Same Character Different Fonts ✨arcane Edition✨

My dam heart

[footage of the inside of an ordinary Eastern-European home, taken with a handheld phone camera, the man filming is walking from the living room to the back door of the house]

man, narrating in russian: Every fucking year, this time of the year, the pond at my backyard gets infested. What do ponds get infested with? Frogs? Poisonous weeds? Geese? No. Not my pond.

[The man opens the back door, stepping out into a garden. Three or four nude, human-like figures dash from the borders of a pond back into the water.]

man: Rusalki! I don't know where they come from or how they get here, and I can't afford to hire an exterminator every year. I can't let my cat outside anymore. Last year a rusalka managed to drown a whole deer in my pond, the stench was unbearable.

[He walks as he speaks, approaching the pond. There are several eerily beautiful female beings peering at him from under the surface, their long hair floating in the murky water. Their eyes are gleaming in an unhuman way. The man holding the camera stops to film them.]

man, calm and deadpan: What the fuck are all of you staring at. Get jobs or something.

[One of the rusalki, smaller than the others and clearly not a fully matured adult, slowly reaches out of the water with her white, thin hand, grasping his ankle. He appears unconcerned.]

man: You can't drown me, you little idiot. You're too small. Shoo!

[A loud thud startles the rusalki, making them scatter. A second thud makes it clear these are the approaching footsteps of something massive. The man turns around and points the camera at what appears to be a house, walking past above the treeline with chicken-like legs]

man, now yelling: IF YOUR HOUSE SHITS ON MY YARD AGAIN I SWEAR TO FUCKING GOD-

the the crushing weight of our own looming mortality is what both drives us to live and makes us want to give up and natural selection means that people with genetic illness shouldn't have children and if the government did fake the moon landing then what was the point of the space race other then to gain meaning in this meaningless life that we can only attain through cheating and not gaining anything at all and yet the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell but we've never needed that information and it's been burned into out heads over and over for years so Michel Obama is rumored to be a man meaning that society's faith in the one true god, shaggy, is no longer strong enough to hold the fabric of this reality together thus we collide with others and that's why the Mandela Effect is putting chemicals in the water to turn the freaking frogs gay but a study showed that wasn't true but the study was made by the people turning the frogs gay so it didn't count... In conclusion: black beans are full of protein so they're good to eat during an existential crisis

My readers, wondering where the new chapter is:

Me, who's been dicking around with the formatting on the google doc none of them can see instead of writing for three months:

I don’t know how long it’s been, but I’ve seen this again now so thank you past me

meirl

This took WAY too long for how it turned out... But I’m proud of it nonetheless

I’m again thinking about Nimona because why shouldn’t I and a detail about it that I love is that Institution always made it seem as if there’s more monsters outside the walls then there actually were. It was just Nimona and she was just living her life. This is something else that I think is a great example of how transphobic lawmakers talk about the trans community.

There always seems to be talk about how the trans community is constantly brainwashing kids into being trans and make it out to seem as if the trans community wants everyone to be trans when that’s not true.

Trans people are just people, not an army ready to attack the world.

Reblogging this (or whatever the hell it’s probably the fifth time I’ve logged into Tumblr, idk what the fuck I’m doing) just so I can see it again

meirl

Part 1: Meeting Clifford's Ugly Cousin

Look, I was told that if I wanted to sell my account of the Second Titan War for some mortal to post on the internet for a bunch of other mortals to read as fiction, I had to put a disclaimer on the inside of the cover and ensure they included it.

So, as 11-year-old me would have told you, being a half-blood sucks, if you think you’ve got some dead-beat god’s blood in your veins or relate too much to any of the “characters” in this “story,” turn off whatever device you’re reading this on and forget you ever heard of a half-blood. And for good measure, just don’t touch any electrical device again; especially if they have a history of blowing up on you.

The first incident I can remember happened when I was four. My dad had just remarried and wanted to find a fun way for us to bond as a family. The best way to do that, according to him, was to go camping in British Colombia. But the “family” part was lost on my stepmother, who opted to stay home, so it was just my dad, my stepbrother, and me. 

The first two days went smoothly. The drive out was normal, we didn’t have any problems with the cars or the places we stopped to sleep. But on the third day, when we got to camp I started seeing this dark, hulking figure stalking us through the trees. I just glimpsed it out of the corner of my eye at first, but its appearance became clearer and more frequent as the hours went by; its red eyes followed our every move as we set up camp. I, being a toddler, cried to my dad that there was a giant monster hiding in the trees that was going to eat me.

He held me and assured me that it was just the shadows playing tricks on me. Repeating the same reassurances all parents tell their kids. “There's no such thing as monsters" and "the worst the shadows will do is scare you." He told me that if I didn’t go looking for monsters I wouldn’t find any.

So we continued setting up the tent, chopping firewood, spraying bug spray, and I did my best to listen to my dad; I tried to ignore the pitch-black creature and the shadow it cast over my small body as it stalked, I tried to ignore its piercing red eyes glowing behind the brush and its gnarly bared teeth, and I tried to ignore how every time I stole a glance– “Not looking, just checking,” I told myself– it had crept closer than before.

The creature eventually inched its way right behind me while we were roasting marshmallows over the fire. I felt its breath blow against my back and heard the dirt shift as it lowered itself to pounce. But just then, lightning struck a tree near our campsite, splitting it in two, and rain began pouring seemingly out of nowhere. 

Somehow my dad had failed to notice the massive storm brewing right above us, and we were completely unprepared for the wind and rain. The storm got so bad that my dad was forced to take us to a hotel. Then it persisted for the next two days until we gave up and went home. 

My stepmom would tell you that the monster I saw in the woods was the first time I was afflicted by my "overactive imagination." This “imagination” would later have me completely convinced that giant men were walking around with one big eye in the center of their foreheads and a giant lizard with too many heads was selling donuts.

At first, my parents thought that my little toddler brain was misinterpreting unfamiliar things in my environment, but that explanation made less sense the older I got.

The Giant one-eyed men were of average height and apparently had two perfectly good eyes when my parents asked me to point them out, and the lizard was a regular, underpaid cashier. Nothing about the “people” should have been new or scary to me and my parents just couldn't understand why I insisted that something was wrong with them.

On top of hallucinating, I caused even more problems because of my “behavioral issues.” 

According to the numerous reports of teachers and classmates alike, I just loved to throw various objects at other students or pull chairs out from under them, despite never touching any of the objects. No matter what school I was in, someone would throw a stapler or a chair at a kid I was fighting with and everyone would swear up and down that I did it.

But the most trouble came with the arson and domestic terrorism. 

Lightbulbs, computers, radios, cell phones, toasters; if it's got wires, I've probably seen it short circuit or blow up at least twice. And I’m sure you’re beginning to notice a pattern because every time something blew up I was the closest to it. Which, of course, meant that it had to be my fault, and the teachers would accept any made-up story over the logical explanation.

What really hurt was that even kids I considered my friends would tell the teachers I’d somehow sabotaged a computer, or blown up a lightbulb. 

It was so obvious that they were lying too! Their stories rarely matched up and they'd change details every time they repeated it. Not to mention I was 5, how would I have known enough about wiring and electricity to make stuff blow up? I couldn’t even tie my shoes yet!

Growing up that way was confusing, I didn’t understand how I could make a whole class of kids hate me enough to lie about me within the first week of school. We moved too often and too far away from one place to another for kids to spread rumors before I arrived. At some point, I started to think that maybe I was just so terrible that people could figure that out without even talking to me.

Eventually, after reports of my wrongdoings became more frequent and outlandish, my parents decided that it was time to take me to a doctor. They told me Dr. Barlowe was going to see if there was something "special" about my brain, but I’m pretty sure he was just a behavioral psychologist. 

He did diagnose me with ADHD, which a lot of teachers and PTA members believed to be the root of my problems, but even after I started receiving treatment the only change was a slight improvement in my grades. I was still seeing things and causing terror everywhere I went, so Dr. Barlowe recommended that my parents take me to some other doctor who specialized in a different field. And “a doctor" soon turned into several doctors. 

After lots of tests conducted, lots of doctors seen, and lots of money spent, the only other condition they found was dyslexia. Other than my testimony, there was no evidence that I was seeing monsters. There was nothing in my brain that would be causing hallucinations and no signs that a physical condition was messing with my head. They couldn't even diagnose me as a compulsive liar, which my stepmom was really betting on.

The conclusion: I was lying– and not because I had a compulsion– just because I wanted to. Just because that's the kind of kid I was. 

That "diagnosis" was the last straw, and broke the trust that my dad still had in me. I was still adamant that I genuinely saw monsters, even if it wasn't real or true. That's when my stepmom started saying I "lied so much that I believed my own lies."

The worst part was my dad's sympathy. I'd tell him what really happened to that projector at school, or that I was missing because I was hiding from a giant scorpion. My dad would sigh and then tell me that it was okay, that he forgave me and I'd grow out of my “phase” soon.

I hated the resignation in his voice, and every day was a struggle; I just wanted to regain his trust. I wanted to tell the truth, and for him to comfort me, I wanted him to look at me and tell me that he believed me and I wasn't crazy, that he saw the weird and scary things too and he'd protect me from them. But he didn't trust me, and he couldn't protect me from things that weren't there.

I didn't want to lie to him, but he wouldn’t believe me if I told him that we shouldn’t go to the lake anymore because I'd seen a shirtless man with a moving, breathing face on his chest. I couldn’t tell him that I was scared to go back to school because one of the cheerleaders in the next building had a pair of bat wings and a blazing fire instead of hair. 

By age 7, I had mostly figured out what was considered real and not real. If I saw a big dog that went up to the owner’s waist, it was probably real and I could point it out. If I saw a giant lion just walking around with no one else pointing it out, I just decided I wouldn't say anything. 

So reality stopped being the world I saw in front of me; it was whatever my teachers, family, and classmates told me it was. I understood that it didn't help to tell my parents what I was seeing and no one ever seemed to get hurt when monsters were nearby, there was no reason to mention them. So I just kept silent, even if being near them made me sick to my stomach and set my nerves on fire with panic.

After a while, it was almost like I couldn’t see them either. Yes, I’d still notice something that I thought shouldn’t be possible, but they were less frequent, and I could close my eyes or look away. Then, when I looked back, they’d change. Either they would suddenly become more “normal,” or their features would blend together in a blurry mess; like they were standing behind translucent glass. But if I looked hard enough, they’d become monstrous again, so I tried not to look for too long.

That tactic worked for two years, until one night. I was home alone, my stepbrother was out with friends and my parents were getting last-minute groceries for dinner. 

I heard heavy footsteps climb the steps to the front porch. I peeked out the window and saw something blurry, but definitely not human standing quietly at the door. I ignored it like usual and ignored it again when it rang the doorbell. 

After barely a few minutes, it banged its leathery, clawed hand on the door, nearly blowing it off its hinges. It continued to beat and claw at the door as I panickedly grabbed my bike from the garage and wheeled it through the house to the back door. 

I held my breath and slid the backdoor open as fast as I could, sprinting next to my bike until I reached the backyard gate.

As soon as I opened the gate, the monster at the door figured out that I wasn't in the house. It chased me for hours that night as I peddled for my life. Most of that night is just a blur of panic and biking until my legs went numb, but somehow I managed to get away. 

After giving my legs a rest, I made my way back home to find a police car in my driveway and my parents worried sick. They'd come home to find the door broken in and thought I'd been kidnapped; somehow missing the large scratch marks and various holes that indicated the culprit to be non-human, or at least an animal of some kind.

I saw my parents through the window as I got closer to the house, my dad was holding my stepmom on the living room couch. He had an expression I’d never seen him wear before; the grief, worry, stress, and pain were all on full display. 

Seeing him like that made me realize for the first time that he was human. He and my stepmom were both just people. They couldn't have protected me from the monster. They couldn’t protect me from any of the monsters. They were in just as much danger as I was, and they couldn’t even see it.

That was when I realized that ignoring the monsters wasn’t going to work anymore. They weren’t passive and they weren’t harmless. By ignoring them, I was putting both myself and my family in danger.

I needed to know what exactly I was up against, and how and why the thing had found me that night, so I decided to conduct a few somewhat unconventional experiments. 

In one of those experiments, I left dirty clothes hidden around a park and wore a horrid combination of different colognes, perfumes, and air fresheners for a week.

I staked out the park with a pair of binoculars, sneaking out of the house to watch the places where I'd hidden the clothing each night. It was difficult staying there for hours with nothing to do. Originally I was going to set up a camera overnight but for some reason, the battery kept draining before I got to the park.

Regardless, I learned a lot from that experiment. The biggest lessons were:

1) The number of faux-humans or like-animals-but-not creatures (LABNs for short) that showed up was greater if the dirty clothes were mine, and they weren't just more common, they were actively looking for something; sniffing the air and darting around the park. This contrasted the results when I hid clothes that I "borrowed" from friends or family, which would only have the occasional monster, and said creature always passed through without lingering for too long. 

Conclusion: For whatever reason, faux-humans and LABN creatures were looking for me specifically, or at least whatever smelled like me.

2) The longer I had worn the clothes without washing them, the larger the turnout of faux-humans or LABNs coming to look for the source, and if the clothes were clean or had sat out there long enough, the less would appear.

Conclusion: The monsters weren't following my clothes, they were following my scent. That one was obvious, but it didn’t hurt to be sure. 

3) Whenever one of the faux-humans or a LABN happened to run into an actual human, the person would interact with them differently. The faux-humans would play the part of a person going on a walk, receiving friendly nods or greetings from other parkgoers, and the LABNs would act like stray pets or animals. I even saw one person pet a lion thing with the head of a bird.

Conclusion: They were hiding from people and somehow appearing as something more normal. Which I already knew, but it was nice to finally be certain without someone else telling me I was crazy. 

That still didn't answer why that faux-human had only come after me now. Maybe moving around so much had kept them away? That way a monster wouldn't have had the time to catch wind of my scent before we moved again. That hypothesis did make a bit of sense. The house we were in at the time we'd lived in for two years, the longest we’d stayed somewhere since I was six.

There were still questions left unanswered, like why the creatures weren't hiding from me, and why the one had been so hellbent on catching, and probably killing, me specifically. My hypothesis wasn’t perfect, but it would have to do for now because the most important conclusion I’d come to was that I had to leave, and soon.

If I didn't move and keep moving, who knew when the next time something dangerous would show up at our door again? What if my family got caught in the crossfire? They could get hurt or even killed if I stayed. But if I kept moving those things would probably follow. They'd have less time to pounce and I'd have more time to run, while at the same time, I’d be leading them away from my dad and stepfamily. This was the best option to keep everyone safe.

So I packed what I needed in a duffle bag and a backpack, wrote a note to my parents explaining the truth and saying goodbye, and started heading south. 

I wanted to lie to them in the note. I should have said that I was running away because I hated them, and I should have told them to never come looking for me, but I couldn't bring myself to tell them they were the reason I was running away, even if it was for their own good. They didn't deserve to believe that for the rest of their lives. They probably thought I was lying in the note anyway, but at least I knew that I gave them the truth, which was the only thing I had left to give them, other than a goodbye.

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It was just after midnight, and I was walking through Okotoks's residential streets, 200 hundred miles away from my family. The smelly hoodie I’d been wearing since the day I’d left didn’t provide much protection from the rain. 

Luckily, the storm had soothed temporarily, the rain had stopped before returning as a light drizzle while the storm began to reanimate itself. Only the occasional clap of thunder in the distance betrayed the presence of unseen lightning. 

I chose to come to Okotoks because it was the town I grew up in. At least for the first six years of my life; before my family began moving every year for my dad’s job. At the time, it felt like the only place that could ever feel like home without them. 

It didn’t, but it still brought some comfort to walk down its vaguely familiar streets. Which was a much less depressing way to spend the first hour of my birthday, rather than alone in the abandoned Safeway where I slept. 

Living like this was awful but necessary. Even if I had no way to actually verify it, I chose to believe that my family was safe now that I wasn’t around to attract monsters. And I was safer too because I had the freedom to pack up and move when the monsters caught up to me. 

But in the end, I was still a homeless kid on the run from monsters and police looking for a missing child. Even at the age of 9– 10, as of seven minutes ago– I still somewhat understood that my situation and the amount of stress I was under was way more than a kid my age should be able to handle. So I tried my best to cope. 

Being an unsupervised child, I wasn’t usually busy with the most constructive hobbies. 

Stealing, vandalism, fighting, and eating junk food ‘til I was sick had all become commonplace for me. But I did find a few ways to destress without causing trouble; such as climbing trees and going on walks.

But of course, why I would ever be allowed a moment of peace, even on my birthday.

I noticed that a pair of red eyes had materialized from the shadows as I passed a car that was parked on the street. Their eerie glow, like a barely contained fire, caught my eye as it reflected off the car’s window.

 I slowed to a stop in the street and listened for if the massive dog was creeping closer, taking deep breaths in an attempt to choke down my rising panic. Adrenaline began to flood my veins and every nerve in my body was set on fire as I tensed up.

Only once had I been bold enough to try and fight a smaller one-eyed guy with my bat and knife, and I’d learned the hard way that both were useless. My baseball bat could barely knock him off balance, and when I tried to stab him his skin was as tough as leather. 

Keeping in mind what it was like to fight a small monster, I made a beeline for the nearest house, hopping the low fence into the backyard. The giant dog burst through the wooden boundary, sending its splinters and chunks all over the homeowner’s yard. I continued hopping fences into more backyards, consequently destroying more private property. 

I knew I couldn’t run from the fleabag forever, and watching it tear apart the fences made me sure that I couldn’t just run and hide in the dilapidated building; the monster would rip it to pieces in seconds. Meaning my only option was to somehow force the dog to lose my tail– pun not intended.

I turned a corner back out into the street but it had gotten in front of me somehow; rising up as if from the shadows themselves to tower over me. Time felt like it was slowing down as I stared up at yellowing fangs, my brain trying to process how they had gotten there.

"Oh,” I blinked, “shoot!” I cursed before the fangs began to descend towards me. 

I rolled forward between its front paws as it lunged towards me, barely evading its jaws as its teeth snapped together where my head had been with a ‘click.’

I finished the roll awkwardly kneeling underneath its stomach and put my hand on the ground for stability. I took a large step to the side with my sneaker landing next to my hand and threw my weight forward. I struggled to get my other foot underneath me, but I managed to slip out from under the dog and stumble into another full sprint.

I ran down the open street for a few more minutes before I began to run out of stamina. The dog was slowly closing the gap that I had gained and I needed to find a way to catch my breath and come up with a plan.

I decided to run towards two adjacent houses, praying that they were close enough to one another, and placed my foot on the wall of one house. Kicking off of it towards the other, I hopped back and forth until I could grab the ledge of a window on the second story. It had taken me seven hops; the highest I’d gotten with that move before had been three. 

Honestly, I didn’t think I’d make it, I’d only practiced wall jumping twice before. 

I dangled there gasping to catch my breath, still in awe that I'd even made it so high up. But I didn't have much time to celebrate my little achievement, the dog was already right under me.

The monster jumped and I took a risk, kicking off the wall again and throwing myself up to grab the other house’s roof and accidentally kicking its nose. 

Before I could pull myself up onto the roof, it jumped again. I panicked and tucked my knees to my chest with a yelp, curling into a semi-fetal position as the dog’s fangs snapped close centimeters from the soles of my shoes. 

I barely let my legs drop down for a second before I swung a leg over the edge of the roof and scrambled up.

I lay on my back and tried to slow my breathing. I knew better than to assume the mutt wouldn’t be able to find some way to get on the roof, but I was willing to risk just a few more seconds to catch my breath and come up with a plan to lose it so I could go back to the Safeway.

After less than thirty seconds, I risked a peek over the edge of the roof, only to be greeted with the now familiar sight of yellowing teeth, which snapped shut inches from my face. 

I quickly pulled myself back onto the temporary safety of the roof and decided now was probably a good time to get moving again.

I hopped from roof to roof with the dog hot on my tail. I felt strangely more secure up off the ground, despite knowing a single stumble would likely be a death sentence. Because, even if the fall didn’t kill me, I'd definitely be too injured to continue running. 

I couldn't lead it to the abandoned grocery store. It'd rip the place to shreds and I'd lose my only shelter, but if I didn't get the dog off my tail soon I'd run out of energy. Just then, I saw Crystal Shores Lake in the distance. 

I hopped a few more roofs in the direction of the lake before jumping into a tree. The plan was to use it to reach the ground without breaking my legs, but I felt clumsier and more off-balance the lower I got. I slipped on one of the lower branches, falling at least six feet out of the tree and landing flat on my feet. The stinging in my legs forced me to stumble and land on my knees. 

My stomach dropped and the image of one of my legs going limp where the bone should have been popped into my head. But to my surprise, my legs looked perfectly fine and the pain subsided within seconds.

I jumped to my feet yet again and hopped the fence of a house on the lakeside, before sprinting to the Beach House’s dock. 

Knowing I'd regret it, and that I didn't have much of a choice, I took a deep breath and plunged into the icy water. 

Absolute, chilling terror shot through me when I opened my eyes and stared into the depths of the inky black water. It took everything in me not to flail around in panic as my heartbeat became more sporadic and my already burning lungs screamed for air. 

I desperately swam up, trying to ignore the feeling that the depths of the lake itself were trying to drag me down. 

When I finally surfaced and attempted to catch my breath and not hyperventilate a massive wave forced me under again as the dog jumped into the lake after me.

I swam towards the floating dock in the middle of the lake at a frustratingly slow pace as my backpack and clothes weighed me down.

I finally managed to reach the dock and climb out of the water before it got too close. Now it was time for a miracle.

I took my backpack off my shoulders and looked through it for what I could use. I decided to take out a bag of chips, some spray-on deodorant, and my bat. I started hastily crushing up the chips inside the bag while the big mutt in the water got closer to the dock, which shook with every splash it made.

When I felt the chips had been pounded fine enough, I opened the chip bag and shoved my hand inside, bringing out a handful of salty chip dust; a layer sticking to the water on my hands. I held the deodorant at the ready in my other hand with my foot stepping on my bat to keep it from rolling into the water.

"Gosh, I hope this works," I said to myself while I waited for the dog to get close enough for my plan to maybe work. I was already looking it in the eyes, or rather, the fire in its eyes was burning straight into my soul, but I still needed it to be a little closer if I wanted to ensure it couldn't follow me anymore.

It put its paws on the dock and brought the rest of its body out of the water. Just as it prepared to lunge, I threw the handful of chip dust in its face.

Most of it got in its eyes, but that was fine because I still had the can of deodorant. I took advantage of its blinded state and shoved the can more than halfway up its nose. Then I took a step back to aim and swung my bat at the part of the deodorant that was still visibly sticking out of the dog’s nostril. The can exploded on impact, sending the chemicals straight up its snout.

"Haha! Yes! That’s what you get, you nasty fur ball! Whoo!" I yelled, riding the high of adrenaline while it stumbled around, blind and struggling to breathe. I was so busy celebrating that I almost got my arm bitten off when it snapped in the direction of my voice.

Deciding that was my cue to leave, I jumped into the water again and swam for the Beach House dock while the dog continued to whine and shake its head. Once I was back on the sand of the lake's beach I booked it back to the abandoned Safeway.

The calm of the storm had passed and now it was heavily raining again by the time I arrived back at my dilapidated "home." Immediately, I headed over to the back corner of the store where I kept my stuff and began packing. As much as I hated the idea, I knew that it was finally time to leave Okotoks. Most likely for good.

Despite how hard it was to get here it wasn't any safer than back home. Deep down I'd known that it'd be the same here and that the only option I had was to keep moving, but I'd decided to come here anyway because it had given me a place to run to, and it was the only place that could still feel like home without my family.

"I guess that's the plan, then." I sighed ruefully as I rolled up my hole-riddled, yellow sleeping bag. "I'll just have to keep moving. Forever, I guess. That's the safest option."

My self-pitying was interrupted as I heard the sound of a small piece of metal hitting the ground. I stiffened for a moment, worried that something had been knocked over somewhere else in the store, before seeing the source of the sound in front of me. 

A metropolitan whistle, like the ones you'd see cops use in old movies, was slowly rolling away from me on the ground.

I puzzled at the little brass object before a small postcard fluttered down next to it from my half-rolled-up sleeping bag.

Crouching down, I put my sleeping bag next to me and picked up the whistle, blowing the dust off of it and twirling it between my fingers as I picked up the postcard, which had a picture of the Empire State Building on the front.

I flipped the card over to see if anything was written on the back, but one of the words on the bottom me freeze for a moment in shock before I anxiously started reading the card’s contents. 

The most shocking, unbelievable part of the card wasn't the instructions to follow an address to a place in New York called "Long Island Sound." It wasn't the part that said that the metropolitan whistle in my hand was supposed to turn into a magical sword that could vaporize monsters. It wasn't even the fact that the card was written in a language I didn’t know, and yet I was reading it better than I could read English.

No, none of that had the chance to phase me yet, because I was still in total shock at the words scrawled out at the bottom, on the line where the sender was meant to write their name:

From:____Happy Birthday, from Mom____