Cav's Place

After getting trashed a few times on the first scenario of the campaign, I started figuring out how to make it through Age of Wonders II and I’ve been playing a lot of that over the past few days. Yes, this means I’ll be getting right back to it after posting this, but I keep meaning to mention Sunday’s mishaps and today is probably the last chance I’ll have to do it, seeing as tomorrow I’ll have to seriously try writing the next protest update, so I’ll still have Saturday available in case I won’t manage to get it done in a single sitting.

Since days are getting shorter, the march itself was supposed to start at 5 PM, but the time set for people to start gathering was still 4 PM, so for the first time only one hour was allowed instead of two. Of course, that shouldn’t have been a problem for me, especially since the start location was on the other side of the city, so I had to take the metro either way and meant to leave around 3:30 PM, which shouldn’t have been too early and I even managed to nap a little after the race. Not even the fact that around 3:35 PM I was still replying to something on the event’s page and only managed to be out the door at 3:50 PM was too bad, as that should have still allowed me to arrive around 4:30 PM.
However, the problems started about ten minutes later, when I got to the metro station and noticed that the card, which was the one I had with me during the previous march as well and still had seven trips on it, was getting rejected. It had worked back then, wet as it was, but it refused to work again and I hadn’t taken any money with me, so I couldn’t buy another right away. That meant I had to rush back, take the money, and get back to the metro station at 4:20 PM, now in a real danger to end up being late if I’ll need to wait too long for both trains, seeing as I had to first take one to Dristor and then switch to another.
In the end, I was there at 4:55 PM, along with many others, seeing as hundreds of people were flooding towards the gathering spot around the same time, plenty of them having been on the same train. I’d have liked to have been there earlier, to have time to have a better look around the area and take some better pictures, but at least I wasn’t actually late, so I thought the day’s problems were over and I’ll be able to take part in the march without any further issues… And I was wrong.

Sure, nothing actually happened during the march itself, but at some point, shortly before 6 PM, I suddenly found myself convinced I hadn’t locked the door after rushing back out. Then, after trying hard to remember what I did at that point and being completely unable to, I started wondering whether I had even closed it or simply ran out and left it open behind me. I had no memory whatsoever of what happened between the moment I opened it to leave, when I knew the keys weren’t in my hand, and the one I took my phone out of my pocket to check the time, when I was at the bottom of the stairs, at which point I obviously didn’t have any keys in hand either.
Of course, if my parents would have been home, that wouldn’t have been any sort of issue, but they were only supposed to come back in the evening and, with my phone card expired back in May, if I remember correctly, I couldn’t tell them to try coming sooner or ask what they found if they were already back by then. So the result was that I kept worrying and coming up with increasingly dreadful scenarios, imagining what could get stolen, or that the cat would get out and be lost, or that maybe nothing else will happen but my parents will notice the door unlocked and think we’d been robbed, start searching for what’s missing, call the police and so on. I was also imagining that they were probably not sending me any message about it just so they won’t worry me when I was in the middle of that crowd, so the fact that I wasn’t getting anything only made it worse, not better.
I seriously considered rushing back, but didn’t really want to give up on the march and wasn’t entirely sure where I was in relation to any metro station until 7:30 PM, when we passed by one, and by then it was too late to bother. So I stayed there until we reached the Square, just after 8 PM, but not much more than that, leaving after only taking a few more pictures and very quickly trying to estimate the number of people who were there.

Thankfully, when I did get back I learned that I had locked the door just fine despite having no memory of it, so nothing had happened and I could finally stop worrying. My mind being fixed on this had prevented me from doing much over the course of the march, after the first hour or so, and it also made me need to rush back soon after we reached the Square, but learning that at least meant I could get over it and focus on being in a better state for this Sunday’s march, which once again seems to provide a good opportunity to stay longer in the Square after the march itself will be over, since it should also finish early and the weather is supposed to be quite good, if cloudy. After the first ones finished late, the longest even requiring me to run ahead to make sure I’ll catch the metro, the constant rain made people clear rather quickly on September 29, and the worries stopped me from staying after this last one, it’ll be about time to stick around for at least a couple of hours!