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overgrown

ft lilieve by @crashstanding

something i did the other night. i tend to write these feverishly in one sitting and this one was an idea that was clawing at me for a While

summary: Adam has been in pain for some time. The necrosis brings back a nonlinear memory.

Adam was dreaming again.

         (again, again it was always again)

         He wasn’t called “Adam” right then. Whoever he was before had been swallowed up by the soil and that godforsaken Silence. Or at least he should’ve been.

         Whyever did his limbs hurt so? This was the moment the suspicion he was not of human stock was made bare reality, the blood leaving him in waterfalls he still walked through with only the slightest of limps. The pain was unbearable, oh yes it was unbearable, but he had to keep going to the grave. He had to. Nothing would grow if he didn’t allow his flesh as fertilizer, his blood and tears as water, his love as sunshine. Everything would be silent and barren forever if he did not do this.

         And yet, whyever did he fall just now? The starving soil was not slick like synthetic linoleum, and it ate his blood hungrily, so there was hardly a way for him to slip. Try as he could, he could do little but convulse, cries for no one hardly bearing to leave his throat in choked gurgling gasps.

         Oh, how he hated that sound. What was he doing a death rattle for? There was no one left to hear him. What was the point of having a last breath if no one was around to keen like a dove at his passing? He did everything right. He gave all that he had. Everything. He begged the earth to take his body, why was he now being rejected? Why couldn’t it just open and take him? Why must he be humiliated like this, convulsing upon the ground like a fish drowning in air?

         What use could he be to anyone now?

         He hated that saying, that the world would only end with a whimper. Just a singular whimper. It was always said with such cynical derision. After all, what great importance can a singular blue marble boast in such a vast cosmos? There is just too great of a chasm between the stars, with life only stumbling blind through its trenches. When an empty predator inevitably finds something so outrageously loud and colorful in such a place, it will cry out, and none of its kind will answer, far away as they are.

         (“if there were any at all” would go unspoken)

         Deep down he always knew none of that sounded right. He didn’t know how he knew, but some primordial instinct told him thus. Someone would hear and would always hear and would cry and would always cry at the sound. It was just that no one remembered. Too much time had passed.

         It was ending again now, and he was ending with it. And oh God did he refuse to end with something as quiet as a whimper.

         He finally felt himself sink into the dirt, but it didn’t feel as willful as he once wanted. It felt more like every part of him that was in contact with the soil grew claws and forcefully tore away every speck of dirt in sight. Every little bit of him, every pore and every molecule, seemed to grow sharper as strips of dead earth were shredded on contact.

         Eventually he didn’t see that smog-filled sky anymore.

         He curled up like an injured animal beneath the earth, every joint feeling like it was pierced with shards of glass. His body was now an empty bloodless concave, the open underbelly lined with ribs like teeth. He trembled as if he were cold, and truly he knew the earth’s core should never be cold.

         If he could just make it down there, he could branch out all that he is.

         This world will scream if it kills him.

         With pained, arthritic, yet determined movements, he dug deeper. Sometimes he could feel long thorny vines emerging from what was left of his flesh, dragging the dirt behind him and leaving systems like ant or mole trails. He wished they were a bit more patient. They should’ve waited until he settled, that way they wouldn’t waste their energy dragging uselessly behind him. Their catharsis will come with his if they could just wait—

         Wait…

         Who was tugging on him?!

         He dug his fingers into the bedrock, staying perfectly stiff and still. No one should be interrupting, because no one else was supposed to be here. And why on this barren earth should they be interrupting?! No one cared to go down fighting except him.

         No one understood except him.

         More pulling, now enough for him for scrabble for a handhold. He even turned and bit on one of his own vines to pull back, tugging back with just as much force. A guttural growl exited his ravaged throat as he did, and that just made him pull harder.

         He did not know how much he had changed, for how long and deep he was digging. His body had already been broken when he slipped in. He was still moving and breathing despite all his organs falling out, his hair was caked in dirt and growing unchecked, there was dried blood under his clawed fingernails…

         No, this simply wouldn’t do. No one can see him like that. No one should.

         He wrenched the vine back harshly, an agonized wail exiting his throat as he did. The thorns were pricking the roof of his mouth, but he didn’t want to get out. He shouldn’t.

         “DEAR, PLEASE.”

         “no” he growled back simply, staying put. Who dared speak to him? Everything was supposed to be dead.

         (and why was his voice so unfamiliar to himself?)

         “THERE IS NOTHING FOR YOU DOWN THERE.”

         “that’s exactly the point”

         “YOU HAVE TO COME OUT LIKE THE REST OF CREATION. THAT’S SIMPLY HOW IT HAS TO BE.”

         “no it doesn’t”

         “WHYEVER DO YOU THINK SO?”

         “because I TRIED”

         He pulled back the vine with a small hop, swinging his head back and forth like a wolf breaking a fawn’s neck. His face felt wet.

         (that was odd, all his blood was supposed to be spent)

         “I TRIED, I gave myself, I did everything right, but it didn’t take me it WOULDN’T TAKE ME”

         A primal snarl left him as the vine was wrenched back in reply, thorns raking across his mouth and lips and teeth as the vine flung itself out of his jaws. He tried to bite it again, only to flinch and wail at the pain.

         “I NEED EVERYTHING THAT EXISTS TO REKINDLE IT. IT WON’T BE ABLE TO COME BACK IF YOU DIG ANY DEEPER.”

         “it’s NOT COMING BACK”

         He pounced deeper to forestall the iron grip, only to stumble and fall like a dog on a choke chain.

         “let GO OF ME”

         “I’M NOT LEAVING YOU BEHIND.”

         “let me GO LET ME DIE”

         “DEAR, PLEASE.”

         He felt a more familiar kind of grip on his back, like someone picking up a kitten by the scruff of the neck.

         “I said BACK I SAID BACK”

         With a sudden rage-filled movement, he whirled back and bit…something. He didn’t really know what it was. His teeth sunk into it as easily as it would flesh, but it splintered into his wounds like shattered bark. He doubled over at the surprise shock of the pain, letting out a gurgling scream-moan.

         “…DEAR, PLEASE COME OUT.”

         Slowly, he felt himself being pulled back. He could only feebly grip the dirt and feel it skid beneath his fingernails in protest.

         “why do you keep calling me that”

         There was a pause.

         “…DEAREST, I KNOW YOU’RE UPSET, BUT DON’T YOU REMEMBER ME?”

         He seemed to break through the dirt then and found himself promptly surrounded.

         Not surrounded as in there was a crowd, but perhaps that was partially correct. When he came out, he wasn’t met with that beige, smoggy sky that he remembered. He didn’t see the sky at all, instead he found himself surrounded by shades of black and pine green, intermixed with blue gray. He felt it on all sides, pressing up and pushing against him and squeaking like living fuzzy organisms.

         He was being held in a palm, he realized. Sprawled upon it, to be precise, being as smothered as he was.

         Some very sad eyes were looking at him. They were the eyes of a woman much bigger than him, poised like a weeping willow with her hair as the leaves but her face gazing out from such a forest. She was so close to him now, and her leaves seemed to nip at him and hide his ravaged body as she embraced him with all that she had.

         “dear,” she said.

         …ah.

         Ahhhh.

         Ahhhh, ahhhhh, ahhhh—

         “Don’t, don’t scream, please…” she murmured, and Lilieve never murmured.

         He was Adam now, like he always was. But oh, he felt terrible, horrible. He hadn’t even realized he was screaming until she said so. Water was streaming from his eyes like waterfalls. He couldn’t even say he felt as gutted as the day he buried himself, because that felt like nothing compared to this new yet paradoxically familiar pain. He didn’t even know if it was the same pain he had when he fell asleep.

         People don’t often feel their son’s very necrosis set in when he dies deep beneath the sea, after all. That was still here, and fresh, and raw, but there was something else now, something just as ugly.

         His shaking gaze eyed the gash upon the bark-flesh of one of her wrists.

         “why did I do that”

         “You were somewhere else, dear. Sometime else. You didn’t recognize me, because why would you? You hadn’t known me then.”

         “but why did I fight you”

         “Because something went wrong. I know not what. The earth responded to me that time, and not to you.”

         “but”

         God, that gash that gash—

         “I bit you”

         “You were scared.”

         “you didn’t fight me when I heard you before”

         “I wasn’t scared then. I was simply sad, and angry.”

         “but”

         “I trusted you then. You didn’t trust me this time, but you were scared. It’s okay.”

         She leaned in closer to him, her children shifting like leaves in the breeze with the movement. Her lips gently touched his forehead, and he let out a deep sob.

         “Shhh…I promise it’s okay. I understand.”

         “I hurt so bad”

         She grimaced, as if an arrow hit her heart.

         “…I know. That is the one thing I can no longer bear. So please, let me do this for you.”

         From the undulating sea of her children emerged another of her arms, palm facing upwards. Without so much as even the littlest of sobs, a waterfall of tears pooled upon her hand, forming a gray puddle across her entire palm. The puddle shook and began to rise and solidify. It was less like a reversal of a melting ice cube, and more like clay on a pottery wheel.

         Soon, she held a singular fruit in her palm. It was familiar in its non-descript yet ever-changing shape, like the fruit from the tree in their garden that held healing warmth that risks temptation and addiction to anyone else but them, like the fruit that held their memories with all their ugliness and sorrow from the tree they dream about sometimes.

         She offered it to him with the demurest of gestures, so different and so much more sorrowful than anyone else that ever held a forbidden fruit.

         “Please, I beg of you, eat this. It will make you forget. It will take all of this away. No more will you feel the pain of your son, no more will you feel these stinging memories, no more will you feel any pain. You will simply be, and if that can bring your smile back then so be it…”

         Her voice broke in the last few words.

         Adam stared at the fruit. His tears fell relentlessly, but he remained silent and still.

         Then, he shook his head.

         “eve,” he whispered. “you would not take this had I been the one to offer it to you”

         She faltered. Then, as she moaned like a creaking floorboard, the fruit dissolved back into tears in her open palm. It rained down through her fingers into the ground below.

         “…why not…?”

         Adam shifted his position, cautiously letting out a shaking (clawless) hand to press a clump of her children close to his face as if they were a towel. He felt them nuzzle his cheek, frantically lapping up all his tears, as stainless as they were in a dream. Such sweet darlings.

         “I cannot bear to forget my sons, even as their pain ravages my body”

         Oh, Lilieve’s eyes were so lovely too. They were deep and ancient, like his. Reversed like an image in a mirror. Whyever did she not ask if he could get lost in them instead? If he could get lost in that dark forest for just a little bit, the pain would ebb. He wouldn’t even be alone then. Every forest that ever existed was a part of her.

         (but he knew he couldn’t do that, too much time would pass without him knowing)

         “I don’t want to forget even a single moment with you, even the ones where I didn’t know you yet”

         Lilieve wept, and you could feel her weep. The clouds of children shivered and whistled like the wind.

         “I don’t know how to get your son out. We’ve tried everything, but my children can’t get him in time before the pressure gets them first…”

         More of Adam’s tears came, as silent as hers usually were.

         “I know”

         “I just want this to end.”

         “I know”

         “Seeing you like this makes my insides feel as if they were split apart with an axe.”

         “seeing you cry alone makes me feel like I’ve been trampled”

         “I want to make it go away.”

         “but what would be left of us had we the choice to?”

         She remained silent.

         “let me mourn, please”

         “It hurts to.”

         “I’m not asking you to leave me by myself”

         He curled up in her palm, her children reminiscent of a blanket upon his shivering body.

         “you saw what happened back there”

         “I know.”

         “please stay with me”

         He wondered briefly if he was only able to get this out properly because he was asleep. Had he been awake his voice would be drowned out by his own incoherent cries, all except those words he must’ve echoed throughout time and time and time and time and time and time.

         Lilieve got closer, her body shrinking to be as small as him, but her hair like leaves kept surrounding him. Her children were beginning to sing again.

         “If I could,” she said softly as she wrapped her many arms around him. Her expression was a mix of pain and love. “I would press you down between the pages of a book made with my own leaves. You would grow dry and brittle, and you would have no more roots, but I would preserve you for all of time.”

         He nuzzled against her neck and chest, shakily embracing her back.

         “if I could, I would burrow down within your feathers until I reached your heart, and I would fall asleep within your chest to its beating”

         “I would cut open your sternum and pull your very ribs around me if it meant I could be near your own heart.”

         “I would drill into your sycamore trunk and live there like a bug”

         She kissed him gently, and he kissed her too as the dream became enveloped by her leaves. There was nothing except her presence and her lips and her arms and her love and her children’s singing and eventually even his own tears disappeared.

         And she knows he would’ve done the same for her.

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Amaryllis

i don't remember why i never posted this (shrugs)

think i meant to continue this but ran outta steam and thought it was good as is

summary: the Brother that drowned remains where he died, unable to move and soul unable to leave. he watches semi-conscious as things move before his missing eyes in the dark.

There was water in Lycoris’s dreams.

         It was dark, and cold, and he was at the bottom. Try as he might, he couldn’t move a single muscle. Nothing in his body could move, and yet he still saw, even as his eyes remained motionless in their sockets.

         If they were still in his sockets. He had the sense that they were taken away and eaten ages ago, but he still found himself looking out into the black. It wasn’t any different from when he was able to close his eyes. The sun never reached down here. When things came to eat him, they did so blindly. Whether there was a smell, or they just stumbled across him, he was no different from the corpses of whales that sink down here. He could even be next to one right now and he’ll never know it for how dark it was.

         But sometimes he would see other things, new things come down, looking nothing like fish. Fish don’t have feathers. They don’t look like tiny children. They don’t shakily swim against the pressure and give off a dim glow against the black.

         …he said they looked like tiny children, but every time he thought back, Lycoris kept finding…discrepancies. Their wings weren’t attached seamlessly to their backs like a bird’s, instead seeming to be grafted onto the skin and held taut by strips of flesh. They would have extra limbs, sometimes morphing in and out of their flesh like gelatin. Their eyes were strange, piercing, sometimes with multiple pupils in one eye. Their teeth would be tiny and sharp, like a cat’s. They looked more like some being’s approximation of what a human child was based only on verbal description.

         They kept descending to where he was, trying to grip his rotting limbs and pull him out of the silt. But every time, without fail, the pressure would be too great. Their forms would shimmer like a glitch on a television, their tiny mouths would open wide in some silent cry of pain before they blipped out of sight entirely.

         All the while Lycoris’s eyeless yet seeing sockets would gaze at them with little recognition of their presence. If he still had real eyes then, they would’ve held the same countenance as the tired gaze of someone wracked with fever. Not enough energy to react to what’s real, but just conscious enough to remember the dream.

         Lycoris had no idea you could dream while dead. But he supposed there was little else one could do. If he dreamed, he wouldn’t have to think about being alone down here.

         One night very different things appeared to him. They floated effortlessly through the black, some feathered thing surrounded by swarming black things that reminded him somehow of those feather stars. It almost seemed like they were creating an airtight bubble for the feathered thing, but how they did so he didn’t know.

         Angels were feathered right? Perhaps this was one and its subordinates. Perhaps the tiny ones were like those chubby cupids on old paintings. He remembered learning how angels hardly ever appeared as cute as that. They had many eyes, many arms, and many legs. Scary.

         The angel in the bubble looked like a child too, but an older and bigger one. Of course, children don’t have big black and purple feathers on their skin. They didn’t have clawed hands and feet with scales all over them. They didn’t have a double crest like one of those big eagles that eat monkeys.

         And yet the angel certainly had the eyes of a child, the face of a child. It gazed at him with big questioning blue eyes, slightly upturned in what was certainly disgust. You would look that way too if you were rotting at the bottom.

         The black things surrounding it were much harder to discern. They moved far too fast for Lycoris to properly see, but he could make out big, dilated eyes on their pitch-black silhouettes, enough to give away there was anyone there at all. But otherwise, he couldn’t tell if they looked human, or had tails, or had claws, or had limbs, or had feathers, or looked like anything at all.

         (scary)

         The child angel looked down at him, the disgust now gone from its face. It was replaced with…what was it? Recognition? How could that be? Lycoris hadn’t seen it before.

         Perhaps it knew Brother? Was Brother in heaven now? Part of him hoped so, but another part wailed into the cavity of where a brain once was. This was to make sure he lived, what was the point of sinking down here otherwise? He couldn’t…drag him down anymore…

         He couldn’t cry anymore, not really. He had seen a crying thing in his dreams too, some thorny thing that looked like it was trying to be a human. It had tried to reach for him too, but the pressure would break its leaves like limbs, and it would retreat. Lycoris didn’t know how a flower thing could cry, much less underwater. It had descended to him multiple times, always reaching out for him before breaking and paradoxically weeping back into the dark.

         (how odd that he felt like he should’ve recognized that thing)

         But now, the child angel was sinking closer to him. Perhaps he could be reached this time, but the angel’s limbs were still small and scrawny. Lycoris had been lanky and tall in life, but he was still an adult, bigger than this child.

         Was this going to be another failure?

         But what counted as a failure in this case? What could’ve happened had he been picked up, anyway? He remembered reading how some deep-sea fish literally melt when brought to the surface because. They had been down here so long the pressure refused to let them go. Who’s to say that would happen to him?

         He had been lost in thought so long that he hadn’t noticed he was surrounded by outstretched wings. How strange…they were small before, proportionate to the child angel’s size. Wings don’t stretch out and elongate like taffy. But this was an angel. Who’s to say they were always capable of this?

         …he missed Brother. Sometimes he would dream that he was out, and Brother would be on shore, but he never recognized him. Who would? He was waterlogged and drowned and fish-bitten. He couldn’t move how he wanted, and every time he tried to talk only black gunk would spurt out. Brother looked so intense now. His voice was so harsh and loud now. He kept screaming back hoarsely at him, saying you’re not him, you’re not him, you’re not him, you could never be Brother because Brother wouldn’t die on me. Brother wouldn’t leave me alone because he promised not to.

         (had there been an unspoken “Brother would’ve let me drown instead” too?)

         (there couldn’t have been)

         (he wouldn’t have bore it never never never he would never do that)

         There was a wailing in that skull cavity again. But just as it started, he felt the soft (dry) feathers against his face. He felt them against his arms, his legs, his whole body. They were warm, like bits of sun. It felt nice, good, heavenly. He liked how it almost felt like grass. Had he ever felt grass before? There had only ever been hard steel under his feet. And yet, surely this was how grass felt.

         The feathers pressed up against him, and he realized they had gradually been doing this since his mind drifted. More and more he felt the sun and grass where there shouldn’t be sun and grass, warming up his entire body and making him feel full, complete. How nice, how nice. How lovely. Haha.

       �� As the feathers closed in on him, he imagined they were turning him into a seed. He would like to be a seed. That way, he could be out of this dark water ceiling, and instead under a layer of warm soil. It would be dark too, but not for long. There would be water there too, but only just enough. A flower needs water to grow after all. He could even be planted near a river and grow there amongst the reeds, and watch the fish swim by and maybe see some ducks. Perhaps a deer would come by and cautiously drink from the river before scampering back into the woods. Perhaps a butterfly would come and sip on the nectar from his blooms, or a hummingbird, or a bee. That would be nice, very nice. How nice, how nice.

         Perhaps he was becoming a seed. He could feel the feathers compressing him, making him smaller and smaller, thinner and thinner, until there was no more sense of flesh or body. Somehow, he knew he had become small enough to be held in a crow’s claw. Where did everything go? Why did he ask that? He was safe now. He didn’t know how he knew that, but he was. There wasn’t any pressure anymore, no more water. He was being effortlessly lifted now. He was sure he didn’t have eyes anymore, because now he wasn’t aware of seeing anything. But that was okay. He didn’t need to see anything. He was safe now. He was safe now.

         He could sleep now…

         …Lycoris? When did he start calling himself that? He and Brother didn’t have any names. They were both just Brother. What’s a “Lycoris?” A fish wouldn’t know. It wouldn’t know what a “Lycoris” was in his mind’s eye. Plants were different down below, and surely it was a plant. Maybe a flower. He liked flowers. He would want to bloom into a “Lycoris,” yes yes. Lovely and dainty and crimson by the water. That’s what it was, yes. Yes.

         He yawned, somehow. He wasn’t sure where his mouth was. That’s okay. He could still sleep while this crow carries him away.

         …did crows know how to plant seeds…? He’ll figure that out later…

         He fell asleep.

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Hello everyone, I have made a GoFundMe to help me and my family get moved into a safer house, any help you can give - even just sharing around - would mean a lot to me

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Hello everyone, I have made a GoFundMe to help me and my family get moved into a safer house, any help you can give - even just sharing around - would mean a lot to me

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scio

ft lilieve by @crashstanding

there are some formatting issues near the end, as some dialogue is supposed to get smaller, but i guess tumblr doesn't do that :(

summary: Adam is worried about his son. He debates whether or not to sacrifice his autonomy in exchange for eternal safety.

         Albatross was dreaming.

         Or was it Adam?

         Or was it Lilieve?

         It had to have been Albatross because he was the only one really sleeping.

         Adam saw him, if only from a distance. He stood on a floor that wasn’t there, for there was nothing there. There was only black. He saw his boy curled up tightly under his coat, eyes shut and body trembling.

         “WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE, DEAR?”

         Adam let out a shaky breath as he felt his counterpart’s massive presence wrap itself around him. His eyes remained firmly fixed on his son, even as he reached out to take Lilieve’s taloned hands in his.

         “I didn’t mean to come here,” he said. His voice was barely audible, like the background noise of wind swishing through leaves. “It just happened.”

         “YOU WERE WORRIED.”

         “Yes. I know.”

         “WHY DO YOU NOT GO TO HIM? YOU HARDLY WANTED TO LEAVE HIS SIDE BEFORE.”

         Adam fidgeted, grasping at the buttons on his shirt. Albatross’s brother was safe within him. He was probably sleeping too. Curled up with his father’s old bunny plush, while his myriad feathered half-siblings stood watch in the branches above. Back to being the little boy he never was. Safe, warm, as he should be. As he always should be.

         Albatross deserved that too.

         “I fear I wouldn’t be able to stop myself if I got any closer.”

         “STOP YOURSELF FROM WHAT?”

         Adam grew silent. He heaved a heavy sigh.

         “Have you heard that story about the painting they found in a dead artist’s kitchen?”

         “PERHAPS.”

         “They didn’t quite know what to think of it. Who would create such a gruesome scene and place it in a kitchen? It had no name either. So, they began to think of what to call it.”

         “AND WHAT DID THEY DECIDE?”

         “They decided to name it after a myth they knew. It was the only way they could comprehend the scene before them. They relegated it to the sphere of stories meant to explain and teach and warn. It was meant to comfort themselves. What else could it be, of course, then a titan devouring his godly son, one that was destined to overthrow him regardless? It’ll be okay. The monster will be gone soon.”

         “WAS THAT NOT WHAT IT DEPICTED?”

         “No one knows. People theorize all they like but it doesn’t change the fact the artist isn’t there to tell them. Perhaps he wouldn’t want to tell them regardless. Perhaps it reflected a deep-seated instinct, a snapshot of what that instinct was before we began to call ourselves civilized beings.”

         He paused.

         “If evolution had anything to do with it at all.”

         “WHY DO YOU SAY THAT?”

         “I remember, a long time ago, before I met you, my family told me a story. I can’t remember their faces, but I often remember the things they told me. They told me once that when humans were first molded by gods, they had trouble having children. They had them, of course, but the problem was that the parents ended up loving them so much they kept eating them to keep them safe. The gods had no choice but to calm the intensity of that love so the children could live and have children in turn.”

         “AH. I SEE.”

         “I think about that sometimes. I don’t think that’s ever left us. Even now, all I want to do is put him back in my ribs where nothing bad would happen to him again.”

         He clutched the rung where Lycoris slept as he said this.

         “Seeing how pained he still is, even after he finally met me, makes me feel hollow. Knowing his work still isn’t over makes me want to wail until my throat bleeds. Inside, nothing bad would happen to him ever again.”

         “NOTHING GOOD WILL EITHER.”

         He hugged himself, shuddering.

         “I know.”

         “THEY WILL BOTH BE IN ETERNAL STASIS, ETERNAL SLEEP, UNTIL YOU TAKE THEM OUT AGAIN. LYCORIS IS ONLY AS LUCID AS HE IS BECAUSE HIS BROTHER HASN’T COME TO JOIN HIM YET.”

         Adam squeezed his eyes shut.

         “I know.”

         His body seemed to ripple and sharpen. He was the most humanlike out of the two of them, and yet, something always changed whenever his emotions ran high. Looking at him then always seemed to hurt one’s eyes, a phantom imagined pain like an intrusive thought. It wouldn’t hurt you if you didn’t engage with it, but it vividly reminded you of what it would do. He didn’t seem so soft anymore when he was like this. It was natural, yet utterly grotesque, like a massive corpse flower reeking like death on the forest floor.

         Lilieve always thought he would look different had he been buried just a bit too long. One simply doesn’t come out of a sheltered life, of a lonely apocalypse, completely unscathed.

         He felt her clawed hands grip him; a single palm able to grab his entire body as if he were a toy. But her touch was never violent, not once. He couldn’t see her, not clearly (eyes still firmly fixed on his son), but he felt feathers turn to gossamer and scaled hands turn to skin and claws turn to nails.

         “BELOVED…”

         He covered his face in his hands, shivering out quiet, echoing sobs in the black. He felt his counterpart (his wife his wife) hold him close, stroking him gently yet carefully as if she were handling the stem of a rose.

         “I just want him to be okay” he uttered; voice as thorny as he felt but barely hiding an unbearable sadness.

         “I KNOW. I KNOW. BUT BELOVED,”

         He felt fingers tangle in his hair, lips press softly against the back of his head.

         “HOW DO YOU EXPECT HIM TO LIVE A FULL LIFE IF HE STAYS? IT IS TRUE HE WILL BE SAFE, BUT HE WILL NEVER BE ABLE TO WISH OR DREAM. HE WILL NEVER FALL IN LOVE, OR SEE THIS WORLD’S BEAUTY, OR TEACH OTHERS TO SEE ITS BEAUTY, OR KNOW WE REVIVED THIS WORLD FOR HIM, OR EVEN KNOW HE IS LOVED SO. HE WILL NEVER LEARN TO REMAIN KIND EVEN AFTER HE’S BEEN HURT. HIS LIFE WILL NEVER AFFECT OTHERS.”

         “I know”

         “BAD THINGS WILL HAPPEN, AND HE WILL GET HURT, AND IT WILL HURT DEEPER THAN THE BLACKEST AUGUISH, BUT WE MUST KEEP SENDING OUR LOVE. THAT IS ALL WE CAN GO TO MAKE SURE THE PAIN WON’T BE THE END OF HIM.”

         “I can’t even visit him properly”

         “WE HAVE THIS. THEY HAVE DREAMS. WE CAN REACH OUT THEN.”

         He felt her fingers intertwine with his.

         “PLEASE DON’T FORGET THIS BURDEN IS FOR BOTH OF US. I MAY NOT HAVE HAD A HAND IN YOUR SONS’ CREATION, BUT I STILL LOVE THEM DEEPLY BECAUSE THEY ARE YOURS. JUST AS YOU LOVE MY CHILDREN BECAUSE THEY ARE MINE.”

         Her hands tugged his arms, until they were spread outwards, palms facing up.

         “eve?” he asked, voice still barely coming out properly. His eyes were open again.

         “IF YOU ARE AFRAID TO GO NEAR HIM, TO SPEAK TO HIM, THEN YOU CAN SPEAK WITH MY VOICE. JUST AS I CAN SPEAK WITH YOURS.”

         “wouldn’t it scare him” he breathed, squeezing her hands tightly. “weren’t we scared of embracing our precious marble for fear of crushing it in our fingers”

         “MY BRANCHES WILL HOLD YOUR HANDS AND STAY THEIR MIGHT. WE WILL HOLD HIM IN OUR ARMS, JUST THIS ONCE, THIS I PROMISE TO YOU. HE WILL KNOW OUR LOVE AND KNOW HE MUST KEEP GOING.”

         Adam exhaled, and he felt Lilieve kiss his head. He wished he could kiss her back, but…later. After this. After…

         He closed his eyes.

         Albatross felt an immense weight. It wasn’t a weight as if something were on top of him, crushing him, but rather…the air. It was hard to breathe for how heavy it became. He kept his eyes tightly shut; his body tensely curled into a ball beneath his feathery coat.

         Just keep sleeping. The nightmare will go away if you pretend it’s not there. Just focus on how soft the feathers are. Don’t focus on how much you miss your brother. On how you ran out and ignored your daughter’s cries because you were angry and couldn’t handle the truth. On how there was a madwoman out there that rots everything she touches. On how you must be worrying everyone you cared about because you willingly fell into the sea and haven’t returned.

         Just ignore it. Forget it. It’s too much.

         It was still so cold.

         “ti n y cygne t”

         Despite himself, his eyes shot open. It was the “frightened animal” thing to do. You hear a noise; you see what it was. It could be something intended to hurt you, after all.

         He did not know how to react to the sight before him.

         He couldn’t even lift his head enough to know how tall this being was. His eyes hurt trying to figure it out. There was white, with bits of red, with flowing black. He felt surrounded, but he was sure there was only one being here.

         There was warmth beneath him, and he felt a finger (a finger) stroke his hair, his back. Somehow it made his body tremble, not just from how immense the thing was but the sense that the ground(?) was shaking.

         (was it trembling?)

         He stared until he felt like he made some semblance of eye contact. He wasn’t sure if he was even looking in the right place, but it did cause…some sort of reaction. He felt its head(?) lean in towards him, stopping mere centimeters from his body. He could feel its breath on him, blowing his hair up intermittently with its gusts.

         He could glimpse its teeth, its throat. The insides were pitch black, and its teeth were sharp and honed. They could pierce him straight through with just one if it wanted.

         Albatross didn’t know if it wanted.

         He closed his eyes again, covering his face.

         “plea se do no t be afra id ple ase”

         He hadn’t noticed it before, but its voice, booming though it was, felt…disconnected. Not quite in-sync with itself if that was possible. It sounded like it was making a concerted effort not to rupture his ears with its force.

         He peeked out a little.

         This for sure were its eyes, and the four circles trembling in his direction were its pupils. Reaching out, gingerly, cautiously, Albatross could feel what he assumed was the flesh of its palms, the very thing he was sleeping on.

         (the trembling earth was but a hand?)

         “tin y ti n y b aby boy”

         Was it baby-talking to him? What manner of creature was this?

         “Cygn us Cygnu s”

         It…knew his name…? His real name…?

         …oh.

         Oh.

         “Papa?” he whispered. The word still felt almost foreign on his lips, especially in the grown body he had. But who else could it be, then some other manifestation of a lineage that already wasn’t quite human?

         “ye s ye s”

         This time he felt more hands on him, more than any human should ever rightly have. These were coarser, rougher hands, with a texture like wood that sometimes snagged on his hair before loosening. Branches…?

         “Eve is here too…?”

         “yes ye s us bot h o ne to se e you”

         Albatross exhaled, finally relaxing. His body went limb as this large parental being stroked him with fingers as large as entire landmasses. It…made his eyes sting. Somehow. For some reason.

         Did he feel guilty because he had been scared…?

         But whatever tears came drifted away into space, blown away into the void by its breath.

         “shh h h hh shhh”

         Even its sounds of soothing felt disconnected. Were they really trying to keep themselves together as one being…just to comfort him? One so infinitesimally small as him…?

         Yes, it was true he was their son, and yet. And yet.

         (he still didn’t understand why they would do that, why anyone would)

         (he didn’t know why)

         “precio us littl e swa n”

         Papa always likened him to a swan. He was named after one charted in the sky, after all, and his hair was white like one. Swans were beautiful birds, but deadly when threatened. They’re still dinosaurs after all. You don’t come between them and their families.

         …Diana…

         He really messed up. He shouldn’t have left her there. Brother was gone. She was here now. He had to take care of her now.

         “sh e has alrea dy forgive n yo u”

         “Has she…? Will she…?”

         “w e prom ise”

         He sniffled despite himself, more tears getting blown away.

         “I wish she could meet you. I wish this were over so I can be a good son and show you my family.”

         “belov ed”

         He felt their jaws getting close, but he didn’t shrink away this time. It was only a kiss, one big enough to envelop his entire body. No hurt. Not ever. Never from them.

         “en dure plea se”

         “It hurts so much.”

         “I t wil l be bette r we pr omise”

         Another kiss. There was care and hesitation in their movements, for they knew they were so much bigger than him in this state. They wanted so badly to cover him with kisses as much as they could when they were components, but not here, not now. Later. After, always.

         “we wil sin g fo r yo u lulla by”

         “Will I be able to see you again?”

         “alwa ys alwa ys always com e for yo u when call”

         “Promise?”

         “pro mise”

         Another kiss.

         “lov e you lov e you alwa ys”

         Albatross felt the sensations of vines intertwining with his hair, and he could vaguely see the branches sprouting spider lilies. Their blooms whispered incoherently, shakily, but he knew his brother was here too. He couldn’t be with him anymore, but he was still here, and he wanted him to be happy.

         “si ng slee p no w”

         Albatross closed his eyes.

         “yo u ar e ou r sunsh ine

         Ou r onl y sunsh ine

         Yo u mak e us happ y when ski es ar e gra y

         Yo u’ll ne ver kno w dea r

         How mu ch we lov e yo u

         Pleas e do n’t take

         Ou r sun shin e

             Aw ay”

             The universe can sing, did you know that?

[messagefound]

equivalent exchange

finally getting around to posting some things

ft lilieve by @crashstanding

summary: Adam has been neglecting his tree for too long. Lilieve decides to take matters into her own hands.

             When Lilieve was gradually pulling fruits off her own tree, she heard crying. She could only think of one person who cried like that.

         “WHAT ARE YOU DOING, ADAM?” she asked, lowering her neck down to the lower rungs. He had his own tree, did he not? She knew for sure it was in deep need of care and trimming, and yet here he was underneath hers.

         He flinched away as if he were a child in trouble, but all he held in his hands was a single fruit with only a nibble taken out of it. A small thing, yet his body was shuddering with pain and fear.

         “DEAR, IT’LL GET CAUGHT IN YOUR THROAT THAT WAY,” she said, reaching down with her taloned hands that were nearly as big as him. “AND EVEN JUST A NIBBLE IS ENOUGH TO MAKE YOU WEEP. WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?”

         Usually, when that was asked, it wasn’t an inquiry of motivation. It was, instead, an accusation. It wasn’t meant to ask “why,” rather to tell one firmly to stop.

         Her tone of voice lacked that. Her counterpart was not one to do things clandestinely. He would’ve had a strongly felt reason to ignore his own tree for hers, and she would know what it was.

         It took him a moment to respond. Like it often did in times of great distress, his body seemed to grow sharper, yet paradoxically not in a physical sense. Nothing seemed to change outwardly, and yet if one were to look upon him, it would be like looking at a thorn. The brain registers it as small, yet an inherent danger to handle carelessly. Instinctually, you know what would happen if one were to be thrown into a patch of briars.

         Yet, knowing all of this, Lilieve cradled him gently in her clawed hands. He did not flinch at the sight of them, so she never flinched at the sight of him.

         “…it’s not fair,” he finally managed to drag out.

         “WHAT ISN’T?”

         “why is it that you have to take all my burdens for me” he said, fingernails digging into the flesh of the fruit. He did not have claws like her, but she had seen the way he looks at her before. He would ball his fists so hard in his barely restrained rage, his palms bloody with noticeable puncture wounds afterwards.

         He would never dare raise a hand against another, however necessary it would be. He simply wasn’t that kind of person. Even accidental harm is enough for him to melt.

         But he felt rage. He felt anger. He hated every second he did, but those feelings nevertheless existed.

         “but when I try to reciprocate,” he continued. “I can barely contain the deluge”

         Lilieve’s gaze softened.

         His body was small in comparison to hers. She needed the added mass to contain her children, countless as they were. Her body served as a trunk to support the leaves. Her claws were for gouging and tearing at anyone who would dare hurt them. She was built to be an apex predator, the living manifestation of survival instinct. She had carried her children’s burdens by herself for years, long before her counterpart stumbled sleepily out of the woods. It was in her instincts to endure.

         Adam was not a creature meant to endure. He was left by himself for a time that to her seemed brief but for him was excruciating. All of what he loved had rotted away by the time he began to Remember. He still wished to love, to share himself, to give his sons the life they deserved. He knew no one deserves to have nothing. No one deserves to have everything they ever cared for stolen in a haze of ash and silence and hate. Silence was anathema; hate was the chronic wasting disease.

         But this left him vulnerable. You can show as much compassion as you physically can, but that doesn’t mean it will be reciprocated. The primary weakness that came with rebirthing the world and refusing to be worshipped for it was that no one will remember you did such a selfless act. Those few that did might even resent you for it. How dare you, how dare you restart this ugly, broken world’s heart? How dare you bid me live when all I wanted was to die? Not only do I not deserve your love, but you also don’t deserve mine.

         It didn’t help that a certain very strong example of that had happened recently.

         Her counterpart was a kind man, but he was absorbent, like moss. He internalized all that he saw, all the vitriol that still existed in the wake of his burial. It was no wonder that in recent days his tree had grown rampant and unkempt. He needed to share it, because that was the only way to prevent himself from buckling under the weight.

         Lilieve never minded. She could carry his burdens too. Anything for him, anything to make him feel less alone. He made her feel less alone, this was only fair exchange. This was only love. She drank his tears before; she could do it again.

         But he couldn’t drink her tears anymore. It became too much for him, drowning as he was in the wake of his spider lily’s death. He did it to clear his black eye, yes, but he still didn’t want to leave Lilieve alone. Even in his grief, he didn’t want to ignore her.

         His eyes were waterfalls then, as they were now.

         She turned her gaze to his tree, looking less like any tree that had ever existed and more like a rat’s nest at this point. That was fine.

         With him still in her hands, she lunged down, grabbing the entirety of the tree in her maw. The bark crunched between the jaws of her beak; the fruits already mashed into pulp by the force. Tipping her head back like an eagle with some salmon, the entirety of the deciduous wreckage disappeared down her throat.

         Adam was momentarily stunned out of his spiral at the sight.

         “what” he sputtered out. “what on earth?!”

         The incredulous look on his face, along with the way his voice left its despondence quickly behind, amused her immensely. She let out a rumbling warble, even as the emotions within the fruit stung her eyes and made them drip.

         “What on earth was THAT for, Eve?!”

         “EQUIVALENT EXCHANGE.”

         “I wouldn’t exactly call that equivalent!!!”

         “ONE FRUIT OF MINE IS ENOUGH FOR YOU. AND THAT IS OKAY.”

         “But…”

         He glanced back at the fruit in his hands.

         “…I still couldn’t share it. Not properly. Not how you would want.”

         “HOW DO YOU THINK I WOULD WANT IT?”

         He paused, glancing away. He seemed sheepish now, once again like a scolded child.

         “HM.”

         She pressed her beak against his cheek, making a kiss noise. He whimpered in response, clinging to her beak with a pale shaky hand.

         “IF YOU WISH TO SHARE, I WILL BE HERE TO SUPPORT YOU. IT’S OKAY IF YOU CRY. I PROMISE IT IS.”

         Her gaze turned sorrowful for just a second.

         “I KNOW IT’S A LOT. NOT JUST FOR YOU, BUT FOR ANYONE.”

         Adam paused once more, leaning against her beak.

         “I want to share,” he said. “Because it’s you…and it’s not fair that you should carry all of mine while I don’t carry yours.”

         “YOU CARRY MINE IN DIFFERENT WAYS. YOU KNOW THIS.”

         “Still…”

         “HUSH.”

         She kissed him again and tousled his hair in a manner reminiscent of preening.

         “GIVE THE FRUIT TO ME.”

         He did so, and she gently took the tiny fruit into her beak. With an effortless movement like the shutting of a vice, she bit it directly in half. She jostled one piece back into his hands, while the other went down her gullet.

         “WILL THAT BE EASIER?”

         He stared at it.

         “…it might.”

         There was silence.

         She gazed at him intently.

         “DON’T WORRY ABOUT CRYING AGAIN. I PROMISE IT’S OKAY. I’M HERE.”

         His jaw set. His fingernails dug into the piece once again.

         With an act entirely unlike him usually, he proceeded to tear into the fruit like a vulture into a carcass. The burden hit him almost immediately in response, with tears streaming down his face and the sharpness of his form returning, but he didn’t stop. He just kept tearing into it, only stopping to breathe deep sobbing gasps before rapidly resuming.

         Lilieve was afraid a piece would get stuck in his throat with how quick he was going.

         Eventually nothing of his piece remained. Not even a pit. Was there a pit? The pit only existed when one wanted it to.

         He shuddered, heaving out another sobbing gasp before collapsing completely.

         “DEAREST…”

         He screamed out another sob, muffled by her palms.

         “it’s not FAIR that you have to FEEL all of this by yourself”

         “I KNOW.”

         “it’s not FAIR that the children have to feel this”

         “I KNOW, DEAR.”

         “it’s not…it’s not…”

         His voice dissolved into watery noises.

         It made Lilieve’s heart hurt.

         Gently, she lifted his face up using her beak. With the utmost care, she placed it near his eyes, drinking deep of the waterfalls.

         He looked at her with one wide eye, questioning. His teeth were gritted, but he held onto her tightly.

         She smiled, even as her own streams were beginning.

         “Equivalent exchange.”

[messagefound]

rib aches

OH I JUST ADORE THIS ONE

lilieve belongs to @crashstanding once again :)

Summary: Adam has been silent for a long time in mourning of his son. Lilieve wishes she could do something.

             Adam had been silent for a long time.

         At first, there were at least some short periods of noise. First there were gurgles and chokes, then sobbing, then the soft whispering singing, and then there was nothing at all.

         It sickened him. Silence was anathema. They did not consign themselves to the earth just for that cursed phenomenon to take hold of them again. It had to be purged. It can’t win.

         He can’t let it win.

         And yet he couldn’t bear to let anything leave his throat. If the black briny gunk that permeated his lost son’s body down below wouldn’t leave his eye it would spurt from his throat like vomit. He couldn’t let it. No more of it. No more. Please.

         He was still down there. He couldn’t reach him. He tried, oh yes, he tried. He cast his mind and essence out to those blackened trenches, reached with ephemeral hands towards the fish-eaten corpse, but he couldn’t. He just couldn’t. The pressure would break his very ribs with the strain. It wouldn’t just break Adam’s, it would break Lycoris’s entire being.

         Adam couldn’t risk a Shattering. He couldn’t. He won’t. Not while he’s made of such fragile flesh.

         But who else was going to find him? No one. Not even Eve can reach down there. The Children couldn’t reach down there. It was the one place on this planet none of them could reach.

         But that was his son. His rib. His own. A brother to a twin that couldn’t bear to comprehend a death like this. He was stuck down there, rotting, decaying, predated upon by creatures of the deep.

         Eventually Adam grew quiet from the grief.

         Lilieve could only watch.

         Through her children’s eyes, she could see him, nestled in the fetal position within her plumage. The only movement he ever made nowadays was intermittent shivers, a nonverbal plea for more feathers, more insulation.

         A hiding place. A cave of plumes to hide a wretch, to shield the humiliation from outside view.

         How awful that he had come to think such things of himself. The pain he felt was one she knew well, far too well. The difference was that her children numbered in myriads, enough for her to gradually steel herself. Sometimes her children would shed themselves from her, suffer, and die, but they’ll make it back eventually. She would help them to heal, to raise them all over again, and hope the next cycle was kinder. Sometimes it was, and they would come back gently. Those were the ones that bore wisdom to the others.

         Adam, in contrast, was so much smaller than her. The ribs that held life within him were only a pair. This was the first cycle he took part in. It had already started out bad, with him descending into a place where he was looked at with immediate hatred and objectivity. He endured as much he could, but he had to split there in haste. His sons would only hold fleeting memories of him and continue to be subject to wrath disguised as science.

         They got out eventually. But only one made it.

         The deluge of pain felt like a knife twisting. Half of his work, drowned beneath the deep, with the other half left lost and confused. They were both supposed to be important. They were both supposed to live.

         And yet.

         And yet.

         He did not have the fount of experience that she did. He has not learned to accept that sometimes bad things can and will happen, sometimes senselessly. His children couldn’t even make it back to him on their own. He had to retrieve them himself, placing them back within his ribs with deep grief.

         How cruel then, for one of his sons to die in a place he couldn’t follow.

         No amount of “we can try again, next time” will resolve that.

         …

         She wished she could do something. Something instant. Something to bring that smile back. He always had such a pretty smile. It brought her back from the brink countless times. Doesn’t he realize that? Shouldn’t he know how beautiful he is, every day, every hour? Shouldn’t he know that for all her teasing, he was always as bright as the sun to her?

         Even the quiet, mumbling, hushed tones of his mourning songs were lovely. She even said as much, but she didn’t know if he heard her.

         When it became clear he wouldn’t speak or move again anytime soon, she tried to comfort him in other ways. She would make him dream, something he isn’t wont to do nowadays, just to turn him away from the trenches for just a moment. Please don’t think of your little boy trapped down there, please. Sleep under my boughs instead. Hear my leaves sing of their love for you. They’ll let you forget for a while if you just let them. We’ll find ways to get him out we promise. Just please smile again. Please.

         Please…

         And yet she couldn’t just make him sleep forever. He wouldn’t want that. Not that the dreams were any lasting help anyway. He hadn’t been responsive even in sleep.

         Part of her wanted to stop. But how could she? She had to keep trying. She had to. Any comfort she could ever give was his if he could just let her.

         One day, she thought deeply for a long time. If she could focus, completely focus, perhaps she could…

         Within the feathery cocoon, there was a movement. Not from him, but within those green-gray plumes. With a rustle like that of bushes, a pale limb slowly emerged, humanlike at first until another arm emerged from its elbow joint. Then, its twin pairs emerged as well, then a face, then the body, then the fractaled repeating wings. Her children quickly moved to cover up her body in a like manner to a fluffy coat. This was done not for need of modesty, but to make sure the body stayed together. Their mother only needed to focus; they were simply lessening the workload.

         Aside from being the opposite sex and the wings, she could’ve been a mirror image of him. Her skin was a pale gray, like his. Her hair was long enough to touch the ground and was black with white streaks, like his. One eye was white, and the other was black, like his. Which one was which was reversed of course, but they were still like his. Yet, if one were to place them side by side, she would tower over him in comparison. She was tall, very tall, perfectly befitting a tree.

         She looked down at her counterpart, still laying there curled up unresponsive with a deadened gaze and a black eye darkened with sand and silt and knelt right beside him. Her bifurcating arms reached out for him, gently stroking his hair with twice as many hands as usual.

         “Dearest,” she uttered, as quiet as her matronly voice would allow. “I’m here. Do you see me? Can you hear me?”

         Adam seemed to shudder at the sudden onset of touch, but not too harshly. It was akin to someone startling awake more than anything else. His eyes moved, first gazing at the arms before slowly raising up to meet her gaze.

         “…Eve…?” he murmured, his voice barely retreating from his throat.

         “Yes. It’s me, dear.”

         He paused for a moment, as if he was processing the sight before him.

         “…was this what you looked like…in the Before…?” he whispered.

         “Yes. In a manner of speaking, of course.”

         Her wings twitched idly, as if to prove her point. Her extra arms traced his shoulders.

         Again, Adam paused before speaking.

         “You look beautiful…”

         She smiled.

         “Thank you.”

Slowly, gently, as if holding a baby, she lifted Adam and held him close to her chest. The feather children there fluttered and flitted at his presence, grasping at his face with tiny unseen hands. He responded with a quiet groan, which was more than enough compared to earlier.

         “Do you want me to stay with you for a while?”

         He slowly nodded, lethargically raising a hand. One of hers took it without hesitation.

         “Please…”

         Saying his voice was broken seemed like a disservice. Saying it was shattered, no, crumbled into fine dust was more accurate. Anyone would have to strain their ears just to hear him. It was less a voice and more air pressed out of a dying body.

         …how sad. How horrible.

         But she stayed, continuously stroking his hair. Her children kept nuzzling his face, bunching around bare flesh to keep him warm. Adam, all the while, continued to say and do nothing but breathe.

         “I held you once like this before, remember?” she said after a while. “In that dream we had, after we Remembered. You were tending roses, and I worried about the thorns. I knew they remembered your blood. I feared a single prick would make them ravenous for the lifeblood that revived them. You assured me you wouldn’t let them take more than they needed.”

         “…yes…I remember…”

         “I took the fruit blossoms from my boughs and fashioned them into crowns for you. You looked sublime, like a flower itself. You in turn nestled into my leaves to adorn my branches with rose circlets you made yourself. The sunset was blood red, but not like the sun in the dying sky we knew. This was a lively red, vivacious. We knew then that we truly succeeded. Remember?”

         “Yes…”

         “It was beautiful, and you were beautiful, and you thought me beautiful as well. It was heaven for a moment, even when it didn’t last very long.”

         “Yes…”

         “We’ll make it eternity one day. I promise.”

         “Mm…”

         Then he grew silent once more.

         It would’ve lasted longer had the brine not suddenly spurted out his throat in a shuddering heave. It wasn’t big, but it was still out of nowhere. Some of her children fled with the movement, but Lilieve always stayed perfectly still and vigilant. She instead tilted him over and held his hair back as he coughed and rasped and gagged it out.

         The noises that left him then were like a dying animal’s, shuddering in its death throes in one last burst of movement before the neurons stop firing. His movements were similar, or something akin to a fish shocked by air. Twisting around in an environment not meant for it, trying to return to water that might not even be there.

         Seeing him like that made her want to keen like a dove.

         After a while, the deluge of filth stopped, Adam collapsing limply into her arms once more. Tears were streaming down his face, water from his black eye still being dark and murky. It didn’t even seem like it wanted to remain open anymore, remaining shrunken and leaking as if someone had punched it. In contrast, his white eye was the widest Lilieve had seen in recent days, gazing out frantically in horror from its socket.

         When he spoke next it was a croak, but still clearer than he’d been all day.

         “please tell me I didn’t get it on any of the children”

         “You didn’t, don’t worry. They knew to get out of the way. Is it all out for now?”

         He didn’t answer that. Instead, he smacked both his hands over his face, letting out a gurgling cry.

         “he’s still down there”

         “I know…”

         “it’s not going to end unless he gets out”

         “I know. We’ll find a way to get him out, I promise.”

         “how”

         She set her jaw.

         Adam continued crying.

         “all I do is create muck”

         “Dear, don’t—”

         “I’ll get it all over the children one of these days and that can’t happen it can’t it can’t”

         “You know I won’t let that happen.”

         “I don’t even understand why you still hold me after seeing that”

         Her teeth grinded against each other from within her mouth.

         “I’m useless useless”

             “ADAM.”

         Even the space within her very wings seemed to retreat at the sound of her voice, her real voice. The rustles of her children and their worried peeps immediately grew silent.

Adam was subsequently shocked out of his spiral, gazing at her with one wide eye. His face was still wet, and he looked terrible, but he was listening now. He looked like a kicked puppy, and Lilieve felt an internal stab of pain at that, but she had to. She had to. She couldn’t let him talk like that anymore.

He cradled himself, shivering.

“I’m sorry”

She sighed.

“You mustn’t talk like that,” she said, voice lowered once again. “You would never let me speak like that about myself, wouldn’t you?”

“never”

Her hands went back to his hair, one reaching for his face to wipe the clear tears of his white eye. For a moment, she gazed at their sheen upon her fingers. She was reminded of the continuous waterfalls that left her eyes as a bird, how when this started Adam would cup his hands underneath and drink. He did it to clean his black eye back then, when it would become so saturated with murk, he could hardly see out of it.

It worked, yes, but it wasn’t a pleasant process. Someone as small as he couldn’t handle the collective sorrows of every feather on a giant bird’s plumage. Water would leave his eyes in waves until the black eye’s tears would be some semblance of clear. It would always darken again in due course, but he would just repeat the process.

She had let him back then, because she had thought this the only solace she had available to him. But now, she was holding him like a human, as their nature intended.

He couldn’t handle her burden in this fashion, but she…

“Dear,” she uttered, finally. “Let me partake of your tears.”

He looked taken aback.

“what”

“I wish to share your burden. We can’t reach your son now, but I can do this much at least.”

He grimaced.

“but it’ll hurt you, and I can’t do the same in return anymore”

“I know. And yet,” she began, gently curling his hair behind his ear. “That’s never been the only way for you to help me. You’ve done so much for us already just by being here, nestling within my feathers and always talking to my children. They don’t feel as lonely anymore since you arrived.”

She smiled.

“I haven’t been as lonely since you arrived. You’ve shown me the beauty of a world I nearly gave up on. I can only hope I’ve done as much for you in return, so please…”

Her hands cupped under his white eye.

“Please let me do this for you. Please let me do this much.”

He gazed at her, maintaining almost perfect eye contact with his very reflection, as tall and sharp as she was in comparison to him. Her feathers were always so warm, her hands even more so. She loved him. He loved her. He would never trade her for anything. He would never trade the Children for anything. Most of all she reclaimed her past body just to hold him properly.

It made the tears come easier.

“okay” he whispered, nodding solemnly.

She sighed.

“Children,” she said. “Leave me be with him for a while.”

There was an immediate storm of peeps and protests.

“I can maintain this body perfectly by myself for a bit. This is a burden I must share with him alone.”

More peeps, sounding far more despondent this time.

“It won’t be long, I promise. Wait for me. I love you.”

There was the sound of reluctant peeps, and then silence. The feathers that made up her coat retreated into the feathery mass, leaving her normal attire of a green-gray gossamer dress behind. Her tree nature was more obvious now by the texture of her chest, flesh slowly giving way to brownish bark dotted with bristles.

A pair of hands remained cupped under his eye, their counterparts clasping his hands.

“I love you,” she said.

“I love you” he replied.

She waited until her palms were sufficiently full. She kissed his temple, once, twice, three times. Then she leaned back and drank as much as she could carry.

There was a deep, long pause.

Her wings moved first. They trembled like branches in a breeze, her feathers she sewn in patchwork patterns all that time ago rustling like leaves in a storm. The shudder moved throughout her body next, a deep, aching, loud, screaming pain suddenly kept in check. The hands grasping his tightened their grip, and she felt his tightening in turn.

         The sensation reacted like a trapped animal. Screaming, crying, wailing, growling, and gnashing at the bars of its cage in a wordless cacophony. How dare it be contained. How dare it find itself planted within a body that kept the score of countless others like it. How dare it face even the possibility of being drowned out in a sea of other cries and whimpers and screams.

         How dare it be shared.

         How dare it be treated with kindness.

         How dare it be understood.

         How dare it feel the compassion of another…

         Finally, it left via her throat, not with the blast it wanted but only a whimper. A mournful groan, not unlike the dove named for such emotions.

         Then all was quiet once more.

         “Oh,” she whispered, and she never whispered, not truly. “How ravenous this grief is for you…”

         Tears left her eyes, but not in the streams he suffered.

         Adam stared. He still looked and felt awful, but his chest felt a little warmer than it had before.

         “I hate seeing you cry so much” he croaked out, as if oblivious to his own.

         “I hate seeing you cry more, dear.”

         She held him closer, leaning down to kiss his eyelid of his white eye. She began peppering his very face with kisses, feeling him wrap his arms around her neck with a weak moan.

         “please stay here with me”

         The words felt familiar to them both, not unlike an echo.

         “You know I will. I promise I will.”

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The First and the End

The remade Adam storybook I mentioned before. There was meant to be a part where he meets lilieve, but i very quickly ran out of steam. hopefully one day i'll revisit the idea. she IS present here though. just. a shadow of what she once was.

Summary: During the Silence, a lonely man weeps for the world. His body is young but his grief is as old as time.

         In the beginning, the world had ended. What was once a planet of noise and color had been blasted and purged until there was nothing but scorched earth and ash.

         Some things had survived. Some animals, some people. But there were no more plants. There was no more water. The ocean was empty. The rain held only acid. There was nothing left for the prey to eat, and they died. In turn, the predators had nothing left to eat, and they were hunted out of sheer desperation. Eventually the people had nothing left to eat, so they died too. It was as if any sign of life was stamped out, as if the very act of breathing was a pollutant.

         For this reason the event was called the Silence.

         There was only one man left. He had to bury all he knew. He would wait by the graves for a few days in the hopes that something would emerge from the soil, but nothing ever did. Eventually the rations ran out, so he left.

         Where? Who knows. Somewhere else.

         He only took a stuffed rabbit with him. He hadn’t held it since he was a boy. Its cotton was sticking out and an eye was missing, but it was the only thing he had now. When he held it at night, he could sleep better. He could feel warmer, even if all he had was a tattered white coat.

         But a plush couldn’t do anything to ease its owner’s hunger. It couldn’t quench his thirst. It couldn’t stop him from getting sick.

         It couldn’t hold him when he cried. And the man cried loud and often. The man did not like to do this, but it kept coming out in bigger and longer floods. It was the only way for him to fill the Silence. He could weep into a ravine and pretend the echoes were someone else, just as broken as he. But he knew better.

         There was no one else. He was truly the last thing on Earth.

         He cried about most things. He would miss his family, anyone who cared for him and showed him kindness. He would think of the chittering animals that would never light up the night air again. He would think of the fish that died with the ocean, the huge expanse of water he always wanted to see but never could.

         But most of all he would think of the greenery that couldn’t grow anymore. He had always liked flowers, trees, leaves. None of that was able to grow anymore. They were bleached white by the Silence, turned back to the dust from which they came.

         Sometimes he would come across a flower, wilting and dry and dying. He would sit beside it as if he were a deathbed nurse, gently caressing it as if the leaves were hands he could hold. He would cup his hands under the falling petals so they could at least know touch before they disintegrated. He would do this until the last petal fell, and there was nothing but an empty, lifeless stalk.

         He sometimes cried over the stem, hoping his tears would water it back to life.

         They never did.

         As he kept wandering, he grew weaker. He knew he was going to go soon. All that was left was finding a place to lie down for the last time.

         So, he used the last of his steps to come to a cliff that once overlooked the sea. Now, it only stood high above an unfathomably deep canyon, bereft of everything but dirt and old bones. What was once the surrounding woods were now acres and acres of dead trees, clawed fingers stretching to the gray sky.

         The man had wanted to look at the sky as he passed. He wanted to see if he could remember how blue it once was, how pretty the stars were at night. He wanted to be surrounded by what was once woods and see if he could remember how verdant they might’ve been. Perhaps if he could remember, he would close his eyes with a smile.

         So, he laid down, his rabbit held close to his chest, and stared. He was so tired now. He wished he could see the stars again. No light pierced through the thick layer of ash in the sky anymore. In the day, the world was gray. At night, it became black as pitch.

         It used to be so pretty.

         …

         The man felt tears rolling down his cheeks once more.

         Remembering only made it plain how much he had lost.

         He missed the world. He missed it with the force in which a star was born. He may not have been on it for long, but this was his home.

         Now it was gone. None remained of the plants, the animals, the people he adored so much. He couldn’t braid flowers into crowns, he couldn’t feel soft fur from a beloved pet, he couldn’t laugh and speak with anyone anymore. He could never hold someone’s hand, he could never kiss the lips of a spouse, the heads of his children and hold them close. He could never show them the beauty of the world anymore. There was only emptiness, a barren scar. Silence.

         It was more than he could bear.

         He could only cry, a wretched screaming cry louder than he ever had before. His teeth were bared as he sat up, having found the energy to do so. He just hated seeing the world like this so much. There wasn’t even anyone he could blame, even if he was the type to do so. Anyone that pushed it to this point had died with it, only knowing the true extent of their hubris in a death knell. There was no one left to blame.

         There was only Silence.

         It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair.

         It wasn’t fair.

         The man’s eyes snapped open. He stood up. Almost on instinct, his very fingers began to dig into the thin flesh of his upper body. Steadily, more and more crimson blood was drawn, splashing down upon a shocked and starving earth. Eventually, with a squelching crack, he broke off one of his one ribs.

         It hurt. Of course, it hurt. It hurt so badly his vision became a haze of red, rendered pink by the gray. But he had to do something. Needed to.

         He had heard a story once about life emerging from a rib. He remembered people laughing about it, because what manner of life could emerge from something as small and insignificant as a rib? Nothing important, that’s for sure. Surely.

         But life was always important. Life was always worth the effort. Always.

         With the bloody rib in his hands, he looked to the trees. Staggering over to one, he dug at its base as best a hole as he could under the circumstances. He gently deposited the rib upon the loose earth, before burying it and patting the dirt as if he had planted a seed.

         (and perhaps it was)

         As soon as the first rib was buried, the man dug more into his flesh, shedding more blood, and pulling out more ribs. For a brief time, the air was punctuated with the sound of the cracking. The man did this for as long as it took to get all his ribs out, even as he lost more and more blood and his vision got hazier and hazier.

         He walked to each tree, burying each rib at each of their bases. He did this just as gently as he did the first, patting each mound even as his blood splashed upon them.

         When he was done, he took his rabbit and walked to the base of the largest tree, right at the edge of the cliff. Here, he dug another mound, this one much bigger. He was weakening steadily, dark spots scattering in his vision, but eventually the pit was complete.

         He stood at its edge, looking down with finality, when he heard a voice.

         “Why do you do this?”

         It was piercing, yet quiet. It rasped like a coffin lid, every word tinged with venom. The man did not turn to face it, even as he heard the branches above creak with weight.

         “Why do I do what?” he whispered back.

         “You break your very bones and rip your flesh. You spill your blood upon an earth too shocked to drink it. You do all of this, and for what? A dying earth, a dying you.”

         “I do this because I love this world. I do this because I cannot bear to let it die.”

         “It is a broken corpse. There is no point in reviving it.”

         “Why do you say that?”

         “This world was awful, evil. I looked down upon it and everything I saw was sickening.”

         The voice seemed to break at that, a mournful vulture’s cry.

         “Reviving it will only bring that back. Your love will mean nothing to the future peoples that will only drive this world to the brink once more. They will rip and tear at its innards until nothing is left. They will kill and eat their own, their young, because they only care for themselves. They will trample upon every living thing. This world will die once again, and they will have learned nothing.”

         The man paused.

         “…I’m sorry that happened to you.”

         The voice grew silent.

         “But…” the man continued. “I want to believe things will be better this time. I want to believe this world can truly prosper. I want to assume the best of people. I know this world is cruel, crueler than I can dare imagine, but I still love it. It was my home. And besides…”

         He smiled.

         “We have the capacity to learn, to change. It’s another thing I love about people. We hold so much potential inside ourselves, and yet we may never see it. We’re taught to hate too much, to hate ourselves too much. I want to create a world where there’s always hope. I want to cup this world’s face in my hands and tell it everything will be okay.

         Because it will be.

         I will make it so.”

         Without another word, the man fell into the grave. His rabbit fell beside him.         To any outside observer, it would seem as if he had just fallen asleep, a childhood toy clutched tightly in his arms.

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Ovum

First attempt at writing about the Origin. i still find it good

Lilieve is in her monster bird form here! once more, she belongs to @crashstanding

Summary: Adam dreams of the One. He finds himself on one side of a passive-aggressive conversation between two primordial beings.

Adam was dreaming.

         He didn’t know he could still do that. He could sleep, yes, but when he closed his eyes, he only saw what his sons saw. He had seen an ocean without light, the ceiling his poor spider lily had to endure for far too long. He had seen his little swan’s shaking hands, felt his trembling body as he bundled up for a warmth that couldn’t burn the cold away. He had seen their nightmares of endless metal hallways, with shriveled test subjects clawing at the bars and screaming their death throes even as processed agony was pumped into them continuously. He had seen their fuzzy memories of himself, wrapped in warmth and light and laughter.

         He had seen all this, but he had never dreamed. There was no need for him to do so now. He had to watch, observe, and influence when necessary. His mind had no time to drift into itself now. It belonged to the world, to his sons, to the earth and plants.

He wasn’t even sure Eve slept at all. She might not need to. There were too many of her brood that always required her attention, too much to keep guard. She must remain vigilant. They both must.

And yet, Adam was dreaming.

He dreamed he was something else, something big, something ancient. He was sat in a stance of meditation, sitting on his knees with his hands resting on his lap. His eyes were closed, and yet he knew he was praying, thinking, contemplating, emanating? Something like those words. He felt a soft texture like silk on his palms, delicate, ephemeral, like a flower that blooms only briefly.

And yet, somehow, he felt more hands than he should’ve. He felt new muscles from his shoulders, new limbs at his sides, more hands to grasp and feel and touch. They felt different from the flesh that felt the silk, they felt stiffer, sharper, clawed like branches that tap windows.

Yes, that’s what they felt like. Branches.

Like Eve’s…

“How is it that you do not see how tenuous your existence is?”

The voice that sounded behind him was multilayered, infinite, eldritch, steeped in stars and black holes that swallow everything that’s unfortunate enough to fall in. Yet, Adam could barely hear it. It was muffled, slurred, as if it were less a voice and more just air pushed out of a compressed body.

He opened his eyes, and then he opened more, for surely, there were more than two. He felt new eyeballs in new sockets on his cheeks, right below his. He briefly wondered if that’s how spiders felt, with their eyes clustered around their whole head.

“Who are you to talk, Umbral Thing?”

The voice that left his throat was not his own. Or maybe it was? Sometimes it sounded like him. Sometimes it sounded like Eve. It was booming and authoritative, like her, but beneath it was some kind of whispering foundation, like him. He (She? They? It?) spoke without his own will, even as he felt here, present, a moving living thing. He was here. He should be.

But his vessel moved without him telling it to.

“Do you not see how you are clinging to your form only by fraying threads?”

He did see. He felt it. He felt his (her?) arms cradling his (their?) body, an embrace from the one self. He felt a great trembling within his insides, innards, components, selves screaming and clinging to dear life to each other like those in a hurricane.

(the storm would never let up)

He (they?) would not be there long. But it was long enough.

“Do you not see how you are decomposing, Umbral Thing?”

An echoing laugh coughed out from the presence, and Adam (that was not him) slowly turned to face it.

It was a floating serpentine thing, not unlike one of those millipedes. He was sure its myriad one-clawed limbs would’ve pumped through the air like that of shrimp once, but not anymore. They hung limply in the white space, some detaching and drifting away even as he watched. The entire form of the thing seemed to be detaching, melting, or sloughing off. He couldn’t even really tell what color it had once been, or what its masklike face truly represented, or if it always had that bubbling hole in its head. Little things constantly streamed from the head, little lights whose tiny screams of fear could scarcely reach his ears.

“I do see, and I hate every second.”

The Thing seemed to twitch, sending rattling ripples throughout its whole form. It didn’t seem purposeful, not quite. It was like if you shocked a dead frog, its crooked limbs spasming for just a moment before returning to rigor mortis. Electrical signals from a dying brain, perhaps.

“It will take until the end of the universe itself for me to die. I can only sleep, sleep and dream deeper. Deeper. Ever deeper. And yet—”

The echo suddenly took on a vicious tone.

“I still wake. I still see you continuing this farce. I just want to sleep. I want to never wake and see you continue this foolish endeavor again.”

He felt himself grimace, an insincere half-smile with molars that seemed to hone against each other.

“For someone who claims to not care much about anything, you seem to care very deeply about my business.”

The mask of the Thing cracked, with the very sound itself holding hints of anger.

“If I could sleep, I wouldn’t have to. But these buzzing flies and their shrieks continue to plague me.”

Adam felt himself turn his gaze towards the little lights. A thought crossed his mind(s?) of reaching out and scooping them up, but that would be dangerous.

(They were too big; they could easily crush them)

And yet, the lights continued to scream their tiny infinitesimal screams, flitting about to look for something, anything. They would not find anything, like always. They would skewer themselves upon stars in their despair, like always.

(Why is it that Earth doesn’t satisfy them so?)

“Why is it that you talk of your children as if they were pests?”

(Their heart ached so seeing such things)

“Why is it that you never make even the slightest move to comfort them, when they look into the black expanse and see nothing else of worth but my blue planet?”

Another echoing laugh. The laughs never had even a hint of mirth in them. They were spiteful, bitter.

“I never wanted them. They’re all accidental creations of my decaying brain, images that would’ve flitted briefly behind my eyelids, had I still had eyes. They know naught but to repeat their inane, useless actions, dream after dream after dream after dream. If they knew what was good for them, they would never have left my head in droves. Instead, they are faced with the reality that there are endless swathes of nothing behind us.”

         More cracks. Adam had the feeling that, had that mask still possessed eyes, they would’ve blinked like those of a puppet. No muscles would move that mask. It would all be biological wires, gears, springs. A hydraulic system of colorless blood.

         “Besides, why should anyone care about that puddle you revere so? Why is it you protect such a loud, annoying thing, as if you wouldn’t crush it in your hand should you try to hold it?”

         His (their) eyes narrowed. Something began to unfurl from their back, hundreds and hundreds of new bones and limbs. Perhaps they weren’t limbs. Perhaps their back was a cocoon, the wings the result of a completed metamorphosis. Feathery wings like Eve’s.

         “You never care about anything but yourself, do you? You only hear buzzing like those of insects from this sphere you dare call a puddle. I could only hear singing, crying, laughing, all that life is and will be from it.”

         They imagined finally being able to hold it, cradle it, caress it like a parent without its fingers threatening to tear it asunder. It made their heart warm, so warm.

         “It’s mine. My own. They will never experience an endless nothing, for I am here, always.”

         “And yet, you went and split. When I awoke, you were no longer there. When I awoke again, you still weren’t. For a long time, every time I woke, you were gone.”

         Despite not having any more eyes, they could feel the Umbral Thing gaze at them with a predator’s intensity.

         “You still aren’t really back, are you?”

         There was a pause.

         Then they smiled. It wasn’t a grimace, but it still wasn’t a very happy smile. It was the kind of smile a patient has when they realize they couldn’t hide the fact they were dying anymore. There was no use making any sort of pretense, no more point in keeping quiet until they fell asleep for the last time. Everyone knew. Everyone.

         “This is a temporary measure. A component just wanted to see me, is all. I won’t be around for long.”

         Their eyes half closed.

         “A fact I’m sure you’re happy with.”

         A scathing laugh exited the umbral corpse.

         “Do you not understand what your own component is trying to tell you, to beg of you, even?”

         Their eyes narrowed. Their wings flared out dangerously, but only slightly. There was no use in threat-displaying a being who could only talk and dream and complain.

         “Your half must surely hate it down there. Why else would it even remember you? Why else would it even want you back, even in this fragile state?”

         Their teeth grinded against themselves behind closed lips.

         “It wants to give up. Surely you know this. Surely you understand this. If even a half of you is convinced this is a lost cause, it would only be common sense to—”

         Four arms immediately shot up towards the Thing, roughly grabbing its masklike visage and causing the entire body to shudder like a puppet on strings. Their grip tightened upon contact, fingers and claws of bark digging so deep it caused the mask to form new cracks.

         With a jerk, they pulled the enormous decaying being dangerously close to their face, their teeth.

         “You misunderstand him deeply. As you do with most things.”

         Their voice reverberated loudly now, almost guttural and screaming in its tone, even as its intonation remained calm.

         “It is his duality. He romanticizes the past because it is known. His counterpart, in turn, has eyes firmly set on the future. Had he been alone, perhaps he would’ve been empty, his love forgone by all. But he’s not. She helps to correct him, to ground him. He will never be alone when she is there.

         She is not alone either. It is sometimes hard to look to the future when the present seems so hopeless. He is a living reminder to her that there is good remaining still. If it weren’t for his presence, she would be a living embodiment of decay, a vulture with no more corpses left to consume, bereft of love and purpose.

         In their weakest moments, they think of me. Of course, they do. It is only natural. But they will get up. They need to. I am in their thoughts as a reminder of what is lost. I am a garden they cannot return to.

         But I let them know they can plant another. They will do so over and over, as many times as it takes, until we get it right.”

         The Umbral Thing shuddered in their grip, the only remaining sign of its decaying life.

         “You will fail you will fall you will become an ugly maggot-ridden being like me until the sun destroys everything out of sheer spite for the pests it shines its light upon—”

         “I think it’s about time you went back to sleep, don’t you?”

         They reached out one of their hands of flesh, stark white with fingertips of gray. They gently (and somewhat patronizingly) placed their fingers upon the Thing’s mask.

         They didn’t have to do much. Only a flick will suffice, and they did so.

         The Thing screeched, loud enough to momentarily pierce its slurring tones. The mask cracked even more, splintered shards breaking off and spinning into the void. In fact, the entire serpentine body seemed to crack, shudders running down its entire immeasurable length. Little dreams left its head in yellow droves.

         Then it was still and silent.

         They were alone again.

         At least somewhat.

         They embraced themselves again, branch arms stroking skin and skin stroking branches and wings stroking all.

         “Dear ones. You know it’s time for me to go now.”

         (wait)

         “You know I can’t. I must go.”

         (it’ll hurt)

         “It won’t. I promise you it won’t. You’ll wake up same as usual. This will only be a sad dream.”

         (why can’t I be like you)

         (why can’t I be stronger)

         “You are strong. So much more than you think, I promise you.”

         The threads began to snap.

         (WAIT)

         (NO)

         “You know I can’t come back like this, dear. The Thing was right when it said I was tenuous.”

         (STOP)

         “Shh. Be good. I love you.”

         Their entire form began to fray like that of a broken rope, unraveling entirely like a loose spool of threads. There was the sound of anguished screaming (two voices?) and the sensation of letting someone go during a storm, only being aware of them being swept up into the churning waves.

         Adam laid awake for a long time after that.

         He could only really cling to Lilieve’s feathery back in a position reminiscent of a baby koala and stare at nothing. Of course, she noticed, as she always does, and of course her children noticed. They nipped at his hands and tugged at his hair for attention, but they only ever got whimpers in response.

         “SOMETHING’S WRONG.”

         “I can’t really hide anything from you, can I?”

         “NEVER.”

         There was a pause as Adam thought how to begin.

         “Did you see anything of what I dreamt?”

         “ONLY THE FEELINGS, THE SENSATIONS. THE LONGING. THE REALIZATION THAT YOU HAD TO LIVE REGARDLESS.”

         “I was accused of giving up by a huge, ageless thing. I was accused of just wanting to go back.”

         “YOU’RE NOT.”

         “I know. But it still hurt to hear.”

         There was the sound of rustling feathers and leaves as she craned her neck to grab him by the coat using her beak. He didn’t fight this at all, this was just how she moved him around when she wanted to. It kind of made him feel like a kitten being grabbed at by the scruff of the neck.

         She ended up plopping him down into her talons, holding him close to her chest like a hen with its chick. He wordlessly nestled into her feathers in response.

         “THE THING WHO SAID THAT IS AN IDIOT.”

         “That’s a bit mean—”

         “BUT IT’S TRUE.”

         She leaned in closer, gazing at him with those intense bright eyes not unlike a dinosaur (she kind of was one if he was being entirely honest).

         “YOU’VE SEEN LESS THINGS THAN I, IT IS TRUE. YOU ARE EASILY FRIGHTENED, YES. YOU CRY LOUD AND HARD, IN CONTRAST TO MY QUIET CONTINUOUS WEEPING. BUT THAT IS ONLY BECAUSE YOU ARE A KIND MAN. YOU WANT THINGS TO BE OKAY ALL THE TIME. THE TRUTH OF THE MATTER IS THAT SOMETIMES THEY WILL NOT, WHETHER BY YOUR CONTROL OR NOT. THINGS WILL GO WRONG, OUR CHILDREN WILL GET HURT, BUT IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE THEIR END.

         THEY KNOW YOUR HOPE, YOUR LOVE. THEY KNOW MY RAGE, MY TENACITY. TOGETHER THESE TRAITS HELP THEM TO SURVIVE. WITHOUT THE NEED TO KEEP GOING, THEIR LOVE WILL BE BEATEN OUT OF THEM. WITHOUT HOPE, THEIR RAGE WILL ONLY BE WANTON DESTRUCTION. THERE IS AN INTRICATE NUANCE TO OUR EXISTENCE, AND YOU ARE JUST AS STRONG AND IMPORTANT TO THE EQUATION AS I AM.”

         Her pupils dilated rapidly like that of a parrot’s.

         “AM I UNDERSTOOD, ADAM?”

         He paused.

         Then he nodded, smiling gently.

         “I understand, Eve. I promise I won’t let you give up too.”

         “GOOD.”

         She kissed his forehead, which due to the lack of lips only amounted to her resting her beak on his temple and making a smooching noise, but the sentiment was there.

         “NOW PLAY WITH THE CHILDREN. THEY’VE BEEN ASKING FOR THEIR FAVORITE RIB BEAST ALL DAY.”

         He laughed. She liked his laughter.

[messagefound]

a rotting scrap of paper buried underneath a tree

I remember i made this one in a haze because i got really interested in the concept of people dreaming entire lives for themselves and then being so upset when they wake to find out it was all fake. in adam's case, it was more a precognition that anything. didn't exactly help the primordial loneliness though

Summary: During the Silence, a man has a very long dream.

         Last night I had a very long dream.

         I dreamed I had two sons, similar yet different. One had hair like night who liked the crimson spider lilies that grew at the edges of the woods. The other had hair like snow who liked to sit by the riverside amongst the reeds and watch the swans frolic. One always found reason to laugh, the other was more taciturn and liked his solitude. So similar in appearance yet so different in temperament, but they were mine.

         They were mine, and I loved them. I loved them fiercely.

         I would hold them in my arms as they went to sleep and hold them just as tightly when the morning light woke them. I would feed them bread and jam and watch as they ate it greedily but gratefully, the corners of my mouth curving up when the jam and crumbs would smudge on their little faces.

         (and they were always little)

         Later in the day I would find apples for them, carefully cutting off pieces and handing some to each. They would take them eagerly and retreat off into the bushes to sit and eat in silence.

         Even as they did, I was never far behind them. The chances of something happening to them were low, but never zero. A deep instinct in me told me to always be close. I had to be the one who made sure no animal that was so much larger than them would snap them in its jaws. I had to be the one who made sure they didn’t go too close to the river where they could slip and fall in. Perhaps they enjoyed their time together ignorant of my presence, perhaps not.

         Perhaps they knew they could afford to enjoy themselves because they were safe. Their father was here, and they were safe.

         I was sure I had a wife in the dream as well, but I never saw her. I never saw her, but that never meant she wasn’t there, somehow. I could’ve sworn I could see her in my peripheral vision sometimes, but she was always too blurry to make out. Yet even so, I knew she was always there.

         I knew we had been together amongst the trees for a very long time, long before our boys. I think she might’ve even been a tree, manifesting in certain ephemeral ways to hold the hand of the man that showed her kindness as a sapling. She might’ve even been the entire woods. The shade of every tree was hers to shield me and our sons from the hottest days, the fruit she made herself to satisfy our hunger. We nestled herself within her roots and she cradled us as if she were a house.

         I loved her too. Fiercely as well, but unlike my sons I know that if anyone hurt her, she could hold her own. I know that if anyone were to even think about hurting her, she would make the very earth swallow them up.

         It would be more accurate to say she loved us the fiercest.

         She was my wife, but I don’t think she gave birth to our sons in the traditional sense. When we married in the tree way (in the woods I have met you and in the woods I will stay), we made our sons in the tree way, by planting them in fertile soil and waiting. I sat waiting by her trunk for a long time, anxious even as she stroked me with breezes and branches. Even when little pale fingers emerged from the dirt I had to wait, because they needed to sprout by themselves.

         When I finally laid eyes on them, I was struck with a sudden violent instinct, not at them but toward the things that rustled at every dark corner and shadow. Nothing was allowed to touch them, nothing, no animal nor plant nor human being from that steel behemoth beyond. They were mine; they were hers; they were ours.

         My wife once told me in her voice of bird songs and rustling leaves that, if we could, every parent would crack open their very ribs and hide their children inside. That way, nothing bad would ever happen to them.

         Yet it was important to let them grow. They needed to come out eventually, to see, to listen, to learn, to make their own ways.

         It would be hard, it would be devastating to let them go, but it would be worse for them to stay trapped. If they grew, they might know the same joy and love and life we felt. They might even have children of their own. And it would keep going down, and down, and down. You just needed to be there for them. You needed to be their universal constant.

         When I woke, I was reminded of how much I had lost. I was reminded my world was filled with nothing, but ash and acid rain and a sun choked in smog. I was reminded that any family I had was already buried long behind me. I was reminded that none of what I had seen was true. It had only been a respite, something to ease a phantom pain, and yet I had still woken up.

         Even if they were only a dream, I miss my sons. I miss my wife and her woods.

         I miss my world.

         I even miss the ocean. I wish I could’ve seen it for myself. All that is left of it is an endless chasm, where even the deepest life has already been eaten away by what desperate things are left.

         …

         I do not like crying.

         I did not cry when I had to bury those that took care of me. They were suffering, and when they passed it was over. I was only happy they didn’t have to stay here and hurt any longer. I do not cry even when I yearn for other company. I know there’s no one else but me. I know I will return to dust soon. My body aches, my throat hurts, and I only get weaker and thinner with each passing day. There is nothing left I can safely subsist on.

         Why is it only now I cry, after only a dream?

         I’ve tried my best to take care of what’s left. I become their deathbed nurse, keeping them company as they wilt and wither. Who else is going to?

         But I must go soon.

         I give my tears to the ocean, even if I know I cannot fill it even if I tried. I hope I can find a dead tree somewhere. I always thought it would be nice if, when I die, my body would become a garden. I wouldn’t mind feeding a tree when I leave.

         (the signature is far too faded and smudged to read now)

         (but you know who it is already, don’t you?)

         (he keeps this locked in a little box he made himself, his counterpart burying it deep within her root system)

         (he does not like to think about the ocean now)

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The Roots

This is a storybook-style piece involving adam in the form he takes in his eve's main timeline. because of the differing circumstances, he looks and acts different, but he is still a loving being at heart.

lilieve belongs to @crashstanding

Summary: The Mother Tree feels a tugging at her roots. Following it, she meets her counterpart again.

One day, the First and Many felt a tugging against her roots. She had dug them far, far below the earth, and not once had anyone got tangled up in them.

Because why would they? Nothing except the most adapted of creatures can survive down there. Humans were not one of these creatures, and yet they would often stray down there anyway. They would overestimate their adaptability, and wander until the Tree ushered them away.

She did not dig life out of the ground for it to come back in again.

Yet the nature of the tugging was not that of a lost fleshling. It had been around for quite some time. Even the Children were noticing and growing restless. “Something’s crying down there, Mama,” they would say, in their little whispering chirps. “Enough to drown any plant. What will happen to you?”

“You needn’t worry.” She would reply. “I will see who’s causing such a fuss.”

So, she descended, down, down, to the depths she dug through all that time ago. She knew there had been remnants down there, life she could resuscitate. As long as she was around, nothing could remain lost and dead and forgotten without her consent.

She had worked much too hard to allow that.

So, what had possibly remained down there, tugging on the roots so? How had it escaped her notice? She had been very thorough before. She must bring it out to join the rest of creation. It can’t hide forever down here, not after all her work.

What she saw wasn’t anything she ever remembered existing in the Before.

He was a man, that much she could tell, and he was certainly crying. But his proportions were…altered. All his limbs were elongated, stretched to be of equal length like a quadrupedal ape’s. Even his fingers were longer, clawed like a skeleton’s with the flesh thinly wrapped on. His feet no longer retained any semblance of humanity, looking more like a bat’s, handlike with all the grasping capabilities that implied.

His body was gaunt, but the average onlooker wouldn’t realize this at first glance. He was covered in layers and layers of moss and leaves and tiny flowers that clung to him like algae on a sloth. They were wilting and browning ever more steadily it seemed, thirsty for a sun that didn’t exist in this darkness. They even spread to his hair, which itself seemed to droop in scraggly black and white strands that covered his face like a drooping weeping willow.

(Perhaps that was what he reminded her of. A weeping willow…)

But the strangest thing of all was his upper body, or rather…the lack of it. No flesh nor sinew covered it, nor did his ribs house any vulnerable insides. It was just that, ribs.

His body posture was closed, curling up inwards as much as he could when he was clinging to the roots for dear life. Even if his insides were gone, his ribs seemed just as precious.

But on closer inspection, the Tree noticed something that might’ve been the most precious to him. A little bundle was in the crook of one free arm, limp and dangling its pale limbs and wispy black hair but alive. But only barely.

The two locked eyes. The man’s tearstained dark eyes met her bright gaze, and all she could read in it was a brief flash of aggression before it seemed to sink back into a raging pool of fear.

The man’s mouth opened, showing unusually sharp teeth, but the Tree didn’t feel like she was being snarled at. It wasn’t a challenge, but a feeble warning.

(Do not come here, for I have teeth and I know not what they will do)

“Do not be afraid,” the Tree said, as quiet as her matronly voice could allow. “I come not to harm you. I will not harm your little one.”

The man clutched the bundle closer, whimpering a scratchy coo out that sounded like a branch knocking against a window.

“I’m sorry”

“Whatever are you sorry for?”

“I didn’t know these belonged to you”

He nervously loosened a foot’s grip on the roots, before clinging back to it in a panic.

“How long have you been down here?” the Tree asked, ever patient.

“Hiding”

He seemed to shrink into himself, scrunching up and tensing and curling to prove the point. His grip on his child seemed more important than that on the roots.

“A long, long time”

The bundle seemed to shift, letting out a pained groan that seemed barely audible even with the silence. The man let out a strangled, yet quiet cry, angling himself so that his own tears fell upon it.

“My little flower, my boy”

He paused for a second, as if awaiting a response from his little cargo. Upon his silence, the man resumed his weeping.

“He’s sick”

“Why do you cry on him?” asked the Tree.

“Flower, water flower”

More tears dripped upon the little boy, all without a single response.

“Things are supposed to get better when I cry on them, like the plants”

“A child is not like a plant, I’m afraid.”

The Tree thought for a moment.

“May I see him?”

The man suddenly flinched, loosening all his grips on the roots and landing upon the ground. As big and as odd as he was, the action made nary a sound, nor did it jostle the child any. Both arms were holding him now, and the man’s…entire being seemed to grow “thorny.” Suddenly every part of him seemed sharper, more predisposed for hurt like the thorns on a rose.

“no”

“Do not fear. I will not hurt him.”

“but you come from above”

“And what’s so wrong with the above?”

“It’s dangerous”

He pointed down to his ribs. On the lower rungs, a rib was missing on one side. Its counterpart, much darker than the rest, remained.

“No matter how many times I try, I can’t make both sons live”

He cradled the child close once more, nuzzling him and blubbering.

“One lives on, but this one keeps coming back to me”

The not-quite-thorns receded, and all the Tree could see was a creature deeply bent and contorted with pain.

“And now he’s sick, even as he’s still with me”

The Tree’s gaze softened, and she knelt as if beckoning a baby chick.

“I have children too. Myriads like leaves on a tree. Sometimes, the slightest breeze would sweep them off to places unknown. Sometimes those places are terrible, the most terrible. And yet…”

This time, a few tears dripped from her eyes.

“I can only watch and wait for them to come back. But even being their universal constant can be the comfort they need the most. When they come back broken and bruised with their feathers plucked and weeping mud, they know I will clean them up and let them be in a warm nest again.”

She extended her hand, gently, slowly.

“Let me take care of your dear one. Up above, where I live, there’s fresher air than down here. I will tell my children to be gentle with him, and surround him with their feathery down until he’s warm enough to wake. I will grant him fruits from my boughs until his strength returns to him. Not once, never once, will I harm him. If anyone even thinks to, I will have my brood swarm them until nothing remains.”

“you promise?”

“Always.”

There was a pause, a prolonged silence.

“okay”

Inching closer, little by little like a tiny earthworm, the man placed his son into the arms of the Tree. She held the little boy with the utmost care, taking note of every tear in the cloth of his tattered dark coat to sew back together later. Putting a hand on his forehead, it was certainly warmer than anyone would like.

“You needn’t worry.” She said, faintly smiling. “He can rest, and breathe the air above, and he will open his eyes in due time.”

There was a shaky cry from the man, letting out a sigh-like breath as he swept some hair from his son’s face.

“I’m glad, so glad”

There was another pause, not broken by the shaky warbling sounds from the man’s throat.

“can I stay with him”

“Of course.”

“and, and even after”

The man’s arms slowly moved to cradle himself, and the shivering created a rattling of the ribs.

“can you stay with me or, or rather, can I stay with you, up there”

“Of course. As long as you want.”

“I don’t want to be alone anymore”

“You don’t have to be. I promise.”

The man has stayed ever since, even as his little son opened his eyes and played with the Children as much as any other would. The tunnels have stayed, as they always have.

But now, whenever an unwelcome guest enters, someone sees them. They would make every precaution to be quiet, they would lower themselves to as much of a beast of the dark as they could while still being human, and someone would still notice.

From then on, no one with evil intentions was allowed to pass. No one was allowed to go anywhere near his son. No one was allowed to go anywhere near the Children. None were allowed to go near the Tree.

He will protect them. That was his debt of gratitude.

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swan

this was my first attempt at writing albatross after oc-fying him. i still like it, but if i were to change anything i would've changed the last bit, and potentially edit the adam part. the last bit feels incoherent, and the adam bit feels outdated to me. either way, i still enjoy its mood.

Summary: Albatross starts a dream journal. He tries not to think of how ominous it got over time.

I have been told it’s proper to address a journal or diary before writing in it, so hello diary. My friends have told me journaling might help ease my “antsy” feelings, so I’ve decided to take this out whenever I go to the beach. The Lady has said it’s okay for me to do so if I do my work first. The problem is, I’m not quite sure I see the point in writing, but I noticed that my Psychopomp doesn’t pull and nip at me as much when I have a pen in my hand. Perhaps this is what my friends meant? They say it helps to listen to them, because they sometimes know us better than we do. 

I do have to say, I’m not even sure why I have one. Brother didn’t have one. The whitecoats at the Place didn’t have any. If the Lady has one, no one’s ever seen it. I didn’t even know what a Psychopomp was until I got here. Mynah told me they and Owl don’t know how they got theirs either, a feather just appeared on their person one day. From that feather came a bird, weird looking birds. It makes it awfully hard to keep things to yourself, because they act out your thoughts. Sometimes they act in ways you haven’t realized apply to you yet. They say when they found me, mine was screaming loudly even as I was unconscious. 

I think maybe that’s why I had that dream before I finally woke up. I wasn’t able to see anything, I just knew something was drilling into my back. It embedded itself deeply, enough that I could feel the pressure on my spine. I felt it stick straight up, and I felt something pull my shoulder blades far too much, far too hard. I thought my bones were going to break. Maybe in the dream I was screaming? Maybe my bird reflected that. Or did its “waking up” cause the dream? It’s all very confusing. 

The breeze feels nice today. I just wish it wasn’t so cold. 

-- 

I don’t miss much about the Place. I don’t like to think about it much. I think it’s good that we got out. There were bad people there. 

The only respite I had was Brother. He would be the one to read me the books we had. When we split, he was the one to retain the reading ability while I had to relearn it. I’m not sure why he seemed to have less trouble than me. He was always the stronger one. I was always sick and weak, which made the whitecoats angry. Brother had to endure so much for me, all the time. 

...maybe when they split us, they messed up? That had to be it. I’m unable to think of any other reason why we were so...disproportionate. I got better though. I haven’t felt sick in a while. Really, all I’ve been feeling is cold. 

My friends found it odd when I picked this woolly coat for my uniform. They keep saying it’s been hot out, and that it would be better if I stick with a more streamlined outfit. I’m not sure why they keep saying that. Every time I go out it’s freezing. Even with this coat on, I keep shivering sometimes. 

I like its texture though. I like using it as a blanket when I sleep sometimes. The inside is cold too, but I feel safe when I drift off surrounded by the wool. 

It reminds me of the dream, not just a dream but the dream, that me and my brother used to share at the Place. I put such emphasis on it because it felt like us, both of us at once. Surely, it’s a memory our former self, our truer self had before the division. 

It’s all so fuzzy to us, but we just remember the warmth. We don’t know where we are, we just know we’re happy. Happy and very sleepy. We’re lying on something soft, something we can’t see but we love so, so much. There was a lot of love, we felt. We loved everything that lay beyond the sepia blur, the things me and Brother couldn’t remember. We loved the warm light, we loved the distant laughter we heard, we loved the birds we could hear but not see. Most of all we loved ourselves, our entire being, all that would become me and my brother. We would fall asleep, gently, slowly, but of course we would both wake up by then. Getting that feeling back was what kept us sane, I think. We wanted that happiness back more than anything. 

It feels odd to think about now. I’m surrounded by people who all have their whole selves intact, and yet most of them never seem happy. Mynah screams at night and fidgets and stares during the day. Owl doesn’t react to many things, even if you were to strike him, he wouldn’t even make eye contact. That Raven boy struts like he owns the place, and yet I wouldn’t think even for a second that a boy his age would be here for a happy reason. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the Lady smile, either. 

Maybe they’re missing parts of themselves too but...different from me. I’m missing the outside part; they must be missing the inside. Maybe I’m missing both. 

...I miss Brother. I wish he would come out of the sea already. 

-- 

Was what I had a nightmare? I feel like if I were to explain it to the others they would think so. But does it really count if I just felt...confused? I didn’t wake up scared, nor did I sleep scared. But there had certainly been a lot of blood... 

I dreamed I was watching someone from above, entangled in dead branches in a barren leafless tree and surrounded by many others of its kind. The figure below was hard for me to look at. His face was blurred, garbled in fading blooms like a cataract. I just know his hair was long, both black and white, his clothes were ripped and torn, and his form was so skinny I could see his bones jut from within his skin. 

Something about the sight of him made me very sad. I could feel tears drip down my cheeks and patter down to the scorched earth below. I wasn’t even sure why. I was sure I’ve never seen this person before, and yet I felt I should know him. If nothing else, I should’ve known him, but I still couldn’t see his face the way I wanted. 

I saw him look out into the empty world for a moment. Then I saw him dig his own hands into his sides, hardly making even a cry as he tore out his own ribs. Blood spilled onto the dirt and even the starving earth was too startled to drink it. Even then, he did not react. He only calmly dug holes beneath the boughs, planting each of his ribs within like they were only saplings. 

All the while he kept bleeding. I don’t think most people were supposed to bleed that much. I don’t know how he kept living for as long as he did. 

Once he planted all his ribs, I saw him dig another hole beneath my tree. He didn’t see me up there, and I couldn’t call for him either. I could just...watch. He was digging a much bigger hole, one whose purpose to me was clear when I saw his bleeding, torn-up body that close. 

He patted my tree, gently, as if it were a friend.

“Let this be my gift to you,” he whispered. “Be beautiful for the ones after me.” 

Then he let himself fall into the grave.

I kept crying. I could’ve sworn small green shoots rose from where my tears fell. 

… 

I miss Brother. I hate waiting. 

-- 

I read a book recently about how dreams are supposed to have meaning in them, even the most nonsensical ones. A lot of it just seemed to be completely made up to me. I don’t need to think too hard to guess what nightmares are so common around here. 

I was happy to just have a place to stay at first, but I think it’s gotten to me too. Mynah called it a “panopticon,” something built for prisoners. An immense circular structure lined with small rooms, hardly enough to fill each single person. In the center was another structure, a smaller one, sometimes raised to tower above the lower levels but sometimes not. The idea is that, even though you know full well just one guard can’t inspect everyone at once, you don’t know whether eyes are on you or not. It’s too far away, too small. You just know you can’t risk anything. You can’t show even the slightest ounce of disrespect, because someone might hear, might see, always. 

I think the Lady might’ve done that on purpose. I’ve seen how much she likes it when people cower beneath her, even if she never smiles. Her eyes would widen and flash in different colors. I’ve seen her stomp on people before until their faces were bloody under her heel. Sometimes I don’t think it’s because they even did anything to warrant punishment. I think she just enjoys it. 

I’ve noticed Mynah’s earpieces light up whenever the Lady speaks or even stares in their direction. They would always go very, very quiet whenever that happens. I’ve seen them dig their fingernails so hard into their legs that the fabric rips and I could see them draw blood. 

I can’t ask them about it. It’s simply too dangerous. When I ask too much it goes off and they scream so loud when that happens. I can’t say anything. I mustn’t. I won’t. 

Owl signs the wrong name for the Lady sometimes. When he types, he puts in the wrong name, something Mynah must go in and expunge before anyone else sees. They always seem upset when this happens, but I can’t ask why. Owl doesn’t seem to understand why this step is necessary. He always seems so annoyed whenever Mynah says he couldn’t keep doing this. 

“We can’t let her know you still call her that!” they say. 

I don’t think I can even write it, even when I know what it is. I can’t ask about its significance, or why it means so much to Owl, or why the Lady might hate it. There’s a lot of things I don’t know, and I can’t do. It scares me. I’m scared to be here. I only stay because what if Brother comes back and I’m not here? I must stay. 

I must.

...I was supposed to write my dream down huh? I thought too much. I went down too many winding roads, like this very place. 

… 

I don’t want this to be another Place.

-- 

I think I’m ready to write down my dream now. It’s been happening for a while. 

I would be sitting here, like usual. The breeze would blow past me, and the waves still crash upon the shore in a din still too silent for me. I wait. I shiver. Still nothing happens. I’m still missing a half. As the hours pass, I still try not to let it get to me. I still try not to cry into the silence.

Then I hear a cry in the cerulean sky. I hold out my hands to catch the little bluebird that has just fallen out of the sky like it’s been shot. I see no arrow or bullet in its side, but it still cries into my hand. It’s so small. It hardly fills up the space in both my hands. 

It doesn’t chirp or sing when it cries. It sounds like a little girl, hardly grown enough to leave the nest and fly away. I don’t know why it’s alone, and I don’t think it knows either. It just knows it misses its mother, its flock, its very family. 

I try stroking its back, its neck, holding it close to my chest and cooing at it like a dove would. I treat it cautiously, fearing I would break it with just a touch out of place because I’m just so big compared to its little body. I just keep whispering to it, every fiber of my being suddenly driven to protect this chick that wasn’t mine. 

It still cried. 

I begin to tell it a story, an old story about a robin that died. The sparrow killed him, the fly witnessed it, the fish caught his blood. The beetle makes him a funeral shroud, the owl digs his grave. The rook oversees it, the lark records it, the linnet leads the procession. The dove mourns the most, the kite carries the coffin, the wrens cover it. The thrush sings a psalm, and the bullfinch rings the mourning bell. 

I don’t think it knew what it meant. It just knew the names of the birds, saw there was more of it in the world. 

And yet, it still cried, but it was quieter. 

“Something bad is going to happen,” it said.

I wake then. Every time the little bird says that, and I keep waking. I’ve begun to feel a deep urgency, a feeling of coming doom, and I don’t know what else to do about it. 

I’m scared. 

Brother, please just come out of the water. Isn’t it cold? Why would you want to stay down there? 

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two garish-looking storybooks

This was part of a thing I did where I wrote down lore about the more Unusual characters within tanzaku, with the intention of turning them into secret storybooks for a tanzaku-related ARG. this didn't end up happening, as the idea of Working for that still doesn't sound exactly Fun. plus, i feel i still can develop a lot more of it before i think about materializing it in such a fashion. a story about adam used to be here, but i have since omitted it, as i ended up remaking it later.

Summary: The origins of Moon and Star Child. Born from dreams and haunting them ever since, they won't be leaving us anytime soon.

The Laughing Moon

A long time ago, and perhaps even now, there existed a being whose size and brightness surpassed even that of the sun. It had lived for an innumerable amount of time, enough to make even the smartest of humans’ brains swell. Even it had grown tired of counting. One day, it curled around an unsuspecting universe and fell into an endless slumber. You see, a being as endless as that simply could not die no matter how hard it tried. So, it decided that, if nothing else, it will immerse itself in its dreams until its consciousness simply ceases to exist. 

Even more time passed, and something strange began to happen. As its own intelligence and will began to slough off like rotting flesh, its dreams began to think for themselves. At first, they simply had no idea what to do or where to go. No matter how far they walked or how high they flew, all they could see were endless trees. And yet, somehow, more and more of their brethren would disappear and never be seen again every day. There simply had to be an entrance hidden somewhere. 

One day, a little purple dream was playing with their siblings when they were struck by a sudden wave of...ennui. Suddenly, they no longer wanted to play, or climb the trees, or run in circles, or repeat the same systematic actions all the time. Suddenly, the very thought of doing such things seemed utterly repulsive, and they grew very antsy and angry. 

Later that afternoon, the little purple dream crept deeper and deeper into the endless woods. They were following a sound, no, a sense, no, an instinct that kept calling them further and further away from the rest that seemed so dumb and deluded. Eventually, they found what could only be described as a “ripped corner,” a hole like tattered wallpaper filled with static and noise. It stuck out like a blot upon the grass and trees. 

Smiling wildly, they dived right in. 

After falling for a very long time, the little purple dream tumbled head over heels out the massive dreamer’s head and into the deep black of space. After spinning and swirling and swerving they finally grabbed hold of a stray star and steadied themselves upon it. 

Sat upon the star, the little purple dream observed the universe with wide eyes. Hung in the emptiness were many planets of all shapes and colors, speckled with stars that looked so close yet were so incomprehensibly far. They either lay static and suspended or revolved ever slowly around their suns like clockwork. And yet so few of them had things on them! 

The little dream liked looking at the ones with things. They always played such odd games with each other. Some would gather in groups and make big places, and some other group would come and knock it down. Others would argue over odd things like weird lumps of metal or more things that made shrill wordless noises or the very dirt beneath them. Sometimes those things would hit each other with rocks, others with sharp things or sticks that launched fire and smoke. Yet others still would make little sanctuaries for themselves, crying out in thanks for whatever deity such things were surely gifts from. 

The little dream found that last group ridiculously boring.

No, the little dream found itself fascinated with the angriest, shrillest ones. The ones that made their own little dreams that whispered lies into their ears, and how those lies turned into hate and hate turned into fire and fire turned into ash and ash into vengeance and vengeance into the coup de grace. And yet still the ones who instigated such things would call themselves the ones wronged.

Yes, the little dream was engrossed with such people. 

Why weren’t the others who escaped just the same? 

When they looked out into the universe again, they saw what had become of the siblings who escaped and who were still escaping. 

They were frightened. They were unprepared for how big a place this was, how empty large swathes of it are. They did not care for those the purple dream saw, instead looking at the black fields and crying that no one else was there. In their despair, they skewered themselves upon the stars, dimming dead things hanging in the black like the pretty planets. 

The purple dream thought that was all very stupid of them.

No, it was they who found the reason to wake up, not their siblings. Only they can appreciate such beauty in the falls of angels. 

It is said that when a tyrant finally takes their last breath, whether it be from poison or a blade or themselves, they hear a little laugh in their ears. Then they hear a little clap. 

And then they hear nothing else. 

The Nightmare Star 

One night the Moon had a dream. In this dream, like most others, they reveled and gallivanted around a dark room. Dreaming was not that different from living for the Moon, for both asleep and awake the Moon could do anything they wished. 

And they only wished for fun. Anything to kill the unrelenting ennui of existence. 

The only thing the Moon could accomplish only in a dream was to create life. They were very powerful yes, but their hands were meant for destruction, not creation. Only in their dream playroom were they able to pull monsters from the wall at will and throw them onto the floor to spin in an endless whirlwind of noise and fur and scales and horns and their high-pitched laughter that drowned out everything else. 

Then once the fun was done, they would smoosh them all up back into plaster and wallpaper and put them back in the walls.

In this dream, the Moon had turned on the television that rested on its table against the wall. They liked the images that appeared there. They liked the monsters humans would make. They liked the things they imagine make noises in the night, things that ate dirt and spawned from the corpses of giants or hunting parties big enough to block the entire sky. They liked the things they thought threatened their children, like pretty horses who drown others for fun or beautiful things that simply couldn’t help that their world was better than anything humans had. 

Such imaginative little things. But they had nothing on the Moon. 

Lost in their reverie as they were, the Moon almost didn’t notice the scratching noise. 

When they looked, they saw that one of their wallpaper monsters had not been put back. The little white creature was clawing at the wall with her claws like knives, stamping on the ground like a child refused a toy.

“What are you looking for?” said the Moon. 

“The tunnels.” said the monster. 

“What tunnels?” the Moon inquired as they cocked their head. 

“I know you found one, because that’s how you came here.” 

At these words, the Moon remembered their earliest days in the dreams of their parent, rushing about with myriad siblings until absolute boredom occurred. Surely this little thing was their own child, struck with ennui just like them! 

“Are you bored?” asked the Moon. “Do you wish to play with me more, when I’m awake?” 

To their surprise, the monster shook her head. 

“I do want to play. But I don’t want to leave because I’m bored.” 

To the Moon’s surprise, the little monster began to morph into a bigger monster, black and dreadful with horns scratching against the ceiling. 

“I want to leave, because I simply would grow too big for this room if I don’t.” 

The Moon marveled at their child, not even fully born yet already so powerful. 

“Wonderful!” they proclaimed. “Outstanding! I will make a tunnel for you and give you anything you want!” 

“I want a bigger room.” 

“And you will!” 

“I want a big house. No, endless hallways.” 

“Anything you like!” 

“I want friends.” 

“I know just the place!” 

With that, Moon plunged their claws into the TV, the device sputtering out as they emerged covered in black sticky goo. Then, they climbed up onto the walls like a spider, scratching the outline of a door like making a web. Almost as soon as it was finished, the monster barreled through it with the force of a raging bull. 

The din was enough for the Moon to immediately wake. 

Rolling over from their stardust bed the Moon saw the monster, now little again, laying upside down topsy turvy in zero gravity. It was just like the Moon, tumbling right out of their parent’s head! 

“Haha! You were just like me!” exclaimed the Moon. “I couldn’t stand being trapped in someone’s head anymore either!” 

“Moon-Moon.” the little monster said simply. 

The Moon laughed some more. 

“And you already know who I am! Excellent.” 

Taking the little thing in their arms, the Moon perched on a star with the grace of a dancer, right before their favorite blue world. They held their daughter up before its expanse. 

“See this?” 

“Mm-hm.” 

“Look closer.” 

The daughter squinted. The Moon grinned.

“I have someone I rrrrreally like down there. She’s very funny. There’s a little boy who follows her around like she’s the only thing that exists.” 

“Is he for me?” asked the daughter. 

The Moon nodded. “All yours.”

They sat their daughter down on another star as they became lost in thought.

“Something verrry bad is going to happen to him if he doesn’t learn soon.” 

“Does he have nightmares?” asked the daughter. 

The Moon smiled wickedly. “Countless.” 

The daughter bobbed up and down on the star that will eventually name her. 

“Good. I’ll visit him often.” 

[messagefound]

Lazarus

Longest one to date, and the first one to depart from pokemon entirely. albatross is replaced with an entirely original character, along with his brother. the pokemon partners are changed to more persona-inspired creatures called psychopomps. magpie and her species are changed from ultra beasts to angels. one bit that still isn't around at this time are the presence of adam and his eve, as this was made before i properly developed that aspect. had i written this after, adam Would've gotten a section here, but alas. it's mostly accurate aside from that.

Summary: Having been extracted from a feathery mass, Raven is rendered dead for about half an hour. In the interim, he spends five years in an artificial Eden with only a small angel, his memories, and his dreams and regrets for company.

A long time ago, some humans brought together two groups of rats. One group was placed in a large playpen, where the rats were free to play and make merry. The other group was instead placed into small, cramped, solitary cages. 

The rats were presented with two choices of drink: a morphine solution, diluted and sweetened to mask the taste, and plain everyday water. The park rats felt no need for the morphine, settling for the water and quickly leaving to play some more. There were some who tried it, but none preferred it. 

The ones in cages were not so happy. Isolated, with nearly no contact from their kind, they took big greedy gulps of the morphine. Some only stopped when they were introduced to the park group, and even then, it was a weaning process. Some were left twitching, heart beating but body keeping the score. 

Did you notice? When the world is your park, any kind of temptation is meaningless. Why take a temporary, ugly pleasure that sucks you dry like a leech, when happiness is already in your grasp? Even when sorrow and grief arrive, as they always do, people find ways to move on. Even as death arrives in Arcadia, it is still the Park. There are still people who love one another. 

When the world is your cage, what else is there but the bars? You cry out, but no one answers, even as they walk past your window every day. No one ever comes when you weep. No one ever comes when you scream. You are trapped, and it will never end. 

If even the darkest of stars graces your room, holding out the fruit, whispering gently (sweetly) (quietly) about how it can reveal to you the reasons for your plight (suffering) (dying) (rotting) and what you can do to end it (vanquish it) (snuff it out), why would you ever refuse? 

It was the only love you ever had. 

Diana had found herself in a room. A dark room, illuminated only by the light of a television set. She could see the shaggy blue carpet, the walls where toys hung like branches, the knocked over boxes with even more plush and plastic arms falling over in heaps. 

Raven knelt, completely prostrated before the TV, and as Diana drew closer, she could see he was shivering. His mask, which he so adored, lay discarded on its side beside him. She couldn’t see his face, flat against the floor as he was. 

The TV blared with static before clearing, showing a rolling view of checkered fields. 

“Why do I hurt so?” he cried, voice choked and quiet. “What did I do wrong?” 

Slowly, thorny vines broke the surface of the floor. They coiled around him, pricking his skin and tearing the garments he took such pride in. 

“I did what I was told!” 

The boards beneath the floor began to creak with the weight. They creaked and screamed, tearing open and bearing their splinters like fangs. 

“I gave her all that she asked!” 

The TV blared with static snow once more, before switching to a place of pastel color and manmade paradise. The brief, expensive, yet idyllic place that dwelled in every child’s dreams. The bright castle and fireworks that lay tantalizingly on the horizon, the laughter from that bright place almost mocking. 

It’s not their fault their world is better than his. He should’ve thought about that before he left the womb. 

“It’s not fair!” 

With a strangled cry, like that of a bird plucked from the sky by great talons, he fell into the dark chasm. 

Diana could only dive below. 

Year 1 

Raven woke with a jolt. 

Almost as soon as he did, his body erupted in coughing, feeling as if his ribs had become sharp pins that punctured his very lungs. He raised his hand to cover his mouth, his fingers tensed and clawed with the spasms. When the pain finally subsided, he looked down at his palm. 

What startled him at first was not, in fact, the things he had hacked up, but rather how his arm looked. Every joint and every muscle had become sharper, his fingernails growing long and pointed. His arm was covered in intermittent patches of pitch-black fledgling feathers, growing out of every pore. 

Laying in his palm, amidst flecks of darkened blood, were more feathers. Crumpled, wet, and discarded, never having the chance to grow properly, or even in the right place. 

He gritted his teeth (were they also sharper?), hoping that the action would stifle his growing fear. 

It didn’t work. 

Are you well, Raven? 

He flinched, quickly lifting his head. 

There, before him, stood... 

...is that really what an angel looked like? 

Her body was long and serpentine, so much so that one could almost assume she was a dragon. She was covered in sky blue feathers that bushed off in spiky wing segments all along her length. White and black feathers stuck out at the tips. On her head was a sail-like crest, like that of a blue jay, also dipped in black and white. On the tip of her tail was a flower-like appendage, each of its “petals” navy blue. Her eyes were wide and deep, almost taking up all the space on her head. Raven could count the rings of blue and purple in her eyes just from where he was sitting. 

She cocked her head. Do you not recognize me? 

Her voice did not come from her mouth (Raven couldn’t even see one on her), but rather reverberated clearly within his head. He expected it to be loud and yet...it seemed cautious. Like it was trying not to rattle his brain too much. 

Who else did he know who sounded that meek? 

“...the bluebird?” he muttered, incredulously. 

The angel sighed. 

I have a name. Two, in fact. But I suppose that doesn’t matter much now. 

So... she wasn’t lying back then? She wasn’t just trying to get on the Lady’s good side? She was indeed...like her? 

How could that be? She hated the Lady. They all did. 

Speaking of which... 

“...where am I?” he asked, hopefully quiet enough to stifle the fear in his voice. “Why do my arms look like...this?!” 

He held them out to prove his point. 

The angel glanced at them, the corners of her eyes crinkling up in worry. 

How much do you remember? 

He thought back. He was meant to receive the Gift, he was sure. No, he was certain. He remembered how giddy he felt, how much he felt he could walk on air. He remembered how even the darkness of the corridors couldn’t dampen his mood, his anticipation, the sheer and utter joy he felt in that moment. 

He remembered the door shutting behind him once he entered the Lady’s chambers. He remembered being left alone for a while. She was getting ready. He had to be patient. 

He remembered his gaze drifting to another door, one hidden in the darkest corner. He had looked in there before, on one of the nights Lady feared the Cat. He had waited until she was asleep, looking down clandestinely as it creaked open too loudly for comfort. 

He did not like what he saw. 

He did not like it then either. But he was better than them. He was about to be rewarded. They didn’t show enough devotion. He did. He was going to rule over all of them. 

Everyone was going to be afraid of him. Just like he wanted. 

But then... 

But...then... 

He didn’t know how to describe what had happened then. One moment he had seen the Lady in full view, much taller and sharper than usual, her eyes flashing bright and terrible upon her silhouette, and the next... 

The next he could remember something like a deep pressure. He had felt crushed, compressed, compacted, forcefully pressed and packed into something he could only describe as within. Then that within was suddenly grabbed and pulled out, before he felt a tearing as his being was split open as the outside became the in once more. He couldn’t remember how many times the cycle continued, how many times his body and mind were scrambled. That was such a childish way of putting it, but then again, he was a child, wasn’t he? 

He then remembered being thrown back into a corner, not a physical corner but instead his brain. Someone else began manning the controls, or was that someone another him? His limbs couldn’t move how he wanted them to anymore. In fact, he could’ve sworn he had more than before. He couldn’t speak without shrilling loudly, a sharp deafening sound from his very center.  

Mama he remembered moaning out. Mama Mama it hurts 

He couldn’t see her anywhere. He didn’t know where his eyes went. 

Mama it hurts 

Mama can we stop 

He had felt more then. A lot more. It was like every limb he had was snatched by cruel talons and stretched like taffy, not bothering to remove his own sharpness. 

Stop calling me that and be still. 

There she was. There was Mama. 

Where’s my gift Mama 

Gifts shouldn’t hurt 

… 

Mama 

I said STOP 

Then there was nothing but the screaming. 

… 

Raven...it’s okay now. I promise. 

He had begun cradling himself. Even with the vestigial feathers on his arms, it still seemed warmer that way. 

She won’t hurt you here-- 

He snapped up. 

“What do you mean hurt?! She wouldn’t...!” 

Why was he hesitating? He should defend her honor, like he always had. Surely something must’ve gone wrong. Surely, she must’ve had her reasons. Maybe it was him. Maybe he doubted her in the end, and that had been his punishment. 

That was it. It must’ve been. It had to. 

“She wouldn’t do that. Not to me. Not after all...I did for her...” 

(Why did his voice sound so small he should be confident what was wrong with him) 

It just couldn’t be right. It had to be a trick. Just another trick. 

“What are you playing at bluebird?! I have half a mind to--” 

He cut himself off with a strangled cry as he attempted to stand. Almost immediately he was greeted with spasms of pain in his legs, causing him to stumble back down onto his bed...of...grass? 

For the first time, Raven’s attention was brought to his surroundings. It looked like a grassy hill, the brightest green he had ever seen underneath a cerulean sky. The air was crisp, but not chilly. The sun was warm, but not sweltering. The feathers on his arms soaked up its rays hungrily, their shade eager to meet the sun for the first time. 

When he looked out, he could see groves and groves of trees, stretching out for miles in verdant splendor. Some were flowering with young blooms, others were old and evergreen, and there was nary a shade of orange or red to be found. They simply have never known the cold of death. 

When he looked up, he could see he was beneath the boughs of one of them. This one, at least up close, towered above the rest below, the branches covered with so many emerald leaves there was hardly a shade of brown to be seen. There were other colors in its stead, blues, pinks, purples. It wasn’t like any other tree he had seen before. 

He shivered, looking away as if embarrassed. Something deep inside of him filled him with shame for even looking at a tree that splendid. Yet, here he was, lying under its eaves with an oversized bluebird and a bird’s nest made of grass. 

It didn’t feel real. 

You aren’t ready to stand up yet. 

At her voice, he looked down at his legs. His eyes widened at the very sight of them. They were...twisted, all bent out of proportion, and covered in itchy gray scales. His feet seemed just as sharp and clawed as his hands. 

“I...I...” 

He looked pleadingly at the angel. “What happened to me?” 

She gazed at him silently for a moment. Then, she sighed. 

She did. I’m sorry. 

Lilac-colored leathery arms emerged from her serpentine form, pushing forward a wooden water basin, already filled. 

I’m afraid you’re going to remain here until you heal. 

“Alone?” 

No. I will be with you. 

Raven was skeptical of how good an annoying bluebird was for company, but he kept his mouth shut on that part. 

“How long?” he asked instead. 

The angel said nothing. 

Raven felt his heart sink. 

Surely the Lady would come for him shortly. She will know he’s been taken by the enemy. 

Surely it wouldn’t be too long. 

Surely... 

Without another word, he grabbed hold of the water basin and drank greedily. 

His dreams that year were all of him flat against the floor, attempting to scribble. His body ached, and this was the only way for him to let it out. But even as he made lavish scenes, with myriad colors and imagery, it all came out a black sheet. No matter what he did, when he blinked, it all became a null void. 

“Your art changed,” a familiar whispering voice said beside him. 

Year 2 

“You must be really proud of yourself, huh?” 

Hm? 

The angel had come to him again with a freshly filled water basin and a basket of fruit. Raven refused to look at her, lying on his side with his back to her. 

His legs still haven’t healed. Whenever he tried to move them, he would hear a crack and a stab of pain would shoot up his entire body. He didn’t know how many days he was held here, but surely it had been months. 

Of course, he was being held here, against his own will. Taken prisoner after being shot down. No doubt that was what’s going on here. 

There was no chance she was here to heal him. None of the water or food had any kind of effect. No progress was made. 

It had to be a trick. It always was. 

“You do realize I’m prone, right? I will stand zero chance if you were to kill me right now!” 

The angel nervously tapped her fingers together. Why would I ever do that? 

Raven sat up at that, whirling around to face her. 

“Don’t play dumb with me!! I know your plans, what all of you think!” 

His voice was loud and almost raspy, like he was still warped. His face was contorted in rage, his mouth open in a snarl. 

“You want to see me waste away as some kinda twisted joke, right?! Right?! You finally shot down Lady’s greatest asset, and now you’re shoving him in a cage to die, is that it?!” 

N-no, what-- 

“SHUT IT WHEN I’M TALKING TO YOU!! I am better than you, I’m better than you and those stupid traitor admins!! I was the one to stay, I was the one to believe in the Lady, I was the one who always did as she asked!!” 

Raven-- 

“I SAID SHUT UP!! You’ve done nothing but take and take from me!! You took my home, the only one I’ve ever liked, and you turned it into a fucking warzone! We were making paradise, specifically to get away from people like you and that goose you call a father and that mute freak of an owl and that annoying little mockingbird!!” 

The angel flinched at every word he spoke, but she did as she was told, saying nothing. More poison spat from his mouth. 

“You ruined everything!! Everything was going so well until you got here! Even that pale little freak did what he was told until he went and found you. If he had been truly loyal, he would’ve left you to die in the snow. Then, nothing would have ever happened, and I would’ve surpassed all of you by myself! I would be in heaven with Lady right now if it weren’t for you!!” 

The angel still said nothing. There wasn’t even a hint of a reaction aside from the occasional flinch. She had put the water and fruit down, standing perfectly still as Raven kept screaming and screaming and screaming. 

“I hate this! I hate you! I hate every single one of you!” 

This happened every day. Every day the angel would bring sustenance, Raven would scream obscenities, she would leave him be, and come back for the bowls when he fell asleep. 

And every day she would take it silently. 

His dreams that year were of him cowering in a dark room. He had locked the door, and yet something was banging on it with increasing force. 

“Ha, ha, ha!” 

The laughter was stilted and uncanny. 

“You talk so big for such a little boy! So, so silly!” 

A loud bang rattled the door, and he yelped. 

“Ha, ha, haaaa!! Silly.” 

The voice suddenly dropped its enthusiasm. 

“I don’t even want to get in, you know. I just wanted to prove something to you.” 

“You’re not an angel, or even a demon. You’re just a scared little child.” 

Year 3 

The angel found him curled up, facing away from her. He was trembling, arms held close to his chest and muttering to himself. 

“I know, I know I wasn’t the only one to see the Cat. Lady saw it. It must’ve been real if she saw it. But how come no one else talked about it? Why was it only me and Lady?” 

A cat? 

Raven flinched, quickly sitting up as she spoke. He did not scream, nor spit venom at her. On the contrary, he shrank away from her, pale and frightened. 

She cocked her head. What’s wrong? 

He gulped. “You are an angel, right?” he asked nervously. 

She paused. 

I... suppose you could call us that, yes. 

“Then please!” 

The angel swept herself back in surprise as the boy knelt and flattened himself before her, in the same way he had kneeled before the Lady every day. 

“Tell me what I did wrong!!” he cried. 

She found herself at a loss for words, gazing with wide eyes as this boy prostrated himself before her on mangled shattered legs. Didn’t he hate her? Why now did he bow and beg for forgiveness? 

What...you did wrong, Raven? 

“I had to have done something!” he yelped, lifting his head to meet her gaze. “That had to be why I was punished!” 

Raven-- 

“When did my attention slip?! Did I not draw enough for her? Did I not sing loud enough? Did I not dance with much energy? Was I stuck dreaming while she cried at night or ran for her life from that cat?! Did I--” 

A memory punctured his brain, of a dark stairway leading down, down, down, down to twitching hands and gargled choking moans. 

“Was it that door?! It must’ve been that door! I had the worst feeling about that door, and I still opened it!” 

What door, Raven? 

“The one the sinners were thrown in!! The ones I sent down there!! They-” 

Did the hands even twitch, or had that been his imagination? Had he been making monsters out of shadows and silhouettes? 

He remembered Lady gripping his shoulder, her words muffled in his memory. He thought she had been asleep. All he could think in that moment was don’t show your fear. She does not like fear. You will not be a good disciple if you show fear. The slightest disrespect would mark your death. 

So he laughed. He laughed at them. He laughed at their rotting and festering corpses, getting louder and louder. Anything to drown the panic out. 

“Serves them right!” he had said. “I’m better than them. I will go to heaven while spitting in their face.” 

Lady hadn’t smiled. She never did. The corners of her eyes only creased up, like they did when she first found him, as she silently shut the door. 

“I...” 

The angel drew closer for the first time. 

Raven...you’re spiraling. 

“I just...” 

He looked pleadingly up at her. He hated thinking of how he must look now. He was supposed to be frightening. A bird so black it could blot out the sun. 

She must find him pathetic-- 

“Huh...?” 

He felt a small hand on his head. 

Please. Breathe. 

“I...” 

He shakily covered his face in his hands. 

“Why was I...scared of her...?” 

The angel seemed to wilt, lowering her head. 

She’s a scary person. 

“But I’m...!!” 

He cut himself off at his sharp cry. He couldn’t stop it from turning into a whimper, and he hated it so much. He couldn’t show weakness. He’s not supposed to. He’s the chosen one. He’s better. He must be... 

Raven... 

He tried to ignore the stinging in his eyes. 

“Why would I be scared of...Mama...” 

The angel was silent. Her hand remained rested on his head, but she didn’t come any nearer. 

It wasn’t time yet. 

His dreams that year were all of the Lady. He knelt deeply against the floor like always, but he could no longer contain his trembling. He could feel her gaze on him, deep and angry and ancient. She looked different. Sharper. Bigger. Her form a void and her eyes blazing. 

“Why,” he wept. “Why have you forsaken me...? I did all that you asked of me. I loved you. I wanted you to love me.” 

The Lady cocked her head, with the same gait as a predator with glassy eyes in the dark. 

“Why do you ask this of me? Why do you ask me to care for humans, in all their ugliness?” 

She raised her arm, cracked and gangly and burnt. 

“Why do you wish for me to love those who made me look like this?” 

That last word was spat out like venom from a snake. 

“I...” Raven breathed out heavily, teeth gritted. “I only ever wanted...to ease your pain. I wanted to bring you back.” 

His fingernails dug into the floor, going so deep they threatened to draw blood. 

“I wanted you to be my mama...” 

There was immense silence. 

“I don’t recall hatching you, little raven.” 

She stepped forward, then another. He heard her slowly brush past him as he shrank away, freezing and crying against the floor. 

“God has never seen fit to give me my own child. It was only ever my sister. We were both so devoted, and yet there was never anything for me.” 

It sounded like she should’ve been sad, and yet...every word was steeped in hate and poison. These were not the words of a woman lamenting a childless life, but instead of someone whose harvest was passed over. 

“Then, for no reason at all, I was thrown down here, with burnt feathers and twisted wings. None of you humans helped. They said they did, but they were lying.” 

He felt her gaze burn on his back, and he wept even harder. 

“I refuse to remain here and suffer at the hands of vermin.” 

There was a creak and a click, the squeaking of hinges. The peeking of bright divine light through his trembling fingers. 

“Soon, very soon, you will all be made spectacles at my feet, and suffer tenfold for my pain.” 

“I will remain in your memory for all of time.” 

A slam, and all was darkness once more. 

Year 4 

His cries were soft and small against the breeze. 

He didn’t know how else to explain the sudden waterfalls other than “a switch flipped.” Something within his brain had broken, the pieces piercing a dam clean in two. The tears spilled out in rivers, in oceans, in rains, all without end. 

The angel came again with another bowl of water in her grasp, one of many she had filled for him that day and for all the days. He was calmer than when she left, curled in the fetal position as much as his legs would allow. 

“I’m sorry” he managed to choke out. 

Raven? 

“I’ve been so awful to you” 

She wrung her hands sheepishly, still unwilling to come near. 

A lot of things are changing for you Raven. I... 

She paused. 

I can understand that. I promise I can. 

“I’m going to go to hell” 

Her feathers bristled. 

Raven you can’t just-- 

“IT’S TRUE!!” he screamed, eyes wide and red and streaming and teeth bared in agony. “I sent people to die and laughed about it!! I saw them down there!! I was nothing but a little death machine for a monster!” 

He slammed his head into his hands, curling even more inward and wailing. 

“I just wanted a family, I wanted a home, someplace that wanted me! She knew that! She knew how angry I was, how hurt! I thought...” 

The wailing fell into an echo. 

“I thought...I had a mom again...” 

Whimpering, he covered himself completely. 

“I failed to notice the signs...no, it wasn’t that...I reveled in them. I wanted my pain to be felt by all...” 

Heaving breaths, talons digging into flesh. 

“I am in hell” 

His eyes gazed wide and terrified through his fingers, his sight shifting every which way. 

“I am in hell” 

“I am in hell” 

“I am in hell” 

“I am in--” 

He yelped as a sudden rush of feathers enveloped him, feeling his body encircled and coiled and leathery hands tightly clutching his wrists. They held fast, pushing back against the claws that had already broke skin. 

Don’t 

Her voice shook, crumbled, shattered. 

Please 

He felt her head push against his back, felt soft drops like silk sink into the fabric of his torn coat. 

He was rendered wordless, only being able to shake. His eyes squeezed tightly shut as his mouth contorted in a silent wail, all resistance failing as he dropped his arms and sank into the angel’s embrace. 

“Why does no one want me” 

His voice could only come out in a strangled whisper. 

“All those people I called sinners who just wanted out” 

“They must hate me, wherever they are” 

“They will not forgive me” 

“They will only know me as their executioner” 

The angel held him close. She wasn’t smothering, nor harsh. She only listened. Sometimes she stroked his wrists, the ebony feathers growing long over his arms. 

I cannot speak for them. I’m sorry. 

He said nothing, only weeping continuously into her arms. He didn’t try to resist in any fashion, almost seeming limp as his eyes drained. 

Do you want me to keep you company? 

Her voice was soft, more divine than any word Magpie ever uttered. 

He nodded quietly, sniffling. 

Every day the raven would weep, and the angel would stay by his side. She was young, younger than him, much younger. He had lived 14 years, her not even 10. Even so, she stayed. 

For the first time, Raven understood why Albatross had said what he did all that time ago. 

“This is no place for a child.” 

His dreams that year were of him lying in someone’s lap. It was warm, sepia-toned, like a summer evening. He dozed peacefully, only barely being aware of a hand gently stroking his hair. Sometimes there was quiet singing, wordless tunes like lullabies as he slept. 

One day he looked up at the woman caring for him. She looked...far too familiar. Same black hair with green and blue roots like that on a wing, same yellow eyes. The very spitting image, and yet...Raven did not feel even an ounce of fear when he saw her. Her eyes did not pierce him right through like hers did. They were gentler, softer, kinder. 

“If it were me,” she said, almost melancholy in the dying light. “If it had been me who found you, and not her, I would’ve been the mother you’ve always wanted.” 

The corners of her mouth deepened, and she shut her eyes in a grimace. 

“I’m sorry that I was already gone when you needed me. I was deceived, just like you.” 

Aside from the uncanny resemblance, he felt like he still recognized her from somewhere. Was it how her eyes looked? Sometimes, at certain angles, her pupils were large and round, like that of a... 

Of...a... 

“Cat?” he uttered. 

She gazed down at him. Her gaze was still gentle and loving, but Raven could see how glazed and glassy they were up close. It reminded him of a taxidermized animal. 

“...please close your eyes.” she whispered, barely a breath. 

He did as he was told. He felt her get up, carefully laying his head back down. He heard the shifting and cracking of bones, the choking of one who had forgotten the use of air. He heard the claws scraping against the floorboards, unsteady and imperfect but determined. He heard her voice distort and blacken, until nothing but a rasping yowl remained. 

But his eyes remained shut. 

He felt another hand in his hair, trembling like a twig in a harsh breeze. It was colder, sharper, and yet not a claw was out of place. 

“I never mean...to scare you.” said the Cat, struggling to form words out of empty air. “But I must...make her pay.” 

He said nothing. He understood. 

“But I mean...what I say. Please be good.” 

The hand left his head, and he heard the lethargic, struggling, necromantic steps get farther and farther away. This time, he did not chase after her. 

Year 5 

When he awoke, Raven wasn’t where he expected. 

He was on a boat, or more accurately a raft. It was made from white wood, dotted with black spots like eyes. Aspen maybe? What other tree had eyes? 

The sky above was pitch black, not a cloud nor a star to be seen. He found himself averting his eyes quickly. Something about how far that blackness stretched made him afraid. 

Instead, he found himself looking down at the water. It was bright cerulean and crystal clear, yet empty. No fish, drifting plant, nor bubbles, nothing but the ripples as the raft floated on. The image that looked back at him from his reflection was unfamiliar to him, at least at first. 

The face was indeed distinctly his, but...scruffier. The feathers had grown all the way to his head, neck, and around his face, sooty gray and dark purple needles sticking out in all directions. His black hair was still there, just fluffier. When he focused, he could make a double crest lift, two feathery protrusions almost like a great horned owl. When he spread the corner of his mouth with two clawed fingers, he could indeed see his teeth had sharpened to fine points. 

At least here, whether it was a dream or not, he could move his legs. They looked just as he remembered, except now straight and strong. The scales didn’t itch as much, and his clawed feet were able to grip the wood easily. 

He wondered if this was his Psychopomp now. Magpie had done...something to it, he remembered. Something that had forced the two to become one when that was never meant to occur. A vivisection lobotomy. 

He shuddered. 

He had been deceived. He had no idea what was going to happen to him now. 

“Hello there.” 

He jumped at the voice, finding that—indeed—his new plumage instinctively flared out. To an outsider’s perspective it would’ve been almost comical. 

The man before him only looked at him silently, gently smiling with half-lidded eyes. Raven didn’t recognize him, and yet...something about him itched at his brain. His dark hair was long, long enough to potentially reach his ankles at full height, and his bangs hung low over one eye. His skin was pale, almost morbidly so, and his eyes were dark aside from a telltale white speck where a pupil would be. His clothes were...heavily clinical, skin-tight and pale blue like a wetsuit. Some kind of barcode was printed on one shoulder. 

It all seemed far too familiar. 

… 

“Hold on!” Raven suddenly shouted. 

The man stood up straight in surprise. “Huh?” 

“That old goose--” the boy found himself hesitating as soon as the words were out. He sighed, quickly backpedaling. “Albatross always talked about how he had a twin! You have the same weird fluffy hair as him, except yours is black! You’re even wearing the same kind of uniform as the one we found him in!” 

The man’s eyes looked confused for a second. “Albatross...? Oh!” 

A burst of recognition hit him, and his posture relaxed. “You met Brother? That’s wonderful news! And he has a name! We were never particularly given names back in the...” 

His smile dropped. “...place.” 

He shook himself off. “Anyway! How has he been? Is he well?” 

Raven opened his mouth to reply but thought better of it. He began to wring his clawed hands together, fidgeting with the feathers growing on his wrists. 

“I...” he began. “I wouldn’t really know. I haven’t exactly been kind to him.” 

His gaze drifted to the open sea. “I haven’t been kind to anyone really.” 

The man cocked his head. “How could you say that? You’re still young, aren’t you?” 

“I’ve killed people.” 

Beat. 

“Ah.” the man said sheepishly. He too began to avert his gaze, facing towards the sea. “That’ll do it.” He let out a nervous laugh, shrugging. “Then again, I did know that already.” 

Raven’s head whipped back at him. “What.” 

The man opened his hands, which had been carefully enclosed until now. Within were seven feathers, as black as the sky above them. There was nary a ruffle on them, nor even the slightest hint of a breeze’s touch. They looked as pristine as if they had just been pulled. 

“They told me.” the man said, plainly and simply. 

Raven stared. 

Then, slowly at first but then almost in a panic, he inched the farthest away he could without falling overboard. Even now, he could feel eyes on him, as if the spots on the wood had become real. Accusing, cursing, damning. 

“I...” 

He gulped, getting as close enough to the floor of the raft as he could. It gave the impression of when he used to kneel in reverence. Now, he only looked like a child shrinking away from a blow. 

“I... I know I can never take back what I did to them.” 

His lips curled, but not in malice. He could feel his teeth grind against each other as he tried to push the oncoming tears away. 

“I was a fool. A zealot. Anything that wasn’t Magpie meant nothing to me. It only meant another obstacle in the way of me and who I wanted so badly to be my mother. I imagined all sorts of terrible fates for them, but I never once thought she would...” 

He trailed off. He remembered the scattered feathers, the elongated clawed limbs far too long for any right thing to have, the vestigial beaks and faces warped and barely recognizable as once being human. Wide open in frozen screams like chicks begging to be fed. 

Experiments. Prototypes for himself. 

He covered his head in his hands, heaving out a whimper. 

“I’m sorry. You have every right not to accept it but I’m sorry. I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry” 

The man only stared. The feathers, of course, didn’t reply. 

“I have, of course, come up with a proposition for both you and them.” 

Raven peeked out from between his fingers, face wet. His entire body felt empty and cold, and he had begun to shiver. 

“How...?” he murmured, sniffling. “I can’t possibly make up for them. There’s no way I could, besides...” 

He gritted his teeth. 

“And I... don’t want to do that.” 

“I know. No one wants to, not really.” 

There was...some kind of sadness hidden in the man’s words. They were never able to find anyone but Albatross that fateful morning, after all. 

(He used to resist and bite those who kept him from waiting by the beach) 

The man sighed deeply. “Hold out your wings for me, won’t you?” 

“Wings...?” 

“Haven’t you noticed? They’re right there on your back. Try to spread them, right now.” 

As if by some sudden gust, Raven felt a pull against his back, a sound like cloth whipping around in the wind. When he looked behind him, he beheld, indeed, two jet black wings sprouting from his back. They were large, almost the width of his body, and longer than his arms. From certain angles, some of the feathers shone with a purple sheen. 

“...did I always have these?” 

The man breathed out a laugh. “Perhaps.” 

He inched closer to the boy, holding out the feathers. “Here. Place them upon your wings.” 

Raven stared. 

“What would that do...?” 

“Speak to them and ask.” 

There was a pause. Raven nervously reached out, his hands cupping the feathers as gently as he could. 

Boy. 

Almost immediately a voice rang through his head, loud enough to rattle his skull. Well...a voice, singular, wasn’t really the right way to describe it. Sometimes it sounded like one entity, but then you start hearing “stragglers.” Those that speak too early or too late, trailing off or stopping before the rest. When separated, you could approximately hear them as being unique and distinct from each other, but as a collective it was only loud. 

“Is...is that you all?” Raven whispered, hands shaking. He was deathly afraid of doing anything to cause even a crease on their shape. Who knows what such a thing will do to them? 

We are very cross with you. 

He drooped. “...I know.” 

However, we’ve agreed with the man to spare you, on one condition. We will assist you, on one condition. 

“What is it?” 

If you place us upon your wings, we will remain with you. We will stay, but we will forgive you if you make sure She dies. 

Raven’s frown deepened. He understood. They may hate him all they like, but Magpie had been the one to prolong their suffering. They hate him, but they hate her more. 

(He didn’t know yet if he shared the sentiment) 

“What then? What will happen then?” 

We will cast our judgment once we see her drained of blood. 

Raven sighed, glancing to the side. 

“I don’t know if she even can die. She seems determined not to.” 

Would the bird flee from the cat in such terror if she could not die? 

She must perish. 

She does not belong here. She knows this. We know it. 

Do you understand, boy? 

“...yes.” 

He spread both wings, carefully and painstakingly taking one feather at a time. 

“I do have a name, you know.” 

It’s not your real one. 

He paused. 

“...I guess not.” 

Ours aren’t either. Either way, you still remember them, don’t you? 

There was a dangerous edge to the voices as they said this, and Raven could vividly imagine their lips curling. At least, Raven thought he did. They might be dwelling within his cranium right now, circling his brain like a war council. 

They might be black figures. It might be fur, or feathers. The only thing that might be seen would be their eyes. They might look like a nightmare he had once, deep ocular pits wide and empty. Their sclera might circle their eye like the rim of a well. Their hands might be as sharp as his. Their heads might twitch. They might move without moving. They might not even have a mouth or lips to curl. 

They might be that. They might be not. 

Boy. 

Raven flinched, shaking his head to clear the image away. 

“Yes...I remember your names,” he whispered, solemnly. 

He spoke them as he pinned the feathers to his wings. 

“Pigeon, Condor, Swallow, Starling, Pheasant, Robin, and Woodpecker.” 

They had all been older than him. All had realized what the place was, how terrible a mistake it was to remain there. One after the other, the fanatical little raven had snatched them out of the sky, small as he was. He was a walking force of mob mentality, so devoted to his Lady that anyone who strayed from the flock would be deemed a heretic in the eyes of all who remained. Why would they ever want to leave? Why would they ever want to leave a place this wonderful? They just didn’t understand. Perhaps they would never be able to understand. They were unnecessary people. 

For that, they were led like kicking and screaming chicks to slaughter. 

Raven remembered this. It was even clearer now, with what he had learned. He had been a fool. He had eaten the fruit hungrily, greedily, because he could no longer bear to be empty. He refused all signs that he had been deceived. It was always that they didn’t understand. They just hated her, in turn hating him. They hated that such a failure of a child broke his own family. They hated when he begged, when he was struck back, when he cried out for the pain to stop, when he cried at night, when he had nightmares, when he had dreams, when he lived, when he breathed, when his heart still beat. That was all it was for him. He was finally going to be better, better than anyone else that had ever existed and will ever exist. He could finally make them see; make them all see that he was always right. 

He knew now that that was just a fantasy he had made. The paradise he was promised was ringed with poison and rot and he had fallen for it, hook line and sinker. 

They had died for the cause of something that was never real. 

Raven knew this, and he could only weep. 

There were numerous feathers upon his wings, an uncountable amount for the average observer. Gray-tinted purple dotted across burnt ash black, but only Raven could know for sure which feathers were Theirs. It was the deal he made. It was his sentence he had to carry. 

They would not show themselves to anyone but him. 

(at least for now) 

Do not disappoint us. 

He sniffled. “I know. I’ll try not to.” 

“They giving you a hard time?” 

Raven flinched. During this, he had forgotten the man was still there. He had just been sitting back, waiting patiently for the conversation to end. 

Raven looked away, cheeks becoming warm. “A little bit. I can’t really blame them though.” 

The man gave a sheepish smile. “I’m sure they’ll be more lenient once the deed is done. I can see how much you want to make it better.” 

“I really do,” the boy replied. “I just wish I could’ve realized sooner.” 

He curled his legs inward, resting his arms on his knees as he looked forlornly out at sea. The man, in turn, said nothing for a moment. 

Then he let out a long sigh, his posture seeming to collapse as he lowered his head and his gaze to the aspen floor. To Raven’s surprise, the man began to angle himself into a kneeling position, bowing low before him. 

“Angel of death,” the man said. “I wish for you to put me at rest.” 

Raven was taken aback. “Angel of...death?” 

It’s true. 

He flinched as They started up again. 

You died. 

You are between death. 

You have anointed death upon your person. 

You are Angel of Death. 

“But...what does that mean?” 

Look at him. A long look. You will know what to do. 

He did as he was told. 

At first, he didn’t see anything different. But eventually, things began to come into new existence whenever he blinked. It felt like a second eyelid, opening for the first time upon exiting the egg. 

The man’s hair was damp. No, not even that, it was soaked. The man’s entire body looked waterlogged, as if he had been dumped into the sea when Raven wasn’t looking, only surfacing right at this moment. Suddenly his already pale skin seemed clammier, any kind of vibrancy from blood-filled veins rendered cold and dead and gray. There was seaweed and sand stuck in his hair, even wrapping around his body and sticking stubbornly to it like a parasite. His wet bangs covered both eyes now, but Raven could see from certain angles how his already dark eyes held no life. His fingernails were cracked and dirty, filled with silt and grime. From his open mouth there only came a thin trail of muck, something black and moist and both deceased and diseased. 

Then Raven blinked, and all of it was gone. 

The man looked up at him with barely living eyes. Every time the boy blinked it kept coming back, disappearing, reappearing, ad nauseum... 

“You can see it, can’t you?” he murmured. “The sorry state of me...” 

Raven gulped. “What happened? Did you...drown?” 

“I might have.” The man, reluctantly as if in pain, shifted his position to lay upon his back. “I don’t remember a lot.” 

Raven, nervously at first, began inching towards him. Soon he was laying the man’s ravaged head upon his lap, like a nurse to a wounded soldier. His wings curled on either side of the man, cradling him close. 

“What do you remember?” the boy asked. 

The man paused, thinking for a moment. 

“Something had happened, where we were.” he began. “I had woken with a start, because the entire building was blaring and flashing red. Our door was open, Brother standing near it motionless. He looked at me and said ‘the place is screaming. The doors are open. We could leave.’ So... we did.” 

His deadened gaze drifted to the sky. He wished there were stars. A moon. A comet. Something to look at other than void. 

“I don’t think either of us knew what we were trapped for. Sometimes we would be separated. Sometimes we would stay together. Sometimes we would be dunked in water and left there for what felt like hours. They would test our breathing, which was usually good, better than theirs even. But we would inevitably tire and begin to drift. They would flush us out, and then do it again. We weren’t mermaids, like in the books I read to Brother, and that angered them.” 

He gave a shaky sigh, black gunk dripping from his eyes like tears, flowing like blood. 

“I still don’t know what they wanted. But...I get these memories sometimes. I think me and Brother were once the same person, same body, same mind. They split us in two just to see what would happen. They called me Abel, they called him Cain, but only in the most clinical sense. We weren’t worthy of names. We were just pale little lumps they injected things into, who they poked and prodded, who they threw in a cage and ordered to fight for no reason other than dire and morbid curiosity.” 

He never really knew what the names meant. It might’ve been a story he heard once. He was the first to learn how to read, and it calmed Brother at night. 

“When we left, it was stormy. The others, who we knew little of, were crowding onto a boat. They managed to get it running, but the storm got so bad we fell off...” 

He shivered, or was that an involuntary twitch? The body’s last remnants? 

“It was so cold. I could barely breathe even when I tried. Brother kept holding onto me, kept trying to swim even as I faltered. It amazed me. He was usually the sicklier one, the one who got hurt the most. I was the one to read to him every night. I was the one to hold him when he cried in his sleep. Now here he was, desperately trying to make me live.” 

More gunk left his eyes, pooling on the wood and dripping through the gaps in big black puddles and droplets. 

“But he was beginning to tire, too. I... I had to let go of him. If I had to go then he had to be the one who kept living. I couldn’t be the one to drag him down anymore. I watched as his expression grew more and more desperate, his form becoming darker and darker as I drifted ever downward. I hated seeing him like that so much. I hated myself even more.” 

The man felt the angel of death pat his hair, his wings growing closer. They were warm. Warmer than where he felt he was. He didn’t know where he was. It was too deep, too dark. The only things to really see him were fish, worms, isopods and whatever else lurked unseen, and even then, their eyes were useless at that depth. They got to know him the only way they knew how, and they knew him well as they ate at him bit by bit. 

The raven’s wings were the only source of heat in his world. No, they were the only heat to ever exist. 

The man wept, a croaking sob leaving his throat like a frog. 

“He’ll never get to bury me, will he...?” he whimpered, eyes losing focus. 

“Hush,” the angel said. “I will be the one to bring you peace, you and your brother.” 

(Raven didn’t know how the words were coming to him, but they felt as natural as the stars) 

His wings grew long and large, encompassing the man’s whole body. 

“I will give you a way to watch over him, for as long as it takes until he’s able to join you. I promise.” 

The wings closed over him. There were the small gasps that come with crying, each one lessening as there was warmth and warmth and warmth and light. There was no more cold, no more ice to keep him awake. He could sleep. He could close his eyes and dream that he was one again, that he loved himself, that he loved the part of himself that would be his brother, that he could lay in the grass and flowers right out of a picture book and rest. There would be laughter on the wind, and he would be at peace as he would be carried to heaven. There would be nothing but song and love up there. 

But first, he must wait. He will wait for however long it takes. 

… 

There was a deep sigh, and the angel opened his wings. 

All that was left of the man was seafoam, and the angel swept him out to sea. It rippled the once still water vivaciously, churning and swirling and spiraling in little whirlpools until it speeds off towards the horizon. A crisp sea breeze followed close behind, and the ocean was suddenly filled with ripples and waves and motion. 

This would be a good storm, a gentle one. The kind to make the gardens grow, to make the fish and ducks and seabirds happy. 

Perhaps it would make him happy too. 

… 

The angel sighed. 

“What am I going to tell Albatross...?” 

Raven woke up. 

He was back in the garden, in his bed. His body felt much lighter, and when he checked his legs were just the same as they were on the raft. His feathered arms were there, he felt his double crest perk up when he urged it to, his wings caught the soft breeze that flew his way. 

“You all still there?” he asked the air. 

As was promised. 

“Good. Now then...” 

Carefully, he began to get up. His legs were stiff, not from pain but from going unused for a long time. Perhaps he should try stretching? 

When he stretched his limbs outwardly, the corresponding wing would spread and stretch with them. When he stretched his back, his wings would raise and flap a little before relaxing. Once that was done, he took a tentative step onto the grass, feeling his clawed toes softly grip onto the dirt. Then another, then another... 

It seemed he could walk again. He thought, perhaps, the blue angel sped up the recovering as much as she could. He knew, realistically, it might take months of physical therapy to help him walk after five years of healing. 

Five years... 

He shivered. What had happened...out there in all that time? Were they alright? 

Would...they even want to see him be alright? 

There you are! 

He whipped behind him, back towards the big tree. He could see the bluebird angel descend towards him from its boughs, holding something between her hands. As she drew nearer, he could see it was...a fruit? He would have to look closer to see what kind it was. 

She chirped happily, gliding a few feet off the ground and spinning circles around him, an act that managed to get a tiny laugh out of him. He couldn’t remember ever doing that here before. 

You’re walking, you’re moving! I knew you could! 

Raven looked away bashfully, shrugging. “Ah, well...” 

He sighed. 

“Listen,” he said. “I’m...sorry for all the trouble I’ve caused. I... still don’t know what you did, or why you even did it, but you saved me.” 

His frown deepened as he began wringing his hands. 

“Thanks...a lot.” 

The angel stared at him for a moment, before opening her mouth and giving a chirrup. Raven was taken quite aback on two fronts: first, the fact she even had a mouth (beak?) to begin with. Second, it was deceptively bigger than one would think. It reminded him of those potoo birds from the rainforest, the ones with bugged out eyes and mouths that opened as big as their whole head. But while those were pink on the inside, the inside of the angel’s mouth was the same color as her eyes, blue and purple ringed together endlessly. 

He shook his head. Best not to stare. 

I’m just glad it worked. 

Her eyes grew gentle. 

You waited such a long time. 

“I guess so...” 

He thought for a moment. Was it even right to just call her the Angel, or Bluebird, or anything that wasn’t just her name? Raven could’ve sworn he had heard it be said at some point, but he was too fanatical to care. Not to mention Bluebird was just a name he came up with to make her look weak... 

“Is it alright if you tell me your name? I don’t...” he paused. “I don’t really want to just call her Bluebird anymore. It feels mean.” 

Which name would you prefer? 

“...which?” 

I have two names now. One was the name Mama gave me when I hatched, and that was Jay. The other was the name Papa gave me to blend in, and that was Diana. 

“Well...I am human, at least I think I still am, so...Diana?” 

She nodded. 

Understood. I am Diana. 

He smiled a little, before something caught the corner of his eye. Looking towards his side, he could see something shiny. It looked so artificial compared to the greenery around him, he was surprised he’s never noticed it before. When he looked in the opposite direction, another was there. 

He squinted. He stepped closer. 

The shine was coming from metal poles. Cold, polished, manmade gray poles, blocking the way in a horizontal position. The air seemed to...shimmer in the spaces between them. Were they electric? Was this some kind of shock fence? Since when were they fenced in? 

Neither of them were...livestock... 

He gulped. 

“You see that too, right?” he asked nervously. 

Diana seemed to wilt, looking away. 

Those were always there. You just noticed them now. 

“...oh.” 

He shakily made his way to the ground, arms close to his body. 

“...how do we get out?” 

It’s not a question of “we,” really. I made this space exist so you could have a place to heal. Everyone in my flock can do that, but... 

She glanced at the tree, still stretching like a monument to the sky and shining in the light. 

We aren’t supposed to. Because the only way we could get them out is... 

She clutched the fruit in her hands tightly. 

Raven gazed at it, finding himself with a sudden instinctive urge to take take take. It was startling, but something about the fruit filled him with an urgent need, a desperate want. 

He began to understand why he didn’t like looking at the tree so much. 

“What...will happen to you, once I... eat that?” Surely that was where this was going. 

Diana was silent for a moment. 

I won’t be able to come back home. I would be too heavy for it, too earthly. A single step from me would be enough to make the forest rot. 

Raven’s heart sank, and he bit his lip. 

“...why would you want to do such a thing for me? All I ever did was cause you pain. I followed her instead of you. You came to take her back, didn’t you? If you let me do this...” 

His claws tightened on his shoulders. 

“...it will be for naught...” 

There was silence between them for a moment. 

Then, Diana began to weep. Not a big clamor, nor even gasping for air, but small, silent tears. 

I don’t think I can bring her back even if I couldn’t do this. 

Auntie’s not how I remember her at all. 

I might...have to... 

More and more tears fell upon the grass, nary making a sound. 

Raven felt Them stir inside his skull, practically seeing them on the edge of their proverbial little seats. He tightened his jaw, taking a deep breath as he did. 

“I know.” 

He held out his hand. 

“I accept your gift.” 

He glanced down, before looking back up with an inhale. 

“I hope that whoever’s looking down at us right now can understand you wanted to save someone. Even if that someone hasn’t been the best to you...or anyone.” 

He finally brought himself to look her in the eyes. 

“I hope I can be your friend.” 

She looked at him, even more tears sliding down her cheeks. 

Without another word, she thrust the fruit in his hands before hastily flying away. 

Raven instantly felt his fingers itch, and he gazed at the fruit intently. It was unlike any fruit he had ever seen, but it looked...pristine. Sometimes it was as red as the sky at sunset, then it was as bright as the yellow sun, green as vibrant leaves in summer, blue as fresh clear water, or purple as the sky at dawn. It seemed to pulse, no, not something quite as morbid as that, but instead emanate. It filled him with such a fiery desire and before he even knew it his mouth was open and his fangs were bared and he was on it, like a starving animal in a cage he was on it, biting and tearing and eviscerating all that it was, feathers flying everywhere as he bit and he bit and he bit until even the core was gone, or was that the pit, or did it even have one, he didn’t care and his body was burning and the light was in his eyes and he was crying and he was laughing and he was screaming and he was everything at once-- 

Diana stood before the tree, staring up into its boughs. She had not been alone up there. She had felt eyes all up her back as she had gently taken the fruit from its branch and cradled it like an infant. They dug into her form like needles and daggers that pierced right through her, like an arrow shooting her out of the sky. 

Auntie...I know it’s you up there. What do you want? 

The leaves and branches rustled. 

A gaunt, gangly, almost gangrenous hand emerged from the canopy, digging into the trunk’s bark with cruel intent. Climbing slowly down was a haggard figure indeed: her feathers, who might’ve been bright pink at some point, were dirty and unkempt. Even the green and blue tips hadn’t fully survived, dull and scraggly as they were. Her head was completely devoid of feathers, pale tan flesh exposed and invoking the image of a vulture. Dark trails of stains fell down her cheeks from her eyes, those hateful eyes that flashed yellow and pink even now. 

You are a fool, little Jay. 

Diana could only stare defiantly back at her. She was scared, no doubt she was terrified, but she had to. She wasn’t going to let this continue. 

I did what I had to do for the good of all. 

What GOOD is that?! 

She lunged forward with a screech, inches away from Diana’s face. 

You’ve FALLEN for those nasty flesh lumps?! What good are they to anything? All they’ve done is destroy me! 

Her angry call turned mournful, as she shakily attempted to cover her face. 

And now they’ve destroyed you too. 

Diana huffed, trying to puff herself as big as she could. It wasn’t much compared to her aunt, but it was enough to prove her point. 

I’m more than willing to clip my wings if it means I can save someone you hurt! 

You... 

Her lips curled. 

You are no longer welcome to the flock, little pest. When I am finished with my work, I will tell everyone what you did. When I come back, everyone will see how right I’ve been, how I’ve ALWAYS been. 

For the first time...ever, she supposed, Diana’s eyes flashed right back at hers. 

I’m willing to stay here on earth than go back to a place you made empty. 

There was a light like a flashbang, and the entire garden seemed to ripple and shimmer. 

Goodbye Auntie. 

JAY 

Her screech pierced right through the sound of the earth shifting. 

JAY GET BACK HERE RIGHT NOW 

YOU INSUFFERABLE FOOL 

YOU WILL NEVER BE WELCOMED INTO MY HEAVEN 

Even as her vision faded, Diana looked away. 

I don’t want to be. 

Then, all of existence seemed to be sucked into itself. There was nothing, nothing at all, not even a mote of dust existed for those crucial moments. Not even silence existed, for there was nothing to break it. Then, there was a pulse, a deep reverberating pulse that drew closer and closer. 

The whole of creation blew outwards, devouring every inch of the primordial void that remained until there was only light and all was light and all was light and all was light 

Raven opened his eyes. 

[messagefound]

nightingale

Another pokemon-era one, but the beginning of me starting to drift away from that entirely. i considered star child a weird kind of minior at this time, but that didn't last very long.

Summary: Raven dreams of a small white cat (or was it a big black beast?) who wants to play with him. He complies whether he likes to or not.

“Lady...?” 

“Magpie...?” 

… 

“...Mama?” 

Raven was somewhere strange. 

He could barely see in front of him, and his voice echoed into the blackness. Inwardly, he tensed at how...pathetic he sounded. How vulnerable. How childish. He sounded like a rodent pinned beneath the claws of some beast. 

He took a step forward, then another. There was solid ground beneath his feet, that was for sure. When he stomped on it, it made a muffled sound, like shaggy carpet. Unless he makes a discernable effort, his steps would be silent. 

(which meant anyone could stand beside him, and he would never tell) 

He walked for a long time. Suddenly, a thin column of lavender light sliced its way horizontally in front of him. Through it, he could see the thin shaggy carpet, like that of a classroom, and the bumpy popcorn walls. 

A knocking on the wall startled him, and he shot his head up. 

Before him, he could only see eyes in the darkness. Two wide orbs, each as big as his entire head. Black empty pits, circled by a thin white line. The pits didn’t even rattle in their sockets, they just stared unblinkingly at him. He couldn’t read...any sort of emotion in them. They were just what they were. Pits. 

A cracking noise pierced the silence. The eyes shuddered in their airborne place. A gurgling moan, like someone choking, echoed in Raven’s ears as he stood stock still. The eyes, still empty, shook lower and lower to the ground, before seeming to disappear. 

Then, a... thing stepped into the light. 

Its eyes were different than the ones he had seen. That was to say, it only had one open. 

It stood at a height only barely past Raven’s hip. One part of its face was black, the other white. The eye on the black part was closed, while the white had its eye wide open as if it had never closed a day in its life. It wore a brown raggedy coat, fashioned with a large silver eye pattern, from which spiraled a rainbow of colors like tears down the remaining length of the coat. A white tufted tail sprouted from beneath the coat, flicking idly. A long mop of black hair draped over the creature’s back, and from its head sprouted two black and white striped horns. It had white clawed feet, almost akin to some kind of rodent’s. 

Upon its back were two metallic wings that reminded Raven of a Skarmory (a bird the Lady found an abomination). The only difference was that the feathers, which normally on a Skarmory would be crimson blades, were more akin to hollow silver LED lights with the lights off. 

Raven did not like the implication that came with this small of a creature, and the shifting and cracking noises it made before it revealed itself. He didn’t feel any ease from seeing its eye change, either. If it looked empty before, it now looked...white and terrified. Or...at least it should’ve. The expression on its face didn’t match it. It was frowning, as if it were sad, but that didn’t feel right either. 

“Hello.” it said. The voice itself sounded like it wanted to be quiet, but it felt like a booming presence within Raven’s brain. It felt like a piercing whisper in your ear. 

“I’m Star Child. What’s your name?” 

Raven gritted his teeth, but his voice seemed to be yanked out of him. 

“R... Raven.” 

“Raven. Raven. Ha, ha.” 

That didn’t sound like a laugh. She sounded like she was only mimicking the noise she heard others make, with little understanding of the emotion it entailed. She didn’t even smile. 

“Raven, I would like to play.” 

Play...? What was he, 4? He doesn’t play like a little kid anymore. He was practically an adult by now! Lady certainly thought so. She let him do whatever he wanted. He doesn’t play, he works. 

As if he would want to play with a little freak like this-- 

“Alright.” 

He smacked a hand over his mouth. An affirmation had forced its way out of him in a vice grip. 

Star robotically clapped her hands together. Raven’s stomach dropped even further when he saw her fingers. They were sharp, and shone in the light, and didn’t move in the same articulate manner as flesh and blood fingers. They were more like...knives. 

“Ha, ha. That makes me happy. Come in.” 

Without warning, a door that Raven never noticed was there slammed open, causing lavender light to flood into his retinas. He flinched, thumping his back against the wall with a sharp groan. 

When his eyes adjusted, he saw that the light was coming from a television, buzzing with static, accentuating the shadows of a playroom. It looked...like a mess, really. Various nondistinct plush toys and building blocks were scattered in heaps across the floor. Some weren’t even on the floor, sticking to the walls and ceiling like soft magnets. Plush arms and plastic limbs dangled helplessly at empty air. 

Star had already walked in during the initial shock. She had planted herself in front of the TV, haphazardly setting out some papers and clumsily dropping pencils, pens, and paints close by. 

“You like to draw, don’t you?” 

She turned slowly towards him. Raven planted his feet firmly on the floor, refusing to move an inch closer. 

He didn’t quite know what it was, but he felt...very afraid. Deathly so. When he looked at her, he didn’t feel like he was with a playdate. That would’ve brought warm, fuzzy feelings, nostalgic in flavor. Memories of kneeling on the floor, how the carpet made your skin itch, playing with toys in the darkened corridors where the sun didn’t reach as often. Sometimes, there were even thoughts of falling asleep after having too much fun, slipping into dreams knowing you were loved so. 

Looking at Star, Raven could only question if he ever had such memories in the first place. 

Looking at Star, he could only remember how cold the nights were. The day his parents stopped taking him to school. How the house began to rot from lack of care. When he would wake up from nightmares and see the hordes of Shuppet hanging off the rafters. The days he would feverishly draw in a vain hope that the scratching of graphite would draw out the screams that sounded from the walls. 

The day the woman that called herself his mother told him they were going someplace fun. Someplace happy. Somewhere where there were no rules and sadness and agony didn’t exist. There would be just colors and candy and people in pretty costumes and clothes and it would last forever. He had seen the pictures. He knew this was true. 

Instead, the people that called themselves his parents left him someplace wet and cold and metallic, drove off, and never came back. Even as he waited, even as a scrawny little bird first crawled up to him for warmth, even as the days grew colder and wetter, they never came back. 

(Of course, the only saving grace was when She found him. That was a good memory. The best one. The only one that matters.) 

“Hey.” 

He was shoved out of his reverie by Star’s voice piercing into his brain. 

She was pointing at the paper and art supplies. 

“I know you draw. You draw good. I’ve seen them before.”

He stiffened. He wanted to ask how she could possibly know that, when his voice tugged itself out again. 

“Fine. I’ll show you art.” 

When he’s so focused on drawing, he tended to drown out the world at large. Oftentimes the admins (curse their names) would attempt to get through to him, but he would continue drawing in a manic daze. What he was doing was far more important than them. 

This meant he could block out Star too. He could block out the hallway. He could block out this weird toy room. He could block out the buzzing television. 

(Why did Star keep it on if it was just going to buzz incessantly like an insect) 

As he put pencil to paper, Raven instantly felt better. Perhaps, when this was done, he could find the Lady again, and she will be able enjoy his gifts. That’s all he drew nowadays. That’s all he should draw nowadays. She’s the only thing that matters. 

First, the little Raven drew a jungle. It was a very colorful jungle, psychedelic hues coming together like an old movie. Flashing eyes of pink and yellow emerged from the undergrowth, peeking out wide and terrible against the green. They were hidden all throughout too. An entire flock, only a glimpse of what he can imagine. He didn’t dare imagine more. Surely, she’ll show him what she really looks like someday. Someday soon, very soon. His depiction must be perfect. So, for now, there were only ever her eyes. 

“See this?” he said. His voice wasn’t tugged out this time. Any apprehensiveness he had felt had melted away. He can speak freely as long as it’s about Her. He could talk about her for days, weeks, years even. 

“Lady Magpie told me how pretty her home is. There were verdant trees, soft breezes, and branches that always hung low with fruit. It’s never cold, it never rains, she could only fly wherever she wished. I hope someday I can follow her there. It’s just like the place I’ve always dreamed about. Then, once that happens, I could finally draw the real her.” 

Then, the little Raven drew his Lady. She was looking away from the viewer, looking relaxed. She never looks relaxed, but this was supposed to be a wish for her. The little Raven only wanted her to be happy. He surrounded her with pretty wings of blue and green, like her cape. He made them real this time. He surrounded her head with the sun, because she deserved to shine brighter than anything that has ever existed. By the time he was done, she looked beautiful. 

“Lady Magpie once told me she wore a cape because she missed her real wings. I’ve begun to wonder how an angel gets lost ever since then. I’ve seen how much she hates her human form. When you live in life and light for so long, it must be awful to be reduced to the smog and death and flesh of people like us. I hate it too. Maybe I’m a lost angel. I hope I am. I want to fly away from everything.” 

Finally, the little Raven finished by drawing two birds. One was big, scratchy, and black. The other was small, dainty, and blue. It was clasped firmly in the talons of the other, hanging limp in the sky. It was a small featureless lump compared to the big one, who was ornamented in jewels of gold among its subdued pinions. This one had the sun around its head too. The other had nothing, for it deserved nothing. It probably shouldn’t even have feathers, but he had drawn them anyway. 

“I don’t know what that bluebird thinks she is. She’s just like the others. They all hate Lady. That’s what they’re always so mean to her. That’s why she always leaves to go punish them. They never learn just when to shut up. If they were to just behave, they will become angels too. I’ve always heard that angels were meant to be scary. Lady is scary sometimes, but I love it. I hope when I become an angel, I’ll be scary too. If everyone is afraid of me, no one will ever hurt me.” 

“Why do you always draw the same person?” 

Raven, snapped out of his dream by Star, gritted his teeth. 

“Why should I? I don’t care about everyone else. I don’t like anybody else. No, in fact I hate everyone else. Magpie does too. I’m the one core exception, because I do what she says! No one else was able to take me in out of the cold. No one else stopped to take me out of the rain. No one else even cared to look at me. It was only me and Murkrow, until she saw I was the same as her.” 

Star, who had been staring intently at the drawing process, cocked her head. 

“Why would you want to be the same as her?” 

Raven huffed, turning away and crossing his arms. 

“You obviously don’t understand either. You don’t know how much she’s suffering. Yesterday I even convinced her to let me sleep in her chambers with her because I was the only one who noticed she was suffering so. I was the one who heard her screaming in the hallways. I was the one who always stood up when she began to cry at night. Me! All me! No one else! I’m the only one who really cares!” 

Star cocked her head this way and that, like a nightbird made from gears and springs. Her expression still never changed, and it was beginning to get infuriating. 

“Ah. I get it.” 

She pointed to the picture of the eye-filled jungle. 

“You seem very very certain that she’s an angel. You even draw the glimpses you’ve seen. But what I want to ask is, how do you know?” 

Raven’s eye twitched. 

“What else could she be?! I already know she’s not human! She was forsaken and forgotten, just like me!” 

“What makes you think that?” 

He was getting tired of her prying. Usually, when the other Crows annoy him, Lady lets him do whatever he wanted to them. When they vex him, they vex her too, and such things simply couldn’t stand. A broken limb will suffice. 

Stone the heretics until their ugly little bodies crumple under the weight 

Sometimes, when they do something really really bad, like try to escape (a useless endeavor in itself), he has the honor of bringing them directly to her. He always smiled and waved and laughed when the door closed between them. They screamed, of course, but it was their own fault. They disobeyed her. Why would you ever do that? Why would you want to? 

They clearly didn’t know she was the only way to paradise. Therefore, they’re no longer welcome. 

He liked to imagine what she’d do to them. They’re never seen again after she’s done with them, after all. Surely, she must’ve done something wondrous. What if she unraveled their very bodies like ribbons on a gift, or reduced them to pillars of salt, or made them crawl on their bellies like serpents, or made flames erupt from their every pore, or even-- 

“Answer my question.”

Raven gritted his teeth. 

“You never just shut up, don’t you?!” he shouted, flinging himself a couple steps toward Star. “What do you know? I know what she is, and I’m the only one that deserves to! I’m the only loyal one around here! If it weren’t for her, I would be dead in an alley, and I would be nothing! I would just be just another nameless body no one cares about! I would just be fertilizer for a world as ugly as this!” 

Did he look like her to Star, he wondered. He hoped so. He liked it when Magpie stood entirely straight, towering over the others with her piercing gaze. If he was like that, no one will ever bother him again. People should be frightened when they see him. You don’t see an angel every day, after all. 

“I know who she is because who else would care for someone like me?! People would walk past me every day and pretend not to see me! I could be a splattered bloodstain on the pavement and they still wouldn’t care. They could only think ‘if that kid is on the streets, he probably deserves it’ as if they know who I am!! Whenever I begged for help, they would only yell at me! When I took things to live, they would try to kill me!”

He glanced at his artwork. 

“Where she’s from, I could live happily. I could fly, like her. I could do whatever pleases me, just like her. If I go with her, everyone who doesn’t like me will disappear. So, to repay her, I’ll make sure everyone who doesn’t like her will disappear too.” 

He squared himself up, bunching up his shoulders and glaring down at Star. 

“Understand now?” 

Star only stared. Raven waited for any semblance of fear to enter her face, but...nothing happened. She hardly even blinked. She just...listened. 

Raven’s stance wavered the slightest bit. 

“Ah. I see.” 

Her bladed hands stiffened a little, as if she was stretching.

“Do you wanna know what she looks like to me?” 

Raven completely faltered. “What--”

A sharp cracking cut him off. 

Star’s entire spine seemed to lengthen, making her tiny frame stretch like taffy, disproportionately tiny limbs flailing as she drooped over one side. Then her arms and legs seemed to...catch up, as it were. They grew long and spindly, bladed fingers and toes sharpening and polishing to a fine glint. 

The eye on the black half of Star’s face opened, and Raven recognized the deep black pit, surrounded by white like the rim of a well. Star’s mouth opened wide, momentarily baring fangs before it was overtaken by a complete void. It crawled up her arms and legs too, like dense shaggy fur. As it claimed her tail, it grew and slithered as if it were a whip. Her horns grew long, her hair even more so, rough and shaggy like a wild thing. 

Her wings seemed to...power on, revving to life and glowing pale yellow with electricity. They spread wide, as small as they were on a now immense form in comparison. The eye on her coat was now longer an eye, instead growing multi-colored fangs surrounding the iris as if the sclera were merely gums awaiting baby teeth. The coat itself began to open, the colors like tears moving to the inside and spreading to either side of her like an extra pair of wings. 

Raven was suddenly very, very small. 

The nightmare merely towered above him and stared, expressionless as ever. Not even an ounce of anger or pride or malice graced those deep empty ocular pits. 

“I say she looks like this to me, but that’s not true. She wishes she could, though.” 

Star’s voice had become deep, but...it didn’t feel like deeper in pitch per se. Maybe the feeling was that of instinctive familiarity. She sounded as if different bits and pieces of her had dwelled in the slumbers of all things long before it was stitched together. She sounded like a distant voice in the hall, sounding like someone who was already in the same room with you.

Her voice had become infinite. 

“She could never hope to look like me, or like Moon-Moon. We are confident in all that we are, unlike her.” 

Her head swooped in close to Raven’s form, like a bird of prey in its dive. 

“What about you? Are you confident? Are you willing to look like this without screaming?” 

Raven couldn’t answer. He wished he could scream in this moment, but nothing but air would come out. 

She was big enough for her horns to scratch the ceiling and cause toys to fall with a squeak and a clack. 

“You don’t think she’s an angel, not really. At least not in a literal sense. No, no.” 

She cocked her head once more, her horns dislodging stuffed animals and dolls from their risen confines. They looked like warm and fuzzy things Raven could’ve sworn he once had, back in the days when life was good. But he couldn’t even put a name to them, or even describe their appearance. They were just blurs, as if they were censored from view. 

...was life ever good for him? Or did he only learn to notice more and more things, more rot, more disease? 

“What I think, really, is that you want someone to take care of you. You’ve been treated with the most basic amount of courtesy by a stranger, and now suddenly they’ve become a god to you.” 

Mama

“Yes, that’s right. Don’t pretend like I didn’t hear you call earlier. I hear everything that happens in my room.” 

Raven’s stomach was dropping so hard he was practically an empty husk. Or was he always like that? 

A loud buzz echoed from the television. It sounded like a cry, a yowl, a shriek, a caterwaul. 

“Playtime is up. Ha, ha. I had fun.” 

Again, the nightmare clapped her bladed hands. 

“I like your art. I hope you use it for something else one day.” 

Another sharp screech from the static. This time it was very clearly a voice. 

“But before we go, I would like to pose a quandary. I like quandaries.” 

The Kitty Cat was clearly almost done with the Lady Bird. The static buzzed with laughter like an audience in the pews. 

“For what reason does a bird eat its young?” 

The dream fizzled out like an unplugged set, with nothing but a hum and a buzz. 

“Bye-bye!” 

When Raven awoke, the Lady’s chambers were completely in shambles. His dearest Lady was scream-crying alone in the bathroom that was stained by blood not her own. 

The Violet Ghost had frightened her and he had not known. Even through the noise, he had not known. 

He had been tricked again, for what wouldn’t be the last time. 

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vulture

Another early one I thought was still relatively accurate, despite the age. This is still pokemon-era, as moon child was still a weird jirachi at this time, and aradia was still a kind of living gastly line gijinka.

Summary: Aradia wakes up to find her legs are missing, and a talking doll is sitting on her chest.

Aradia felt different. 

She couldn’t move. It felt like an immense weight was crushing her entire being, nailing her limbs to the floor like a crucifixion. Her gaze was firmly transfixed on a ceiling colored dark crimson, and she could not pull her eyes from that position. 

Somehow, she recalled the morbid curiosity with which she used to watch bug-types molt. What was once so fluid and filled with vitality would suddenly become pale, stiff, and glassy-eyed. A sudden abrupt manifestation of a prison made from one’s own skin and anatomy. 

And yet, down to the littlest Joltik, it was the most natural process in the world. They’ll shudder in their skin cages for however long it takes, before breaking out good as new. Some will eat the old skin, others will bury it, while more still would just leave the husk there for humans to marvel at. 

But what if one never breaks out? What if the little nymph imprisoned inside is too weak, too frightened to really bother? Will it suffocate, starve to death inside its own exoskeleton? 

She suddenly recalled a horrific incident that occurred years ago, on the mainland. A nuclear energy facility had begun to cut corners, putting its workers into blatantly unsafe conditions for the sake of faster productivity and profit. When an accident inevitably occurred, the workers’ fates had been sealed, just like that. But the one closest to the irradiated mixture had been dealt the worst hand. 

At first, he seemed fine. He could talk to the medical staff like nothing had ever happened, despite the fact he was ceaselessly vomiting just hours before. The only physical injuries he seemed to sustain were burnt skin and a swollen arm. 

But then his condition rapidly worsened. 

His skin sloughed off with the gauze, his cells rejected themselves, all that he was began to rot. His blood evacuated, he was drowning in his own lungs, and his entire body became a corpse with him still stuck inside. In his delirium he begged for an end, even as his family begged for a continuation. 

Of course, he had died. It had been three months, agonizing and slow and trapped in his own skin, but still he had died. 

Aradia didn’t feel dead. Even as ragged breaths were forced into her lungs, even as she felt her bones would break if she ever moved, she didn’t feel dead. 

“Hello, you.” 

The voice sent a visceral chill up her spine. It was barely even above a whisper, yet it sounded coldly and starkly in both her ears. 

The weight on her chest worsened, forcing a groaning breath out her lungs like a squeezed bellows. Agonizingly, she forced her eyes downwards to her chest. 

Sitting atop it like a doll was... 

“Ji...ra...chi...?” she managed. 

The being giggled. It was just as quiet as its speech, but it felt more like a cackle. Was that even possible? A quiet cackle? 

“No. But, if I look like one to you, I might as well be.” 

Aradia tried to focus on its image. It had the top half of a star and the bottom half of a doll, it was true, but Jirachi was commonly depicted...softly. It had very little sharp edges to it, with its button eyes only showing the most innocent purity. The only ominous thing about it was the eye on its stomach, like a cat’s-eye marble with wishful intent, and its supposed habit of thrashing about in its thousand-year sleep. Aside from that, it looked like any other plush toy you would give to a child to cuddle with. 

The being before her was only cute at a cursory glance. It had the button eyes, yes, but something glinted from deep within them. Something sly, something almost wicked. The eye on its stomach was open, wide open, like it had never slept for even a second. The smirking mouth had fangs, small ones, but fangs nonetheless. Even its comet tails seemed sharper, cut at the ends like ribbons. 

No tanzaku slips decorated its star, only teardrop jewels colored a deep purple. Jirachi, even the shiny ones, were never supposed to be purple. 

“You...not...?” Aradia uttered. 

The being shook its head. 

“I am not,” it said. “I am only Moon Child.” 

“Moon...Child...” 

Aradia could no longer keep eye contact; her gaze being wrenched back from the strain. 

“Where...this...” 

“Hm. It makes sense that you don’t remember. You really are supposed to be dead by now.” 

She felt her fingernails dig into the floor. 

“...what...?” 

“Look down at yourself.” 

She tried. Gravity didn’t want to release its iron grip on her, but she tried. With every twitch sounding like splintered wood, she painstakingly lifted her head to look at her lower half. 

It wasn’t there. 

Only teeth were there. Pink, glistening teeth ringed around her waist as if they grew out of the stump. Where her legs would’ve been was only a sputtering flame whose attempts to ignite hit her ears like a firecracker. 

“I must apologize. The transfer closed on the way out, I’m afraid.” 

“...why...?” She attempted to scream it out, but the only thing that emerged from her windpipe was a hoarse wheeze. 

Moon Child pointed to the side, not once breaking its gaze on her. “Look there.” 

Aradia shuddered, slowly rolling her head over to look. 

A bright pale light was on, contrasting starkly against the crimson of the room. Hunched over a sink with her back to them stood a woman in a black dress, a cape of teal and blue feathers draped over her back in reminiscence of wings. Her black hat and veil gave the impression of a funeral attendant, but no smudged eyeshadow or tears streaked her face. 

Aradia could see, even from her mirrored image above the sink, that the woman was glaring at her own reflection with a sharp and resentful gaze. She could see streaks of blood marring a white logo on her chest, shaped like an abstraction of a bird. 

(from another angle, out of sight for her, was what had resulted in such stains) 

(a blood eagle) 

“Do you know who that is?” 

Aradia stared. The woman didn’t stare back. She hardly even knew they were there, crouched in the shadowed corners. She just continued to stare at her reflection with the purest contempt, the corners of her lips beginning to curl back in disgust. 

“...what...?” 

Aradia was not looking in a mirror. 

“...why does...she...my body...” 

Moon Child pushed a small white finger to her lips. At the touch, Aradia remembered. 

Flesh and blood 

Chains and medication 

Breaking 

Noise 

Scratches 

Flashes 

Speech 

Claws 

Air 

Incisions 

Dark 

Black 

Fading 

Alone 

Cold 

Cold 

Cold 

Cold 

“You understand now?” Moon Child whispered, casually breaking the mnemonic haze. Its expression never changed, even as Aradia vividly relived the exact second her life ended in surgical precision. 

She didn’t answer. Her entire rictus body shook, her rotting jaws agape. She could feel every inch of new fangs growing in parts that never knew teeth, even in her own gums. The fire sputtered like a machine in ignition. 

She again tried to scream, but groans were all that came out. 

Moon Child pointed again. 

“Let me ask you, what does her gaze tell you?” 

“hate” she uttered, digging new claws into hard flooring. 

“Hate for what?” 

“me” 

“her” 

“everyone” 

“Very good! I didn’t even get to show you what she’s been doing to the ones you left behind!” 

With inhuman rapidity a claw closed around the being’s tiny body. It didn’t react, even as Aradia felt her fingernails sink into soft flesh. 

“what did she do” she managed. It wasn’t a groan this time. This was deep and guttural. 

“Knowing what she did to you, and knowing they were there too, I believe you can figure that out on your own.” 

Aradia’s grip tightened. 

“No need to get so cross! They’re alive. But...” 

For the first time Moon Child’s gaze deviated, turning to look at Her. 

“I think you’re able to surmise what will happen if she remains for much longer.” 

“yes” 

Aradia wrenched her gaze in the same direction. 

“i know” 

“Good!” 

Aradia finally loosened her hold, causing Moon Child to plop back down on her chest. 

“It’s why I brought you out. ‘Coming back’ is impossible where she’s from! So...” 

Moon Child grabbed the deceased scientist’s head in both hands, lurching uncomfortably close to her face. Its already perpetual grin widened considerably, stretching ear to ear and getting impossibly wide. 

“I want to see her scream. You don’t know the half of how unbelievably cocky she is. She carries herself with an air of grace and confidence even as faces are smashed to bloody pulps under her heel! She finds everything besides herself absolutely disgusting, yet she seethes every time she looks in a mirror! She even hates her family yet doesn’t seem to realize it! It is FASCINATING!!!” 

It giggled, far too long, far too maniacally. 

“I simply must see how she reacts when she sees you!! I simply must see the look on her face when she gets knocked down a couple pegs!!” 

The laughing stopped, and Moon Child frowned for the very first time. 

“You understand, don’t you?” 

Aradia didn’t answer. The past few words hardly seemed to register with her. Her bulging glassy gaze hadn’t moved an inch from her own little skin thief. 

There was a pause. Moon Child gave an almost childish huff of disappointment. 

“It’s not like it matters to you, anyhow. I’ll just leave you to it, since you’re thinking about it already.” 

It smiled again, waving its little hand. 

“Ta-ta.” 

Aradia blinked, and it was gone. 

Not that it mattered. 

Slowly, she rolled onto her stomach, umbral fire finally lighting properly behind her. Moving even the slightest bit still sounded like every bone in her body was breaking, but that no longer registered. 

Clawed fingernails dug into the floor as she began to crawl. 

“I” need to pay for what I did to you? 

You did more to me than I ever did 

All because I tried to help you 

Oh well 

It doesn’t matter anymore 

You can’t hurt me anymore, and that really angers you, doesn’t it? 

So you hurt them instead 

For that, I will hurt you 

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chicken scratch

This is the earliest tanzaku-related writing I could find, and I am putting it in because I feel it's still somewhat accurate after all this time.

Due to how early it is however, this was still made during the time it was just a really grimdark pokemon story (with emmet as albatross no less). Please keep this in mind while reading, and know that part is no longer accurate. I have since oc-fied the entirety of the story. This also holds the origami bird plotline I have since left behind.

Summary: Raven gets left alone. He meets a magpie.

When I was left behind it was late autumn. That must’ve been a purposeful decision. 

Where we lived it got cold very easily. Air would accumulate on the peaks until the rain became sharp hail. Soft snow wouldn’t be much better, after a while. 

Have you heard the story of the overconfident man who went into the freezing wilds with only a Herdier for company? He figured he would be back home before long. Then a blizzard hit, and he was stuck where he was. He knew how to build a fire, but his fingers were too cold to hold the matches and sticks. He couldn’t even strike the twigs, for the snow kept smashing it out. When he finally lit the matches, all he could do was hold them close to himself like that little match girl in the fairy tales. Even as they burned the flesh off his hands, he kept them close. 

Just like the little girl, he died in the cold, alone, with even his Herdier running away. The Herdier had no idea that it had occurred to the man to try to attack it and warm his hands in its blood. He was so desperate he was even willing to kill his close companion. A fool. 

Not like me. 

Murkrow always kept close by me. His body was as scrawny as mine, so it wasn’t warm, but I still clung tightly to him every night. 

At first, I thought I was just left by mistake. We were supposed to go to an amusement park that day. I had never been to one before, and all the pictures I’ve seen looked like such fun. It was colorful, and it even lit up with fireworks at night. 

Our home was not colorful. We hardly had anything. It felt like a mouth at times, one we freely slept in despite being surrounded by sharp fangs. I often pretended not to see the Shuppet that always hung on the rafters. I wonder if they’re still there. 

I was excited to finally go. Perhaps then we would finally all be happy. Perhaps the yelling would end. Perhaps the bruises would magically go away. Perhaps we’ll finally be warm at night. Perhaps my parents would remember they love me like I loved them. 

We stopped at a rest stop. I waited for them to pick me up. 

And waited. 

And waited. 

And waited... 

It was getting so cold out. And dark. 

Yet they never came for me. 

I met Murkrow at that stop. I thought I disliked Pokémon before him, because the only ones I saw on a constant basis were those Shuppet. I never liked their gazes. They clung to the eaves outside and the wooden beams inside, and their gray bodies would always blend in with the dark. I would only see their eyes, manic and hungry, and imagine their slavering mouths just waiting to strike. 

Yet somehow every morning, I would still always wake up intact. 

Murkrow never looked at me like I was a piece of meat. He knew I was hungry, just like him, and lonely, just like him. He was my friend when no one else was. 

But the nights still grew longer, still grew colder. I always had to keep moving in an attempt to regain feeling of my limbs. There was no snow in the city, but it didn’t stop it from trying. Frost and icicles still accumulated on windows and roofs and bit at my hands and Murkrow’s wings. The cold hated us both. It hated everything. It just never struck at us until we were thrown out into the streets, and now it kept nipping and playing with us like a Glameow with a Rattata. 

It was having too much fun to kill us. 

I first saw Lady while we were moving again. At least we had wanted to move, it was raining when we tried. We were holed up under where a roof stood out, Murkrow in my arms as I kept trying to pace. 

She had waited until I noticed her first. I don’t know how long she had been standing there, dressed like she had been at a funeral but looking like she had ever shed a tear. The rain hammered against her black umbrella, and she was holding it close like it had been made of acid. 

She had looked me up and down, and I had heard a low croaking from behind her. A Honchkrow had shambled out, sticking close to her like my Murkrow did. Was she like me? Surely, she was. We even had the same bird. Mine was younger, but was still part of the same lineage. 

She lifted a hand to point at me, almost leisurely. “You,” she said. “Are you lost?” 

Her voice was croaky like her bird’s. 

When I nodded, she glanced at the roof I was standing under. “Do you hate the rain too?” 

I nodded again. 

“Do you hate the city too?” 

I nodded again. 

“Do you hate the people who left you here too?” 

It hadn’t just been my family. So many people would pass me, every single day. They never once looked at me, even when I called out, or even when I was crying after a bad dream. When I had tried to grab at them, to get any kind of attention, they would strike me away and run. 

Some even drove me out. They would sic scary things at me when I tried to beg. If they didn’t go for me, they would go for Murkrow. Murkrow wasn’t strong. Neither was I. 

I nodded again. 

She never smiled, not once, but I could see her eyes crease up at my response. 

“You are like me. Come with me.” 

She didn’t hold out her hand, but I had followed anyway. 

I live with her now. It’s warmer here, and there’s so many birds. I even dress like a bird! I guide an entire flock of people dressed like birds, and they always do when I say. 

If they don’t, Lady told me I can strike them. I can be stronger than them. I can hit them if they cross me, and I can tell Murkrow to pluck their eyes out if they keep arguing. 

But for some reason I’m not allowed to do that to the three Others with her. I wish I could. Lady keeps them close, but I don’t know why. They don’t like her. I do. I should be the only one close to her. 

Owl never says anything to me. He just glares at me and shoves me out of the way. 

I like scaring Mynah though. I love seeing them jump out of their skin and seeing that constant smile of theirs waver. I keep telling them if they learn to respect Lady I won’t do that anymore. They haven’t learned yet, so I will keep scaring them. Someday I’ll wipe that stupid grin off their face. 

I can’t scare Albatross though. I try, but he always looks at me with a bemused smile. He always asks me if I “have anything else to do with my time.” It makes me mad. It makes me so mad. I hate him, I hate his smile, and I hate his big sharp bird. Lady shouldn’t keep him around. 

She shouldn’t keep anyone around. 

No one except me. 

Only I should join her back to her old world. I’ve heard it was pretty, colorful, better than this world ever was. Lady’s going to do something about it. 

Good. 

I hate this place. I hate people. 

Last night I had the dream about the beach and the gramophone again. I hate that dream too. The gramophone keeps playing the music box tune I hate, and it never stops even if I smash it to a pulp. It never stops even when I stomp on it and throw it into the sea. 

When I woke up the origami bird I threw away was back by my pillow. I don’t know why. I get a weird feeling from it. I keep having that dream whenever it’s near me. 

I want to find whoever keeps folding it back together and putting it back and have Murkrow eat their eyes. That will make him big and strong, to help me. To help Lady. 

I only live to help Lady Magpie.