Disciples and Deadly Things

PHOEBE

She listened quietly as he vented his frustrations and shortcomings, failures and insecurities. The little meat handpie she had made herself she ate quietly, letting him talk at her as she processed what he had to say, and what might make him feel better and move forward. "I started apprenticing as a midwife when I was seven." she said at length, considering the pie in her hand thoughtfully. "And at the same time my mother was teaching me to be a good wife. Cook. Clean. Keep house. Sewing. Knitting. Things like that." she said. Perhaps her path wasn't filled with as many rules as his, but it was filled with expectations. She would be a midwife, and she would be a wife and mother. That was her lot.

"Now, it might seem obvious, but as a midwife, I am supposed to help women through their pregnancies, as well as before and after care. And it's a dangerous thing really, having a baby. So you train and practice and watch and learn for years, and then one day you're ten and your teacher tells you to take the lead. And you're very excited because this is exactly what you have been learning to do and you do everything just like you're supposed to and you follow the plan exactly... and the mother and child die anyways, because of a small oversight. A little mistake, something you might have been able to prevent if you had just a bit more experience but still probably not, or so your teacher says." she said quietly, before looking over at him. "But that mistake doesn't mean I wasn't cut out to be a midwife. It means I still had more to learn. I had room to grow. That I was human. Just because you made mistakes and felt out of your depth in what you did before doesn't mean you weren't cut out for it. And now that you have the opportunity to start again, your old mistakes don't mean you will fail now, or that you won't fail again. Failure is just part of life. It's fine to be down for a bit but you need to pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and do better next time." she said with a small smile.

"Perhaps you should pray to the gods here. I doubt they would tell you exactly what to do, but they might give you the confidence to find it for yourself. I know they have done so for me."

I gotta find my place
I wanna hear my sound
Don't care about all the pain in front of me
'Cause I'm just trying to be happy