Since coming back to Luisant I’ve tried to dedicate my life to progress – towards learning new disciplines, towards inventing new devices, and towards enlightening others of the ideals and practices of a modern era. I’ve had my setbacks here and there – trying to rebuild my life here has slowed me down immensely – boarding with my uncle helps, but it comes at the cost of privacy. My community also tends to look down upon my inventions – a practice that I’m trying my damndest to remedy, but I feel like I’ll be fighting uphill the whole way. At least a few in my community have started to see the merits of my work, I just hope I’ll be able to convince them all in my lifetime.

That said, while it’s been hard for me to come to grips with – Granny Jo and the others are right – there may need to be a line drawn somewhere on these innovations.

For me, the line was drawn at the last market. The line starts innocently enough – humorous even – I was out gathering with Marinette and a few others when we happened upon Henri. As usual, he was busy sticking his arm down mama snapjaw’s mouth, when he managed to pull out a gun that presumably belonged to a guard. He handed it off to me, still dripping in whatever snapjaw had had for breakfast, knowing that I could fix it up. The day passes on – it seems like the guard who lost it isn’t currently looking for it, so I fixed it back up in the meantime, and left it in my backpack, where I quickly forgot about it after the fun of the blind mason’s trial, the spring sovereign contests, a rather intimate conversation with Ellie, and the maypole dancing.

I may have forgotten about it for a lot longer had it not been for the crisis of the grove that night. Fear reminded me to bring the gun, but it was madness that caused me to draw it forth, level it against the man who had given it to me to begin with, and to pull the trigger.

I will forever be grateful for the distractions of that day – had the spring sovereign festival not occurred, I may have had time to find powder and shot to actually load into the infernal device, and the event of the grove may have gone… differently.

I’ve always thought of firearms as just impractical weapons – their high metallurgical demands, their neigh-impossible to craft fuel source, and needing to collaborate with a noble to acquire and supply them always had them feeling like their applications and usage were too niche and limited to be as useful as a bow or sword. After that ordeal in the grove though – they’re not just impractical, they’re too dangerous for their own good.

And so I’ve drawn a line – a line across my life’s work of ceaseless innovation in the name of improving our lives at Luisant, with the hope that this line will prevent us losing the lives of Luisant. I need to get rid of this gun.