The next day at work he couldn't focus on his poem, his mind was on himself. He thought about his mother, he didn't know if she was still alive, the last confirmation of her life was around two years ago. He wanted to know what her reasons were for not asking his father about the name Ast, he wondered if her line of reasoning was similar to why he hadn't asked Ner. He thought about how this tendency may run in his blood and wondered what else ran in his blood, perhaps his depression too, he had always suspected that his father may have taken his life intentionally but was too young at the time to have noticed any signs, another question he would like to pose to his estranged mother.

Maybe it was just love to not question the motives, she trusted the name he chose and the fact that it came from him was enough for her to support it, is that love though? it's not needed but it should be the default stance, to accept your partner's opinion, the women should always be very hesitant to challenge their husbands, there needs to be the threat of physical violence, a man should never hit a woman but the woman should always know that he could and might, this threat is useful for making women second guess questioning your decisions and thinking before they do so, yes, a woman should challenge a man when needed but she should always be consciously aware of what she is challenging and why before doing so, that is the role of a woman, my mother probably knew this, maybe she knew that not asking for his reasons would be a big compliment to my dad, to show him that she trusts him so much with something as important as the name of their only son to just accept it without an explanation, or maybe she is just like me and selfishly wanted to maintain the mystery. I should ask her, one day...

The rest of his thoughts for the day at work were among a similar line, Ast trying to work out how much of both his and his mother's personality could be due to nature. He left work relatively early again and went for a walk to the park, he felt bad for not making any progress on his poem so he decided to sit on his favourite bench knowing that he did his best thinking when he wasn't encountering stimuli. What he considered to be his bench was at the top of a little hill on the corner of the park with bushes around the sides, it was out of the way and provided a lovely although limited view of the park. He sat down and tried to remember where he was at with his poem but got distracted by a little field mouse he noticed coming out of the bushes and running across the tall grass beside him. This was the first time he had ever seen a mouse outside of a house and thought that was an unbelievable realisation for someone of his age, he wondered what other common things he may have yet to experience. While thinking about these possible experiences he noticed a girl about halfway up the hill coming straight towards him, she gave a little smile and sat down. She was beautiful, a little younger than Ast with a facial structure that looked asian but she wasn't, she was fairly tall and slender, her only flaws that he actually found endearing were slightly protruding eyes and a large overbite giving her a fairly distinct face, he could tell from her accent that she had grown up here. She spoke shortly after sitting down "Hi"

"Hi" he replied unconsciously emulating how she spoke, they they sat in silence for a good 20 seconds, Ast would usually avoid engaging strangers in casual conversation but even with his poor social intelligence he could tell this was an abnormally forward approach that she had taken and he was curious to know more, he was about to speak when she beat him to it.

"I've never seen anyone else on my bench before"

"Your bench?" he said without it sounding much like a question.

"Well, usually I sit on that side" as she looked over to where he was sitting before raising her eyes to meet his.

"Ok" he was lost for words and was a bit nervous, paused for a bit before "we can swap"

"No, it's nice" More silence as he fidgeted with his fingers on the edge of the bench a little hunched over, she sat up straight with her hands folded on her lap as if she was in church or at a funeral service.

"It's a bit out of the way" Ast said

"That's part of why I like it"

"Most people don't do things out of their way unless it serves a purpose, they don't do things because they want to, they only do them because they feel like they need to" he immediately regretted his words, how they sounded far more cynical than he meant them to be "anymore" he added.

She didn't respond instantly as if she was trying to really understand what he said before replying "I know what you mean, I rarely see anyone in this park at all who isn't walking a dog or running for some exercise, they are all doing something they think they need"

He was still a little embarrassed about starting a topic which disparaged such a wide portion of humanity and tried to turn it back on himself to lighten the mood. "Well... I guess I can't talk, I'm here because I feel like I needed to do something too"

"What did you need to do?"

"Just.. um... sit and get away from the noise a bit"

She could tell from the way he stuttered the start of his sentence that he initially wanted to say something else and stopped himself, she couldn't think of much to say because of this distracting thought so just replied "same".

They sat side by side for a while, not speaking when Ast realised he didn't care about hiding himself right now, he wanted to be seen and took a chance on her "The truth is, i'm trying to write a poem and I think best here"

"Hmmm... what's it about?" Ast was happy she had asked this and not enquired about something that he deemed less interesting as had been the case the couple of other times he had spoken to people about his poems where they had asked about the name of it or had said in a patronising way that it was cool that he was writing poems and wanted to know more about how often he writes them.

"It might change but..." he maintained eye contact as he paused to think of the best way to structure the story "it's about a man who notices an unimportant, err small detail about someone he has interacted with a lot, he feels like this detail is important and that he should ask the person about it but his logic takes over and tells him that it's not worth caring about, then he finds out the detail was important and due to the detail this close acquaintance of his has to leave forever and he never sees them again, missing their last chance to finally have some meaningful interaction" he stopped and allowed her to respond but she didn't as if she was listening intently for more so he continued "that's basically it, it's about regret, regret that he didn't trust his judgment, regret that they are now separated forever and despite having thousands of interactions, their relationship will now always be confined to history as being one of a completely superficial and unimportant nature even though he could have and should have brought meaning to it in the last time they interacted" he paused again to give her a chance to interject before continuing "it's about how if you don't take the chance to seize on the meaning you see then the meaning will create itself and it might not be the meaning you had wanted, or maybe it is more meaningful this way, I haven't decided... sorry, I'm rambling" he surprised himself with how concisely and eloquently he had put his idea, he rarely spoke to anyone and when he did he often tripped over his words but now he was speaking honestly and without care for its impact and it came naturally.

"I get it, I don't get how it will be a poem though..." she hesitated "It sounds nice though, can I say something too personal?"

"Sure" he wanted to leave it at this but couldn't resist justifying himself "it probably wont be like normal poems, it will be longer and more like a mini story, but please tell me"

"It reminds me of when my twin sister was dying, while we were never really distant it wasn't until her last days that we finally connected" her unnatural level of composure had slipped and her hands were fidgeting, Ast could tell she wanted to say more but was hesitant to reveal too much to a stranger.

"Sorry if I'm being too nosey but are you happy for that connection?" he regretted this instantly "...of course you are, but I mean, I don't know what I mean, I'm sorry, forget it"

"I think I know what you mean, I'm happy but sad we wasted so many years basically just being friends, imagine what the rest of the days could have been like"

"That's what it's about, but then maybe all those days of shallow interactions added to the meaning in the end, I don't know, I'm still thinking about it"

"This is a personal poem to you?" she asked.

"Not particularly, I like to write poems about things I haven't experienced usually"

"I'd like to hear what you come up with" The way she said this sounded so genuine and without judgment to Ast and at this moment he was intensely attracted to her. He didn't know how to feel about this so sat in silence for a while thinking about it before he asked her "What is your name?"

"Sarah"

"That's a normal name" he hesitated before the word normal, he had wanted to say 'real name' but had decided against it, thinking it would be too much of a weird thing to say after she had been so nice to him.

"Normal? like common?" she had noticed this hesitation and given him a second chance to say what he truly meant and he took this and loved her for noticing this.

"It's a real name, it's what people think of when they think of names"

"It is my real name" in a calm serious tone.

He realised she was teasing him by how she stressed the word 'is', she made it seem as if he thought it was the first fake name she could think of, he realised she was joking about making a joke so he decided to make a similar joke back.

"Ast is my real name" he pronounced Ast like 'Asst', sometimes he would pronounce it like 'Arst', he tended to mix and match pronunciation seemingly at random with others, initially he had done this to mess with people but these days he maintained this as he didn't like having a concrete name and hadn't decided on a preferred pronunciation for it himself, he smiled afterwards as if to imply to her that he might be lying about his name.

"Why?"

"I never found out why" he didn't entirely realise it at this point but he had made a promise to himself subconsciously that he would continue to be 100% bluntly honest with her as long as he felt like she was being genuine with him, something he usually didn't do due to the difficulty in explaining his unusual quirks and backstory to others, prefering to maintain some harmless lies to pretend to be normal.

"I see" she responded, with most people he would have thought a response such as this would be from a lack of interest but from her it appeared to be a sign of respect, an acknowledgement that it's a complex story and that she will wait for a better time and place to hear it. "It sounds interesting, i'm not flirting" she paused to watch Ast's reaction but he offered none "i'm really not, but take my number so you can share the poem when it's done"

"I didn't think you were" he thought about telling her that he had a girlfriend but it didn't sound right to him "can I ask you questions about my poem if I get stuck?"

"Of course"

He immediately sent her a message with just an 'i' to check it was a real number, for some reason this didn't feel real, he thought she was messing with him but he heard the notification.

"It might take a while to finish" he paused, he wanted to ask her why she was here but couldn't find the right words to not sound nosey or questioning of her motives.

"I'm patient"

"Same" he felt this to be a dumb thing to say and was afraid of saying anything more "I need to get some dinner" he stood up and looked over his shoulder at her nose to avoid her eyes "it was nice to meet you Sarah"

"Alright, same" she stood up but they walked in opposite directions, he looked over at her just as he was breaking line of sight with her but she wasn't looking.

I only added this sentence to make the book 78,268 words long. I wanted to make the book 100,000 words long but fell short and decided to keep it even though 78,268 isn't as interesting of a number. I only said that because I think being unreasonably honest and being able to fuck with people is a type of intelligence and I deem this as intelligence because I lack what is clearly true intelligence of being able to manifest your will in reality so I cope by changing the criteria to suit me. Now I'm saying that because I think being honest and self aware excuses flaws somewhat even though thinking this often becomes an excuse to not fix them.