; you have to do what's right for you, even if it doesn't involve crying. Even numbness can be a part of mourning."

The Author stared at the words on the screen as the voice stopped, eyes getting just a little bit wetter. She blinked and looked up as Frisk began writing something in their notebook again: "Did you love her?"

"What kind of question is that?" She asked, a slight hint of indignance in her voice. "Of course I did, I just—"

Frisk was writing again: "Do you love your family?"

"…Yes?" She replied slowly, starting to see where this was going.

"And do you love your friends?"

"Well, I don't have a lot, but I do care about the ones I have…"

"Then there you go. If you love her and anyone else you lose, then that's all you need to say your sad."

"But I'm not sad!" The Author said a little louder. "That's the problem; I can't feel anything, just that I'm numb and I miss her!" Frisk huffed. "…Sorry," The Author said quietly.

They patted her hand, then began to write again: "You said you have pictures of her?"

She blinked and nodded. "Yeah, on my phone; I'll show you." She pulled out her phone and tapped at the screen a bit, then tapped a picture and set the phone in front of Frisk at the table the two of them sat at. She was a small, black and white tuxedo, with big green eyes and a little white half-a-mustache under her black nose. The fur on her ears was thin, a mark of ear mites at a much earlier age. She was sitting on The Author's lap, either looking up at the screen or off at a wall. There was also a video or two of her being pet. Frisk reached the last picture and handed the phone back to The Author. "My pretty little baby…" she said longingly. She jumped slightly when Frisk nudged her with their notebook.

"Please talk to someone about your feelings."

"I am," The Author said, "I've been seeing my councilor at college, and I'll probably talk about it with my psychiatrist and psychologist when I see them again. And there's you, of course."

Frisk smiled and nodded. "Of course," they wrote.

"Thanks, Frisk…" The Author slowly returned her gaze to the front of the room.

"Come get some snacks! Mom bought her famous butterscotch cinnamon pie~!"

"I have always wanted to try that pie…" The Author put a hand to her stomach. "Okay, sure. My homework can wait." Frisk hopped out of their seat and tugged The Author's hand excitedly as they pulled her out of her seat and hurried to the open door. "Okay, okay, you don't need to drag me… but we can hold hands, if you want…" she said this more quietly, though Frisk heard her and smiled up at her. Together, they walked to the PTA meeting room.


Head Canon I Don't Actually Think #45: The Author is a generally known entity to most in the world of the story, given her status as the writer of said story. Some know her fairly well and have generally nice feelings about her while others know of her, but not all that much (See Katie Messer from chapter 34). Either way, most people don't see her very often outside of the chapters, since when she's writing is the only time she can truly be in the world.

Head Canon I Don't Actually Think #46: The Cat is curled up on a warm and cozy bed next to another cat, who we will call Flag-waver, which is a synonym of his real name. Flag-waver was The Author's mom's mother's cat, a fluffy black cat with a white spot on his belly and a little more attitude.

Head Canon I Don't Actually Think #47: The fallen humans, Frisk and Chara included, had at least one item in their inventory that matched their soul's color, at one point or another in Frisk's case. Chara had the red heart locket, Patience had a cyan toy knife (see Mad Dummy's gift to Nate from Chapter 9), Bravery had an orange pair of tough gloves and a manly bandana, Integrity had a dark blue tutu and slippers, Perseverance had a purple notebook, Kindness had an apron with a green heart on it, Justice had a dark yellow cowboy hat (in the middle to the point it could correctly be called brown or yellow), and Frisk had a red Band-Aid at the beginning of the game. These humans would also choose to write in their soul color (hence Frisk writing in red; different shades for them and Chara).


So… yeah. I don't want to seem like I'm trying to get famous off my cat's death by writing about it, but since writing is one of my only skills, I felt the need to write something down. Like I said, I'm not going to try anything; at this point that doesn't seem worth it. I think I'll write one more story for the day, and then I'll probably be away for school until at least mid-March. Again, not trying to profit off my cat's death, but a review would be nice. Just saying. I'll see you all later, eventually.