No, Doctor, I Don't want to discuss this!

Remembering that first 5-man.
No, doctor, I DON’T want to talk about it!

Yes, I know I’m paying good money for your time. Doesn’t that mean I can decide what to disclose to you about my personality known as Esi? No? /sigh.
. . . . . . . . . . .

Esiwlil was a wee gnome mage at the time of the traumatic experience. She did not belong to a guild, or have a core group of friends running around with her. It was a dark day.

A stranger came close and whispered into her ear. (I know she should have run away from the stranger danger, but well, Esiwlil was innocent in the ways of the World.) The stranger asked her if she would like some candy from a place called Scarlet Monastery. What’s more innocent than candy? Esi bounced up and down in her excitement to be invited to go with four strangers (4??) to church. It all sounded so safe.

“What is this place you are speaking of? How do I get there? YES! I wanna come!” She was so proud and felt so excited to be singled out by these strangers (Yes, strangers!) to come help them in the Monastery. And off she went.

They didn’t talk to her. They didn’t tell her what they wanted her to do. She had no idea, she was just caught up in the excitement. She had a new wand she wanted to try out. /shrug. One of them said, just fight when we fight.

/nod. “Okay, I can do that! Wow, thank you soo much for asking me to come along!”

/eyeroll

The strangers and Esi fought their way deeper and deeper into the Monastery. Esi saw many books – she wanted to stop and look around, but everyone just pulled her along so fast, she stumbled trying to keep up. After all, she needed to do good to impress her new friends. (Friends?)

“Look at this! Look at this nice knife!” one of the strangers said. Then they handed Esiwlil a piece of paper that had choices on it. Make a mark, the paper read. About the knife. Do you want it? Three choices.

No one explained the paper to her. They just thrust it in front of her face and said, make a mark in one of the boxes for the knife.

Esi looked at the choices. She was so careful. She knew she did not want to check “pass” as the blade was a good blade. She read “greed” and “need” and knew that being greedy was a bad thing if you wanted to make and keep friends. She confidently picked need. The blade magically was in her hand!



Suddenly the group of strangers turned on her. One of then slapped her and another spit on her. She was kicked and pummeled. She cried out asking what was wrong.

“You are so stupid!!” “You are horrible!”

Esi was so hurt and confused, but her tears and wails went unheard by any. Suddenly she was alone. Running for her life! She could not see through the tears.
- - - - - - - -
Doctor, why do I have to talk about this? It still hurts. I don’t like remembering that Esi was sooo stupid, dumb!!! /cry.

“What did you do after that? Immediately after?”

Me? You mean Esi, right? She remembered the name of the stranger that had whispered into her ear and wrote a very heartfelt letter, apologizing for what she had no idea she did. She begged him to forgive her and tell her what happened. She admitted in her letter that she had only came to the big city a few days prior and was still trying to learn her way in the big world.

She went home, and lay down and sobbed the rest of the day. Her chance at having a friend and she had messed it up.

She never received an answer. Time passed. The stranger’s name forgotten. But Esiwlil learned that day that the word “need” was such a bad word in her world that using it would cause others to spit on her. She had been brought up to believe that “greed” was a bad word. The confusion caused her to be very frightened, especially of strangers. Which pretty much everyone was. Her growth was stunted.

She now knows that the stranger should have talked to her about the rules of their gang before she ran with them. It was his responsibility, not hers.

“How did that affect you?”
“Me? You mean Esi? She um still tried to make friends and go places and do things with ‘em but she stopped even looking at the treasures her friends found for fear of messing up again. You see to her, friendship is way more important than a knife.”