Dear Past, You Suck!

Boy Talk

The town was sparse of people now. Just in a little more than a week most of the men of the town had shipped out. The war was serious, I could tell even though everyone walked on tiptoes around me. The streets weren't as packed with horses and carts. Women bustling about their day to day chores were the only people out in the day. I often wandered about the streets discreetly taking pictures for when I get back, trying to stay away from home as long as possible. Margaret and Duchess Hemerton were even more insufferable than normal. They were obsessing over my wedding like it was their own. Margaret  was completely taking over, my input was practically worth nothing. Everyone was extremely tense with the war getting more intense, the 'witch' in the forest, and the biggest wedding in this region in a century coming up. To top it all off, Abrahams father was keeping him away to prepare for husbandhood and Eleanor was too busy to talk. Honestly I would love to get away from boring proper Margaret and all of this wedding talk.

A carriage rolled in front of me as I exited the pub. I had been trying to get a pint of beer but now that the innkeeper knew who I was, he refused to serve me. Typical, everyone is scared of the name Hemerton. It's not like I wanted to chug a keg! Duchess Hemerton hailed me from the window. Before I was even seated, she started scolding me.

"What do you think you were doing at a place like that. If anyone were to see you..." she pursed her lips,"You must stop this inexcusable behaviour, at once. A married woman does not act such as yourself."

"Ok mother."

"And you are being inconsiderate of Margaret. You two were arranged to study your lessons." She stared hard at me. I couldn't see how anyone could view her as a mother. She was cold, unforgiving, and formal. Everything a mom from the present shouldn't be. I rolled my eyes, ignoring her. I stared out the window as she continued grilling me on everything. I thought my mom was harsh. I don't blame Elizabeth from running away in the slightest. The estate came into view. When I first came here I thought it was magnificent, old and beautiful. But now it was like every flaw in the building stuck out. Every shadow, every crack, every cobweb, every rotted board. It had become a rotted and dark mansion. Every now and then like a mirage, I could see the splendour in it. But that's becoming less and less the more I get desperate to get home. I miss my family and Molly. Even her dorky boyfriend I would be glad to see. This might sound really weird but I really want to be able to walk into a room and flick on a light switch. That automatic light seemed almost fictional. I even miss school, which is saying something. Duchess Hemerton was still jabbering on when I exited the coach, heading straight to the library where lessons are supposed to take place. I was not exactly sure where I was going, since I had never exactly been to lessons. Usually I snuck out of the building before the time came. I always had been a school skipper.

I expected Margaret to patiently be waiting in the library, but she wasn't there. No one was. I sat in front of an open window, Margaret would be here shortly, she was never late. Being late was considered unladylike after all. The sun was warm and it didn't make me want to move. I could go on my phone, but it was getting low on battery and who knows when I will get a charger again. So instead I found the non-fiction section of the library and decided to play a game. What could be considered real science in the 21st century and what was garbage. Surprisingly a lot of the non-fiction section was variations of biblical stories. I decided to put that in a inbetween section; who knows if it is right or wrong. The last bit of books was studies. Like the religious books that I had already gone through, most were handwritten but some were printed in sloppy, uneven ink. The things that they took for facts baffled me. Of this is what they thought was true, then what did we actually know in the 21st century. We take things in textbooks for facts but a lot of it is just consistent guessing. I laughed throwing an anatomy book into my trash pile. There wasn't much information on anything on the systems of the bodies. One particularly interesting note in the book said that women's bodies  cleanse itself of excess emotions once a month and should be avoided at that time of the month in risk of the women's excess emotion affecting the level headedness of men. That's just... not even close. I'm pretty sure that doctors here are just guessing with everything. An older handwritten book was of astronomy. A diagram of a large earth in the centre surrounded by orbiting stars, the largest of which, the sun, was closest to earth.