story

The only child of an agricultural finance manager and his wife, who raised herself from poverty through land investment, Mephi was born into wealth not at all reflected in his family's attitudes or lifestyle. They were modest people in a modest house living modest lives in Kitiven's countryside, diligently securing funds to support Mephi's education and overall success. While horrendously neglecting Mephi himself.

Though, they weren't ill-meaning people. Work kept his father absent despite his good character. And despite his mother's presence, she couldn't care for him. She was too scared of him. Rather, too scared he wouldn't like her, and she'd fail as a mother.

That fear was self-fulfilling. Insensitive, inflexible, and immature, her social ineptitude left him without guidelines for maintaining relationships, her drive to impress and coddle him constrained his growth, and her emotional obliviousness turned everything he did into something she was sure she must have caused. When she approached him, it would be for validation and emotional support. When he approached her, she would dismiss him. When neither approached each other, it was peaceful.

He was eight when heart disease took his father, leaving him with only two human connections. His mother, who he avoided and resented, and a girl in his class named Tjan.

He and Tjan were both extremely unpopular. Tjan because of a severe cleft palate, Mephi because of his weird, aloof personality. Despite being each others' only friends, Mephi did not especially like Tjan, or her company, or opinions, or hobbies, or weird lip, and was altogether more relieved than upset when she and her family moved out of town, a few years later.

Through his adolescence, he embraced his friendlessness by entertaining the idea that being a misfit made him wise and omnipotent. Equally he deemed himself deeply defective, careless, obnoxious, socially incompetent with no aspirations, unlikeable and incapable of liking anything, and recognized his withdrawal as self-pitying consolation for failure as a human being. His trend toward isolation was deeply solidified come graduation, as was his self-loathing.

But university would be a new start. He would move to the capital, Amsherrat, a mecca of art, culture, and opportunity that surely he'd find some niche in. He'd be away from his mother and anyone who knew him, among peers of his white-collar bearing. He'd finally secure his education, and eventually career, in finance management, a lucrative, respectable, and sentimental field that not even he could criticise. Finally, his life would begin.

It didn't.

For all Amsherrat's wonders, nothing he found there particularly interested him. He performed well in his classes, but wasn't stimulated by them. As if on reflex, everyone he met, he held in contempt, distanced, and rejected. His reasons were petty and inconsistent enough to infuriate himself. No way everyone in the world was the incompetent, feely, leeching tick his brain labelled them as. The problem had to be him.

But he struggled to care enough to do anything about it. If he even could. Since he didn't seem to care about anything. Activities, people, his hobbies, his studies. Sure, he did well, but he lacked the basic interest or discipline to pursue anything as a career. And even though he could regurgitate information like a champion, the second he'd enter the real world to conduct real consultations with real people, he'd be sunk. He'd break. The quicker he found an excuse to drop out, the better. Then he could devote himself to doing whatever he stumbled on next, and then his life would begin. As if he hadn't said that before.

Serendipity nonetheless accommodated his fantasies when he did stumble on something, a beggar. She began regularly appearing in his vicinity after he gave her a large sum of money once in passing. On a windy day where her hood was blown off, exposing her eyes for a moment, he realised she was a witch.

She attempted to murder him that evening, before he could report her to anyone. But, he had no intention of reporting her, and was interested in the occult himself. After explaining this, and accidentally reassuring her into venting her current life frustrations on him, her feelings did a complete 180 and she promptly developed a crush on him.

Her name was Soft Nails. Exiled from her coven for frequently causing disharmony among its members, and having pathetically weak magic, her life would be over the second that authorities clued into her presence. Though she was resourceful enough to get by without relying on Mephi, she did appreciate what she perceived as his friendship, his spontaneous favours, and his openness to her. Learning of his own discontent with his life, she encouraged him to become a witch himself, after which they might get revenge on Nails' coven and embrace a lifestyle of darkness and terror.

Though not inherently against the idea, the weight of making such a decision intimidated him. He instead planned to wait until outside factors began pressuring Nails to act, expecting her to murder him and enslave him as her familiar. Then he would be the unaccountable victim who didn't have to make any choices. Simultaneously, he'd continue his studies, and if she never did make him into a familiar, then he'd proceed into higher academia as planned.

He greatly disliked Nails. Mostly because she wasn't following through on his plan, but also because he found her condescending, selfish, sanctimonious, hesitant, petty, and stupid. The only interesting thing about her was that she was a witch, and even that was a point of contempt. In fact, it was exhausting to learn through Nails that the occult lifestyle was just as full of politics, socializing, backstabbing, and drama as mundane society, with the caveat that everyone involved was guaranteed scum. Not that Mephi wasn't scum, but he doubted he could spend another second around another stupid witch without wanting to slam the wastrel into a wall.

Their relationship ended when Nails was informed that her coven wanted her back. Unable to choose between her revenge fantasy with Mephi and returning to the coven, she left the decision to him. Highly distressed by the dumping of responsibility on him, and equally unsure of what she should do, he severed the relationship without warning. Deeply hurt by the betrayal of her only object of trust and affection at her most vulnerable moment, Nails determined to punish Mephi before returning to the coven. So she killed and enslaved one of his dorm-mates as her familiar instead.

The dorm-mate begged Mephi for help and tried to warn him of Nails' presence. But, realising that Mephi already knew about her, and had fraternised with her for over a year, he shifted to cursing him, vowing that he would make Mephi pay for what he'd done.

An urgent letter came for Mephi the next morning.

His mother had fallen very ill, and might not have long to live.

With the most perfect, most opportune excuse handed to him on a platter, Mephi dropped out of his postgrad, and ran away.

It was one hell of a wake-up call.

Who cared if he or Nails got hurt. But to think his spinelessness could have ramifications on someone uninvolved?

Incredible how he could do absolutely nothing, and still those around him would suffer for it.

Having returned to his hometown of Vamu, Mephi settled into his empty house while making occasional visits to the hospital to see his mother. She'd ingested some parasite that devastated her liver, then gone into treatment late, and was now in a coma while her system bordered on failure. Somehow he wasn't surprised.

Regardless, he was soon offered a job to inspect, revise, advise, and budget the town's spending and accounts. It was a good distraction, but the longer he worked at it, and the more recognition he got, the more his interest faded. The question came from the hospital, should they keep tending his mother? It didn't take much deliberation for him to reply, No.

Though he didn't invite anyone in the first place, it was still entertaining how nobody attended her funeral.

He quietly resigned from his job, thoroughly unmotivated. He'd been right. He wasn't cut out for a career in the field he'd studied. Waste of four years. But any four years would've been the same. It didn't matter. Any year in his life was a waste.

Everything always felt so damn grey.

Why didn't he care more. Shouldn't he be more concerned about this dead end.

How come he so naturally thought and did such awful things. How come he broke at the slightest responsibility. Was he just evil.

What should he be doing. Where should he be going.

Maybe he should've just married Tjan. Done whatever she said. Not like anyone else would be interested in her. Maybe he could still do it.

Who was he kidding. He'd hate her.

But if he was going to give himself a reason to wake up, eat something, go back to bed, it might as well be this ghost of Tjan. Otherwise, and he had to be honest, it was questionable why he even bothered being alive.

It wasn't that he had an urge to die. But he didn't see the point in living. While it played on his mind constantly, it was also nice to think he was making a decent effort for Tjan, devoting his time and hobbies to Tjan, perhaps even making her happy. Months turned into over a year of complete housebound reclusion, entertaining his mental Tjan. Though miserable by any standard, and far from purged of suicidal leanings, at least he was stagnating in stability and comfort. Pleasantly he preoccupied his mind while he waited to die.

Until one day Tjan, the real Tjan, came back home.

One of the first things she did was visit Mephi. She was very eager to catch up.

Tjan's life had improved considerably since her childhood. She'd made good friends, found a fulfilling hobby in pottery, completed training as a nurse, and married a man she loved. Now she was carrying his child, and thought it right to raise them in the town of her own birth.

She realised that Mephi had fallen into a rut, and reckoned she knew what had happened. His mother's death had driven him into deep depression, thrown his study off-course, and separated him from the friends he made in Amsherrat. Being that he lost his father young as well, the tragedy might've reopened old scars. Either way, he needed support, so she was determined to at least give him basic company, and help around the house where she could.

It made him feel useless. Like an overgrown child. The image of Tjan he'd relied upon dissolved to nothing, as if subsumed by her presence. Even when she left, he couldn't bring it back. All he could conjure was a vague sense of resentment for being patronized. Which was ridiculous, because Tjan was not Nails, and was being perfectly compassionate, merciful, whatever. But he couldn't deny the sickening sense that she was enjoying the chance to care for something weak and helpless.

And like some marionette, he felt himself conform to that desire. The more involved she became, the deeper he sank into impotence. She was unrelenting, and his response was automatic: nod, yes, thank you, I appreciate it, you've done so much to help. He didn't think any of those things. Why was he saying them?

Maybe he did think those things. It was becoming hard to tell.

Maybe he was dying.

Maybe he needed to kill her.

Absurd. But the more he considered it, genius. He'd long had the sense that he was a fundamentally awful person, on par with, if not worse than, a witch. Tjan had cornered him, ruined his coping mechanism, and was refusing to leave, so he was apparently desperate enough to be considering it. A murder might be what he needed to lay a lot of ambiguity to rest.

If he killed Tjan, and liked it, then he would have irrefutable proof of his wickedness. He wouldn't need to pretend to himself that he could or should tolerate anyone. No wonder he'd always been so listless, if he'd been a repressed psychopath all this time. Well, he'd embrace it with gusto.

If he killed Tjan, and disliked it, then at least he'd know he wasn't a complete monster. But perhaps people would start understanding that he wasn't so innocent either. He'd turn himself in, let prison, atonement, and rehabilitation be the next chapter of his life. Or maybe Tjan's husband would murder him. That would be acceptable too.

Either way, he would figure out some crucial information about himself.

The problem with the plan, though, was that it required murdering Tjan. Was he proactive enough of a person to do that? Probably not. Did he have any real reason to kill her outside of idle curiosity? Not really. Like everything, the drive to try it simply wasn't there. Or perhaps the pretext. He was the type of coward to need those.

At least it was comforting to think about.

Tjan visited outside of schedule one evening, in tears, with a bundle in her arms. She'd delivered her baby, but the child came out wrong.

She'd just had a fight with her husband about it and couldn't bear to spend the night at home. This creature couldn't be his, he said. Had she been sleeping with devils? Without protest, Mephi let her stay.

After settling the baby into a basket with linens, Mephi instantly understood her husband's accusations. With twisted limbs, a gaping mouth, and legs melted into some kind of tail, the thing didn't look human. So what was she planning to do?

She'd keep the child, of course, she said. And give it as happy a life as she could. Right now she needed to talk again with her husband, convince him to make peace once they'd both calmed down. But she didn't want him anywhere near the child in the meantime. For a day, or a few days, Mephi might have to look after it while she sorted things out. If he was willing.

...He'd do the best that he could.

Thank God. Thank God. Overcome with relief, she hugged him and buried her head in his chest. Quietly, she said, she might name the child Sharvara, or Sharvarni.

He let her rest in his arms until she fell asleep, then laid her down on the couch.

How dare she.

What utter idiocy gave her the idea that he could possibly care for a child. Much less a mutant. One that disgusted him. Wasn't she supposed to have actual friends? Was he just the most convenient option, or was she unable to rely on them when it mattered. Not on her husband either. How much of her happiness was a sham.

How much of a selfish, deluded cow did she have to be to want that thing alive. Watching it gnaw pathetically at the air, Mephi felt no intimation that its life would be anything but suffering. It was all just another manifestation of Tjan's fetish for vulnerable things.

How dare she equate him with this.

One couch cushion, held firmly into the basket. It was easy.

The basket was still.

Tjan next.

He looked at her on the couch. But what if he said the baby died overnight. It wasn't like it hadn't been sickly. She'd probably believe it.

Listen to him, already looking for excuses. For just once in his stupid fucking life, could he please follow through? Just once. Just fucking once. Or did he want to deal with Tjan, and regret not seizing this moment, forever? What kind of pathetic half-assed fuck jacking off to the idea day in day out day in day out and for how awful and evil and whatever the fuck else he decided he was he couldn't even kill a person, huh, was he fucking joking, even an incompetent piece of shit like Nails could do that, or what, was he just wrong, completely wrong about himself, and everyone else who had ever called him, kind, caring, understanding, a philanthropist, they were fucking right?

Her throat spasmed. Minutes after it stopped kicking, he released his hands.

He'd done it.

For the first time in his life, he'd fulfilled a personal goal. He'd also crossed the threshold into irrefutably being a monster. Now, how did he feel about that? Would it be despair or euphoria?

Seconds ticked into minutes.

Nothing.

May as well have spent the past half-hour spinning circles in his chair in his room. He sighed, You're kidding me.

He climbed the stairs to his studio in the attic, then fished a cord of rope out of the cupboard. He'd become quite proficient, over time, at tying the appropriate knot. Soon he had it slung over a rafter, and him standing on a chair, eyeing the short distance to the floor.

Might as well. Might as fucking well.

With a clatter, the chair's legs bent to the sky.

HOLY SHIT HE WAS A FUCKING IDIOT
IF THERE WAS EVER A LIST OF IDIOTS IN THE WORLD THEN HIS NAME RIGHT NOW WOULD BE AT THE TOP

loathsome as your ears may find the prospect,
demonstrably, you are intelligent
such, your name is far down the list

YES YES YES OF COURSE HE KNEW THAT FUCK
THRILLING INSIGHT!
OR, SORRY, BUT HE WASN'T EXACTLY IN THE MIND FOR MANNERS RIGHT NOW
CUZ HE WAS IN TREMENDOUS PAIN, AND SORT OF PANICKING, AND KIND OF REGRETTING A LOT

curious confessions from the man
who quite recently deemed himself damned
to emptiness, indifference, and apathy

WELL I AM VERY RAPIDLY STARTING TO APPRECIATE THE FINALITY OF DEATH, I THINK
AND ALSO, THE INDESCRIBABLE PAIN, THAT HAPPENS WHEN ALL YOUR WEIGHT GOES TO YOUR NECK
AND—AND I'M REALLY FUCKING DYING AREN'T I? I'M FUCKING DYING

rather you are failed by tenses
what could preoccupy you into such an uncharacteristic mistake
i find, nothing

Roundabout as the phrasing might be, it was correct. It was only once it was pointed out that Mephi realised he was already dead.

Time surrounded him like an ocean, moving surely with some tide, but imperceptible from his vantage point. Inexplicably, he thought of a tuning fork.
Something impelled him to cry, to scream, to curse, and to hit, but to laugh, to admire, to comfort and to boast. Right now he couldn't do any of those things. But even if he had the means to, he wouldn't. Because stronger than any other blip in the tempest, overriding any other urge, was a pit of complete, primordial, paralytic terror.
Something unseen, but surely evil – beyond a witch, or callousness, or any of his weaknesses – was encroaching on him.
And the only barrier presently between him and it was someone he had long since abandoned.

Was this how it usually went?
A test?

i am not usually here
and if there is a test, you are its author

fancy yourself proficient in scorn if you wish
against me you are only a tyro
hardly what i reserve it for

i associated with witches. i was an occultist, a heretic.

you haven't the spirit to burn scriptures
much less to call me a charlatan

i killed a woman, and her child. i've done something horrible.

a woman, her child, and a man
each was horrible

where do you get off on sympathizing with me, huh
is it fun to forgive me

sympathy i will concede. forgiveness i will not.
i merely decline to condemn you,
as again, you overstate your malignance

if you lust for my ire, however
then i shall ire your aversion to the intrinsic humanity
harboured in yourself and in anyone.
i cherish that gift as a treasure beyond anything else
you will shun it?
then i shall make you live to see its magnificence

as a participant,
you cannot fail to find meaning in that

else you may rot to dust as you wish
you may resign and run as you wish
you may stay dead, forgotten, and obscure as you wish

whichever you choose will be suffering
but only one will be pointless.

what stupid joke of a choice was this?
then of course he'd want to LIVE.
GOD HELP HIM.

exquisitely forthright!
perhaps that hunger will serve you
once burned into your recognition

He came to at daytime in a field, covered head to toe in blood. He screamed. Overwhelmed by horror, he failed to immediately register the excruciating pain in his gut, or the strange, almost magnetic forces tugging distantly at his skin.

As he came to understand over the following months, his constitution had fundamentally changed. For one he was an unkillable thing with incredible aptitudes for magic and shapeshifting. For two, he'd manifested a supernatural hunger for guilty or otherwise sinful souls, which, while manageable at first, eroded his will and sanity within a few weeks if not regularly sated. Though obviously connected to the vaguely-defined agreement he'd made with God, and dear lord did he have questions about that, he sensed none of the changes had been externally inflicted. Rather, they seemed to just be him, which was an oddly comforting prospect in these otherwise discomforting circumstances.

There was no running from this. He could be as unmotivated or as apathetic or as reluctant as he wanted, but the urges and pain would become unbearable far before his sanity waned. Proactivity was the only answer, and once he attempted it with volition, he found the practical demands of a predatory lifestyle shockingly easy to fulfil. The mental, and moral ones, less so.

He was uncomfortable with what he was doing. His nature was indisputably evil. But at least he could direct that evil, typically, against things equally or more malevolent than him. Perhaps that had been the point God had meant. Either way, he had plenty of time to contemplate it, as months turned into years turned into decades. Always moving, and always skirting the fringes of society, but never completely divorcing from it. Steadily he became known as the most powerful, most feared, and quietly, in some places, the most respected living entity in the country.

That infamy sparked opposition. With the hysteria around him at its peak, he became the quarry of renowned monster slayer, defender of good, vanquisher of evil, all-round hero, and fellow Archon, the venerable Sir Renard Cox.

Renard had done his homework and come prepared. Carefully planning with and around Mephi's hunger cycles, employing artefacts to disrupt and nullify magic, and taking advantage of uncannily good luck, Renard headed a relentless offensive against Mephi with the full support of the nation's government. The campaign persisted for over a year and was staged far more like a war. The only thing that stopped it from being one was that Mephi had no militant supporters.

Since Mephi was immortal, slaying him was out of the question. Instead, Renard planned to drive him to the most southern end of the country, through the rainforest, and then into Nix. Very few things that went far into Nix ever came out, so Mephi would be banished for centuries, if not millennia, if not forever. In other words he would be stuck without prey, and starve, insane, potentially forever.

Nothing could terrify him more.

Renard was winning. Mephi, powerful as he was, did not have the resources, experience, or freedom to outplay Renard at his own game. Flipping between desperation and resigned hopelessness, he resorted to evasion and fleeing through inhospitable or uncharted wildernesses. It was only a contingency; he still needed contact with people for prey, and Renard would always capitalize on that. But, still, it was by traversing these obscure regions that he stumbled on the islands of Miulu.

He, like most people, had been unaware Miulu's existence. The exception was its contingent of settlers, Kitt apostates who had been exiled from their respective communities, presumably to die in the rainforest. While Miulu lacked the oppressive climate, disease, and wildlife of the rainforest, it was still barely hospitable, with cold temperatures, little sun, and largely barren earth. The settlers, when Mephi found them, were midway through a terrible famine that had decimated their already small population.

Taking pity on them, and being that it required not a lot of effort, Mephi used his magic to rejuvenate the land and resupply their storehouses. The locals responded with joy and adulation, which made Mephi extremely uncomfortable, so he began arranging to leave. Especially convenient to this was the fact that Miulu was connected to distant continents, making it the perfect escape route. As long as it stayed undiscovered.

Not to be. Renard and his war party arrived before Mephi could leave. Demoralized by Renard's words and then thoroughly defeated by him and his allies in combat, he resigned that he'd lost, that Renard was right to want him gone, and that he belonged in Nix anyway. Too exhausted to move, it was just a matter of waiting for Renard to literally drag him away.

When the locals intervened. Still weak in the aftermath of the famine, lacking armour, with only sticks, rocks, and random tools for weapons, facing fully equipped and trained soldiers, they would obviously lose if it came to blows. Which it would, as negotiations floundered. If they were so sympathetic to Mephi, Renard announced, there was no telling what they could do if left to take him, a monster, as a martyr, combined with resentment for their original exile. They must revoke allegiance to him or be slaughtered.

A boy threw a rock at Renard.

Renard drew his sword.

Mephi intercepted the blow. Immediately the conflict transitioned into a fight between him and Renard, though considering Mephi had already been defeated, it was little more than a feeble second wind on his part. Once the battle of attrition ended, Renard and his army would be free to massacre everyone, and there would be nothing Mephi could do about it.

There was no point praying for a miracle. Renard was slamming Mephi into the dirt. Mephi would lose. So why did he bother. What was the point. Did he even care. He should just give up. But.

Call him crazy, but something about this filled him with levity. Ridiculous as it was, it would probably be okay if he lost here. At the very least, nothing hurt. And he was spent. Renard, again, raised his sword.

Captain! called one of his lieutenants, Enough.

There was no need to continue this. They had decisively won and the combat had far crossed the line into senseless brutality. The floor was reopened for negotiations.

Renard sputtered. The lieutenant pulled rank – while Renard's strategy and prowess was undoubtedly to credit for the success of the campaign, he was not a legal representative of Kitiven or authorized to commandeer its policies with foreign peoples. Though only a lieutenant within the sphere of this army, he, a templar of not insignificant standing, would be the one presenting the official reports and advisories to the Church.

Renard snapped, If all this effort goes to waste let it be known in your report that it was because of your meddling.

The templar replied, Of course. I'll write that you tried to stop me.

Renard huffed, Good, and fell silent.

The templar proposed this: His priority was to ensure the safety of Kitiven's populace and minimize the threat to humanity presented by Mephi. However, if these people were ready to sacrifice themselves for him anyway, their party would agree to leave them alone provided they took responsibility for his diet and allowed him to prey only on those among their own number. Anything else would be taken as an act of hostility and reopen the military campaign.

Renard grunted, I'll see to that.

The locals accepted. The templar nodded, and looked to Mephi. And you, tel-Sharvara?

...what

If these terms are unacceptable, you'll have to propose your own.

hahaha no what

Do you accede?

thumbs up

And that was the end of that.

The problem, Mephi realised, was that Miulu's population was tiny. He'd be out of palatable souls within a few months, and even if everyone on the islands suddenly became acceptable prey, budgeting would be tight. Sick as it was to consider, the locals would need to drastically improve the region's—or nation's, he supposed—infrastructure to a level where the sustainable farming of humans was possible. ...If he wanted to honour the agreement at all, that was. Frankly the whole thing was disgusting, and he still wasn't sure what he thought of these people.

But he had no doubt Renard would be on his tail again if he tried anything, and the thought of giving him that satisfaction was irritating, so he resigned to at least try and accept it. This translated into him spending half his time sulking in isolation on the most desolate of the islands, and spending the other half helping build the nation and contemplating how to make its systems work.

His first major breakthrough was in establishing a local coven of witches, later to be known as the Masked Coven. Witches are inherently sinful creatures, with their souls and humanity defiled for power, but still present enough to elevate them above a simple monster. By exploiting his skill in soulsmithing and some of his inherent Archon traits, Mephi was able to manually and precisely sever fragments of a living person's soul to later use to turn them into a witch. The greatest benefit to this was that, while providing Mephi with food on one hand, he could also specifically leave the important portions of the subject's soul intact and uncorrupted – or in other words, sane. The Coven would cover his dietary needs while infusing the populace with a significant number of magicians, some of which were powerful, all of which were of sound mind and invested in seeing the country succeed.

Second, he opened up the islands as an international trade and travel route. Then brutally taxed everyone who went through them. Being that the only alternative for trade or travel between some countries was through Nix, and that Miulu was otherwise just more efficient for travel, this taxation soon became the foundation for a shockingly strong economy. With Mephi personally overseeing the national accounts and budget, money soon stopped being a vital concern.

The last major thing Mephi introduced was the process of soul transmigration. Rather than allowing souls to rot into monsters upon death, as was normal, through the use of a personalized catalyst implanted in the body, the subject would instead transform into a mundane animal. Specifically some species of carrion-eater. Rather than corrupt the subject, their body would painlessly 'digest' the rot until their soul was entirely extinguished, making them truly no different from a normal animal. The subject would then die again shortly, and permanently, unaffected by rot. Being a complete circumnavigation of soul rot and all the problems that came with it, this death system soon became another attractive and distinct aspect of Miulu.

And so things have gone for centuries.

Mephi keeps a hands-off approach to civil politics, though his word is law when he feels like asserting it (rarely). Managing the national accounts, coven, and catalysts are the extent of his day-to-day civic activities, though he also ensures quotas for basic resources are met and keeps the land from falling barren again. His presence alone greatly dissuades would-be criminals or invaders, and has inadvertently stopped wars between various foreign powers because nobody dares to smuggle an army through Miulu. But he's still the hermit he's always been, still avoidant, still volatile, and still aloof. Whether or not his heart is committed is still, quietly, a question of serious personal debate.

But for all his mess-ups and misgivings and misgivings about mess-ups, right now, honestly, he's probably doing alright.

...Probably.