Philomena’s Observation Book, Friday

Friday

I can never tell anyone at home this, not even Claire (she hasn’t forgiven me for including her with the “children” in my last letter home, anyway), for here is the worst part.  My plummeting took me right past the huge windows in the Xirdal Zephyrin lecture hall. Two hundred students watched me screaming down into the ravine, then engage my parachute. They were stamping and cheering, I hear.

As the first von Hedwig at the Academy in twenty five years, I had hoped to create a reputation for calm, steady, reasonable scientific investigation. I love my father.  He’s a brilliant man and a great scientist, and a wonderful father, but I’m not him, and I don’t need his reputation on me like someone else’s clothing.  And his reputation has not been forgotten!  I have been here nearly a year, and have succeeded in keeping my head down until now. This has put an end to anonymity.

This story began here and continues here.