The lazy anarchist

'We need to leave.' Lyna forced a single eye open with reluctance. Her muscles were still stiff and aching from sleeping on an uncomfortable bedroll. There was an painful sensation the side of her head, a finger pushing against a pressure point behind her ear. Wincing, she pushed herself to her feet. 'Move quietly,' Father whispered. 'Don't wake anyone. There's a watchtower three streets ahead, can't miss it. I'll meet you there as soon as I can.' She nodded, glancing around. Their guards were mostly sleeping. There was a single sentry on the roof, his footsteps resonating through the ceiling. But Lyna couldn't spend a night in a building without planning her escape, even when she wasn't a prisoner. Being without an escape plan always left her feeling exposed. She took a moment to remember the building's layout. The steward - what was his name again? - had suggested it by his own personal recommendation, and Father had gone ahead with it despite Lyna's reservations. There were a dozen things wrong with it, not least of which being that she and Father would be surrounded at all times. Surrounded by their own soldiers, true, but a mercenary's honour was barely worth more than the price of their next meal. A quiet step over the man sleeping by the campfire. The door was open, but the floor beyond was wooden. And where darkeyes' households were concerned, wood meant creaking. But every creaking plank was branded into muscle memory from hours pacing that same room planning her escape. The planks near the walls were the most dangerous, those directly down the center the safest. Coincidentally, most of the soldiers prefered to lay out their bedrolls near the walls, where they could retain more heat. Stifling a wince as the door creaked open, she slipped into the brittle air. The street behind the safehouse was kept clear to make entering and leaving as quick and efficient as possible. She sprinted through the city as soon as the watchman was out of sight, running over cobblestones and turning as many corners as she could to lose potential pursuers. After eight minutes she slowed to a walking pace, then backtracked to arrive at the watchtower. She lingered by the door, watching groups of soldiers and pilgrims in the moonlight. Where in Damnation was Father? And why did the two of them have to leave so abruptly? An hour later, the sun had risen. And still no sign of Father. They had a backup, didn't they? Why hadn't Lyna organized a backup? She sighed, glaring at a nearby spren cluster. "Life before death," she said insincerely, trying to gather conviction. "Of course," she whispered to herself. "Exactly. That's what I thought. That was never really your virtue, was it?" If Father isn't dead, he's run back to Alethkar, something in her whispered. "Shut up," she snapped at herself.

'A cold wind lashed out against the walls of Verev, slithering into the guardsman's cloak.' Slithering? Was that the right word? Lyna crossed it out, trying to consider another. Worming? Breaching? Entering? Wrong mental image, wrong mental image and too simplistic. Finally, Lyna crossed out the entire sentence. This idea was never going to work; she would just have to think of another. 'A storm threw itself against the walls of Verev, crawling over...' No. Threw against the walls and crawling over the walls brought together different images; they couldn't be used in the same paragraph, never mind the same sentence. Sighing, Lyna crossed out her thirty seventh sentence that day, before writing down another. 'The guardsman was the first to notice the brewing storm on the horizon.' Would he have been the first, though? Lyna paused for a moment to consider farmers outside the city walls, and discarded yet another sentence. 'Brightness Telavalet,' her father's steward began, 'you are summoned at the behest of Brightlord Saious Telavelet, and may-' Lyna tuned out the rest of his sentence, stacking her discarded pages together. Mother never liked her discarding paper, and insisted that it should be kept to remind herself how much she had improved. Each collection of ink stains was vaguely reminiscent of a half decent sentence, but only vaguely. None of them worth saving. If she had a hearth in her carriage she would have angrily thrown them into it. As such, she could only hurl them at the wall behind her before stepping out the door. 'Lady Lyna,' the lighteyed steward intoned, 'would it not be wise to make yourself more... presentable?' He scrambled for the right word. Another of father's stewards, each one replaced no more than a month after the last. She hadn't seen this one before; first day on the job? Lyna looked at herself in the reflection of her carriage window; what was there to make presentable? Sighing, she brushed yellowed hair from her forehead to behind her ears, rubbed sleep out of her eyes, flicked a crumb off her shoulder, then turned back to the steward. Completely presentable. 'Lady Lyna,' the steward repeated, and she mentally tuned him out for the second time that day. She walked past the steward while he was in mid sentence, slipping out of the caravan and moving towards Father's. The steward ran in front of her, determined to lead the way; he wouldn't get the chance. Lyna hurried her pace without sacrificing dignity, keeping a meter ahead of Father's steward. The steward gave up his last ounce of dignity, leaping in front of Lyna to open the door. She tried to hide her satisfaction, and just barely succeeded. He stepped to the side, gesturing for her to enter. A small victory for him; she had no choice but to enter, and now he was acting like he was giving her permission. Lyna brushed past him, barely giving him a glance, all the better if it soured his victory. Lyna hesitated at the last step. They said life wasn't a competition. Anyone who said that was losing, and she wasn't going to give them the satisfaction of seeing her do the same. She gripped the dagger hidden in her safehand sleeve for reassurance, then stepped into the carriage.

"Descends dramatically from the ceiling" It is I, Brightness of Should-Act-But-Too-Worried-Of-Crush-Noticing-Feelings, seeking to join this troupe of relatable individuals.

Over the internet, you can stop and think something through. There are no awkward pauses on a forum. In real life, I come across as supremely sarcastic by saying things to the effect of "Magnificent!" "Fascinating!" ""Do tell me more!" This isn't sarcasm - this is my brain trying to make more time to come up with an appropriate response. Because my brain assumes that the correct response to "I've got eight hours left for an essay that I've procrastinated for a full week, and now I kind of want to die" is to proclaim "MAGNIFICENT!" Thankfully, I'm surrounded by cynics who take it as a joke. Basically, I make sarcastic static while my brain tries to come up with things to say. This. Just this. I write way more than I speak. On one hand, I get to look smugly at someone when they ask me to stop and define a word I used. On the other, well... writing is a multi-draft process. If you don't like how a sentence looks, you are literally a button press away from removing the offending part from existence and starting fresh. You can change individual words after you finish the sentence, which for me at least means my first drafts are always rather chaotic. I can always edit them later. For actual conversations, though... My brain uses basically the same mindset for writing and talking. On paper, I can conjure an exquisitely written argument to dazzle the eyes and convince the mind. In speech, I just sort of flail about using words that are vaguely related to the point I'm trying to get across in order to give myself time to think of the best way to proceed. I used to stutter doing this, which has more recently been replaced by the more bearable Um and its two siblings, But and Well See Here, and the red-headed stepchild of The Point I'm Trying To Make You See Is As Follows. To summarize, I use semi-sarcastic delaying tactics to improvise a script line by line when I have conversations with people I'm not completely comfortable with. Makes everything from checkouts to flirting to submitting assignments far more storming difficult than it has to be.

Long term lurker from Ireland who waited a full year before gathering the motivation to register an account. I was first introduced to Sanderson three years ago when a friend came up to me with a copy of the Final Empire and a life-changing message - "Read this book. Now." It sat around on my shelf unopened for almost a year until I realized I had a five-hour flight and no fresh reading material. My first stop, even before accommodation, was a bookshop to buy the Well of Ascension and Hero of Ages. Since then I've gone out of my way to read everything Cosmere-related, all of Sanderson's novellas, and Steelheart. Currently a third of the way through Firefight, with Calamity waiting on my bedside table. Still waiting on my copy of White Sand to arrive. I named myself after my initials and two most significant personality flaws (stretching the definitions of those flaws to fit them within my initials). I take a disproportionate amount of joy in watching other people panic due to harmless amounts of disorder - if a friend is panicking and looking for their phone, I'm more likely to sit in the corner and cackle as they run past it twenty times than point out where it is. Also, I can't be bothered to achieve 99% of my goals in any given day. I procrastinate everything I'm not enthusiastic for, especially sleep, and there's basically nothing in the real world that I can get enthusiastic for. I will probably go inactive for weeks at a time before realizing this account still exists. Favorite works of literature - Cosmere, Worm, Shades of Magic Hobbies - Reading, Writing, Video Games, Dungeons and Dragons, Speculating about the lives of normal people So... yeah, greetings from the Lazy Anarchist, pleased to meet you.