I can't talk about what the months following being raped were like without talking about the unnecessary kindness that my new friends - some of them - offered me.

Listen. There is so much from that time that has vanished from my memory. I'm playing archeologist to piece it back together. I'm reading through old google documents, texts, photos. I've scrolled all the way down on my twitter. I've reached out to friends, like "Remember that time I completely snapped right after graduation? Can you remind me of what that was like?"

I put on some sort of gorgeous dress and gorgeous eyeliner. The grief has given me a sort of consumption chic, with my eyes always super-wide and super-sparkly. Because of the crying. 

Also, I've had a lot of time to practice doing my makeup while I was busy not leaving my house.

There's a big party of us. We're Ubering to the other side of town where someone has a dinner reservation. We'll eat and drink, and then the plan is for all of us to go to some party or another. Ring in 2016 with some sort of intention. 

[I have a different plan][gin]. 

The sun rises at 7:30. 

It sets at 4:30. 

I get up somewhere in between. Take the elevator from the fifteenth floor to the basement garage, drive to work with the sky so low and heavy that it feels like a wool blanket - like a literal wool blanket. Thirty minutes to the underground, unheated parking lot at work, then the elevator to my windowless office. 

You keep living in [the city][Kirkwall] where [the bad things][Winter] happened. 

Madison is a small city. A quarter of a million people. The isthmus is even smaller - less than a mile from lake to lake. 

Dragon Age: Origins is a hero story.

Dragon Age Two is not.

For one thing, you win at the end of Origins.

I spent four years at a tiny women's college. I am open and friendly and unafraid, like a tasty animal that doesn't know to hide from the sailors who just landed on shore.

I am in a new place, and I have new friends. I trust them very quickly and very fiercely. I love them right away. Not for the better. I don't read this language of red flags. 

Here is my playing field: one night, out of nowhere, my best friend turns to me and goes "Anna, being with you makes me feel like I'm rotting inside." A few hours later, he shows up at my door. 

Winter is a promise. Winter is a threat.

Every day. It is in the air months before it's on the ground. That ashy, chemical smell that the air gets in winter in cities? A little acrid, burns your nose? In Madison, we get that in October. We get it in September. It gets [darker every day][the darkness]. 

Kirkwall is not a nice place. The city of chains. 

You had to indenture yourself to get your family in to the city. Your uncle lost the family home, but you can buy it back, if you can earn enough. Get used to this place, the streets and alleys, the underground slum, the outskirts, the docks. The whole game happens here. The next ten years of your life. 

We'll skip the details, Elia. You, your mother, your brother, and your new warrior friend catch the last ship across the sea to Kirkwall. Mom tells you that you have an uncle there, and a family fortune. 

She was right about the [uncle][Gamlen].