If Estrid ever has a baby boy, she better keep it away from Daeglan. If he could drown a kitten lord knows what else that boy is capable of.

Maire did sleep with Malcolm at least once, since she brought it up in "Maire wakes the wrong man":

[Egelric's] hands were a rough mockery of Malcolm's hands in their bridal bed, and this interminable manhandling a mockery of the long minutes Malcolm had spent touching her that first night, caressing her shaking legs and arms, murmuring nonsense to her, stroking her softly as a man might stroke a skittish filly, until she had calmed and quietly allowed him to climb atop her, secretly grateful, secretly relieved.

And she had hated him for that, and mocked him for his feminine gentleness in the morning, because she could not admit she had been skittish and had needed to be soothed, nor even that she had wanted him.

Malcolm tried to be good to her -- for even though he was strong-armed into marrying her, I think he was attracted to her -- but Maire spoiled it with her pride. What an idiot woman, mocking him for the way he made love to her! OK I get that her "pride" is some kind of self-defense mechanism, but argh. Magog is kind of smarmy sometimes but that event really makes me fume.

They did sleep together after that, but Maire spoiled everything that first night. After that, sex and the withholding thereof (and everything else in their relationship) was always a battle of wills. In any case it must not have happened often enough for her to get pregnant.

She really blew it. If there was a man who was the love of her life it was Malcolm. She picked him out of the pack and said "Daddy I want to marry that one", and Aed made it so, even though he probably had to hold his nose at the wedding to get over the unbearable stench of Gog. (Mutual I'm sure.)

Maire was always his pet, and he defied the Pope himself when she later said "Daddy I changed my mind." (Fortunately the Pope later came around. ) We'll see how he handles these latest events.

Depending perhaps on how much people liked Lena and Paul, there may not be much grumbling amongst the people if Sigefrith doesn't execute Maire. (Though they probably wouldn't want her going freely among them, if only because she's potentially dangerous.)

The sense of hypocrisy would not be as intense as you would imagine, Devin. I doubt even Sigefrith sees it in those terms. (As in "I just executed Tidraed for less, therefore I should execute Maire.")

This is the 11th century (*pulls out the "It's the times" banner*) and noble people like Sigefrith and Maire are actually seen as a different kind of people. We're centuries before the Magna Carta, and still far, far from "all men are created equal" (and even our own nation took two hundred years to embrace the full sense of those words).

As a rule among the Anglo-Saxons, and especially among Danes, the punishment for a noble person killing a common person was a monetary fine, the value of which was determined by the social status of the person they killed (or their wealth, but those two were practically synonymous). If the noble person could pay it, that's about all the King would do.

That's what I was driving at with Iylaine saying "men have hanged for less" and Malcolm replying "lesser men".

Now this *is* the end of the 11th century and not wild Viking days, and a slightly more recognizable justice system is beginning to take form. "All the King would do" didn't always satisfy families, so there was plenty of back-and-forth revenge and blood-feuds and fines going both ways on occasion. A guy like Sigefrith doesn't want that kind of chaos.

However this is the first time a noble person has done something like this in the kingdom, so Sigefrith doesn't really have any "jurisprudence" to fall back on (or seem hypocritical about). Maire also did more than Tidraed -- premeditated murder as opposed to being drunk and getting into a fight with her boss -- plus arson, which was a BIG deal (crime against real property), and breach of household. And the aforementioned constitute a breach of the King's peace, which is itself a sort of umbrella crime.

And he's still pretty mysterious to me, but I am getting the feeling that Mysterious really is a really gung-ho, by-the-books sort of lawman -- in keeping with the "modern times" I'm writing about here -- and he's not going to make it easy for Sigefrith to harumph and fidget and sweep this one under the rug. It's his first big case, dammit!

Either that or it makes him really hot. I can't figure out if that guy isn't actually a serial killer in disguise or what. There is something not quite right about him, and I haven't figured it out (or made it up) yet.

Ever since "Gwynn gets an advice", the Mysterious Reeve has kind of been registering on my gaydar. Not sure if that's just me who's finding that or not.

But it would explain why he's so mysterious. That was a big deal back in those days, so if that's the case, then it makes sense that he feels he has to hide it. Poor guy

I wouldn't be surprised if he had some peasant boy waiting for him at home. Ain't nuthin wrong with that if your gay be happy!

Naaahhhh, Mysterious isn't gay.

Bi-curious at the very most but even that seems like a stretch.

And even so, that doesn't explain his creepiness. It has to be something else. And not necessarily something sexual.

Though it probably is something sexual involving moderate amounts of pain.

Anyone getting a necrophiliac vibe? Just curious. I don't think he's gay though. At least not "just" gay.

OH CRAP I forgot about Sophie. I FAIL at Lothere trivia today.

In that case Sophie definitely sets a precedent of getting off by paying a fine. OTOH (1) Sophie is a noble lady by blood though I don't know how far that really mattered since she somewhat debased herself by marrying Leofwine, and (2) Leofwine did beat her. Everyone felt really shitty about that, so they were willing to make allowances perhaps.

In this case Maire does outrank Lena, but poor Lena never hurt anyone, and quite a few noble people are going to be pretty sore over her death, starting with Alred, who outranks everybody but Sigefrith and Caedwulf.

It never occured to me that he might be a pedophile..... Sigefrith it most definetly crossed my mind though.

Don't count Emma out yet, she's still too young to have any sexual tendencies.

I'm sure they had a concept of pedophilia, they just set the bar lower. Really, where do you set the bar if it isn't at sexual maturity? It becomes almost arbitrary -- if a 13-year-old can have kids, then what makes her not a kid anymore? After that point it's the society that decides. And I think I've said before, the very notion of "teenagers" as this in-between stage of not children yet not adults is a pretty modern notion. Of course people didn't necessarily get married at 15 but that was more because they couldn't support themselves yet than because people saw them as pre-sexual children.

Anyway, I don't think Sigefrith has gone off the deep end -- his attraction to Eadgith (and perhaps Kraaia, though that could have been Sigefrith just wallowing in vulgarity there, as he likes to do) seems a little ooky to us but not to the people of his time. Are you a pedophile if you are attracted to girls who are considered at a marriageable age in your society?

The place where I want to watch Sigefrith is what happens as his wife gets older and loses all her girlishness. Will he still be attracted to her then, or will he be lusting after another barely-developed 14-year-old? That, I think, is where Sigefrith might have what I would call a problem. (Even though that too can be explained by biology / natural selection if you are into that sort of thing.)

As for the dates... there are a number of early chapters that have the wrong dates. When I first started this story I only listed the chapter month & year, not the days, so the "day" of the chapter ended up being the day on which I wrote it. I retroactively assigned dates to some of them at one point, but I didn't get them all. You can tell sometimes because all the chapters of one month will be clumped over a few consecutive days. Margaret was definitely born on the 22nd. I will have to go through and fix those... but it will require rereading them all. *sigh*

Caedwulf and Ogive's kids can marry their first cousins just as long as its not his and Cecily's child I don't want it getting mixed up with that mess.

Re: Caedwulf and Brit's kids, I think people did have some idea that madness ran in families back in those days. They could at least observe that other traits like hair color and height and stuff were inheritable, and they must have witnessed families with unusually high rates of mental disturbances.

More pertinently, when Alred told Sigefrith about Maud's mother, Sigefrith and Alred both "extended this line of reasoning" and thought of the possibility of Maud's children inheriting her madness.

Now, if Caedwulf and Brit both grow up to show no signs of her illness, then maybe they will think they and all their future generations will be in the clear. Which may in fact be the case.

I suppose they might let their children marry, especially if they have lots. But in the first place, since the King and Duchess will be siblings, the future King and future Duke will be first cousins, and they might not feel the need to reinforce that alliance still more by intermarrying. Twenty years from now it may not seem useful at all to marry someone who lives a twenty-minute trot away, when their kids could marry the children of princes and lords hundreds of miles distant.

The other obstacles it that, at various places and times, and to greater and lesser degree, marriage between first cousins (and even more distant relatives than that) was forbidden by the Church. William of Normandy was forbidden to marry his Matilda for that reason, though he did it anyway and got in trouble with the Pope for it.

In Sigefrith's family they're practically incestuous with all the cousin-marriages, but I don't know how long they'll get away with that. And I don't know how Alred and Dunstan will feel about that at all. (Especially with the Maud blood in the family... y'know, just in case.)

Re: Colburga Ashdown and her marriage... yeah I really have no idea. She knew since long before she was married that she was going to marry the man she did -- he was her father's apprentice, and the best way to keep a former apprentice from competing too ferociously is to marry him to your daughter. And she was a bit fast before she was married. (Maybe with her future husband, but still.) So something tells me she is a sort of "Yeah, whatever, we're married" kind of wife. She's not really the meek, housewifely sort. But she and Alfred may be reasonably happy for all we know. They're living exactly the life they always expected to live, and so it may not occur to them to be unhappy about it.

You sound scared! I would have thought I seemed so excited about the Finn + Gwynn saga...

But yeah I chose Gwynn because (at the time) if he was going to make babies with anyone in Lothere, it would have been Gwynn. I hadn't really thought of the Connie angle then. But Cearball was never supposed to be as big a character as he has become. And he was supposed to be all evil too. (Maybe not children-of-rape evil, but still, I had to consider the possibility.)

Gwynn's genes are pretty darn good though.

Although I do agree that Gwynn may unintentionally open herself up to that kind of catastrophe, by now I don't think Cearball could be the one to deliver it. He is a kinda decent guy, in spite of his hormones. He's used to dealing with older, married women who presumably know what they're doing and know what they want, but he seems aware that a well-bred girl of Gwynn's or Connie's age is not the same thing.

Furthermore he does not seem to be attracted to Gwynn at all, especially since she totally creeped him out in that conversation on the rug, so it wouldn't even be one of those "got carried away" things. She seems to strike him as an annoying kid more than a potential sex partner.

But I've said before that Gwynn's obsession with romance is bound to get her into trouble one of these days. It would be poetically right if she found herself in the middle of an undesired or immediately-regretted elopement, for example. And if Finn saved the day!

Who's Boxy again? Is that Tathan?

Sadly, Tathan is married to a young lady and father of three.

Why, were you hoping to fix him up with Cearball?

blocky boy and Gwynn???

Meh. I personally wouldn't complain if we never saw Blocky again.

She is rather pretty, though I suspect the gorgeous hair helps a lot. (And doesn't help her neck.) She has a somewhat unusual face for a Sim, quite round in the face and jaw. Not like any of the face templates. By now I'll gladly take anything a little out of the ordinary.

I was planning on her having a somewhat pivotal role in the story (though just a few chapters), but then Cynan and Cearball went off in ways I did not expect, so now I don't know whether we'll even see her.

Heh heh... talk about a random sampling of Van's brain.

1) They're illegitimate, but they're noble, so they can't be raised in the temple like any riff-raff.

I believe this is a situation that comes up extremely rarely since normally síkhón girls are allowed to marry, and may even aspire to marrying laítón, so they're not generally sexually available to random noble-elves.

I only found two síkhón girls who had children but never married, one of them being these girls' mother, and the other is Sorin's daughter Lasrua, who was deflowered at the tender age of 12 (or earlier??) by the 70-year-old elf who is supposed to be in charge of the temple. And of course we know a bit about what Dru is. (The girls' mother was 12 likewise.)

So I think it's quite possible that it was simply something deviant going on, and because Dru is who he is, everyone sort of turned a blind eye to it. Lasima had her two daughters at an extremely young age, and hasn't had any since, and hasn't married, so that's kind of interesting too.

We may see the daughters in an upcoming chapter. They do intrigue me a bit. I have the idea that Dru quite dotes on them. (Not in that way mind you.) His one legitimate daughter (Tashnu's wife) was slain years ago.

2. I think Alwy's feelings for Gunnilda were clear. He adored her. How could you forget that chapter where he gave her that house? I think every time he looked at her, Alwy had a little thought about how lucky he was. But he always did feel unworthy of her -- surely in part because that's how she made him feel.

As for Ethelmund, I almost think we would need more chapters before I can say. He finds her quite attractive, and he does seem to enjoy her wit and her company. Some of his illusions about their marriage may have been spoiled... but then again, maybe he didn't have many. I think he was OK with the whole idea that he was a widower with young children, and she a widow with young children, and it was just natural that they get together. The fact that he found her hot was just a bonus.

I think Ethelmund was always somewhat ruled over by his first wife, but for whatever reason (maybe he had grown, or maybe he had just made up his mind) he was not about to fall back into that role with Gunnilda. I think something clicked in him at the time they were married, and he was going to be the man of the house, and she was going to love, honor, and obey him, and oh yeah there would also be lots of sex. And I believe that to a good extent he has managed to impose his will on her. Gunnilda put up a bit of a fight and then backed down when she saw how unlike Alwy he was. But I think it broke Gunnilda a little. Not that he broke her, but that she surrendered a little. And maybe stopped dreaming too.

But like I said, I just haven't written enough about them, and especially not recently. A shame, because they have quite an unusal dynamic for Lotherian couples.

3) When you have a Sim couple in love, and one Sim is already sleeping, and the other gets into bed with her, then the first will roll over onto her side, and the other will snuggle up against her back and wrap an arm over her. (Works in the opposite gender direction too of course... or any direction you like, Sims don't discriminate.) I don't know whether it requires an EP -- if it does, it must be Nightlife, since my Sims have done that for as long as I can remember, and I had only Sims + NL for the longest time. They may do it after Woohoo too, but on the rare occasions when my Sims get to Woohoo (last time it was Connie and Gwynn ) they're usually wide-awake when they do it, so instead of going to sleep afterwards, they get up in their undies and either retch or cheer as the situation warrants.

Practically every Sim made after my first families is a Sim-virgin. There just aren't that many useful animations that come out of Woohoo. I'm not sure even Leofric has ever woohooed. I use InSim to keep everyone's motives up.

Actually I tend to greet questions like that with this look for real. It is so hard for me to switch my brain back into a mode that remembers that the game even has things like motives. It's like "What aspirations do your Sims have?" My response is a blank stare as I try to remember what aspirations are.

Yeah I guess Connie and Gwynn were each other's firsts.

I always imagine my Sims taking off their medieval robes and putting their jeans back on and driving home after a long day at the studio... (Mostly because I like to imagine Alred's butt in jeans.)

The Brit + Dunstan scene (as well as Leof + Matilda, Sigefrith + Eadie, and many others) were done using the Cuddle... Make Out animation in bed. Actual Woohoo looks like a cloud of dust with lots of bent and broken limbs flailing randomly around. It's only useful for the brief animation at the end when they smile at each other across the sheets and hold hands.

It was "Lady Gwynn sees the beauty of it" when they're smiling at each other in the bed.

How often does Eadie see Peleia?

Thanks. Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if it was just my game. What I might do is just ignore their projected heights while they're still kids and just assign something like 0.96 = five years old, 0.98 = six, 1 = seven, etc.

By gibbles, I mean... craziness. I grew up this one kid and made him maybe about 0.9, and then when I opened the game again to change up a few of his siblings' appearances for a post they were going to be in, he was still crawling around like a toddler, and then when he stood up his feet were about halfway between his knees and his ankles. It unnerved me slightly.

I just started thinking about Leia recently when I began worrying about Gwynn and Margaret's possible childbirth risks, because Leia is also Matilda's daughter and also runs the risk of developing that damn gestational diabetes.

Hmm... that's certainly possible. After I discovered the problem with that kid, I aged him to child using InSim, just to be sure. He's normal now, but he's at a stretch of 1, and is suspiciously close to the height of his nine-year-old brother. But when I was taking pictures just now, I tested a few of my other five- and six-year-old kids, and they seemed to walk around just fine. Needless to say, I was fairly weirded out.

I've thought about playing with lifestages and genders in Sim PE myself, but I've always chickened out of it. However, you can change gender behavior with the InSim personality adjuster (you probably knew that long before I ever even heard of InSim, actually). It doesn't do much though; just changes the attraction animation to that of the other gender, might change the aspiration level title, and allows for gay couples to try for baby. Lifestage would probably have more of an affect. I've always kind of wondered if the genders in Sim PE would change the actual physiology of the sim, but I somehow doubt it. I think the one exception is for babies. I've heard of people successfully changing baby genders with Sim PE.

Has Leofric fooled around with any maids or the like since he fell for Hetty? Also, how do Hetty and Lady Eadgith get along?

There have been quite a few sets of twins born in Lothere. Do you foresee any sets of triplets, quadruplets, etc.?

I vote that the first set of triplets goes to Finn and Gwynn

Not if they were small babies. Gwynn and Meggie and Cynewulf were all rather tiny, if I remember correctly

Hmmm... don't multiples often come early anyway?

Sorry if I'm being annoying.

Oooooh, that would be highly amusing!! But both Lady Eadgith and Orlaith are getting up in years, aren't they? And after what happen with Alred, it might be a while before Leofric ever dares sleep with Hetty, providing she's even willing... hmmmm...

Heheheh... maybe Lar could get drunk and sleep with some lady elf with earth nature when she's fertile, and then BAM! Elf triplets who grow up to have violent tempers, daddy issues, and lovely profiles.

Poor Sina would be overwhelmed by Lar. Plus I think Sina would rather have an actual relationship, whereas Lar in his impaired state would probably just want a hookup to help him clear his head.

Oh how poetically ironic it would be for Lar to accidentally unintentionally go a little too far during some elf lady's fertile period and end up with TRIPLETS. Now that's karma.

Quit giving me ideas, y'all.

Uh, oops? :-D

I would have made her birthdate a year later but then she would have married Aed at 13, which is pretty creepy. (Especially if he already had a beard halfway down his chest by that age.) So I made Enna a year older. He was (probably) a real person but not famous enough that I found a real birthdate anywhere for him, so I made one up in the first place.

Their mom is actually a female version of the Cearball version 1. She happens to be, uh..., the aunt of Cearball's grandfather or something, so I think it's a family resemblance going on. Cearball's aunt -- Enna's wife -- has something of the same face as well.

mysql> select id, fname, lname from people where birthdate like '%-01-03';
+-------+------------------+-------------------+
| id    | fname            | lname             |
+-------+------------------+-------------------+
|    39 | Margarethe       | Colburg           | 
|    47 | Bedwig           | Fritholaf         | 
|   132 | Sweyn Estridsson | Ulfsson           | 
|   339 | Robert           | de Flandres       | 
|   404 | Thurstan         | Lea               | 
|   410 | Ceolwulf         | Ealstan           | 
|   767 | Dearbhforghaill  | Ui Briain         | 
|   997 | Faelan           | NULL              | 
|  1229 | Máel Muire       | ingen Eochada     | 
|  1287 | Martha           | ingen Morrainn    | 
|  1522 | Domnall          | mac Gilla Patráic | 
| 10526 | Cwenburg         | NULL              | 
| 10598 | Colburga         | NULL              | 
| 11698 | Berhtgyth        | NULL              | 
| 11892 | Ethelflaed       | NULL              | 
| 12304 | Raenmaeld        | NULL              | 
| 12600 | Eamer            | NULL              | 
| 12601 | Cuthbert         | NULL              | 
| 12891 | Athelreda        | NULL              | 
| 13077 | Ealhmund         | NULL              | 
| 13134 | Godgifu          | NULL              | 
| 13159 | Ceorl            | NULL              | 
| 13709 | Aethelberht      | NULL              | 
| 14754 | Edgitha          | NULL              | 
| 14777 | Dudwine          | NULL              | 
| 15037 | Agnes            | NULL              | 
| 15186 | Ethelswith       | NULL              | 
| 18087 | Dútúra           | NULL              | 
| 18088 | Tév              | NULL              | 
+-------+------------------+-------------------+

Father Faelan maybe? How about Ogive's dad? Or King Sweyn!

Funny about Aed and his first wife, isn't it? Family legend says that he was having an affair with her while she was married to her first husband, and she killed husband #1 to marry Aed. Malcolm casually mentioned this to Cearball in "Malcolm is so kind". But Malcolm's dad doesn't get along with Aed so I'm sure Malcolm accidentally on purpose brings this up on occasion. Her grandson by her first husband is married to Cat and Flann's big sister Cainnech, but their other big sister Aibinn is married to her son with Aed... so I'm not sure how the daughters of Flann feel about this skeleton in the family closet.

Anyway by Force of Aed this was all just brushed under the rug (or under the beard, if you prefer) and everyone now has to act like it was the most natural thing in the world.

I Want Maire Dead before 1086 fund - Please kindly support

Funny about Aed and his first wife, isn't it? Family legend says that he was having an affair with her while she was married to her first husband, and she killed husband #1 to marry Aed.

Like mother like daughter.

It's not a coincidence at all. By the time Baldwin was born, I just totally gave up on Cenwulf's genes. Baldwin's father is actually the Grim Reaper. Cenwulf's other children with Edris are as well, except for the last one. (I forgot.) So I killed her too.

Actually, looking at her now, I think she was salvageable. She just has some weirdness around the mouth. I'm a lot better with plastic surgery and makeup nowadays. *shrugs*

I'm sure he had feelings for her. Remember when he went to Denmark and spent the whole time looking for little dragon-related gifts for her? Remember how he used to visit her bedroom to chat with her and Alred told him to watch out?

I would define it as a crush. He had a mad, sometimes violent wife; the world on his shoulders; and here's this sweet girl who allows him to escape from all that. I doubt Sigefrith ever thought he was "in love with her" but I also suspect he tried not to think about his feelings too much for fear that he would feel honor-bound to put a stop to them. (Witness his "it's nothing! she's old enough to be my daughter!" conversation with Alred.)

It could happen to anyone.

Why does (did?) Lasrua live with Paul instead of Osh? It might have been mentioned in the story, but my mind is drawing a blank right now.

What do you think Eirik would think if he knew that Estrid was having an affair? On one hand, he probably likes to think of his sister as someone who would be faithful to her husband, but on the other, they're very close, and he's likely the only person who knows the true extent of her unhappiness...

Also, do you imagine that Caedwulf is, to some degree, in denial in regards to the state his mother's sanity near the end of her days?

Since we probably won't be meeting them, what do you imagine Ogive's family is like (your versions of them, not necessarily what they were like historically, if that can even be found anywhere)? How do you think Ogive gets along with them?

I Want Maire Dead before 1086 fund - Please kindly support
"She imagines things are going to be like that for her and Caedwulf and for their kids."

Yeah we'll see about that.

Before Theobald became Baron I'm sure they must have at least on occasion, though they would have been quite small.

After they went away to live it would only have been on visits one way or the other in which boys were brought along. Not very often, I'm sure. And Brinstan and Dunstan are so un-alike that they must not have been close friends. (Brinstan always preferred Brit, as we know.)

But they were reasonably friendly enough, up until Brinstan got all protective of Brit.

Haha, I did a research project on intersex people for AP Bio myself. It's SO fascinating.

I'm still campaigning for an epileptic character, myself. But chromosomal abnormalities would be cool to see, too.
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I'm romantic, literary, cynical, and a diehard Alred Sebright groupie.

I'm taking AP Chem. I wish I hadn't.

Holy shit, AP Chem?? I would kill myself.

Then again, AP Chem wasn't even offered at my high school (the only APs we have are English, Bio, World History, American History, and Calculus - I took all except the last one.) Bio is the only science I actually enjoy...and weirdly enough, it was the only one for which I got a 5 on the exam. Despite being an English major and only taking humanities and social sciences since coming to college. I don't get it either.

AP English I didn't find so bad, but I took a college English course my first semester of my senior year taught by a rigorous professor, so that's probably why. We also didn't have a very challenging teacher, which led to us being totally unprepared for the exam. Meh.

(Off-topic FTW)
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I'm romantic, literary, cynical, and a diehard Alred Sebright groupie.

Intersex? Is that like XXY? Ambiguous genitalia? I would have to do research just to figure out what that IS. Not to mention the fact that Lotherians certainly wouldn't know (though they would have noticed the phenomenon in cattle). I don't think I can stretch gender identities too far in the story since it is hard to "be" something you can't even name or imagine.

As for other genetic abnormalities.... well anything physically, visibly different is tough, because the Sims only lets you do so much. I can't do people with missing limbs or anything. (In theory I guess you could, since we have satyrs and all, but someone else would have to make the meshes!) Even Downs Syndrome would be tough... I've seen Downs Sims, but they were children, and as I recall even the creator thought that was the only age at which they really looked approximately correct.

What is the incidence of that sort of thing anyway? Remember how many millennia we would have to wait, on average, for our first set of triplets in a population this size? I wouldn't want to throw people with various genetic differences into the story just because it seems cool. That would ... not be cool.

As for epilepsy, I have a candidate in mind. It's one of those ideas that just won't die, no matter how many other characters I try to stick that idea on, so I expect it will happen. Stalking your blog counts as research, Cassie. It would be especially interesting if she's in a situation where she is either believed to be faking it to get attention or something, or conversely that she is possessed by spirits or controlled by fairies. (And plenty of people would probably prefer to believe the first explanation rather than admit the frightening possibilities of the second.)

Or maybe she REALLY IS touched by supernatural forces...