It was hard to write some of this stuff; I feel for Siobhan, and I believe it’s a testament to her resilience that she becomes the person we see 7 years later.
Discussion welcome.
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This was the chapter I was dreading for a long time. Poor grandfather. Poor Rory. Poor Aimee. And poor, poor Siobhan.
I wonder if her body is awkward and clumsy because of the time in the spirit realm or because she’s had her mind messed with so severely at such a young age. Maybe both. Teenagers do grow rapidly so even her body might not be the same size as she remembers.
It’s just a hellish situation all around. It’s amazing that she survived and survived and survived. Everything life throws at her, she survives and keeps going. She’s so deeply traumatised and she’s going to experience even more trauma, but she’s not broken.
I’m terrified for her in the present day. I’m scared that the seal might have broken. I’m scared what will happen to her now she remembers what was better forgotten.
But most of all, I just want to give her a hug. She’s just a lost and lonely little girl who needs looking after. Thirteen is too young to be alone.
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My thought would be that the information experienced differing with time gives her a bit of alienation for stuff like muscle memory. But once its encoded as a specific thing for what she does(possibly since such delineation likely would make up/be a element of the Will) she can do them with extreme precision in part because of the feedback between her two parts. Kind of like a spell signal bouncing back from the spirit realm for a effect but in her case its a informational package of “siobahn does this action”. Could be wrong of course but I do suspect such a thing might be the other side of the clumsiness
I do have to say I found it sad but interesting that this was the point she focused on a lack of childishness in a harsher way. Makes sense for such to be a side effect of the compulsion her grandfather put on her though given how many of those ideas may be at the least mildly connected to what happened to her.
I don’t think it was so much that, but that she felt apathy and a lack of enthusiasm towards her old passion (which, even without the compulsion to drop it, is a fairly natural result of the trauma she’s been through). Once distanced from her passion and excitement I suppose it would naturally feel like something childish to her because she associates it with the innocent joy of childhood - and most especially her grandfather, who was the central figure in it. She always ran to him with her plans, always waited for him to tear it apart so she could go and improve them, always dreamt of going flying with him and sharing that dream together.
Her grandfather. Who died. Who left her like her mother left her. Who didn’t love her enough to live for her.
I think, even without the compulsion, that dream would have been tainted for her for a long time.
I’m glad that present day Siobhan can take joy in it and think of it nostalgically.
Yeah would be clearer if her memory hadn’t been locked. My suspicion when she noted that framing of distance from it so sharply was that it was a mixture of her feeling alienated due to the memory suppression and the compulsion. Kind of meaning she had no angle to find anything nice in those ideas and so in the chaos of what happened abandoned them.Anything she might grasp for might be a bit too close and so the compulsion would nudge her away.
It’s also interesting how much more thorough Grandfather was with the clean up of reminders than Lacer; Lacer didn’t consider that there were other items about her person that would let her know what she was missing.
They both failed too, which maybe says something else about Siobhan’s powerful curiosity.
He did consider searching her but then decided not to because it wasn’t a part of the vow.