After traveling to a place that boasted the sign ‘Best meatloaf you’ll find anywhere that isn’t 30 miles from here’, and ordering their meals, they sat and discussed the things that had happened.
“It’s… It’s all sort of coming back to me now,” said Mason. “Everything’s still a little… foggy, but… it’s starting to come back… What I don’t understand is how you seemed to remember everything though, Josiah.”
“Well, she had blocked most of our memories. Taken them, put them in one of her magic ‘jars’… All except mine… I managed to escape before… Before she… I’m sorry. I left you. I left all of you. I ran. I fled. I managed to escape. To hide. I never stayed in one place too long. I tried to get in touch with all of you. No one ever responded. I knew I had to take matters into my own hands.” He looked to Peter. “You didn’t think it was strange that Dawn was on your direct path, and somehow knew that you were on a quest? No. I left clues around. I indirectly led her to where you would be. Subliminal persuasion works.”
“It makes so much sense now,” said Dawn, taking in all this information. “There was just something… Urging me to the path that day. And I’d seen earlier that there would be a man with a talking llama who was on a quest to obtain his dream. I just… I can’t believe that was you, Josiah.”
“Mmhmm. That path wasn’t just by luck either. I knew it was the path that had led to Mason’s cave, where She… where She put him after she… Anyway, it was no accident you stumbled into there. And of course I didn’t show up in the cave to correct your grammar. I’m not THAT much of an English purist. Of course not. Totally definitely not,” he chuckled awkwardly. “Mason’s fear of Dawn wasn’t out of the ordinary, either. It’s no surprise after what She did to him. What he had to see. But me… He knew, somewhere deep in his mind that he could trust me. Mason knew I was Her only threat, and that was how I got him to open up to us. Is everyone still following me?” he asked.
Everyone kind of shook their heads in a weird mixture of yes or no.
“Perfect, then I shall continue. It was no accident that we landed here in Hyrule. Of course I could control the snowglobe, I wasn’t gonna try to reunite us without a plan. When we landed…”
“Crashed,” Peter interjected.
“When we crashed, and we found ‘Triste’, I knew the second I saw her face who it was. One can only disguise themselves so much. And obviously I knew exactly where Manalive’s shop was. Kristen always DID have a particular dislike of him, wanted to keep him in the area to keep an eye on him. After we got everyone back together, I knew we could go help Brooke. And that brings us to now.”
Everyone was just trying to take it all in. They were also hungry since their meatloaf still had not come. This is when Peter spoke up.
“But… But why me?… You could have just gotten you guys together, why’d you have to bring me into all of this!”
“You see, when Kristen… When she attacked… She got a little piece of all of us… And she tried to bring back… Him. The one who she did everything for. The one who she always tried to please. Until she couldn’t find him. Until he was gone. She went into a blind rage, blaming us, and starting all of this. When she took a little piece of all of us, she tried to combine that power and remake ‘him’. It didn’t work, though. She ended up creating someone new altogether. Someone who was just a little piece of all of us. She made you, Peter. And she hated you for it. All she wanted was to see him again. So she fashioned you memories. Gave you a simple life. And she sent you to your village. You just turned up on your stepmother’s porch one day. It’s why she didn’t like you. She never wanted children. She figured you’d be useful, however, and raised you as her own.” He paused. Silence resonated throughout the building. “You are literal timelord essence. You’re something extraordinary. You… You have more power than any single one of us… I would say than all of us combined, but that’s literally what you are. I know it’s a lot to take in, but…”
“A lot to take in? A LOT TO TAKE IN? Nahhh, this is easy. I just found out that I’m not actually human and that I’m basically a horcrux holding all of your souls, no biggy. I just… I don’t know…”
It was then when the meatloaf came, and they began to eat, not saying a word. Simply reflecting on what they’d heard. In fact, there really was nothing they could say. It was so much to take in. So much to process. But… But yet it made sense to everyone. They all knew, deep down, that what Josiah had said was true. They knew that this changed everything.
