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explorer
Pick up the trail
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You have been handed a chore list that is somehow entirely yours. You:
Do it well, hum through it, and refuse to let it make you bitter.
Do it with something to read propped open where nobody can see it.
Do half, then get caught by something far more interesting out the window.
Quietly take on someone else's share too, because they're struggling more.
Your family has A Plan for your life. You:
Announce a different plan. Loudly. At dinner. In front of everyone.
Say nothing, and quietly build the thing you want with your own money.
Agree to all of it, and become steadily harder to get hold of.
Ask what the plan is actually for, then go and do that part properly.
The thing you would never admit out loud that you want:
For one person to notice how much you have been carrying lately.
To live somewhere that looks nothing at all like here.
To win, retroactively, an argument you technically lost in March.
For the people who need you to need you slightly less often.
You are given one free afternoon and absolutely no obligations. You:
Finish the thing you've been reading and immediately start another.
Go and check on the person you have been quietly worried about.
Get ahead on the work, because the version of you next week deserves it.
Get up somewhere high and look at how far the land actually goes.
Someone you love is about to make a real, avoidable mistake. You:
Stay close, and be there when it lands, without a single told-you-so.
Take their place, if there is any version of this where you can.
Fight them about it until one of you slams a door.
Ask them the one question that makes them see it for themselves.
A stranger tells you a story that is obviously half invented. You:
Love it, and immediately ask for the rest of it.
Believe the good half completely, and go looking for it later.
Enjoy it enormously, and do not lend them anything.
Wonder what they needed badly enough to make it up.
Which of these would you not be able to shake:
"You were kind at a moment when it genuinely cost you something."
"Talking to you makes me think better for about a week afterwards."
"Nobody has ever successfully talked you into anything."
"You said you were going to do it, and then you did it."
You are standing at the edge of something you cannot come back from. You:
Go, because you would much rather regret going than the other one.
Go, because somebody has to and you are already dressed for it.
Wait, and think carefully about who gets hurt if you are wrong.
Go, and start working out how to bring everyone else across after you.
How you handle being underestimated:
Let them. It is restful, and they will work it out eventually.
Do the exact thing they said you couldn't, with no commentary.
Keep the receipts and the numbers, which are very hard to argue with.
Withdraw about six inches, and become completely unreadable.
Your worst habit, honestly:
You would rather understand a person than actually deal with them.
You want the next thing before you have finished enjoying this one.
You dig in hardest on things you privately know are minor.
You adopt entire problems that were never once handed to you.
Everyone at the party has ended up in the kitchen. You are:
At the sink, three conversations deep, entirely content to be there.
In the corner with one person, discussing something far too serious.
Out on the step, because the air is better and the night is enormous.
Standing between the two people who are about to start an argument.
Twenty years from now, the line you would want in the story:
"They never once got talked out of it, and they were mostly right."
"They built the whole thing themselves, from nothing, and it lasted."
"They came back warmer than they left, which nobody expected."
"They went first, and then they took absolutely everyone with them."
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Your explorer
Changes show on the trail as you make them.
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Design
Wren
Nova
Liana
Flux
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Pack colour
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Pack
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