There was a long time before Elody found you. You got turned into a frog when you were a little boy. A regular night in a cold pond, not knowing how to get back to your family, not knowing if you'd ever get home, living amongst the lily pads out here in the woods at night.
A frog leaps onto a lily pad next to you.
“Hey. Do you… Are you a-Yeah, yeah. You know, you'd think that with a fairy godmother running around turning kids into frogs, that there'd be more kids who were turned into frogs, you know?”
Croak.
“Yep. Yep, yep, yep. Well, I'm going to call you Fred.”
A beautiful figure emerges from the wood line, and you see with beautiful white feathers and a long beak a heron emerges from the wood line and takes a stately couple of steps, a tall, long-legged, very stork-like bird, and walks into the shallows of the water's edge.
Croak.
“ ... Hello?”
You say hello. It sort of comes in this small, little froggy voice. Like the other frogs around. The heron doesn't seem to respond to spoken words.
The heron steps over, and you see that Fred hasn't really made eye contact with you because Fred can't make eye contact, because he is a frog. Croak. The heron goes down and kills Fred.
It grabs the frog and it crushes his spine. It breaks, and it swallows him and eats him, and Fred dies with only you knowing that his name was ever Fred, and the heron eats him, and neither of them experience any emotion or sense of self as that happens.
You panic.
The heron steps over in your direction, looks around regarding everything, and you suddenly hear… an whoosh. And an arrow pierces the thing's side, and one of the royal hunters comes out and just grabs it and snaps its neck. Ah. Got it. There’s supper. And starts to walks away from the lake.
“Wait! Hold! There's been a terrible misunderstanding. I'm actually a prince, and I would like to go back to-“
The hunter barely pauses - he lifts up his boot and is going to try to squish you. All you see is the bottom of shoe as you dart off back into the safety of the darkness. But you’re running - hopping, really - going to run in the direction that he was coming from.
“You have more… I'm going to be… You're going to be in trouble, because I'm a prince, and once I start being a prince again, you're fired!”
But as you’re yelling, a dog - one of the castle hunting hounds hears the sound and runs up and grabs you in its jaws - teeth immediately sinking into your flesh (you are so, so small) in a blinding shock of pain and blood.
You wiggle helplessly in its mouth. You're a frog. This is how you’re going to die— But then you hear a whistle in the distance and the dog drops you out of its mouth as it's called back.
When you come to, you're covered in blood. There are huge punctures in your frog body from a dog biting you.
Do you go back towards the castle where the dogs are, or do you go back to your frog pond?
It’s a pretty loaded question. There’s not really a decision to make.
You go back to the pond.
It’s years of this.
Years of that go on before a young Princess Elody first comes by. Much younger, in this memory - the same age you were at the time. Around 14, maybe 15. But the young maiden who will one day fall in love with Prince Gerard. This is the first thing that's not one of the royal hunters or their dogs or a heron. You see she's out playing, and this wonderful golden ball rolls away. You know, after years of that you still have a human intellect.
The golden ball rolls into the pool, and the maiden gasps - on the edge of tears.
”That's very important. That's an expensive toy.”
You’re little afraid of humans, now. You don’t say anything.
It's sunken into the water, so you'll have to swim down to go get it. Swimming down. Eating is hard. It's hard to get enough food to not be hungry. It's hard to keep yourself safe in this place. Do you want to really burn the energy it's going to take to shove this incredibly heavy golden ball up out of the muck and the weeds at the bottom of the pond?
You swim back up, and as you do, you look up and see this young woman who appears really forlorn. She sort of reaches in to see if it's closer to the shore, looks. You see that she's clearly maybe not supposed to have been playing this recklessly or this far out in the grounds away from the castle with this.
“Okay, please don't, like—“
She shrieks.
“I’m sorry! I thought it was-“
“Ah! Who is that? Is it a ghost?!”
“I’m a frog! I'm a frog, I'm a frog.”
“Who's a frog? … You can talk!”
“Yes, listen, you probably shouldn't be out here. There's, fairies and stuff who turn people into frogs, and whenever I ask for help, people just think that a talking frog is kind of weird, and then they try to step on me, and then they sic their-“
“That's awful! … I don't want to step on you.”
“Really?”
“No. I don't, frankly, I hope it's not weird to say, I don't really want to touch you either.”
“No, that's fine. No, I'm a fucking frog.”
She gasps. But also seems sort of impressed. “You said a full curse word.”
“I mean, I'm a frog. I can say whatever the fuck I want.”
“Wow, cool.”
“So you're, okay. So you're cool to talk to me? Because I've been talking to other frogs for a really long time.”
“What do the other frogs say?”
“They just croak. It's insane, it's maddening. I'm going crazy here. Why are you cool with this?”
“I don't know, it wouldn't occur… I don't even know what would make me not cool with it, so I can't really answer the question. Why did the… You said a fairy or someone?”
“Yes, yes. I was admittedly… I was admittedly a little bit of a prick when I was younger.”
“How old were you?”
“ … like 10?”
“I don't think you can be that- I don't think you can be a prick when you're 10. I think you're just 10. I mean, you can be bad when you're 10, but that's not- … What'd you do?”
“I was just kind of being a jerk. Just kind of, I don't know. I would just, like, run around, and honestly, I would … I was just, like, yelling a lot and stuff. I'd be like, look at me, Mom and Dad! Mom and Dad, look at me! Running around.”
“Sounds like you were starved for attention from your parents.”
“Yeah, no, and they haven't looked for me that hard. They really haven't, because I've been missing.”
“I’m so sorry. What's your name? I'm Elody.”
“It's been so long since anyone's asked me that. My name is Gerard. I'm from Greenleigh. Im the prince, the prince of Greenleigh. I don't know if there's been missing posters or anything like that?”
She doesn’t seem like she believes you at all. She gets up, starting to dust off the dirt on her dress. “Okay. Nice talking with you, Gerard. That's very nice.”
“Okay, see, this is what I was afraid of. Okay, I'll prove to you that I'm a prince by showing some royal chivalry. I will fetch your ball for you and prove to you that I am indeed a royal prince. I saw it. I think I could get down there. What is it?”
She stops. “Would you fetch it? Do you know where it is? … It's an heirloom. It's not really a toy, but I just love the feel of it and I like to play with it. It belonged to my mother.”
“You said that in the past tense. Is your mother no longer with us?”
“Neither my mother nor my father. I'm steward of this place, and when I'm old enough, will be tasked with ruling. But it would be nice to have some company, I suppose. Would you fetch it? It would mean a lot to me.”
You dive down. You roll the ball back up, and she admires it and looks and says,
“That's a very noble thing. Even if you are just a frog that learned to talk, it is very princely of you to do something that noble. Do you like living in the pond?”
“No, I hate it.”
And you see she takes a handkerchief and puts it on the ground and says, “Do you want to hop in that and I'll take you to the castle?”
As you’re walking back, she asks: “What ends your curse? Do you know?”
but also, it turns out that fairy tales—already somewhat famously messed up and sad—are even more messed up and sad when the characters are real people living through them. he thinks back to when he first asked gerard to join their team and why. that besides definitely being the best at breaststroke ever, it must be very lonely to be a small frog in a big pond.
turns out he didn't know the half of it. he sits on their grandma couch. ]
[ i will say, i underestimated gerards swimability at the beginning of the game because we rewatched an episode and he canonically can breathe underwater. so that's great.
but he blinks a bit in surprise when haru has this reaction. he isn't quite sure what to make of it. ]
[ GERARD YOUR SWIMABILITY IS SO HIGH!!!! GERARD!!!!!!! ]
...I thought for a long time that all I needed was a life like that. But that's not true. I realized eventually how hard it would be, to be alone. [ ... ] Surviving years of that. You have to have been strong.
[ it'd have been much easier to die, or to become something not human at all. ]
I think it did the opposite, actually. [ he has to think of how to put this. ] After that I was so afraid of going out and doing anything, of standing up and fighting, that I avoided it all until it was way too late to fix it. I survived years by luck. I shouldn't have.
[ he would've died trying to fight even a dog as a little wriggly frog. he thinks gerard deserves a little more credit than he's giving himself, being a child lost at sea, where the sea is a pond. ]
Do you mean when you met Ylfa? [ it doesn't sound like this was their first team. ]
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W4 - MONDAY
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but also, it turns out that fairy tales—already somewhat famously messed up and sad—are even more messed up and sad when the characters are real people living through them. he thinks back to when he first asked gerard to join their team and why. that besides definitely being the best at breaststroke ever, it must be very lonely to be a small frog in a big pond.
turns out he didn't know the half of it. he sits on their grandma couch. ]
Gerard. [ ... ] You're really strong.
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but he blinks a bit in surprise when haru has this reaction. he isn't quite sure what to make of it. ]
What do you mean?
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...I thought for a long time that all I needed was a life like that. But that's not true. I realized eventually how hard it would be, to be alone. [ ... ] Surviving years of that. You have to have been strong.
[ it'd have been much easier to die, or to become something not human at all. ]
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I think it did the opposite, actually. [ he has to think of how to put this. ] After that I was so afraid of going out and doing anything, of standing up and fighting, that I avoided it all until it was way too late to fix it. I survived years by luck. I shouldn't have.
I didn't get strong until I had friends.
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Do you mean when you met Ylfa? [ it doesn't sound like this was their first team. ]