solarcurious

[solarcurious]

much love to everyone locking their fics to users only cause of the ai situation. rest assured i will never do this because it is simply not my problem to solve

[solarcurious]

It's not the caw of a bird which tears its way from his throat. No, it's the cry a man would make, full of such suffering that your heart seizes with the urge to run to him; when he screams, it's with your brother's voice. He sounds human again. He sounds like Rudimer.

Ser Seril fights the Crow Mauler. It is not a victory for either of them.

[solarcurious]

...But if you know you can wear all those hats, and it's just a matter of what hat you wanna wear most, does 'girl' make it into the rotation? Is being a guy your new basketball; something you love for being a part of the team, for how important it's been in your life, but that you can finally admit you don't want to do as a lifestyle?

Jammer isn't a hat guy. She's starting to think she might not be a guy either.

[solarcurious]

There's scratch marks on the walls where she keeps trying to pick shadows off of them, as if the dark is going to leap right back into her hands if she tries hard enough to reach it. You feel awful for her. After so long spent cursed, it's got to be hard for her to believe she's really free of it. All you can do is be patient, remind her that there's nothing wrong with her, and be there for when she accepts that.

Winona gets her happy ending. Charlie doesn't.

[solarcurious]

Its feathers are soft and cool to the touch, and below them, you can feel the stork's warmth, seeping into your hands in a way the heat of the fire never quite could do entirely. You hadn't realised you were frozen until it was over.

The Shade has a wonderful dream.

[solarcurious]

If there is anything hidden away in one of your books, then you must have skipped over that line, and you've gathered up all you might be able to offer, but the Face has no wisdom to give you on this subject. This is what you are. You are what you were created to do, because there's nothing outside of it.

After overcoming Darkness, the Shade goes back to answer their question.

[solarcurious]

Here, there's nothing but the quiet noise of running water. And of your former apprentice yelping loud enough to scare a few starlings out of the trees as they overbalance, paws skidding on the rocky shoreline, splashing shoulder-deep into the river. The fish they were after vanishes upstream. Featherwhisker scrambles backwards, shaking water out of their pelt and right onto your own.

 

Goosefeather and Featherwhisker go fishing.

[solarcurious]

There is an empty space where your arm used to be, and from the jagged crater of your shoulder pours blood, flowing so fast that it doesn't turn the water cloudy and pink, but bright red instantly. You scream. You pause for air long enough to hear Sam say something inaudible, just white noise in your ears, before you start screaming again.

It takes Evan fourteen seconds to bleed out.

[solarcurious]

The world is large to something as small and easily crushed as you, but you have not been crushed yet, and so, you make up your mind to follow your friend.

After the end of everything, along came a spider.

[solarcurious]

Learned helplessness (noun): a condition in which a person has a sense of powerlessness, arising from a traumatic event or persistent failure to succeed.

The generator is destroyed. The door opens. And the prisoner does not move.

[solarcurious]

Because you've witnessed it firsthand. You've seen the degeneracy that lives in the depths of the dungeons, how it warps every beast and being within and compels them to enact it on others; you know that if you don't stamp it out, it will spread, until the whole land falls to ruin. How could you stop, knowing you're all that stands between the world and that? Kingdoms turned to backwards little villages, crawling with savages. Savages with pale, sunken eyes, and grasping hands.

After Le'garde's death in the dungeons and what she went through to find him, D'arce leads a crusade to wipe out everyone and everything she blames.

[solarcurious]

What would it take for you to do the unthinkable, to eat another person? The answer is different for everyone who enters the dungeons.

Or; five characters, and five motivations for cannibalism.

[solarcurious]

You can't imagine him anywhere but this school, not when you still see him walking down the corridors beside you half the time, worn into your vision by memory. If being haunted is like this, you wouldn't mind one bit. And there's already a fair few students who swear this place is haunted, even though you were there when it was built, and you know nobody's died here yet.

Miren, and Marah, and another year gone by.

[solarcurious]

Losing your vision is difficult. Getting along with your coworker is even more so, but it might be worth it.

[solarcurious]

"So you'll promise?" Her voice shakes you from your wandering mind, tumbling right back down to the disconcerting realness of her, how you'd swear you can feel her clammy hand in your own. She looks at you hopefully, and you truly can't say that her eyes seem any less alive than they were when she was living.

"I will; I do," You breathe out slowly, and it feels like giving up, "I promise you that we will never be parted again."

[solarcurious]

And you know at once that it is not the wasps who make such sweet music. There are none left, if there ever were any in the first place. This is bigger than you could dream of and it is nothing close to alive. It's hidden behind the dry, crumbling shell of the nest, gossamer-thin sheets, arranged in delicate layers you could pick apart for hours.

It's a face. A mouth, throat, vocal chords. It's an aperture through which you might hope to catch a glimpse of light, witness something beautiful and sickening, and allow it to open the same hole into yourself.

Snapshots of the time between infection and infestation.

[solarcurious]

editing something 10k because i dont respect your time or my own