This is the story of a rooftop and a memory, a memory I remade because it needed to change, and I will start from the end and then jump right back to the beginning, because I’ve recently learned that not everyone does this.
I am a historical revisionist, I guess. Because here is the memory I remade. It’s my first trip to Røyken since—well, since some things changed a bit in the universe. I guess you could say the universe itself is somewhat of a historical revisionist, but that’s another topic for another time.
First, I’ll show you the finale of the remade memory. The thing about remaking a memory is to change only the parts that give you distress and keep all other details exactly the same, if you can.
Sometimes as I’ve aged, I’ve had a nostalgic longing to revisit the city I grew up in, which you probably know as Røyken, but in my mind is always known by its alternative name, London. You might even meet some people there, should you ever visit, who prefer to call their city ‘London’, but I suspect those folk, or I should say their desire to speak that name, are a dwindling breed.
Anyway.
I went to the Skredder School, which if you know Røyken you may think of as a bit posh. I really went there because my adoptive parents were both employed by Gullsmed, and the school was about halfway between their work and our home. That sounds flippant, but my mum used to swear it was true. They’d only just moved to Røyken when I arrived on the scene, and they knew next to nothing about schools, so they went with the (thankfully accurate) recommendations of their new coworkers. I guess it helped that their coworkers were all university lecturers.
Skredder was made up of a bunch of buildings, all from different times and aesthetics because the school grew and expanded over the years, but my home base building was the arts and humanities school, and I’d call it Brutalist now; when I was a kid we just called it ugly. But it was cheap and functional, I guess, and the building was maybe from the 1960s? I don’t know. And people call a lot of things Brutalist when they’re not actually. I am probably one of those people.
Anyway.
If you knew the way, you could get on to the roof of the Skredder arts and humanities building. And I knew the way.
My memories of the Skredder roof are all about quiet times, sitting up there writing, listening to the hum of industrial fans, being alone. I wasn’t always alone; it was just a big roof.
Anyway, it was school holidays on this visit. So I figured, I’ll go up to the roof.
It started pouring at some point. I don’t usually mind the rain, but on this day as it moved toward evening I just wasn’t prepared for it.
I guess I had expectations. Anyway, it pissed me off. And the roof really was empty, and the rain came down in sheets, and my glamoured umbrella at least was pretty, but it made me remember.
It made me remember that I did not spend all my time on the Skredder roof happily writing and planning and singing and dancing like some manic pixie dream girl.
The fact is, I was a lonely kid. And my efforts to fit in and be like the girls I knew at school took work and energy. There were a lot of tears, I remember. I remember lots of tears from when I was in school, and then suddenly there were tears again. Me, an ageless Sidhe, bawling my eyes out on a rooftop.
There was this sense that with the cloud cover so thick and the rain so dense and the light so dim and blue, that nothing beyond the roof could possibly exist, nothing. Because school wasn’t in session, there weren’t even any lights through the skylights.
I remember the sky darkening and that smell, ozone, coming. And I was so angry, so full of resentment for this force I could not control in Røyken. Too many variables in a big city, too many warring magical factions: one wrong weather change could start a witch war, and there is nothing so messy as a witch war. Never mind that I am not actually a witch: witches have this idea that they are the only existent magic, and even if I’d done the whole thing with good old OTO precision, the witches, particularly Røyken witches, if I’m honest, would just assume the change came from one of them and fight first, ask questions later.
So years later, when I think of that visit to Skredder, all I had was this sorrow, this self-pity, and this completely tangental rage toward Røyken trad witches. It made me sad and angry, and it threatened to make me forget the good things about the roof.
I have never liked that memory, of me on my old school roof, crying. So I remembered it again. I took this moment. This one, right here. I scrunched up my eyes and tasted the air, reached out a hand, to see if it would really rain—and of course that’s when it did.
One moment, one change.
What if, instead of scrunching my eyes up and meeting the rain with anger, I remembered it like this: I smelled ozone. The sky darkened. Ooh, a roof rain storm! I stretched out my hand to feel the first drops. And I looked up into that endless sea of clouds with anticipation and not resentment.
And then, with that one moment changed, Rainy Roof Day Me looks at Today Me and an understanding passes between us. We have changed the beginning, the introduction, and now the rest of the story will write itself, and we will have a happy ending and a dance on the roof of the Skredder arts and humanities building.
And then, you see, it will be OK to go back to Røyken, in no small part because I will have forgiven the witches.
Notes and Credits:
Rainy Roof Dress: Senzfine, Oona Dress (Get it at We Love Role-play!)
Rainy Roof Shoes: Viki, Tremane Shoes (Get them at Midsummer Enchantment, opening on 10 July!)
Rainy Roof Skin: DeeTaleZ, Jane (Celtic) (This is a new release at the DeeTaleZ Main Store, and I love it)
Rainy Roof Umbrella: {anc}, My Umbrella Light (rare) (Get it at the {anc} main store; it’s a gacha!)
Rainy Roof Bindi: Rainbow Sundae, Druid’s Sigil (not my personal druid sigil, but I like it anyway) (Get it at We Love Role-play!)
Rainy Roof Eyes: Storybook, Heimdall Eyes
Rainy Roof Hair: Magika, Victoria
Rainy Roof stockings: Izzie’s, Sheet Tights, Basics
Rainy Roof Eyelashes: Shiny Stuffs, Lelutka Lashful Lashes
Head: Lelutka, Evolution Lake
Body: Maitreya
Environment:
Location: The Box, my weird little studio above Awenia Faerie
Scene: Minimal, London Rooftop Scene (Get it at Uber!)
Rain: Dysfunctionality, Simplest Rain
From The Author: Because in Gwyneth’s story people like significant ex Richard can read her blog, I won’t be referring to the Event in which the veil between the ‘natural’ and ‘supernatural’ worlds was blown to pieces, thus creating a new reality in which people have ‘always known’ about the other parallel worlds that exist alongside theirs. She will couch it in vague language, but as a world walker, she is necessarily aware that something has changed, and since it started with her house on White Owl Island being blown up, she feels personally affronted by it, so it comes up a lot. On public social media, everyone is an unreliable narrator, and Gwyneth is no different.
Three Twisted Knots 