And yet you still want to put food on your plate.
Body build: Average – not skinny, but not chubby either
At this point, you’re probably getting a rough idea of what kind of person Clio is. But you don’t know about her laziness yet. And what lazy person wouldn’t prefer ordering pizza and watching a new episode of a great show to cooking a complicated meal?
Besides, it’s a great pleasure to eat, and a hedonist can’t do without it.
She also cannot run, squat or lift enough to transform all those unhealthy meals into abs, because she is so lazy (or, as Clio calls it, «self-caring») and extremely convincing when it comes to it.
Additional skills: Partially music, dance, painting, almost any creative activity
Clio is a creative person, who as a child has studied dance, singing, clay modelling and musical instruments, but gave it all up when she got bored. She is talented and, despite not completing all her classes, she can draw, sing and dance quite well.
Ironically, unlike the ancient Greek muse she is named after, she has a big problem with history. Names, dates and events desperately resist being juxtaposed with each other. They are getting mixed up and are refusing to line up in the right order.
Hobbies: Watching movies/TV-series/cartoons, playing games
Movies, TV-series and other visual content are worlds that Clio has always escaped to from ours. There are a lot of these worlds, and in almost every one of them there are characters who are like family to her. She cares about each of them as if they were as real as you and me, and she is more often seen in tears because of what happens in a film or a book rather than because of the real-life problems.
● Notable personal qualities:
Intelligence: Thanks to her intelligence and wit, she could afford to skip school and university for many years and still graduate without any bad marks.
Lazy: So lazy that she even puts on make-up quite rarely. Between having extra-time to sleep and preening her feathers, she always chooses sleep. As you can imagine, doing laundry/cleaning/dishwashing/anything else that needs to be done with any kind of consistency is torture for such a person.
Hedonism: After years of philosophical research, Clio has decided that the meaning of life is in the pleasure. Or, to put it another way, hedonism.
Selfishness: For some reason, this word is perceived as a swear word, but Clio considers it a normal self-care. As one example, she doesn’t quite understand when people talk about a job they love – is that even possible?
If they do, they must be the energizer activists who are ready to give up their last shirt «for the common good». But Clio doesn’t want to «give back to the society», she wants to be paid and to buy stuff she wants.
Ok, maybe, her favourite job would be the one where with a minimum of effort she could get the most for herself.
Adaptability: With this set of traits, a person has no choice but to learn to adapt. This includes the ability to mimic the surrounding people, to find a way out of tricky situations, and to fit her behaviours into what the situation demands.
Belief in Miracle: Despite the many times life has tripped Clio up, despite the many times she has vowed to stop believing in the supernatural, it seems to be impossible to squeeze out the magic fairytale of her by any means. Naturally, she is fascinated by witchcraft and sorcery, which makes life in a world without magic a wildly depressing experience.
The torment of choice: Clio doesn’t like to choose. She doesn’t like to choose what to wear, where to eat, or what to be when she grows up.
Longing: All her life, our heroine has felt that she has to be somewhere else. That this world is not really for her. That she can’t learn to fly here. This feeling is not a constant weight nailing her to the ground, but rather a sub-tone, a quiet ceaseless squeaking noise that accompanies Clio throughout her life.
This is why a random song, a thought, or even a whiff of wind can make a person suddenly and inexplicably cry, even though nothing seems to be wrong. But the rest of the time, too, her eyes betray this longing: occasionally Clio can be seen staring off into the distance. To somewhere where she is not.
CHAPTER 2: Tramway
On a Wednesday evening,
After the dinner,
The sleep is for tired moany adults.
We are inviting,
Young daredevils,
To the jungle and into the wild…2
Oooh no, now that song will be stuck in my head for a long time. Stop playing. Stop playing. Stop it. Don’t think about anything. Quiet.
…
Wednesday evening, after dinner…
Oh, for heck’s sake! It’s not even Wednesday. At least it’s not even Wednesday here. And somewhere, maybe it is Wednesday. Probably not in our world, though.
Somewhere…
Is life without the internet worth travelling to other worlds?
After all, if you think about it that way, what is the average Gondorian doing on a quiet Wednesday night in Middle-earth? We’re talking about the most boring times, not when it’s time to die heroically in a war for world peace.3
Speaking of battles, even Grandpa Tolkien, with all his thoroughness, did not carve in stone the names of thousands and thousands of foot soldiers, even the ones who died more or less heroically.
And he carved more than most authors, alright.
Ok, now I’m just thinking about the Professor snowboarding. Stop! Stop!
Clio’s confused train of thought hit the rock of reality the moment the creaking tram doors opened and let the cold November air in. Admittedly, the cold itself is already pretty bad, but now it was particularly unfortunate.
This tram is an artefact from such ancient times that it was not yet known that the metal seats were uncomfortable for passengers. Plus, as it is such a relic, it wasn’t surprising that heating didn’t work. And in this nasty cold times, there is a real danger of sticking to one of these iron thrones.
It’s time for us, sitting in our warm, cosy abodes, to indignantly cluck our tongues and think patronisingly from the height of our wisdom: «Well, she who cares about her health would rather stand than freeze her fillets. She’s got babies to give birth to!»
But the foretold mothers have no interest in our most helpful advice.
Sitting on a tram is not only an honour and a great privilege, but also a simple matter of survival. Working-class life develops many helpful reflexes, and «if you see an empty seat, sit!» is one of them. The battle for a seat after a work shift is no joke.
Only happy people who are full of energy can afford to bow