Her sleep was abruptly disturbed
Thomas had thrown a notepad on top of her stomach
She awoke with a jerk
What?!
I finished my backstory
Oh - ok
I'll just -- uh
Look man
That's who I want to be
Who I could have been
She starts looking at it
It says you have a wife
Yeah
I want my life back
I -
Oh no --
Ok -
Hold on
...
We can make this work
There's no description of her
Why does that matter?
You have to think of the future
Like I told you
You have to leave your stories vague enough to allow yourself room to improvise later
You should always expect follow up questions
Anything you say becomes cannon to the story
So if you say anything and you have to back it up
You need to be prepared
And backpedaling is usually frowned upon
Sometimes it's the difference between life and death
What?!
Oh - uhh
She was still half asleep
She didn't realize how blunt and honest she was actually being
She also knew he needed to know how this works
But not without trust first
Well I'm not saying you're going to die
Thomas raises his eyebrow
She sits up and slumps over
She sighs
You're older than me
You've seen things
You've lived
You know how life is
You always have to present yourself in a particular way
You need to be able to adapt to survive
...
People will love you one minute
She snaps her fingers
Then they don't
...
It only takes one second to mess up
I once heary a quote
That's the thing about reputations
You can only ruin them once
-
It sounds --
Comforting
As if once you mess up you're already ruined
Once you're ruined
You're free to do anything because the expectation has drastically dropped
--
What I learned is that's not true
You can always recover and lose it all again
...
A singular mistake equates to nothing
It's repeated mistakes that do the most damage
The goal is to always consider potential mistakes
Get ahead of yourself
Use all of the knowledge you've acquired and keep applying
Eventually methods cease to be effective
But until they do
It's just foolish to not utilize the knowledge and skills acquired from repeating effective actions and continue to act accordingly
She looks at him
Thomas raises his eyebrow
He nods in agreement
She smiles
Let's go over the details
I still have a few hours before I need to part ways with you