Anders got into his hotel room and took off his bracelets before sitting on his bed, thinking about what'd happened at the cafe. Neil was actually a really nice kid, but then again, he didn't know what he was expecting out of him. He felt bad that he never got to know Grace, because he was being honest when he said he’d like her. then again, he said everyone would get along with grace, but that was because grace was just an amazing person to be around. but other than that, he was surprised how put together Neil looked despite going through horrors Anders could only imagine. he’s seen kids both in Belgium and the states go through similar experiences and come out needing lots of help and therapy, most were ones he met in mental hospitals to help them through the trauma, but Neil seemed to be doing alright for the most part. There were some red flags like him trying to lie about not being hungry and the running his fingers through his hair. It was a habit that grace had, which is most likely where most of Neil's fidgeting came from, but based on how damaged his hair already was, it was a very deep set habit. other than that, he noticed a scarily broad and thick kintsugi mark on his upper right forearm. it was too thick to be a wound Godfrey had given him, cat claws were too narrow to make a wound that thick, was it another animal? even then, the kintsugi looked too thick for it to be an animal claw. it has to be self inflicted wound, and based on the thickness and broadness of the kintsugi, it looked like he used a pair of heavy duty scissors. honestly, as much as he wanted to say he was surprised, he wasn’t. The kids he met both in and out of institutions had an issue with self harm both during and after their experiences. He usually helped them find alternatives to self harm like talking about their feelings with other people, spending time outside and other stuff and 9 times out of 10 has seen incredible progress with their well being regarding it. He decided to stop thinking about it for now and took out the dragon he was crocheting for grace. He wanted to leave it at her gravestone in solidarity. He’d written a heartfelt letter along with a poem to go inside the stuffed animal hidden among the stuffing. He usually wrote poems and letters for her, though they were typically in dutch, and she loved every single one despite knowing like 2 or 3 words in the beginning. She kept every letter and poem he’d wrote over the years in their own photo albums, of which there were about 3 or 4. Grace was his opportunity to explore his more creative side, since he never got to explore his passion for both photography and poetry since his parents wanted him to pursue a more professional profession, hence why he was a child psychologist, though he did enjoy working with them and got to grow his drawing skills since he typically drew with them as a trust building exercise. He got a lot of photos of grace at various places, usually the beach, and got pretty good at it and even got some of his photos in magazines and both college and tourist brochures. Over time, as anders started to get better at english, he taught grace dutch both in order to not lose the language and so grace could visit brussels one day, which never happened. But nevertheless, it helped with her foreign language degree and eventually they’d flip flop between english and dutch at home, which taught godfree the language. But over the 14 or so years he was back in brussels, he slowly lost english as he moved back to primarily using dutch, with the only thing keeping his english being a belgian tourist blog he made for english speakers visiting the country, which was immensely helped by the photography experience grace gave him. Speaking of grace, anders wondered what she was doing. He knew she was dead and didn’t really believe in an afterlife, there was a conversation he had with grace that he always came back to that sort of made him believe the opposite. (neil was conceived in april 2009, they had this convo in july of that year)
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“Andy, do you believe in afterlife?” grace asked. They were perched in a tree together since godfrey was at school and they both got the day off from work. They enjoyed watching yokai as they spent time at the park and snuggling as much as being on a tree branch would allow.
“Not really, no.”
“Well i kinda do? It’s weird but i’ve seen it before, twice actually. And you can call me crazy all you want, but i know what i saw. So back when i was like what… 14? 15? I forget, but i had a really contact heavy encounter with a dragon and ended up having to go to the hospital. At one point i passed out and woke up on a beach on the edge of a meadow. I walked around until i found a beach house styled house in the middle. It was actually the house we were thinking of getting a while ago, but that’s besides the point. It had irises in the flower boxes on the windowsill and a bunch of sunflowers on the front lawn. I went inside and it was completely empty. But anyway, i looked around and there wasn’t really anything of note until i got to the attic. The attic was like the rest of the house, completely empty, other than this sort of beauty and the beast rose case in the middle with a poppy, gardenia, a stick of sandalwood, and a lavender inside of it. I tried opening it, but i couldn’t, so i went back downstairs and found a door just- behind the railing. It wasn’t there before and i already looked in all the other rooms so i opened it and woke up in a hospital bed with an oxygen mask over my muzzle and my mom asleep beside me. The second time i saw it was- do you remember when i had that heart attack a year or so ago?”
“Pleashe don’t remind me.”
“Sorry, sorry. It’s just a similar story of me waking up on the same beach and finding the same beach house with the same flowers outside, but when i went inside this time, it was subject to neglect, decay and hoarding. The house was furnished this time but you could barely tell over the piles of trash coating the floors and other surfaces. The flowers in the attic were the same and the only difference other than the decay and trash was the giant blanket fort in the middle of the living room. It was really cozy and looked like it was built with a lot of care. I looked inside and saw a bunch of pillows and stuffed animals, it was so quaint and i could tell it was made with love. I went inside and laid down for a bit until i got bored and left, and when i stepped outside i saw a door embedded in the floor. It was so weird that i opened the door and i woke up in a hospital bed again with you crying at my bedside. It was so weird and even now i don’t know what to make of it! I didn’t tell you because it was just that weird and you’d call me crazy for saying ‘i think i saw the afterlife,’ or heaven or whatever!”
“I don’t dink you’re crazy. What do you dink seeing dat place meant?”
“I dunno, but i’ve had this theory for a while that i was going there because i had things i wanted to see my family do in life, so i stuck around in that weird limbo place but i was resuscitated and that’s why those doors appeared.”
“Hmm, so you don’t really dink it’s an afterlifve, just a place you go when you hafve unfvinished business in de lifving world?”
“Yea, i guess.”
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Anders put down the crochet project. He was crying. It was weird because he didn’t even notice when he started. He stood up and went into the bathroom to blow his nose. He was still in shock from getting the news about grace’s death from godfrey and was trying to process that she was gone for good. Once he’d collected himself he went back into the main room and went back to crocheting. It was scary how much neil looked like grace. He thought godfrey was joking, but no; neil was a dead ringer for her. It was like if you asked someone to draw her from memory. It made anders miss grace even more than he already did. It made him expect to see her at the beach in one of her loose an flowy floral dresses on the beach as the wind blew through her long silky silver hair while she watched the sun set. It was a scene he’s captured before. It was when they were in college on a weekend; one of the few weekends they weren’t going to visit her parents and he ended up finding her at the beach watching the waves. He took the opportunity of her not knowing he was there to take a photo of her at her most radiant. He started crying again and went back into the bathroom to collect himself. He needed to get outside, maybe that would help. He decided to go for a quick walk before coming back and eating dinner at the hotel before going to bed.
1649 words
from this point on, my writing might dip in quality since you guys are getting really close to under construction areas and I'm kinda lost by the motivation to write this, but I'm gonna try and get the 300 something word summary out on paper in full as quick and careful as I can, but if there's a noticeable dip in quality, just know I don't wanna work on this but also wanna get it out to you guys
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smiling critters
Fanfictionidk what to title this, but it takes place in the same universe as the yokai plex. no, the cover has no relation to the content, it's just for shits and giggles. the L in camila's name is silent, call me crazy but i know that name exists somewhere...
