Chapter 64: A Joke?
Things That Travel Quietly
Some things reach you indirectly.
Not said to you, but about you.
Not meant for your ears, yet they find their way there.
I learned that Oak and Viper had been speaking — filling spaces I wasn’t in with their versions of me. Words passed along, softened or sharpened in transit, eventually landing with Luna and Amber.
There was nothing new in what was said. Just familiar interpretations, old assumptions dressed as concern. The kind that sounds reasonable if you don’t look too closely. But the exaggeration was atrocious. Indirectly, they wanted me out. This is no surprise. Viper is the mastermind, but Oak is clueless and weak. Oak showed stupidity that Luna and Amber agreed. Oak has done it not once but twice. I need to have the utmost patience and resilience. 1 more year is all I need.
What unsettled me wasn’t the content, but the ease of it. How casually a story can be told when the person it belongs to isn’t present. How quickly it settles into place.
I didn’t respond. Not because it didn’t matter, but because I’ve learned that some narratives survive on reaction.
This isn’t about correcting anything.
It’s simply a note to myself:
pay attention to who speaks for you when you’re not in the room — and who listens.
Viper made a joke to Luna and Amber.
It wasn’t subtle.
She asked Oak when he was going to die.
It wasn’t the first time she’d said something like that. It wasn’t said in concern, or shock, or discomfort — it was said casually, as if death were a timeline she was waiting on.
What made it worse was knowing why. The joke wasn’t really a joke at all. It was about inheritance — about what she thinks will come to her, even though it never belonged to her in the first place.
Some people speak their intentions out loud and call it humour, expecting laughter to soften the meaning. But certain words don’t need interpretation. They say exactly what they are.
I didn’t hear it directly. I wasn’t meant to.
But that doesn’t make it less real.
There are lines you don’t cross, even in jest.
And once crossed, they don’t disappear just because someone laughs.
Viper has crossed the line right from the start.