Scion – Petro Campaign – Downtime 4, Part 3
This account was originally found on Livejournal, I am not the original author—I am just a fan of the journal and have found reading it on livejournal clunky to navigate and rife with errors/instability (such as having to refresh multiple times due to the page in questions becoming unavailable often requiring multiple refreshes. The original post can be found here, published by DJ-Yomi, and was published on May 16th 2008.
My tour is over, and I’m back home at Red Mountain. The tour was an astounding success! I had a great time, and I got to meet a lot of incredible people. I have to hand it to all of you who showed up for my shows. You really made it a wonderful, memorable experience! ^____^
There’s a lot to talk about, but I’ll try to keep it short and sweet. The most important thing is that Echo and I managed to fix all those angsty issues I went on about in my last major entry. We’re all good again, and more devoted to one another than ever before! ♥ ^_^ ♥ It wasn’t easy to get over that drama, but I think we’ve done it. I’m glad we were able to resolve it when we did. I didn’t really realize just how much I was hurting Echo, and how much I was hurting too. I almost lost her, and I would never have gotten her back. But now I know how important she is to me. I don’t think I can live without her. My life has been miserable over the past few months despite the tour simply because I was losing her. And I know she feels the same way.
But all of that is behind us now. There’s still some healing to do, but that’s the easy part. We’re together and our love has blossomed afresh. And I think we understand each other better. Echo seems to understand how all the sleeping around was hurting me, and I understand much better how she views the difference between sex and love and how much I was hurting her by indulging my own wandering heart. Now we’ve become comfortable and happy with one another again. Echo’s sworn off all her casual relationships so that she can devote herself only to me, and I’ve done the same for her. I can’t say with certainty that there won’t be some sort of extramarital relationship in the future, but at least we understand what that means and what it doesn’t mean now. And both of us will avoid relationships that might cause our hearts to stray.
Of course, there’s still Persephone. I offered to end that relationship. I’d like to end that relationship…the sexual part, anyway. But I want to remain Persephone’s friend. Echo doesn’t want me to deny Persephone though. Well, that’s not true. She does, but she says it’s not a good time. Angering Persephone won’t be good for either of us. And…I think it’s important for Persephone’s sake that I continue our friendship. So for now, I suppose I’ll put up with it, even if my heart isn’t behind the “benefits” side of our friendship.
I’m also still sleeping with Tabby on occasion. I found that my physical relationship with her is very fulfilling for both of us. Maybe it’s helped me understand where Echo’s coming from much better. If so, then I’m glad. At any rate, Echo sleeps with her sometimes too, so she’s the one partner we can agree to share, if only because we both feel such affection for her.
Anyway, I really have Ray to thank for helping Echo and me get back together. He came to see me toward the end of my tour, and found me in the backstage lounge after a show. Keiko and Sera were with me at the time, but I sent them away. Ray bowed to me and asked my forgiveness for seeing another woman…meaning Cila. He’s so noble! I had hoped that he felt as seriously about our relationship—and the time we’d spent together—as I did, and seeing that he really cared about me so much melted my heart. Not only had I been reunited with the man I’d come to love after almost six months, but he was showing me that he loved me as well!
I immediately began to unburden myself to Ray, sharing with him all the anguish and pain I’d been working through since my argument with Echo. And one thing led to another until I found myself in his arms, and we kissed, and…and then Ray did the one thing he needed to do. The one thing I needed. He said, “Erika, our love is like a flower. It is a beautiful and precious thing. But like a flower, it must wither.”
I was heart-broken. I knew why he was rejecting me. It was because of Echo. At first I was anger and upset. But after Ray left, I realized that he was right. He saw something I didn’t. He saw that I love Echo deeply, and that I couldn’t bear to lose her. And he knew that if we indulged our feelings for one another, I would lose her. Ray couldn’t let that happen. He stoically saved me and Echo’s marriage. Ina way, I love Ray more now than ever before. But at the same time, I’ve given him away. He’s not mine to love. Echo is. We can’t live without each other, and that’s why we’ve been so miserable these past few months. In short, everything started to click and make sense as I sat crying by myself in the lounge. I finally felt that I understood Echo, and I felt so much remorse for the pain I’d caused her.
I went out and found her immediately, and began the long and heartfelt task of apologizing to her and trying to make things better again. It wasn’t easy. We had a lot to work through and a lot of healing to do, but we did it, and our relationship is stronger for it. I love her so much ♥ ^_^ ♥ I can’t bear the thought of losing her again!
Once the tour was over and we’d worked through everything, Echo again brought up the issue of a child, and this time I didn’t begrudge her desire for a kid. In fact, I felt that it was probably the most real way I could show her how much she and our marriage mean to me. And so we conceived (thanks to divine magic!). Echo’s pregnant now. I’ll keep you updated on the pregnancy’s progress! ^_^ Needless to say, Echo is thrilled. She’s been on cloud nine ever since, and I am so happy to see her joyful and smiling again. And she’s very excited about the “late honeymoon” we’re planning. We both need a vacation and some time together, just the two of us. ^_^
Let’s see, what else is there to cover? Oh yeah, as promised, Tabby and I made more shikome over the course of my tour. First, I turned Steph, a British goth-punk who was wallowing in hopelessness and drug addiction in London. Then, in Germany, Tabby found another likely recruit, a deeply depressed and suicidal girl named Emilie. Tabby also wanted to personally turn a Japanese girl after our previous trip to Japan, so on the last leg of the tour, we found a girl named Kaori who had lost all enthusiasm for life and was desperately trying to get herself killed by doing foolish, dangerous things even though she couldn’t bring herself to actually commit suicide.
I turned the last of my new shikome after the tour once we were back in Boston and Red Mountain. Echo and I had patched things up and all was well, but we were still getting over some of the hurt. And I honestly just needed to relieve all the stress I’d been suffering from the tour and the marital troubles and so on. I mean, I hadn’t really had a chance to just let it all out for the past six months. So Tabby suggested that she and I go out into the abandoned town on Red Mountain and just totally shikome-out, tearing things apart and just going wild. It’s not like there’d be anyone there to hurt, after all. I thought that sounded like a wonderful idea, and suggested that we bring loads of spray paint to graffiti the hell out of the place too. And so that’s what we did. It was just what the doctor ordered. I felt so much better afterward.
I’d had my eyes on a girl named Sophie for awhile. She really fit the bill for the sort of person I was looking to recruit as a shikome, and I’d befriended her during stops back into Boston over the past few months. I decided to invite her along with Tabby and me, with the promise that I’d turn her if she liked, but only after she’d seen what being a shikome was really like. If she ran away, then I’d leave her be. But if she stayed with us and didn’t freak out—if she seemed to enjoy the experience—then I’d turn her.
She stayed. She stayed and participated in all the rage and terror and destruction and vandalism. I think we gave her some shred of new life even before we turned her into a shikome. In the end, I pounced on her and bit her. She didn’t struggle, but accepted it willingly. And so Sophie got a real initiation in to the life a shikome. ^_^ And I now have six shikome including Tabby and Robin. Tabby is officially in charge of them. She deserves it, not just because of her status as an elite shikome, but also because of the fact that she’s shown she’s up to the responsibility.
Anyway, leaving all of those shikome in my follower’s townhouse in Boston is problematic, not just because of overcrowding, but because of all the “temptation” a bustling city has to offer. So while I was on tour, I had a second house built next door to the one Echo and I share on Red Mountain. That’s where my shikome will be living, and right now Sera is essentially their caretaker. She volunteered, actually, maybe because of how close she was to Amy.
Keiko and the others are doing fine, though there’s been a little conflict. Nothing major, though. Dahlia’s apparently been quite ruthless in giving Quinn, Sera, and Kimiyo a hard time about the things they’ve gone through lately, so I’ve had to do a bit of peacemaking. Also, Keiko and I did have a long talk the other day. I’m not really at liberty to discuss what we talked about, but I learned a lot that I didn’t know about her. Oh, and Keiko informed me that the situation with the red-headed hiker that Tabby bit and turned into a shikome awhile back is under control. That’s a big worry off my chest. I am so glad to have Keiko working for me. I don’t know what I’d do without her. Anyway, I’ve given her some vacation time as well. She deserves it. I mean, not only did she have to work insanely long hours during the tour, but she had to put up with all the drama too. Poor Keiko.
She did bring Miko up again and explained what she thought was going on with my…nemesis…in more detail. She’s known Miko a long time, virtually all of Miko’s life, so she knows her well. Things are more complicated that I guessed with Miko. She’s definitely in love with me…obsessively so, but she has a sort of love-hate attitude toward me that’s hard to describe. I don’t kow how I’m going to deal with her, but I’ll have to figure something out.
Incidentally, Keiko and my mother have now pointed out the way that I seem to draw people to me, often making them fall in love with me even without even meaning to. The influence my charisma has on people has definitely become a dangerous weapon. I need to wield it with more care…