starly-amazing
starly-amazing
Starly Amazing
3K posts
I have gone feral. 30-something. ace-something
Last active 60 minutes ago
Don't wanna be here? Send us removal request.
starly-amazing · 1 hour ago
Text
YouTube mirror under cut
youtube
75 notes · View notes
starly-amazing · 1 hour ago
Text
Tumblr media
@askoverkill
2
177 notes · View notes
starly-amazing · 1 hour ago
Text
Tumblr media
forgot to post this here
✨Them✨ Lupus from @askoverkill
163 notes · View notes
starly-amazing · 3 hours ago
Text
Tumblr media
jackpot attack sprite redraw!
187 notes · View notes
starly-amazing · 9 hours ago
Text
Tumblr media
fun lil guy to draw
2K notes · View notes
starly-amazing · 15 hours ago
Text
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
[now i'm going to say something that will upset you: i know what you look like. i know your feet and hands and your skin. i know your head and your hair and your heart. you shouldn't bite your nails.]
every now and then i think about i'm thinking of ending things by iain reid
3K notes · View notes
starly-amazing · 19 hours ago
Text
Other party members looping with their own version of Loop are good but other party members looping with Loop still being a Siffrin Loop are a special kind of painful to me.
Because like... This is someone Loop loved. And they did this to them, didn't they? They gave up and passed the baton. And now someone they care about has to go through what they did.
When it's Siffrin at least Loop can have that barrier of self hatred to make it hurt less. But if it were Mira, or Bonbon, or Isa, or Odile... They'd be absolutely crushed. They'd be SO gutted.
Do you think Loop would look at these people that they loved more than life itself and feel a burning ache where their heart used to be? A phantom pain of a shattering heart because they have to sit there and smile and nod along as they watch someone they would give their life for wilt away under this pressure.
When Bonnie stops being irritated and angry and is just tired and wants to go home.
When Isabeau stops even bothering to tell jokes or act dumb and jovial anymore.
When Mirabelle laments how she's the worst chosen one to ever do it in a only half joking manner.
When Odile begins to hate Vaugarde and feel like she's cursed by her own blood because she's stuck there.
When Loop sees just how much these people loved them. Love Siffrin. And they threw it all away. In a last ditch effort at some stray hope of relief.
That shit hurts real bad man.
430 notes · View notes
starly-amazing · 22 hours ago
Text
Tumblr media
"Ohhh, STARS. I've been wanting to do this."
@askoverkill 's Overkill AU!!!
rough drafts cause i forgot about timelapses 😔
Tumblr media Tumblr media
376 notes · View notes
starly-amazing · 1 day ago
Note
What? Aren't you going to silly up for the occasion Director? Seems like a waste not to silly yourself.
Tumblr media
transcript below:
Siwwy, me?!! Nyo, I couwdn't-
(Silly, me?!! No, I couldn't-)
...
…Awe you kitten me wight meow!?
(Are you kidding me right now!?)
what xD what happened to my v-voice?〜star
(What! What happened to my voice?!)
You got what you deserved.
270 notes · View notes
starly-amazing · 1 day ago
Text
A Star From the Multiverse - Ch 9 is OUT!
Cover art by @wyvern-witch as a donation commission for Palestine. Commission them here!
Tumblr media
Fic summary: After FINALLY beating the King after thousands of tries, Siffrin is STILL sent back to Dormont. They. Just. Can't. Do. It. Anymore. They drag themself through the day and to the Favor Tree in the dead of night, begging, wishing for help...and they get it in the form of a strange creature with talons and feathers and fangs.
Memory of Stars Chapter summary: Loop lets their walls down just a bit and takes Siffrin stargazing. Nothing goes wrong in any way shape or form!
Rating: Mature | Graphic depictions of violence & all the canon-typical warnings.
[Read on Ao3]
--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---
"Stargaze!??!" Siffrin nearly throws himself off the branch to lean closer. "You know about the stars!?"
"I—wh—yes? Who doesn't? They're right up there?"
"Nobody does! Everyone just thinks they're boring dots in the sky whenever I try to tell them about it they think I'm lying I've forgotten so much too just like I forget everything I know I used to know more but I lost it all too when the... when the... the..."
"..."
"...Stardust?"
"Wha..? What were we talking about?" They blink a few times.
"...the stars? You—"
"Stars!? You know about stars!?" His heart skips a beat.
"I—wh—yes? I just sai—" They stare at him for a moment. "Never mind. Yes, I do know about stars. I was an astronom—" Their jaws snap shut. They lower their gaze and mumble to themself for a long moment, glancing between their hands while flexing their fingers. "Hmm... I suppose it's fine to share this." They shrug and sigh. "Yes, I was an astronomer, so it was kind of my job to know about stars."
"Your job... your job?" There’s no way. There's no way! "So you know a lot about them!?"
Loop tilts their head, ears flattened. "I'd say my knowledge is above average, yes."
His breath skips. "Please tell me please please I need to know please! Nobody cares anymore I'm not lying I'm not making this up Odile told me to stop lying to Bonnie when I tried telling them but I wasn't and I know they're important but why can't I remember them!?"
He pauses, panting, shaking.
Loop's whole body is tense as they stare. They grip their branch with both hands.
"Please," they whine.
Loop inhales deeply. "Okay."
"Okay!?" His breath catches in his throat.
Loop throws their bubbly persona back on. "Sure, stardust! I suppose it's fine if I talk about this. It's just general information, after all, and I care about you so much, my precious little cinnamon roll," they wink, "I can probably fudge the rules just a little bit more. So! What would you like to know?"
"Everything!!!"
They flinch. "That's gonna take a while!" They gaze up into the canopy at the thousands of little pinpricks of light that filter through. "How about you come back when it's dark and we can talk then? I need some time to er... create my syllabus for our little impromptu lesson, anyway~!"
"But I want—no it's okay, that's fine." It's fine! A syllabus is good! They can prepare!
"You'll be back in no time," they hum. "Go have some fun with your friends and get some delicious din din!"
"Okay, see you soon. Loop."
He leaves, heart thundering in his chest.
>>>
The sun has just barely fallen below the horizon when Siffrin leaves the Clocktower. His allies all seemed disappointed they couldn't meet his mysterious 'friend', but they let them go without too much of a fuss.
When they arrive, he doesn't see Loop in their usual spot and nearly jumps out of his skin when they pop their head out of the bushes right beside him.
"Blinding stars, Loop, you nearly gave me a heart attack!"
"Whoopsies! I guess that wouldn't be too bad, though, since you'd just loop anyway." They retreat back into the undergrowth and motion Siffrin to follow them with their tail waving above it all.
He pushes in after them and follows closely, dodging recoiling branches with some effort. Loop seems to navigate with much more ease, other than the occasional snag on their wings.
They stumble with a small yelp and shake their front paw. Ok, maybe not much more ease.
"Are you okay?"
"Fine, fine!" They shake their paw. "Just a scratch, don't worry your pretty little head about it~!"
They push on before Siffrin can respond, and he can't help but notice they now have a small limp.
"How far are we going?"
"Not far," they say, pausing with no weight on their hand. "There's a little hill nearby that has a clear view and can't be seen from town."
As if on cue, the trees thin and open up to a grassy field somewhat similar to the one he wakes up in at the start of every loop. The grass is shorter, fresher, and less prickly-looking than what he's used to.
Loop peeks out from the treeline, sniffing the air and vibrating the fluffy feathers on their head. They take a step forward, seemingly satisfied, and shake their head until the feathers are tucked neatly away.
Together, they pad out to the top of the small hill and sit down.
It's still light out and there aren't many stars to see yet. Siffrin eyes Loop messing with their paw, picking out bits of debris from it.
“Uhh, Loop?”
They flinch and cover their hand. “Yes, stardust?”
Voice low, they ask, "Do you want me to heal that?" They lean over to get a better look.
"You—you can do that?" They curl their talons and pull them toward their chest.
They nod. "Learned it in the loops."
They squint at him and turn away. "It's fine."
"Are you sure?" Siffrin tilts his head. "It's no problem, really."
Loop's fingers twitch. They stare at their hand for a moment. Then, with a long, drawn-out sigh, they speak. "Fiiiine if you insist, stardust then I guess I can let you heal me."
Siffrin's lips twitch upward, but they hide it with a cough. He holds out his hand, and with some hesitation, Loop reaches out and places their hand in it.
They both flinch. Loop looks away, cheek feathers puffed.
It's warm. Rough. An array of what look like scars break up the even pattern of scutes that line their leg.
Taking it gently in both hands, they turn it over. The palm is covered in a thick pad, similar to a cat's but not quite as pronounced. It's rough and callused from walking on bare ground; a few still look somewhat raw and fresh, even.
There's something strange about the wound. The trickle of blood that leaks out seems...off. Like the shade is a little to the left, but in the dying light, it's hard to get a better look. Not that Loop would appreciate him scrutinizing their hand for longer than necessary, anyway.
As if they heard him, Loop huffs and flexes their claws. "Having fun ogling my toesie woesies, stardust?"
"Ah! Uh, sorry!" They sputter. Using the back of his glove, he gently wipes away the remaining dirt and debris before breathing a bit of healing Craft into the sore. Loop's hand twitches as the wound stitches itself back together with an uneven scar.
"Huh." They flex their digits. "That feels different."
"Different? Does it still hurt?"
"Huh? Oh! No. It doesn’t hurt anymore. I meant different as in—never mind. Thank you, I owe you my life, am forever in your debt, et cetera et cetera."
"Don't mention it," he snorts.
Something nags at the back of his mind. He glances at Loop's other paw.
They have to ask.
"Hey, Loop, can I see your other hand?"
They gasp and put their healed paw to their chest. "My, my, can't get enough of me? If you wanted to hold hands, you don't have to be so secretive."
Siffrin huffs. "So is that a yes or a no?"
Loop pauses. "Fine, if you must." With a sigh and dramatic flourish, they extend their other hand out, folding the freshly-healed one under their chest.
Siffrin squints and turns it over, only to see a similar sight of calluses and old blisters. He heals them, too, watching them harden into something sturdier.
They look at Loop. They're looking away, scar facing him.
"Loop?"
"Thank you, stardust," they pull their hand away and fold it under them. "It's getting pretty dark out now. Maybe we should do what we actually came here to do!" They point their head toward the heavens.
Siffrin stares at them for a moment longer before following their gaze up into the night sky. A little bit of daylight hangs at the horizon, but the stars are rapidly blinking into view as it fades.
A cold, twisting sense of longing churns in his chest as they stare at the sky. He knew. He knew. They knew so much more about it, but it's behind that same wall that shrouds their memories of home. The wall that prickles and cuts into him if he tries too hard to remember. The wall he forgot that he even forgot until the loops. The wall that teases him with morsels when he's not looking, only to take them away forever if he tries to focus.
...Will this hurt?
Loop shifts their body until all their limbs are folded under them. They curl their tail around and shift themself until they look like a giant winged cat loafing in a sunbeam. Siffrin shifts around as well until he finds a soft patch of grass with no rocks poking at him.
Loop hums. "Well, I suppose we can begin by you telling me what you know already. I'd hate to insult your knowledge by assuming you don't know the most basic things, but also you might not know the most basic things, so..."
"Oh," they murmur, grabbing a piece of grass and rolling it in their fingers. "Well, I know stuff like, the sun is a star and stars are all really big balls of fire and some stars are actually planets and people make pictures called constellations and used to navigate by them and telescopes, orreries, star charts... and uh..." He points to a brighter light. "That's the planet Venus, and uhm..." he keeps looking, thinking. The prickling fog already starts digging into the corner of his mind, so he closes his eye and shakes his head.
"That's all I remember."
Loop hums. "Okay, so we're definitely starting from the basics."
He grumbles. "I know I knew more than that. I could read star charts, I know it. I could use telescopes and orreries and whatever else there is."
"Well, maybe this will jog your memory some."
"I wish." They pull up a clump of grass.
Loop watches them rip it up and toss it before clearing their throat. "Anyway, you're right that not every light in the sky is a star. Some are planets, or comets, or moons, and some are entire galaxies that are so far away they're nothing more than a tiny dot to our eyes."
"Galaxies?" That one doesn’t sound familiar.
"Collections of hundreds of billions of stars and planets and other celestial bodies." They gesture at the thick band of stars that arcs across the sky. "We're in the Milky Way, which is a spiral galaxy and—oh, I wish I brought a pencil and paper. Ahh, well, not like I can draw to save my life anyway."
Siffrin can already feel his heart thundering in his chest. He leans closer to loop with stars in his eyes.
"I think..." he pauses and squeezes his eye shut. "That sounds familiar. Please keep going!"
Loop snorts and lets their expression relax. "Okay, well..."
Siffrin is enraptured by the tales Loop weaves of the sky above them. Tales of stars and planets and black holes and quasars, nebulae, dark matter, and everything else. He can't move, he can barely breathe as he soaks in every possible little detail that comes out of Loop's mouth. Some of it tickles the hidden part of his mind, behind the thorny wall, overwriting what was lost and keeping it fresh and close to him. Some of it is all too new; it's as if he's a small child again, sitting around a bonfire with their friends as their... their...
...
He blinks, shakes his head, and has to ask Loop to repeat a whole chunk of what they just said.
Loop looks… so different when talking. Their voice is lighter, smoother, less guarded and calculated, and they frequently have to pause for a breath after speaking for too long without stopping. It makes Siffrin feel winded just watching them. They can't help but smile—not just at getting back such an important part of him he thought was lost forever, but seeing a fresh, new side of Loop. Seeing them talk a mile a minute, waving their hands around, and looking up to the sky with such wonder just fills him with a sense of peace.
It won't last.
He knows that. It digs at the back of his mind. But just for that time, he manages to shove it down.
After talking for a while, Loop pauses and stretches out. They flap their wings a few times and reach out as far as they can with their front legs, spreading their toes out far. They let their wings fall more relaxed to their sides and rest their limbs in the grass in front of them.
Siffrin follows suit, not realizing how stiff he's grown from sitting unmoving in the dirt for however long they've been there.
Loop stretches again, roll to their side and—
"Oof!" Siffrin grunts as their head lands right in their lap. He flinches and freezes. "Loop!?"
"Wow, you are really bony," they huff. They shift around a bit until their good eye is pointed upward and the top of their head is pressed to his gut. Siffrin holds their arms stiffly away from them the entire time. He can't move.
"Ah," Their expression stiffens when they catch sight of his face. "Was that too much?" They keep their eye locked onto him.
"N-no, it was just sudden!" And warm! And surprisingly light. "U-um." He slowly places a hand on their cheek, feeling just a bit of squish as he presses down on their feathers. Loop makes a small noise but doesn't say a word. They look away. "Why?"
"You look like you needed it," they shrug. "Consider this some good ol' rukemi touch therapy."
"Touch therapy?"
"Well, I’m already helping you with the loops and the stars, so I thought I might help with that as well."
"Thanks???" They're definitely touch-starved, but wow!
"You're quite welcome~! Just keep your hands off my plumes."
"Your... plumes?"
"The long feathers on my head. They're sensitive."
"O-okay."
They're so soft. He wants to... to...
He swallows hard. "So I can... I can p—I can p-p-p..."
"Yes, yes you may pet me if you want, I guueeesssss," they huff. "So demanding~!"
"You're the one—agh—never mind." He can guess what kind of game Loop's playing.
Slowly, carefully, they sink their fingers into Loop's feathers until they touch skin. They both flinch.
So warm. Warmer than a human, it seems, though what would they know about touching another human?
He curls his fingers slowly. He wants to take his gloves off and feel just how soft they are, but that seems like too much! They're surprised he hasn't combusted from this level of touch; if he held Mirabelle's head like that or, stars, Isabeau held them like that, he'd loop on contact. With Loop, it's different. Not quite as overwhelming as he'd expect. Like petting a giant chicken.
He starts scratching a little more and cautiously moves his hand around their face, down their jaw, along their neck. Loop closes their eye and sighs, letting their legs relax and slide out a bit more. They flex one paw and relax, flex and relax.
Siffrin works his way up their head until he reaches their ear, only to find out it's not really an ear at all, just a collection of feathers in the shape of one. They slide their fingers around it until they feel a gap in front of them. He brushes his thumb across it, and out of nowhere, Loop yawns wide, flashing their sharp teeth before shaking their head and pulling back.
"Excuse me! Don't go shoving your fingers into my ear," they glare, folding their feathers down.
"S-sorry!" He pulls his hand away. "Um... so... your ear is just..."
"Yes, it's just a hole in my head."
"Okay." Weird.
"What? Disappointed?"
"No! Just uh... I don't know." What is Loop, really?
The rukemi snorts and rolls their head in his lap. "Oh, stardust, you are too much sometimes."
He frowns. "What'd I doooo?"
They glance at him and snort. "Tee hee~!"
Loop's definitely too much, sometimes too.
"I know I'm too much, aren't I~! That's what makes me so great~!"
Siffrin sighs and shakes their head, smiling lightly.
"Also, take your hat off. I can't see the stars."
"O-oh." He touches the brim and pulls it down further. They don't want to be exposed, but it's not like they can hide anything when Loop's looking up at them like that. He clenches his fist and peels the hat off. The cool night air is refreshing, and he shakes the heat from his head as he sets his hat on the grass.
Cautiously, he places a hand back on Loop's jaw, far away from their ear and plumes. Loop flexes and relaxes their hands again and goes silent.
"So," Siffrin begins after a minute, voice barely a whisper. He shifts his hips and stretches his back. Their fingers work themselves lower and lower on Loop's jaw and down their neck until...
They feel something.
A vibration, soft and gentle.
Coming from Loop's throat.
He stops, twitching slightly. He closes his eye, listening carefully.
He can hear it too, now.
No.
It can't be...
"Loop..." They lean over, looking them in the eye.
"No." They look away.
"Are you ... purring???"
"Do I LOOK like a cat?" Their cheek feathers puff out.
"You sure sound like one." Siffrin doesn't fight the smug grin that grows on their face.
"And YOU sound like you know what you're talking about, but sounds can be deceiving," they quip.
His smirk gets bigger.
"Don't look at me like that."
"Like what?" And bigger.
"Like, ughhhh! Do you want to know more about stars or not?"
"I do!" his heart skips a beat. He clenches his fingers around Loop's cheek feathers.
"Good~! Now, where were we?"
They pick up where they left off, and soon Siffrin's nerves ease. He continues petting Loop for a while before he has to shift around and dig his fingers into his back, massaging down his spine to his hips.
After a moment, Loop sits up and scoots around him. His heart spikes again when Loop's wing folds over his knees and shoulder presses to his back.
He stares at Loop, who simply keeps talking, staring up at the sky the whole time.
So warm.
Their breath is slow and heavy against him. He's still so tense, so unsure.
But slowly, slowly, they breathe and let themself relax. Bit by bit, they lean further and further against them, sinking into their soft feathers. He bites back a sigh as the tension eases in their back and slowly radiates through the rest of their body. Their breathing slows, their fists unclench, and they lean their head against Loop's shoulder. He closes his eye and feels Loop's voice reverberate through his whole body.
It's nice.
He can let himself have this one indulgence.
"So what exactly was your job?" he mumbles after a while. "Like, did you just spend all day looking at the stars until you find something interesting?"
"Nah, we have computers do that part. No, it was much more specific than that." Loop mulls over their question, rocking their head side to side. Finally, they sigh. "...I was on a team tasked with finding life on other planets."
"What!?" Siffrin jumps, nearly jabbing their knee with the claws on Loop's wing. He spins around to face them, breathing fast. "There's life on other planets!? For real? Did—did you—" Wait. They tilt their head. "Is that where you're from? Another planet?"
Loop looks at them for a moment, then back to the sky.
"Anyway, we've found two, so far, and a few speculated to have all the building blocks needed to form life, if they haven't already. Early life, it seems, in those two, they're still pretty young. They're both a couple hundred thousand light years away, so we haven't been able to get any clear physical images of them with our level of technology yet, but the readouts show atmospheric levels very similar to what Earth's meso-proterozoic era was estimated to have."
"Meso-what?"
"Oh, stars, do I have to give a paleontology lesson too?"
"Oh, wait. Like, dinosaurs?"
"Waaaay before them." They stretch their leg out as if pushing something away. "Probably very early multicellular life. Think worms, and sponges, and algae. And—" they cringe. "Oh geez, fossil reconstructions probably look terrible here."
"Huh?"
They shudder. "Paleontology is probably a pretty fresh field of study here, so any reconstructions are likely horrifically inaccurate."
Siffrin tilts their head.
"Have you been to a museum that has fossils?"
"Once, a while ago."
"I can guarantee, if there were any attempted reconstructions, they look nothing like how these animals actually were."
"Oh."
"You probably learned some pretty wrong things about astronomy, too. So maybe after a few lessons with me, you'd be ready to go out in the world and correct all those awful inaccuracies!" They sputter. "A-actually, don't do that, just keep this all between you and me. Okay?"
Siffrin squints. "So you really are from the future?"
They pause. "Ah. No. It's... No."
"Huh?"
"Anyway!" They clap their hands together. "What else would you like to know?"
Siffrin stares at Loop for a long while, but the rukemi simply stares back, smiling with their single eye curved upward. Their jaws are so close to his face, and he can feel their hot breath on his skin. He sighs. "Can you tell me about constellations?"
"I—" they gaze back into the night. "No. This is an entirely unfamiliar sky."
"What?"
"I don't recognize any of these stars," they murmur. "It looks nothing like the sky back home."
"Oh." They frown and lean back against them. Loop lets out a long sigh.
"Anyway! What else would you like to know?"
Siffrin stares up at the sky; the trillions of twinkling lights staring back at him seem just a little bit closer.
He hums and closes his eye.
"There's a lot I'd like to know," he breathes. "But..."
"Need some time to process all this, hmm?"
"Yeah."
This is nice.
The night chill starts to nip at his knees, so he pulls his cloak down further. A shudder runs down Loop's body as he does it, and their feathers puff up slightly.
So fluffy, so puffy.
They turn to Loop and gaze into their face; they look back, tilting their head the same way and time Siffrin does. Their darkless feathers almost glow in the rising moonlight.
The loops have been unforgiving, still, but at least with Loop here, they finally have a few moments of respite here and there. They're getting back what they've lost. He's getting to know his allies all over again; maybe even better now than at the start of the loops. The House has changed… for better or for worse; snack times are nice, and even though the sadnesses are all over now, he feels himself getting strong enough to defeat most of them with ease.
Maybe eternity with Loop won't be so bad.
He looks away. They watch him for a moment, then sigh.
"You're going to get through this, stardust. We aren't gonna be stuck here forever. That's not how these things work." They cough. "Er—well, I don't really know how these things work but—ergh, you know what I mean."
"I guess." They grab their shoulder and hold themself close.
"Hmm." Loop shifts and stretches their neck. "What do you plan on doing after the loops?"
"What?"
"You have to have some sort of plan for what you want to do after saving an entire country."
He digs his fingers deeper into his arm.
Nothing. Nothing. There is no plan. They're going to be—Everyone will—
Something grips his throat from the inside.
"What will you do after?" His voice wavers.
Loop's silent for a moment. "I suppose I'll go back to how I was before." Their voice is low, resigned.
"How you were—" A chill flashes through him. Like he's being frozen by the King. He whips around to face them. "You'll leave."
Loop folds their ears down and looks away. "Stardust, I thought this was appa—"
Siffrin turns even more, now upright on his knees. "You'll leave! You'll leave me, too? You're just going to leave!?"
They fold their legs back under them. "I-I told you I'm not even supposed to be around yo—"
"I don't care about that!" He shifts forward, grabbing the feathers on Loop's shoulders. "I won't tell anyone about you! We can... I don't know!"
Loop flinches and goes rigid, their tail starts to rapidly twitch. "Stardust, there's nothing—"
The tightness in his throat worms its way out through his chest, down to his gut. "No, no, no! We can keep traveling together you can't leave you're the only one who I can talk to about this!"
"I'm not, though," their voice wavers. "Your pa—"
"I can't tell them! I know I'm selfish and greedy and awful and disgusting but I'm going to lose them and I don't want to lose you too!"
They shrink down more. "Stardust, I don't really know you."
"But you do! You still remember things! You remember to call me stardust! And that you want to help me! And to meet me at the Favor Tree and a lot about the loops and the King and you remember you care about me! Right? That's what you said!"
"I-I did but—" They rake their claws through the earth. "I don't remember anything else."
Tears prick at the corner of his eye but don't fall. "Then I'll tell you! Every time we meet! I'll tell you everything you need to know! That's what I've been doing already! I'll tell you as many times as I need to so if this is ever over you'll remember for real!"
As Siffrin pleads, Loop keeps pulling back, more and more. Their body tenses, and their wings fold tightly against them. They grip the ground, claws digging deep into the dirt.
"Please, stop." A low rumble emanates from deep within their chest.
"No, Loop, please, please don't leave, please you're my f—"
Loop's ears flutter, eye narrows, and they snap their jaws with a hiss. "I'm your what? Your friend? Your family? Someone who can just seamlessly blend in with you when you traipse around other humans?"
A frozen fist crashes right through Siffrin's chest. "But... you said we were friends."
Loop's tail flips up and slams on the ground with an audible thud. "Did I? Okay! Sure! We're friends! I'll be your friend! I'll just keep living out in the woods, watching you go have fun in civilization and hope maybe you'll toss some crumbs my way once in a while! That sounds fun, yes! Sitting out on the sidelines while you get to move on with your life! While you get to go home, and I get to sit in the mud waiting to get another infection that finally kills me. Wondering why I can't go home or if it's even fucking there anymore!"
"While I get to—" Siffrin prickles. Something white-hot bubbles up within him, forcing its way past the chill that had its hold on him; he clenches his jaw so hard his teeth groan painfully. "I can't go home either!"
Their expression shifts in a blink. "What?"
"My home!" He snaps. "It's gone! Wiped completely off the map! At least you remember yours! I don't! I don't even know how old I was when it happened or what it was like or anything about my family or my culture or my language! It's all just gone!"
"Wiped... off the map... like an ex-explosion?" Their feathers stand on end, and they fold their legs closer to their body, claws ripping at a root.
"Just disappeared! Vanished! And everyone forgot everything about it! Including me!"
"Oh."
"That's why I can't remember the stars! I learned it all there and that was taken from me too!" He's yelling, louder and louder. "I don't have anything! I don't have anyone or anywhere to go after this!"
"But your friends—"
"They're not my friends!" he cries. "They don't care enough about me to want to call me that, to want to stay with me! They'll leave me too!"
"I-I'm not sure that's true." Loop's voice is so small.
"It is! Odile said we're just allies! They all talk about going their separate ways when all this is over! And they will, because this journey meant less to them than it did to me!"
He
feels
a
tug—
"Ugh!" He screams into his hands and stands up, snatching his hat and forcing it back on his head.
"Wait, stardust."
"Just forget it, I'm going back."
They don't try to stop him.
>>>
The Clocktower is dark when Siffrin arrives, save for a small, crafted light glowing in the dining area.
He swallows the ever-growing knot in his throat and bubbling dread in his gut, then slips in quietly. Isabeau is settled at the table, fixing a tear on one of Bonnie's shirts. He jumps when the door latches, but a bright smile rises on his face when he sees them.
"Sif!" Isabeau whisper-yells. "You're back! I was starting to get worried." He quickly sews in a few more stitches and ties it off before packing everything away.
"I'm fine." He watches as Isabeau carefully puts everything in an orderly fashion. They clench their fist and breathe. "You waited for me? How long was I gone?"
"A couple hours. It's pretty late. The others just went to bed. I'm guessing you had fun catching up with your friend?"
"Something like that."
Stupid. Stupid. Why did you say all that?
"Huh?" Isabeau tilts his head, studying them.
"They're just leaving tomorrow, is all." They smile.
Why did you do that?
"Aw, you won't be able to see them after we beat the King?"
Ha.
They shake their head. "It's fine, though, we talked a lot tonight."
And then you had to go fucking blind it up by acting like some sort of possessive, desperate creep.
"That's good, at least!" He grins. "Still, I'm sorry you won't have more time with them. I know it's hard to say goodbye sometimes."
"Yeah."
They stare at the floor for a moment before slowly looking up at Isabeau. He smiles, soft and warm, but he seems tense, gripping his hand tightly and rubbing circles on the back with his thumb.
Neither speaks. Everything is so quiet that his own breathing is almost deafening.
It's fine. It's whatever! They're gonna forget this too, and you can pretend it never happened!
They stretch out with an exaggerated, forced yawn.
Unless you were that much of a blinding ass that it's permanently seared into their memory.
"Heh, ready for bed?" Isabeau hums.
"Mhm," they nod, blinking slowly. They're not tired at all.
"Okay," he hums. "Hey, Sif, before we head up, can I tell you something really quick?"
"Hm?" Is it the same thing from every other night or something new?
Doesn't matter, it's not like he'll say whatever it is.
Loop. Why did they..? Ughh...
He keeps his eye focused on Isabeau, though his mind keeps trying to wander.
"Okay, um," he begins, cheeks darkening. "I just wanted to tell you that I, uhm... really liked traveling with you and... and..." He looks away, scratching the back of his head. "And that's it. It was fun. Yep!"
That's it? That's all he wanted to tell them?
They feel...
"Oh."
"Oh? You didn't..?" His expression falls. "Never mind."
"No, no, I did!" He holds his hands up. "This journey... meant a lot... to me. I just expected..."
Isabeau shrinks in on himself. "More?" he coughs. He can't make eye contact. "Well, there was something else I wanted to say, but I'll tell you tomorrow, after we beat the King. Wouldn't want to distract you."
Ah, the usual, then.
"Is that okay?" He leans forward, head tilted.
They nod. Maybe one day they can pry it out of him, but not today.
Too blinding dead inside.
And... ugh!
Why did you flip out at them like that? They didn't know! But ugh. They should have! Why can't they remember? Why can't you remember?
...
They can't go home either.
...
"Okay!" His radiant smile is back, and even after all this time, Siffrin feels a little bit of ease flow through him.
It's fine. It's fine! Maybe they'll change their mind!
Isabeau gets out of his seat and walks up to them. "Ready for bed? Big day tomorrow haha." His cheeks are still flushed.
"Yeah," they nod. "Lemme just—" They point to the bathroom.
"Okay, I'll warm the bed for you hahahhh."
He snorts, and they part ways.
Why did you do that?
He locks himself in the bathroom and tries not to scream.
Why did you do that?
They splash cold water on their face and slap their cheeks until it hurts.
Why did you do that?
They find their mildewy towel and scream into it.
Why did you do that!?
They hold it to their face, breathing in the stink, getting hardly any fresh air.
Why did you do that!?
They kick the wall, forgetting they had just taken their shoes off. They bite their lip hard enough to make a mark and resist the urge to rip the sink off its pedestal and throw it out the window.
He sighs and gazes out into the night toward the field they were in, wondering if Loop was still there, wondering where they sleep at night, wondering why they can't go home either. Tears threaten to fall again, and he chokes up.
Why did you... do that..?
When he sneaks into the sleeping quarters, Isabeau is already out like a light.
They slip in beside him and shuffle under the blankets.
He settles in for a long, sleepless night.
Loop.
>>>
The next morning, Siffrin can't bring themself to start any new conversations, and they slip back into a semi-script as their party ascends the House. They try and fail not to think about their horrific blunder from the night before.
A stupid sadness is waiting near the entrance this time. They nod along as their party reassures Mirabelle, and he manages to take out half its health with one swipe.
He is getting stronger.
He can't bring himself to feel excited; it's not like it matters unless he can somehow get strong enough to kill the King in one hit.
But they don't even let themself dream about that.
Wouldn't it be nice, though?
>>>
They remember the key in the Head Housemaiden's desk drawer and slot it into the Library's lock.
The library... something about the back wall.
Oh!
The secret library!
The switch!
They shove their way inside and beeline it to the ancient bricks.
Don't get your hopes up. Don't get your hopes up. It's just boring papers.
But still...
They run their fingers across the wall until they feel a brick shift slightly.
He gasps.
Is this it?
Deep breath, in, and out.
They press it in.
It scrapes along the other bricks and...
There's a series of muffled clicks, and suddenly the wall slides away to reveal a narrow passage.
...
He can't breathe.
THERE REALLY WAS A SECRET LIBRARY?
WHAT?!?
"What the gems—?!"
"SECRET PASSAGE!!!" Bonnie screeches.
Mirabelle looks between them and the opening rapidly. "But how— How did you—"
"I-I just touched it and it opened," he chuckles and rubs the back of his neck.
Mirabelle steps forward and peers at the mechanism poking out at the top. "That's so weird?! Was it here all this time?!?"
If it was, then... then...
They don't want to think about it! They will not think about it!
He steels himself and enters.
Another sadness slithers around. They bite back a hiss and sneak past when it has its back turned.
That's future Siffrin's problem.
They push their way through the ancient, heavy door and...
Sweet stars, it really is a secret library.
Stars, stars, blind it all.
No, stop thinking about it and look!
"Wow, there's so much here!" Mirabelle gasps.
"Fascinating," Odile muses. Some papers catch her eye, and she drifts over to a pile on the table.
Siffrin's heart hammers against his chest.
Don't get your hopes up.
Don't get your hopes up.
Do NOT get your hopes up.
They walk stiffly to the first shelf.
He's already sweaty, clammy, gross—the sensation of angry bees buzz in his chest.
They swallow the tightness in their throat.
Okay, okay, just start looking.
Okay, okay, okay, nothing yet. Nothing useful...oh hey, there is an ancient book on newts.
...
Nothing there. Just a bunch of books on colors. Whatever those are.
Next shelf.
Isabeau seems to notice his tension, but Siffrin gives him the widest smile they can and turns away before he can say anything.
There's another headache book.
He starts to gravitate toward it.
No—no time. Don't get distracted.
Check everything. Leave no book glossed over.
Last shelf.
Last shelf. Please.
Please, something.
He runs his finger along the spine of every book to keep himself from rushing ahead and skipping something in his haste.
"Siffrin?" Mirabelle asks. "Are you looking for something in particular?"
No. No. No. Still no.
"Huh? Oh." Maybe another set of eyes would be helpful. "Do you think there's something on Crafted shields?"
Isabeau peers at the shelf. "Like, shields in battle? To protect ourselves?" He hums, scratching at his chin. "It would be useful, wouldn't it... We have skills to boost our defense, but a shield would be cool."
Mirabelle hums, threading her fingers together. "I-I was thinking about learning! And I feel like I'm close to getting it!!! But... I'm not there yet. Sorry."
Bonnie squeezes past them and kneels over the bottom. "This book here is just called 'Shields', and it's super dusty." They pull out a book near the bottom of the final shelf.
What?
"Dusty books are good, right?" They smile and hold it out to them.
Siffrin nearly rips the book from Bonnie's hands and throws it open.
This... this could be.
"Siffrin?"
"Whoa, Sif, are you okay? You're shaking."
He hands the book to Mirabelle without a word.
He can't look. He stares at the empty space in the bookshelf instead.
Mirabelle watches him for a moment, they all do, before she turns to the book and starts thumbing through the pages.
Don't get your hopes up.
Don't get your hopes up.
Don't get your hopes up.
She stops about a quarter of the way through the book. Siffrin forces his head to turn and catches a glance at the page. It's dense and full of confusing diagrams.
Mirabelle taps the side of the book rhythmically. "Well, that's not how it works." She chews on her lip. "But... . . ."
Don't. Get. Your. Hopes. Up.
He forces his expression into mild curiosity.
He wants to throw up.
"Wait... Wait a second." Mirabelle gasps. It's as if a switch goes off in her mind. Her expression brightens, and she buries her nose back into the pages.
A few more seconds of mumbling and Siffrin clenching and unclenching his fists, and—
"THAT'S ALL?!?!?"
He nearly jumps out of his skin, causing Isabeau to jump too and reach out to them like they're about to keel over.
"THAT'S HOW YOU DO IT?!??!"
Don't get your hopes up don't get your hopes up dont'getyourhopesupdontdontdont.
"Ah." Odile wanders over from the papers she was snooping in.
"Oh, this sounds fun." Isabeau leans over to check the book, takes one look at the text, cringes, and leans back.
Mirabelle chews on her knuckle. "So then, if I do this, and keep this in mind, and don't forget about this..."
She mumbles under her breath for a long time...
"Okay, so..." She slams the book shut and snaps her head toward them. He jumps again. "Siffrin, do NOT move. I'm about to try a highly volatile Craft Skill on you that I've never tried before."
He freezes. His lungs feel like they're being squeezed.
Just breathe. In, and out.
Mirabelle holds her hands out and murmurs a few words. There's a sound of sizzling wind chimes that seems to originate from within Siffrin's own body.
He feels warm all of a sudden, like a thick blanket wrapped itself around him.
He pries his eye open right as Bonnie throws a punch in his stomach.
Owwie. He flinches. Wait.
"Boniface."
Mirabelle leans closer. "Siffrin, did you feel something...?"
He puts his hand on his stomach.
They didn't feel a thing.
They
Did
Not
Feel
A
Thing.
...
He shakes his head.
He keeps shaking it, more and more.
He didn't feel it. It didn't hurt. He didn't feel it it didn't hurt he didn't feel it he did not feel a thing!!!
A laugh bubbles up from within his chest, and soon he's reduced to a cackling mess leaning up against the ancient books.
He doesn't even care that his allies are all staring at him as tears and snot stream down his face.
They feel like their chest should hurt by now from how violently they're laughing, but it feels fine!
It doesn't hurt!
Don't get your hopes up!
"Uh, Sif, Buddy," Isabeau says when he slides to the floor, still laughing. "You uh—"
"Yeah, haha? Isa?" They wipe all the fluids from their face in one long motion.
"Nothing, glad you're happy it works!"
"That wasn't a side effect of the craft, was it?" Mirabelle hugs the book to her chest.
"No! Haha, no, it's fine! It's fine. It just I uh... thought of a really bad joke... about shields!"
"Really?" Odile raises an eyebrow. "Gems, alive Siffrin."
"Boo," Bonnie crosses their arms.
"So, what was it?" Isabeau asks tentatively.
"Forgot!" They're not even going to bother trying to salvage that.
They have a shield skill!
They can survive the King now!
Maybe!
Don't get your hopes up!
Trembling, they pull themself back upright, wiping the remaining snot from their nose. The shield Craft has since worn off, and he can feel a twinge of tightness in his chest as he gets the remaining giggles out of his system.
They're gonna beat the King again and Mirabelle's gonna deal the final blow and they're going to break the loops and then everyone...
Loop...
Siffrin shakes his head and violently blinks away the thoughts. He takes one step toward the door and stops. They're gonna have to come back there. It's going to take so long every time because they're not gonna beat the King this loop or next loop or the next loop!
...
Maybe there's another way for Mirabelle to learn quicker.
He turns to her. "So, Mira. What made it click?"
"Huh?"
"This book? What about it made you figure it out when you couldn't before?"
"Oh!" she perks up. "That's easy! It's all about—" Mirabelle suddenly bombards him with technical terms!!! He doesn't follow a single word but smiles and nods along either way.
>>>
" —and that's how you do it!!!"
"I did not understand even a little bit of this." Odile rubs her temples.
Isabeau crosses his arms and looks into the distance. "Hm, I couldn't craft a skill like that myself, but..." He squints as he searches for his next words. He lights up with a small gasp. "But it's just about using the CARROT method, right?"
Odile takes the book and gives it a cursory glance. "Is it?" She flips back a page. "I guess that makes some sort of sense..."
Mirabelle flips back a page and shows Odile. "It is! They actually mention it in here, too!"
The CARROT method???
"What's the CARROT method?" Bonnie tilts their head and scrunches their nose.
Mirabelle points to a line and reads aloud: "Can Arrive at a Really Really Outstanding Technique".
What?
Isabeau chuckles. "If you don't know the CARROT method, you don't need to know the CARROT method."
Okay.
Siffrin sure feels stupider than usual this loop.
But it's fine, it's fine! They have a shield skill! That's what matters!
They take a breath. "So, hypothetically, someone reminding you of the CARROT method would make it click for you?"
"Yes!!!!!!" Mirabelle beams, sliding the book back into its place on the shelf and clapping her hands together.
Well, there you go.
Don't. Get. Your. Hopes. Up.
>>>
They make it through the rest of the house.
He tries to start a few conversations, but his mind is miles away.
Don't get your hopes up.
Do not get your hopes up.
...
Loop.
They don't have anywhere to go either...
Pick up that tonic.
Don't get your hopes up.
Why did you yell at them like that?
Kill that sadness—oh, hey that wasn't so bad this time. More than half of your tonics left.
Why did you have to act like such a needy creep?
Why would they want to stay with you?
Don't get your hopes up.
Pick the malanga fritters again.
They're only helping you to get out of the loops.
Tastes like ash.
The King is ahead...
Siffrin shuts his eye tightly and takes a deep breath, in and out.
He takes another, and another.
They're packing up and are about ready to leave the final safe room.
Tune back in, Siffrin. Don't embarrass yourself dying WITH a shield.
Don't get your hopes up.
"Ready?" Isabeau says as they approach the door.
He blinks and pulls his gaze from the tear floating dangerously close.
"Ready!" He smiles.
Deep breath.
Deep, deep breath.
They push through the door and enter the final hallway before the King.
His heart is going to shatter his ribs.
It's so loud. He can hear it.
It sounds like... clanking metal.
Wait.
He pauses.
That's not him.
"What's that sound?" Bonnie asks.
Something crashes far ahead.
The King bellows, followed by another crash.
Wait.
Wait. Waitwaitwait.
Oh no.
His legs move on their own, and he dashes full speed ahead.
"Sif!?"
"Siffrin, wait!"
Oh stars, oh stars.
Oh, blind it all!
The noise grows louder. There's a massive boom, and the whole House shudders. Dust shakes free from the ancient bricks. Siffrin stumbles but does not slow. His party is already far behind him, calling out to them.
He throws the door open, heart in his throat.
At the far end of the antechamber, the King thrashes around, wailing. Something long juts from his neck, and dark blood spurts from it with every move he makes. The walls around him are littered with holes, with a particularly massive one to his left. Rubble, shards of glass, and so so many tears coat the floor and
        there
                     is
                               a
                                       shade...
terrifying and visceral spattered across everything, the walls, the floor, the King.
And before the tyrant, flying erratically, thrashing violently, dripping that same shade is...
"Loop!"
24 notes · View notes
starly-amazing · 1 day ago
Text
isasifloop warm ups
Tumblr media Tumblr media
741 notes · View notes
starly-amazing · 1 day ago
Text
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
healthy mixture of angst doodles and qpr sketches
1K notes · View notes
starly-amazing · 2 days ago
Text
Tumblr media Tumblr media
OOOOOOHHHHHH I'M GOING TO SMASH THIS BLINDING STAR INTO SMITHEREENS OHHHH MY GODDDDD
1K notes · View notes
starly-amazing · 2 days ago
Text
A Star From the Multiverse - Ch 9 is OUT!
Cover art by @wyvern-witch as a donation commission for Palestine. Commission them here!
Tumblr media
Fic summary: After FINALLY beating the King after thousands of tries, Siffrin is STILL sent back to Dormont. They. Just. Can't. Do. It. Anymore. They drag themself through the day and to the Favor Tree in the dead of night, begging, wishing for help...and they get it in the form of a strange creature with talons and feathers and fangs.
Memory of Stars Chapter summary: Loop lets their walls down just a bit and takes Siffrin stargazing. Nothing goes wrong in any way shape or form!
Rating: Mature | Graphic depictions of violence & all the canon-typical warnings.
[Read on Ao3]
--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---
"Stargaze!??!" Siffrin nearly throws himself off the branch to lean closer. "You know about the stars!?"
"I—wh—yes? Who doesn't? They're right up there?"
"Nobody does! Everyone just thinks they're boring dots in the sky whenever I try to tell them about it they think I'm lying I've forgotten so much too just like I forget everything I know I used to know more but I lost it all too when the... when the... the..."
"..."
"...Stardust?"
"Wha..? What were we talking about?" They blink a few times.
"...the stars? You—"
"Stars!? You know about stars!?" His heart skips a beat.
"I—wh—yes? I just sai—" They stare at him for a moment. "Never mind. Yes, I do know about stars. I was an astronom—" Their jaws snap shut. They lower their gaze and mumble to themself for a long moment, glancing between their hands while flexing their fingers. "Hmm... I suppose it's fine to share this." They shrug and sigh. "Yes, I was an astronomer, so it was kind of my job to know about stars."
"Your job... your job?" There’s no way. There's no way! "So you know a lot about them!?"
Loop tilts their head, ears flattened. "I'd say my knowledge is above average, yes."
His breath skips. "Please tell me please please I need to know please! Nobody cares anymore I'm not lying I'm not making this up Odile told me to stop lying to Bonnie when I tried telling them but I wasn't and I know they're important but why can't I remember them!?"
He pauses, panting, shaking.
Loop's whole body is tense as they stare. They grip their branch with both hands.
"Please," they whine.
Loop inhales deeply. "Okay."
"Okay!?" His breath catches in his throat.
Loop throws their bubbly persona back on. "Sure, stardust! I suppose it's fine if I talk about this. It's just general information, after all, and I care about you so much, my precious little cinnamon roll," they wink, "I can probably fudge the rules just a little bit more. So! What would you like to know?"
"Everything!!!"
They flinch. "That's gonna take a while!" They gaze up into the canopy at the thousands of little pinpricks of light that filter through. "How about you come back when it's dark and we can talk then? I need some time to er... create my syllabus for our little impromptu lesson, anyway~!"
"But I want—no it's okay, that's fine." It's fine! A syllabus is good! They can prepare!
"You'll be back in no time," they hum. "Go have some fun with your friends and get some delicious din din!"
"Okay, see you soon. Loop."
He leaves, heart thundering in his chest.
>>>
The sun has just barely fallen below the horizon when Siffrin leaves the Clocktower. His allies all seemed disappointed they couldn't meet his mysterious 'friend', but they let them go without too much of a fuss.
When they arrive, he doesn't see Loop in their usual spot and nearly jumps out of his skin when they pop their head out of the bushes right beside him.
"Blinding stars, Loop, you nearly gave me a heart attack!"
"Whoopsies! I guess that wouldn't be too bad, though, since you'd just loop anyway." They retreat back into the undergrowth and motion Siffrin to follow them with their tail waving above it all.
He pushes in after them and follows closely, dodging recoiling branches with some effort. Loop seems to navigate with much more ease, other than the occasional snag on their wings.
They stumble with a small yelp and shake their front paw. Ok, maybe not much more ease.
"Are you okay?"
"Fine, fine!" They shake their paw. "Just a scratch, don't worry your pretty little head about it~!"
They push on before Siffrin can respond, and he can't help but notice they now have a small limp.
"How far are we going?"
"Not far," they say, pausing with no weight on their hand. "There's a little hill nearby that has a clear view and can't be seen from town."
As if on cue, the trees thin and open up to a grassy field somewhat similar to the one he wakes up in at the start of every loop. The grass is shorter, fresher, and less prickly-looking than what he's used to.
Loop peeks out from the treeline, sniffing the air and vibrating the fluffy feathers on their head. They take a step forward, seemingly satisfied, and shake their head until the feathers are tucked neatly away.
Together, they pad out to the top of the small hill and sit down.
It's still light out and there aren't many stars to see yet. Siffrin eyes Loop messing with their paw, picking out bits of debris from it.
“Uhh, Loop?”
They flinch and cover their hand. “Yes, stardust?”
Voice low, they ask, "Do you want me to heal that?" They lean over to get a better look.
"You—you can do that?" They curl their talons and pull them toward their chest.
They nod. "Learned it in the loops."
They squint at him and turn away. "It's fine."
"Are you sure?" Siffrin tilts his head. "It's no problem, really."
Loop's fingers twitch. They stare at their hand for a moment. Then, with a long, drawn-out sigh, they speak. "Fiiiine if you insist, stardust then I guess I can let you heal me."
Siffrin's lips twitch upward, but they hide it with a cough. He holds out his hand, and with some hesitation, Loop reaches out and places their hand in it.
They both flinch. Loop looks away, cheek feathers puffed.
It's warm. Rough. An array of what look like scars break up the even pattern of scutes that line their leg.
Taking it gently in both hands, they turn it over. The palm is covered in a thick pad, similar to a cat's but not quite as pronounced. It's rough and callused from walking on bare ground; a few still look somewhat raw and fresh, even.
There's something strange about the wound. The trickle of blood that leaks out seems...off. Like the shade is a little to the left, but in the dying light, it's hard to get a better look. Not that Loop would appreciate him scrutinizing their hand for longer than necessary, anyway.
As if they heard him, Loop huffs and flexes their claws. "Having fun ogling my toesie woesies, stardust?"
"Ah! Uh, sorry!" They sputter. Using the back of his glove, he gently wipes away the remaining dirt and debris before breathing a bit of healing Craft into the sore. Loop's hand twitches as the wound stitches itself back together with an uneven scar.
"Huh." They flex their digits. "That feels different."
"Different? Does it still hurt?"
"Huh? Oh! No. It doesn’t hurt anymore. I meant different as in—never mind. Thank you, I owe you my life, am forever in your debt, et cetera et cetera."
"Don't mention it," he snorts.
Something nags at the back of his mind. He glances at Loop's other paw.
They have to ask.
"Hey, Loop, can I see your other hand?"
They gasp and put their healed paw to their chest. "My, my, can't get enough of me? If you wanted to hold hands, you don't have to be so secretive."
Siffrin huffs. "So is that a yes or a no?"
Loop pauses. "Fine, if you must." With a sigh and dramatic flourish, they extend their other hand out, folding the freshly-healed one under their chest.
Siffrin squints and turns it over, only to see a similar sight of calluses and old blisters. He heals them, too, watching them harden into something sturdier.
They look at Loop. They're looking away, scar facing him.
"Loop?"
"Thank you, stardust," they pull their hand away and fold it under them. "It's getting pretty dark out now. Maybe we should do what we actually came here to do!" They point their head toward the heavens.
Siffrin stares at them for a moment longer before following their gaze up into the night sky. A little bit of daylight hangs at the horizon, but the stars are rapidly blinking into view as it fades.
A cold, twisting sense of longing churns in his chest as they stare at the sky. He knew. He knew. They knew so much more about it, but it's behind that same wall that shrouds their memories of home. The wall that prickles and cuts into him if he tries too hard to remember. The wall he forgot that he even forgot until the loops. The wall that teases him with morsels when he's not looking, only to take them away forever if he tries to focus.
...Will this hurt?
Loop shifts their body until all their limbs are folded under them. They curl their tail around and shift themself until they look like a giant winged cat loafing in a sunbeam. Siffrin shifts around as well until he finds a soft patch of grass with no rocks poking at him.
Loop hums. "Well, I suppose we can begin by you telling me what you know already. I'd hate to insult your knowledge by assuming you don't know the most basic things, but also you might not know the most basic things, so..."
"Oh," they murmur, grabbing a piece of grass and rolling it in their fingers. "Well, I know stuff like, the sun is a star and stars are all really big balls of fire and some stars are actually planets and people make pictures called constellations and used to navigate by them and telescopes, orreries, star charts... and uh..." He points to a brighter light. "That's the planet Venus, and uhm..." he keeps looking, thinking. The prickling fog already starts digging into the corner of his mind, so he closes his eye and shakes his head.
"That's all I remember."
Loop hums. "Okay, so we're definitely starting from the basics."
He grumbles. "I know I knew more than that. I could read star charts, I know it. I could use telescopes and orreries and whatever else there is."
"Well, maybe this will jog your memory some."
"I wish." They pull up a clump of grass.
Loop watches them rip it up and toss it before clearing their throat. "Anyway, you're right that not every light in the sky is a star. Some are planets, or comets, or moons, and some are entire galaxies that are so far away they're nothing more than a tiny dot to our eyes."
"Galaxies?" That one doesn’t sound familiar.
"Collections of hundreds of billions of stars and planets and other celestial bodies." They gesture at the thick band of stars that arcs across the sky. "We're in the Milky Way, which is a spiral galaxy and—oh, I wish I brought a pencil and paper. Ahh, well, not like I can draw to save my life anyway."
Siffrin can already feel his heart thundering in his chest. He leans closer to loop with stars in his eyes.
"I think..." he pauses and squeezes his eye shut. "That sounds familiar. Please keep going!"
Loop snorts and lets their expression relax. "Okay, well..."
Siffrin is enraptured by the tales Loop weaves of the sky above them. Tales of stars and planets and black holes and quasars, nebulae, dark matter, and everything else. He can't move, he can barely breathe as he soaks in every possible little detail that comes out of Loop's mouth. Some of it tickles the hidden part of his mind, behind the thorny wall, overwriting what was lost and keeping it fresh and close to him. Some of it is all too new; it's as if he's a small child again, sitting around a bonfire with their friends as their... their...
...
He blinks, shakes his head, and has to ask Loop to repeat a whole chunk of what they just said.
Loop looks… so different when talking. Their voice is lighter, smoother, less guarded and calculated, and they frequently have to pause for a breath after speaking for too long without stopping. It makes Siffrin feel winded just watching them. They can't help but smile—not just at getting back such an important part of him he thought was lost forever, but seeing a fresh, new side of Loop. Seeing them talk a mile a minute, waving their hands around, and looking up to the sky with such wonder just fills him with a sense of peace.
It won't last.
He knows that. It digs at the back of his mind. But just for that time, he manages to shove it down.
After talking for a while, Loop pauses and stretches out. They flap their wings a few times and reach out as far as they can with their front legs, spreading their toes out far. They let their wings fall more relaxed to their sides and rest their limbs in the grass in front of them.
Siffrin follows suit, not realizing how stiff he's grown from sitting unmoving in the dirt for however long they've been there.
Loop stretches again, roll to their side and—
"Oof!" Siffrin grunts as their head lands right in their lap. He flinches and freezes. "Loop!?"
"Wow, you are really bony," they huff. They shift around a bit until their good eye is pointed upward and the top of their head is pressed to his gut. Siffrin holds their arms stiffly away from them the entire time. He can't move.
"Ah," Their expression stiffens when they catch sight of his face. "Was that too much?" They keep their eye locked onto him.
"N-no, it was just sudden!" And warm! And surprisingly light. "U-um." He slowly places a hand on their cheek, feeling just a bit of squish as he presses down on their feathers. Loop makes a small noise but doesn't say a word. They look away. "Why?"
"You look like you needed it," they shrug. "Consider this some good ol' rukemi touch therapy."
"Touch therapy?"
"Well, I’m already helping you with the loops and the stars, so I thought I might help with that as well."
"Thanks???" They're definitely touch-starved, but wow!
"You're quite welcome~! Just keep your hands off my plumes."
"Your... plumes?"
"The long feathers on my head. They're sensitive."
"O-okay."
They're so soft. He wants to... to...
He swallows hard. "So I can... I can p—I can p-p-p..."
"Yes, yes you may pet me if you want, I guueeesssss," they huff. "So demanding~!"
"You're the one—agh—never mind." He can guess what kind of game Loop's playing.
Slowly, carefully, they sink their fingers into Loop's feathers until they touch skin. They both flinch.
So warm. Warmer than a human, it seems, though what would they know about touching another human?
He curls his fingers slowly. He wants to take his gloves off and feel just how soft they are, but that seems like too much! They're surprised he hasn't combusted from this level of touch; if he held Mirabelle's head like that or, stars, Isabeau held them like that, he'd loop on contact. With Loop, it's different. Not quite as overwhelming as he'd expect. Like petting a giant chicken.
He starts scratching a little more and cautiously moves his hand around their face, down their jaw, along their neck. Loop closes their eye and sighs, letting their legs relax and slide out a bit more. They flex one paw and relax, flex and relax.
Siffrin works his way up their head until he reaches their ear, only to find out it's not really an ear at all, just a collection of feathers in the shape of one. They slide their fingers around it until they feel a gap in front of them. He brushes his thumb across it, and out of nowhere, Loop yawns wide, flashing their sharp teeth before shaking their head and pulling back.
"Excuse me! Don't go shoving your fingers into my ear," they glare, folding their feathers down.
"S-sorry!" He pulls his hand away. "Um... so... your ear is just..."
"Yes, it's just a hole in my head."
"Okay." Weird.
"What? Disappointed?"
"No! Just uh... I don't know." What is Loop, really?
The rukemi snorts and rolls their head in his lap. "Oh, stardust, you are too much sometimes."
He frowns. "What'd I doooo?"
They glance at him and snort. "Tee hee~!"
Loop's definitely too much, sometimes too.
"I know I'm too much, aren't I~! That's what makes me so great~!"
Siffrin sighs and shakes their head, smiling lightly.
"Also, take your hat off. I can't see the stars."
"O-oh." He touches the brim and pulls it down further. They don't want to be exposed, but it's not like they can hide anything when Loop's looking up at them like that. He clenches his fist and peels the hat off. The cool night air is refreshing, and he shakes the heat from his head as he sets his hat on the grass.
Cautiously, he places a hand back on Loop's jaw, far away from their ear and plumes. Loop flexes and relaxes their hands again and goes silent.
"So," Siffrin begins after a minute, voice barely a whisper. He shifts his hips and stretches his back. Their fingers work themselves lower and lower on Loop's jaw and down their neck until...
They feel something.
A vibration, soft and gentle.
Coming from Loop's throat.
He stops, twitching slightly. He closes his eye, listening carefully.
He can hear it too, now.
No.
It can't be...
"Loop..." They lean over, looking them in the eye.
"No." They look away.
"Are you ... purring???"
"Do I LOOK like a cat?" Their cheek feathers puff out.
"You sure sound like one." Siffrin doesn't fight the smug grin that grows on their face.
"And YOU sound like you know what you're talking about, but sounds can be deceiving," they quip.
His smirk gets bigger.
"Don't look at me like that."
"Like what?" And bigger.
"Like, ughhhh! Do you want to know more about stars or not?"
"I do!" his heart skips a beat. He clenches his fingers around Loop's cheek feathers.
"Good~! Now, where were we?"
They pick up where they left off, and soon Siffrin's nerves ease. He continues petting Loop for a while before he has to shift around and dig his fingers into his back, massaging down his spine to his hips.
After a moment, Loop sits up and scoots around him. His heart spikes again when Loop's wing folds over his knees and shoulder presses to his back.
He stares at Loop, who simply keeps talking, staring up at the sky the whole time.
So warm.
Their breath is slow and heavy against him. He's still so tense, so unsure.
But slowly, slowly, they breathe and let themself relax. Bit by bit, they lean further and further against them, sinking into their soft feathers. He bites back a sigh as the tension eases in their back and slowly radiates through the rest of their body. Their breathing slows, their fists unclench, and they lean their head against Loop's shoulder. He closes his eye and feels Loop's voice reverberate through his whole body.
It's nice.
He can let himself have this one indulgence.
"So what exactly was your job?" he mumbles after a while. "Like, did you just spend all day looking at the stars until you find something interesting?"
"Nah, we have computers do that part. No, it was much more specific than that." Loop mulls over their question, rocking their head side to side. Finally, they sigh. "...I was on a team tasked with finding life on other planets."
"What!?" Siffrin jumps, nearly jabbing their knee with the claws on Loop's wing. He spins around to face them, breathing fast. "There's life on other planets!? For real? Did—did you—" Wait. They tilt their head. "Is that where you're from? Another planet?"
Loop looks at them for a moment, then back to the sky.
"Anyway, we've found two, so far, and a few speculated to have all the building blocks needed to form life, if they haven't already. Early life, it seems, in those two, they're still pretty young. They're both a couple hundred thousand light years away, so we haven't been able to get any clear physical images of them with our level of technology yet, but the readouts show atmospheric levels very similar to what Earth's meso-proterozoic era was estimated to have."
"Meso-what?"
"Oh, stars, do I have to give a paleontology lesson too?"
"Oh, wait. Like, dinosaurs?"
"Waaaay before them." They stretch their leg out as if pushing something away. "Probably very early multicellular life. Think worms, and sponges, and algae. And—" they cringe. "Oh geez, fossil reconstructions probably look terrible here."
"Huh?"
They shudder. "Paleontology is probably a pretty fresh field of study here, so any reconstructions are likely horrifically inaccurate."
Siffrin tilts their head.
"Have you been to a museum that has fossils?"
"Once, a while ago."
"I can guarantee, if there were any attempted reconstructions, they look nothing like how these animals actually were."
"Oh."
"You probably learned some pretty wrong things about astronomy, too. So maybe after a few lessons with me, you'd be ready to go out in the world and correct all those awful inaccuracies!" They sputter. "A-actually, don't do that, just keep this all between you and me. Okay?"
Siffrin squints. "So you really are from the future?"
They pause. "Ah. No. It's... No."
"Huh?"
"Anyway!" They clap their hands together. "What else would you like to know?"
Siffrin stares at Loop for a long while, but the rukemi simply stares back, smiling with their single eye curved upward. Their jaws are so close to his face, and he can feel their hot breath on his skin. He sighs. "Can you tell me about constellations?"
"I—" they gaze back into the night. "No. This is an entirely unfamiliar sky."
"What?"
"I don't recognize any of these stars," they murmur. "It looks nothing like the sky back home."
"Oh." They frown and lean back against them. Loop lets out a long sigh.
"Anyway! What else would you like to know?"
Siffrin stares up at the sky; the trillions of twinkling lights staring back at him seem just a little bit closer.
He hums and closes his eye.
"There's a lot I'd like to know," he breathes. "But..."
"Need some time to process all this, hmm?"
"Yeah."
This is nice.
The night chill starts to nip at his knees, so he pulls his cloak down further. A shudder runs down Loop's body as he does it, and their feathers puff up slightly.
So fluffy, so puffy.
They turn to Loop and gaze into their face; they look back, tilting their head the same way and time Siffrin does. Their darkless feathers almost glow in the rising moonlight.
The loops have been unforgiving, still, but at least with Loop here, they finally have a few moments of respite here and there. They're getting back what they've lost. He's getting to know his allies all over again; maybe even better now than at the start of the loops. The House has changed… for better or for worse; snack times are nice, and even though the sadnesses are all over now, he feels himself getting strong enough to defeat most of them with ease.
Maybe eternity with Loop won't be so bad.
He looks away. They watch him for a moment, then sigh.
"You're going to get through this, stardust. We aren't gonna be stuck here forever. That's not how these things work." They cough. "Er—well, I don't really know how these things work but—ergh, you know what I mean."
"I guess." They grab their shoulder and hold themself close.
"Hmm." Loop shifts and stretches their neck. "What do you plan on doing after the loops?"
"What?"
"You have to have some sort of plan for what you want to do after saving an entire country."
He digs his fingers deeper into his arm.
Nothing. Nothing. There is no plan. They're going to be—Everyone will—
Something grips his throat from the inside.
"What will you do after?" His voice wavers.
Loop's silent for a moment. "I suppose I'll go back to how I was before." Their voice is low, resigned.
"How you were—" A chill flashes through him. Like he's being frozen by the King. He whips around to face them. "You'll leave."
Loop folds their ears down and looks away. "Stardust, I thought this was appa—"
Siffrin turns even more, now upright on his knees. "You'll leave! You'll leave me, too? You're just going to leave!?"
They fold their legs back under them. "I-I told you I'm not even supposed to be around yo—"
"I don't care about that!" He shifts forward, grabbing the feathers on Loop's shoulders. "I won't tell anyone about you! We can... I don't know!"
Loop flinches and goes rigid, their tail starts to rapidly twitch. "Stardust, there's nothing—"
The tightness in his throat worms its way out through his chest, down to his gut. "No, no, no! We can keep traveling together you can't leave you're the only one who I can talk to about this!"
"I'm not, though," their voice wavers. "Your pa—"
"I can't tell them! I know I'm selfish and greedy and awful and disgusting but I'm going to lose them and I don't want to lose you too!"
They shrink down more. "Stardust, I don't really know you."
"But you do! You still remember things! You remember to call me stardust! And that you want to help me! And to meet me at the Favor Tree and a lot about the loops and the King and you remember you care about me! Right? That's what you said!"
"I-I did but—" They rake their claws through the earth. "I don't remember anything else."
Tears prick at the corner of his eye but don't fall. "Then I'll tell you! Every time we meet! I'll tell you everything you need to know! That's what I've been doing already! I'll tell you as many times as I need to so if this is ever over you'll remember for real!"
As Siffrin pleads, Loop keeps pulling back, more and more. Their body tenses, and their wings fold tightly against them. They grip the ground, claws digging deep into the dirt.
"Please, stop." A low rumble emanates from deep within their chest.
"No, Loop, please, please don't leave, please you're my f—"
Loop's ears flutter, eye narrows, and they snap their jaws with a hiss. "I'm your what? Your friend? Your family? Someone who can just seamlessly blend in with you when you traipse around other humans?"
A frozen fist crashes right through Siffrin's chest. "But... you said we were friends."
Loop's tail flips up and slams on the ground with an audible thud. "Did I? Okay! Sure! We're friends! I'll be your friend! I'll just keep living out in the woods, watching you go have fun in civilization and hope maybe you'll toss some crumbs my way once in a while! That sounds fun, yes! Sitting out on the sidelines while you get to move on with your life! While you get to go home, and I get to sit in the mud waiting to get another infection that finally kills me. Wondering why I can't go home or if it's even fucking there anymore!"
"While I get to—" Siffrin prickles. Something white-hot bubbles up within him, forcing its way past the chill that had its hold on him; he clenches his jaw so hard his teeth groan painfully. "I can't go home either!"
Their expression shifts in a blink. "What?"
"My home!" He snaps. "It's gone! Wiped completely off the map! At least you remember yours! I don't! I don't even know how old I was when it happened or what it was like or anything about my family or my culture or my language! It's all just gone!"
"Wiped... off the map... like an ex-explosion?" Their feathers stand on end, and they fold their legs closer to their body, claws ripping at a root.
"Just disappeared! Vanished! And everyone forgot everything about it! Including me!"
"Oh."
"That's why I can't remember the stars! I learned it all there and that was taken from me too!" He's yelling, louder and louder. "I don't have anything! I don't have anyone or anywhere to go after this!"
"But your friends—"
"They're not my friends!" he cries. "They don't care enough about me to want to call me that, to want to stay with me! They'll leave me too!"
"I-I'm not sure that's true." Loop's voice is so small.
"It is! Odile said we're just allies! They all talk about going their separate ways when all this is over! And they will, because this journey meant less to them than it did to me!"
He
feels
a
tug—
"Ugh!" He screams into his hands and stands up, snatching his hat and forcing it back on his head.
"Wait, stardust."
"Just forget it, I'm going back."
They don't try to stop him.
>>>
The Clocktower is dark when Siffrin arrives, save for a small, crafted light glowing in the dining area.
He swallows the ever-growing knot in his throat and bubbling dread in his gut, then slips in quietly. Isabeau is settled at the table, fixing a tear on one of Bonnie's shirts. He jumps when the door latches, but a bright smile rises on his face when he sees them.
"Sif!" Isabeau whisper-yells. "You're back! I was starting to get worried." He quickly sews in a few more stitches and ties it off before packing everything away.
"I'm fine." He watches as Isabeau carefully puts everything in an orderly fashion. They clench their fist and breathe. "You waited for me? How long was I gone?"
"A couple hours. It's pretty late. The others just went to bed. I'm guessing you had fun catching up with your friend?"
"Something like that."
Stupid. Stupid. Why did you say all that?
"Huh?" Isabeau tilts his head, studying them.
"They're just leaving tomorrow, is all." They smile.
Why did you do that?
"Aw, you won't be able to see them after we beat the King?"
Ha.
They shake their head. "It's fine, though, we talked a lot tonight."
And then you had to go fucking blind it up by acting like some sort of possessive, desperate creep.
"That's good, at least!" He grins. "Still, I'm sorry you won't have more time with them. I know it's hard to say goodbye sometimes."
"Yeah."
They stare at the floor for a moment before slowly looking up at Isabeau. He smiles, soft and warm, but he seems tense, gripping his hand tightly and rubbing circles on the back with his thumb.
Neither speaks. Everything is so quiet that his own breathing is almost deafening.
It's fine. It's whatever! They're gonna forget this too, and you can pretend it never happened!
They stretch out with an exaggerated, forced yawn.
Unless you were that much of a blinding ass that it's permanently seared into their memory.
"Heh, ready for bed?" Isabeau hums.
"Mhm," they nod, blinking slowly. They're not tired at all.
"Okay," he hums. "Hey, Sif, before we head up, can I tell you something really quick?"
"Hm?" Is it the same thing from every other night or something new?
Doesn't matter, it's not like he'll say whatever it is.
Loop. Why did they..? Ughh...
He keeps his eye focused on Isabeau, though his mind keeps trying to wander.
"Okay, um," he begins, cheeks darkening. "I just wanted to tell you that I, uhm... really liked traveling with you and... and..." He looks away, scratching the back of his head. "And that's it. It was fun. Yep!"
That's it? That's all he wanted to tell them?
They feel...
"Oh."
"Oh? You didn't..?" His expression falls. "Never mind."
"No, no, I did!" He holds his hands up. "This journey... meant a lot... to me. I just expected..."
Isabeau shrinks in on himself. "More?" he coughs. He can't make eye contact. "Well, there was something else I wanted to say, but I'll tell you tomorrow, after we beat the King. Wouldn't want to distract you."
Ah, the usual, then.
"Is that okay?" He leans forward, head tilted.
They nod. Maybe one day they can pry it out of him, but not today.
Too blinding dead inside.
And... ugh!
Why did you flip out at them like that? They didn't know! But ugh. They should have! Why can't they remember? Why can't you remember?
...
They can't go home either.
...
"Okay!" His radiant smile is back, and even after all this time, Siffrin feels a little bit of ease flow through him.
It's fine. It's fine! Maybe they'll change their mind!
Isabeau gets out of his seat and walks up to them. "Ready for bed? Big day tomorrow haha." His cheeks are still flushed.
"Yeah," they nod. "Lemme just—" They point to the bathroom.
"Okay, I'll warm the bed for you hahahhh."
He snorts, and they part ways.
Why did you do that?
He locks himself in the bathroom and tries not to scream.
Why did you do that?
They splash cold water on their face and slap their cheeks until it hurts.
Why did you do that?
They find their mildewy towel and scream into it.
Why did you do that!?
They hold it to their face, breathing in the stink, getting hardly any fresh air.
Why did you do that!?
They kick the wall, forgetting they had just taken their shoes off. They bite their lip hard enough to make a mark and resist the urge to rip the sink off its pedestal and throw it out the window.
He sighs and gazes out into the night toward the field they were in, wondering if Loop was still there, wondering where they sleep at night, wondering why they can't go home either. Tears threaten to fall again, and he chokes up.
Why did you... do that..?
When he sneaks into the sleeping quarters, Isabeau is already out like a light.
They slip in beside him and shuffle under the blankets.
He settles in for a long, sleepless night.
Loop.
>>>
The next morning, Siffrin can't bring themself to start any new conversations, and they slip back into a semi-script as their party ascends the House. They try and fail not to think about their horrific blunder from the night before.
A stupid sadness is waiting near the entrance this time. They nod along as their party reassures Mirabelle, and he manages to take out half its health with one swipe.
He is getting stronger.
He can't bring himself to feel excited; it's not like it matters unless he can somehow get strong enough to kill the King in one hit.
But they don't even let themself dream about that.
Wouldn't it be nice, though?
>>>
They remember the key in the Head Housemaiden's desk drawer and slot it into the Library's lock.
The library... something about the back wall.
Oh!
The secret library!
The switch!
They shove their way inside and beeline it to the ancient bricks.
Don't get your hopes up. Don't get your hopes up. It's just boring papers.
But still...
They run their fingers across the wall until they feel a brick shift slightly.
He gasps.
Is this it?
Deep breath, in, and out.
They press it in.
It scrapes along the other bricks and...
There's a series of muffled clicks, and suddenly the wall slides away to reveal a narrow passage.
...
He can't breathe.
THERE REALLY WAS A SECRET LIBRARY?
WHAT?!?
"What the gems—?!"
"SECRET PASSAGE!!!" Bonnie screeches.
Mirabelle looks between them and the opening rapidly. "But how— How did you—"
"I-I just touched it and it opened," he chuckles and rubs the back of his neck.
Mirabelle steps forward and peers at the mechanism poking out at the top. "That's so weird?! Was it here all this time?!?"
If it was, then... then...
They don't want to think about it! They will not think about it!
He steels himself and enters.
Another sadness slithers around. They bite back a hiss and sneak past when it has its back turned.
That's future Siffrin's problem.
They push their way through the ancient, heavy door and...
Sweet stars, it really is a secret library.
Stars, stars, blind it all.
No, stop thinking about it and look!
"Wow, there's so much here!" Mirabelle gasps.
"Fascinating," Odile muses. Some papers catch her eye, and she drifts over to a pile on the table.
Siffrin's heart hammers against his chest.
Don't get your hopes up.
Don't get your hopes up.
Do NOT get your hopes up.
They walk stiffly to the first shelf.
He's already sweaty, clammy, gross—the sensation of angry bees buzz in his chest.
They swallow the tightness in their throat.
Okay, okay, just start looking.
Okay, okay, okay, nothing yet. Nothing useful...oh hey, there is an ancient book on newts.
...
Nothing there. Just a bunch of books on colors. Whatever those are.
Next shelf.
Isabeau seems to notice his tension, but Siffrin gives him the widest smile they can and turns away before he can say anything.
There's another headache book.
He starts to gravitate toward it.
No—no time. Don't get distracted.
Check everything. Leave no book glossed over.
Last shelf.
Last shelf. Please.
Please, something.
He runs his finger along the spine of every book to keep himself from rushing ahead and skipping something in his haste.
"Siffrin?" Mirabelle asks. "Are you looking for something in particular?"
No. No. No. Still no.
"Huh? Oh." Maybe another set of eyes would be helpful. "Do you think there's something on Crafted shields?"
Isabeau peers at the shelf. "Like, shields in battle? To protect ourselves?" He hums, scratching at his chin. "It would be useful, wouldn't it... We have skills to boost our defense, but a shield would be cool."
Mirabelle hums, threading her fingers together. "I-I was thinking about learning! And I feel like I'm close to getting it!!! But... I'm not there yet. Sorry."
Bonnie squeezes past them and kneels over the bottom. "This book here is just called 'Shields', and it's super dusty." They pull out a book near the bottom of the final shelf.
What?
"Dusty books are good, right?" They smile and hold it out to them.
Siffrin nearly rips the book from Bonnie's hands and throws it open.
This... this could be.
"Siffrin?"
"Whoa, Sif, are you okay? You're shaking."
He hands the book to Mirabelle without a word.
He can't look. He stares at the empty space in the bookshelf instead.
Mirabelle watches him for a moment, they all do, before she turns to the book and starts thumbing through the pages.
Don't get your hopes up.
Don't get your hopes up.
Don't get your hopes up.
She stops about a quarter of the way through the book. Siffrin forces his head to turn and catches a glance at the page. It's dense and full of confusing diagrams.
Mirabelle taps the side of the book rhythmically. "Well, that's not how it works." She chews on her lip. "But... . . ."
Don't. Get. Your. Hopes. Up.
He forces his expression into mild curiosity.
He wants to throw up.
"Wait... Wait a second." Mirabelle gasps. It's as if a switch goes off in her mind. Her expression brightens, and she buries her nose back into the pages.
A few more seconds of mumbling and Siffrin clenching and unclenching his fists, and—
"THAT'S ALL?!?!?"
He nearly jumps out of his skin, causing Isabeau to jump too and reach out to them like they're about to keel over.
"THAT'S HOW YOU DO IT?!??!"
Don't get your hopes up don't get your hopes up dont'getyourhopesupdontdontdont.
"Ah." Odile wanders over from the papers she was snooping in.
"Oh, this sounds fun." Isabeau leans over to check the book, takes one look at the text, cringes, and leans back.
Mirabelle chews on her knuckle. "So then, if I do this, and keep this in mind, and don't forget about this..."
She mumbles under her breath for a long time...
"Okay, so..." She slams the book shut and snaps her head toward them. He jumps again. "Siffrin, do NOT move. I'm about to try a highly volatile Craft Skill on you that I've never tried before."
He freezes. His lungs feel like they're being squeezed.
Just breathe. In, and out.
Mirabelle holds her hands out and murmurs a few words. There's a sound of sizzling wind chimes that seems to originate from within Siffrin's own body.
He feels warm all of a sudden, like a thick blanket wrapped itself around him.
He pries his eye open right as Bonnie throws a punch in his stomach.
Owwie. He flinches. Wait.
"Boniface."
Mirabelle leans closer. "Siffrin, did you feel something...?"
He puts his hand on his stomach.
They didn't feel a thing.
They
Did
Not
Feel
A
Thing.
...
He shakes his head.
He keeps shaking it, more and more.
He didn't feel it. It didn't hurt. He didn't feel it it didn't hurt he didn't feel it he did not feel a thing!!!
A laugh bubbles up from within his chest, and soon he's reduced to a cackling mess leaning up against the ancient books.
He doesn't even care that his allies are all staring at him as tears and snot stream down his face.
They feel like their chest should hurt by now from how violently they're laughing, but it feels fine!
It doesn't hurt!
Don't get your hopes up!
"Uh, Sif, Buddy," Isabeau says when he slides to the floor, still laughing. "You uh—"
"Yeah, haha? Isa?" They wipe all the fluids from their face in one long motion.
"Nothing, glad you're happy it works!"
"That wasn't a side effect of the craft, was it?" Mirabelle hugs the book to her chest.
"No! Haha, no, it's fine! It's fine. It just I uh... thought of a really bad joke... about shields!"
"Really?" Odile raises an eyebrow. "Gems, alive Siffrin."
"Boo," Bonnie crosses their arms.
"So, what was it?" Isabeau asks tentatively.
"Forgot!" They're not even going to bother trying to salvage that.
They have a shield skill!
They can survive the King now!
Maybe!
Don't get your hopes up!
Trembling, they pull themself back upright, wiping the remaining snot from their nose. The shield Craft has since worn off, and he can feel a twinge of tightness in his chest as he gets the remaining giggles out of his system.
They're gonna beat the King again and Mirabelle's gonna deal the final blow and they're going to break the loops and then everyone...
Loop...
Siffrin shakes his head and violently blinks away the thoughts. He takes one step toward the door and stops. They're gonna have to come back there. It's going to take so long every time because they're not gonna beat the King this loop or next loop or the next loop!
...
Maybe there's another way for Mirabelle to learn quicker.
He turns to her. "So, Mira. What made it click?"
"Huh?"
"This book? What about it made you figure it out when you couldn't before?"
"Oh!" she perks up. "That's easy! It's all about—" Mirabelle suddenly bombards him with technical terms!!! He doesn't follow a single word but smiles and nods along either way.
>>>
" —and that's how you do it!!!"
"I did not understand even a little bit of this." Odile rubs her temples.
Isabeau crosses his arms and looks into the distance. "Hm, I couldn't craft a skill like that myself, but..." He squints as he searches for his next words. He lights up with a small gasp. "But it's just about using the CARROT method, right?"
Odile takes the book and gives it a cursory glance. "Is it?" She flips back a page. "I guess that makes some sort of sense..."
Mirabelle flips back a page and shows Odile. "It is! They actually mention it in here, too!"
The CARROT method???
"What's the CARROT method?" Bonnie tilts their head and scrunches their nose.
Mirabelle points to a line and reads aloud: "Can Arrive at a Really Really Outstanding Technique".
What?
Isabeau chuckles. "If you don't know the CARROT method, you don't need to know the CARROT method."
Okay.
Siffrin sure feels stupider than usual this loop.
But it's fine, it's fine! They have a shield skill! That's what matters!
They take a breath. "So, hypothetically, someone reminding you of the CARROT method would make it click for you?"
"Yes!!!!!!" Mirabelle beams, sliding the book back into its place on the shelf and clapping her hands together.
Well, there you go.
Don't. Get. Your. Hopes. Up.
>>>
They make it through the rest of the house.
He tries to start a few conversations, but his mind is miles away.
Don't get your hopes up.
Do not get your hopes up.
...
Loop.
They don't have anywhere to go either...
Pick up that tonic.
Don't get your hopes up.
Why did you yell at them like that?
Kill that sadness—oh, hey that wasn't so bad this time. More than half of your tonics left.
Why did you have to act like such a needy creep?
Why would they want to stay with you?
Don't get your hopes up.
Pick the malanga fritters again.
They're only helping you to get out of the loops.
Tastes like ash.
The King is ahead...
Siffrin shuts his eye tightly and takes a deep breath, in and out.
He takes another, and another.
They're packing up and are about ready to leave the final safe room.
Tune back in, Siffrin. Don't embarrass yourself dying WITH a shield.
Don't get your hopes up.
"Ready?" Isabeau says as they approach the door.
He blinks and pulls his gaze from the tear floating dangerously close.
"Ready!" He smiles.
Deep breath.
Deep, deep breath.
They push through the door and enter the final hallway before the King.
His heart is going to shatter his ribs.
It's so loud. He can hear it.
It sounds like... clanking metal.
Wait.
He pauses.
That's not him.
"What's that sound?" Bonnie asks.
Something crashes far ahead.
The King bellows, followed by another crash.
Wait.
Wait. Waitwaitwait.
Oh no.
His legs move on their own, and he dashes full speed ahead.
"Sif!?"
"Siffrin, wait!"
Oh stars, oh stars.
Oh, blind it all!
The noise grows louder. There's a massive boom, and the whole House shudders. Dust shakes free from the ancient bricks. Siffrin stumbles but does not slow. His party is already far behind him, calling out to them.
He throws the door open, heart in his throat.
At the far end of the antechamber, the King thrashes around, wailing. Something long juts from his neck, and dark blood spurts from it with every move he makes. The walls around him are littered with holes, with a particularly massive one to his left. Rubble, shards of glass, and so so many tears coat the floor and
        there
                     is
                               a
                                       shade...
terrifying and visceral spattered across everything, the walls, the floor, the King.
And before the tyrant, flying erratically, thrashing violently, dripping that same shade is...
"Loop!"
24 notes · View notes
starly-amazing · 2 days ago
Text
Director 2 is worth the world to me unfortunately I'm 99% sure the next update (As I'm typing this) will. eradicate them. Damn.
The gameshow outfit is incredibly off model I think I was just looking at the sprites and then right as I was finishing this someone sent the actual art in the overkill server............................ @askoverkill 2
edit: I just realized this still has the content warning "unreality" but I cut out the second part where they would have said "I have cameras under my skin" so now it doesn't apply as much ??????????????????????????????????????????? oh well ? Better for my time and for people who hate that stuff regardless
source audio vv
youtube
(It's timestampedit didnot fucking save the timestamp cuz its age restricted- but I recommend watching the full thing it's funny as hell)
190 notes · View notes
starly-amazing · 2 days ago
Text
A Star From the Multiverse - Ch 8 is OUT!
Tumblr media
Cover art by @p-paradoxa as a donation commission for Palestine. Commission them here!
Fic summary: After FINALLY beating the King after thousands of tries, Siffrin is STILL sent back to Dormont. They. Just. Can't. Do. It. Anymore. They drag themself through the day and to the Favor Tree in the dead of night, begging, wishing for help...and they get it in the form of a strange creature with talons and feathers and fangs.
Memory of Allies Chapter summary: MONTAGE TIME!
Siffrin takes Loop's advice and starts getting to know their party all over again, and in the meantime gets to know Loop for the first time.
Rating: Mature | Graphic depictions of violence & all the canon-typical warnings.
[Read on Ao3]
---
Siffrin wakes up in Dormont.
The grass pricks at his neck.
He sighs.
Coward.
Coward! Not even going to give them the chance to try anymore?
What are you even afraid of, stupid? It's not like that last death was the worst or anything!
Pretty quick, comparatively! You didn't bleed out while watching the King throwing Mira's body on the floor until it fell apart! You didn't have to stare at Isabeau's smashed-in face wheeze and cry until he stopped breathing! You didn't--
He growls, shakes his head, and slams his fist on the ground.
Whatever, it's whatever! You'll do it next time.
You got to know your allies better at least.
And found out that Bonnie's sister's friend lost some fingers to a seal.
They shudder.
Time to go see Loop again.
>>>
"Again, I see?" The rukemi dangles precariously off their branch; their head and neck is twisted almost upside down, watching them. They squint. "Er...ssssssssssstardust?"
He nods, avoiding eye contact as he seats himself on his branch.
"Well, that's no good." They frown but morph into a look of confusion immediately. "Remind me what it is again?"
They press their palm over their eye. "Mirabelle told me about a kitten I found in the woods. A little fluffy striped one. We couldn't take her with us, so I gave her to a family in the next town." They run their fingers down the back of their hand as if petting the kitten. "I hope they took good care of her."
Loop perks up and lets out a tiny squeal. "Awww, kitten! How old? Wait, what do they have to do with the uh...whatever thing?" They close their eye. "Theeeeeee... Regicide? Yes! Is the tyrant deathly allergic to cats?"
"I talked to them. My allies. About stuff I remembered." He rips off a strip of bark and watches small bugs scuttle around in a panic.
"Huh?"
"It was...nice. Even if we're not friends."
"Not friends? With the, uh...your party?"
"That's what Odile said." He kicks his feet.
Loop squints. "Oh, right, the Researcher, correct? Really, stardust, you're all over the place here. I'm not sure how you expect me to follow along~!"
They swing their legs as Loop's words wash over them.
"It's fine though!" he giggles. "As long as they're all happy and never find out this is hopeless, then it doesn't matter what they think of me!"
"Ehhhhhhhhhh..." Loop's face pulls tight. "That's probably not the healthiest way to frame it."
Siffrin lets out a tired laugh. "It's fine . I just gotta get used to this new normal! I guess! It's not so bad! I think I'm getting a little stronger. Maybe."
"Oh? Did you manage to make any progress?"
He pauses, then blinks some awareness back. "Uh...yeah," he sweats. "We almost had him this time, we just uh...We were real quiet but… someone uhhhhhhh...sneezed! And he—"
They do not want to imagine that scenario...
Not like it's worse than what they've already experienced!
Loop cringes. "Well...that's no good!"
"Nope! Tee hee~!"
"Try not to do that next time, stardust~!"
"No promises~!"
Loop snorts. "Well, anyway, you do need to stop being cryptic and tell me about what the fuck is going on, still! Are you proud of me for at least remembering you're trying to kill a King?"
Siffrin snorts. "It makes things a bit easier, so, yeah, I guess."
>>>
It doesn't take long for some things to start settling back into a new 'normal' on Siffrin's ascent through the House. Collecting bottles of caustic chemicals is now as routine as hitting their hip on that one table—except it's now a counter in an entirely different kitchen instead of a table in a room they've already forgotten, because of course it is! Sadnesses have started showing up earlier and earlier in their trek through the House, rooms vanish and reappear on entirely different floors every few loops. Nothing makes sense, but at least it's enrichment and helps keep him from zoning out so much.
Tee hee~!
It takes even less time for their sessions with Loop to become routine, too. At least the contents of their talks aren't all the same!
At least he can still pull some memories out of whatever muck is inside their head.
Fewer and fewer each time, but it's fine! It's still fine as long as they're getting something !
They know it won't last forever!
They need to enjoy it while they can...
Just pass Isabeau, get to Loop, clamber up the tree, manage their confusion, 'lore dump', get told they have no new ideas for him, get told to "talk to your party, they know more than I do about this weird-ass fantasy France." Blah blah blah. Whatever 'France' is.
And every time he has to tell them that it won't matter—that they'll just fall into despair and resent and hate him for failing them and trapping them with him forever.
They can't find out.
They can't find out!
But it's okay, because they won't!!
Because if there's one good thing about the loops, it's that they can backtrack whenever they mess up!
And they do that a lot, as stupid and useless as they are!!!
>>>
They enter the pottery classroom. Siffrin lingers on a few half-finished sculptures shoved haphazardly on the shelf. A figurine of a deer with antlers twice the size of its body catches his eye.
A memory flickers. "Hey, remember that time I was so hopped up on pain meds I escaped camp and tried to fistfight a deer?"
The three adults go stiff and glance over at Bonnie. They hunch over, gripping the apple they were munching on so hard it cracks and juice runs down their arm.
Siffrin tilts his head. "Bon—"
"Yeah I remember you stupid crab!" They spin around and throw the apple on the floor. "You almost got yourself killed again! Why did you do that?"
"I was—well it was the meds. They made me loopy." Haha loopy. "But it was funny, wasn't it?! I was okay!"
Odile sighs. " Siffrin , it kicked you in the face, and Mirabelle had to redo your stitching."
She nods, holding a fist to her mouth. "You bled almost as much as when you lost your eye!" She chews on her knuckle.
Oh yeah.
"You're so crabbing dumb Frin why did you keep doing stupid stuff like that!? You kept doing stupid stuff the whole time! It coulda stabbed your other eye out and then— and then—"
Their words are cut off with a sob. Tears, large and hot spill from their eyes—soon joined by a stream from their nose. Mirabelle and Isabeau slowly approach them with soft words of reassurance.
"But I was fine," he whimpers, frozen in place, heart racing.
Their words are met with another loud sob from Bonnie. Isabeau reaches for them but they slap his hand away and dash out of the room. He and Mirabelle scramble after them in a flash.
Siffrin can only stand there, hand raised.
...
Odile looks at them, pinching her brow, frowning. " Siffrin. "
"I—"
<<<
In the library a thin book called ‘Day of a Killer’ catches his eye.
"Hey Madame Odile, remember when you said you thought I was an assassin!"
She slams her book shut and glances over at Mirabelle and Isabeau, who both immediately stiffen and exchange wide-eyed glances.
"I don't believe I've ever told you that, Siffrin." Her gaze hardens.
Oops.
"I didn't tell him anything, M'dame!" Isabeau holds his hands up.
"Neither did I!" Mirabelle picks at her nails, voice wavering.
"Oh, really? Then how is Siffrin now aware of this secret? I don't believe Boniface would have told him as they weren't there at the time...unless someone told them first."
Oh stars, that was during a loop, wasn't it?
"Wha? Why are you acscusing me? I didn't do it!"
" Accusing , Boniface. And I am not implying anything, but Siffrin must have found out somehow ," she slams a hand on her book. "I hope you two remember what I said the day after, about what I would do." She smirks, leaning forward and tapping her fingernail on the cover. Tap. Tap. TAP.
Oh no no no you're going to get Isabeau and Mirabelle in trouble why did you say that?
"I didn't tell Sif! Honest!" Isabeau's almost in tears. He gleams with sweat.
"We're innocent, Madame!"
"Siffrin? You weren't spying on us, were you?" She raises an eyebrow.
Wuh oh.
"N-nobody told me I—"
Quick think of something.
Think of—
"I—"
<<<
"Yeah Bonbon! We're so gonna kick his butt!"
"Yeah!” Bonnie punches the air and almost trips on their own boots. “Kick his CRABBING BUTT!"
"I’ll punch him right in his teeth!"
"No, Za. Punch him in the NARDS!"
Siffrin chuckles and adds, not even looking back. "Chop his blinding head off!"
"Hit him in the face with my wok!"
"Spray him with chemicals and listen to him scream as his eyes melt out of his head then beat the shit out of him again and again and rip his hair out and yank out all his fucking teeth and hahaha and smash his fucking brains out and hang him by his own hahah his own blinding hahair! HAhha haahah!"
He can't stop laughing. It claws its way out of his throat, raw and burning. He wipes a tear from his eye and catches sight of his allies.
They're not laughing.
They're all looking at him.
Odile steps in front of the others.
He can't stop! It's so funny! There's static sparking in his chest.
Mira has her hands over her face.
He can't stop!
Isabeau—
<<<
"HAhhaha!!!" He blurts out immediately, then stops in his tracks.
Mirabelle collides with his back and sends him flying forward. Their allies gasp as he crashes to the floor.
"I'm sorry Siffrin!" Mirabelle calls out and is by his side in an instant, holding her hand out. Her other hand grips the collar of her dress. "Are you okay I didn't have time to st—"
"Hahha make him eat his own heart!" He wipes his face, ignoring the hand.
"Sif???"
"The King! Haha." He chokes. "We're gonna make him pay for everything. Turn him into a puddle! Hahahehe!"
Siffrin slaps his hands over his mouth but his chest still shakes with laughter.
Everyone's crowding in and Siffrin can't stop laughing and it hurts his chest his throat his eye is leaking his missing eye hurts why can't he stop he's so gross he's scaring everyone—
"Sif are you okay? I mean yeah we're going to kick his butt but—"
<<<
He trips.
"Whoa! Sif!"
"Siffrin?" Mirabelle catches him and rights him, pulling her hands away as soon as he gets his footing.
"I'm okay! Hahaha hah... Just tripped on a haha brick!"
Bonnie scans the area. "But there wasn't anything there?"
"I—"
<<<
They don't trip. They choke back a giggle and continue on, ignoring the ghostly apparition of himself that flickers in and out of existence in front of them.
It's fine! They won't remember any of those blunders!
That or anything good that happens!
Like when they finish off a Sadness with a cool flip!
And when they tell a funny pun!
And...
And...
Anyway! They're still getting to know their allies all over again. Maybe they even learned some new things!
They still haven't figured out what Madame Odile's researching or what Mirabelle's papers are for but at least they remembered she doesn't like her roommate much because she's rude and annoying or something and Isabeau wants to become a clothing designer and that's why their eye patch is so comfy and fits perfectly and Bonnie's favorite foods are rice, samosas with potatoes NO cheese, and—and—
Well they'll get the third one another time. They have all the time in the world after all!
Tee hee~!
Mmm! Malanga fritters again!
Yep! Already taste like ash!
King time!
Time to go fight! Give him chemical burns! Blind him! Rip his throat out! Haha!
They stand at the door while their allies collect themselves.
Time to go…
Time to… die again.
Fresh Squeezed Allies Juice. Ground Party. 
They just need to…
The ding dings are gone. Bonnie’s shoes are off. Nobody will make a sound.
Just have to move forward. 
If he gets through the door he’ll be fine.
Until they’re not.
Crunch. Crunch. Crrrunch ! 
But it’s fine, though! They’ve done this a million times already, just do it a million times more!
Get ground into a paste again.
Watch them go squish again!
Ding ding!
And then if he does win, they—
“Sif?”
Maybe next time!
Tear!
<<<
Siffrin wakes up in Dormont.
The grass pricks at his neck.
He laughs.
It's been twenty loops since meeting Loop and they haven't tried to fight the King once after that first catastrophic failure. 
Coward .
He approaches the Favor Tree after having his usual, scripted conversation with Isabeau. Once again, the Fighter reaches out toward his shoulder after their tree-mendous joke, but lets it fall to his side without touching them.
He watches it fall, starts to speak, but decides against it.
One day they’ll ask him about it; right now they just want to sit down--to lie down.
They reach the Favor Tree and peer up into the canopy, squinting as their eye adjusts.
Loop is there, as usual, but for some reason they're squished up against the trunk with their head pressed to the bark.
"Loop?"
The rukemi's eye cracks open and they angle their head slightly to get a better look at them. "Well hello again, stardust. I suppose you have something to do with this." They press harder with a long groan. "Or something. I know I know you somehow, but...urgh."
"Are you okay? What happened?"
"I'm not sure~!" Their speech is slightly muffled by their chest feathers covering part of their mouth. "I think—I think I stopped to look at your Fighter before coming here."
"What would that have to do with it?"
"I don't know... I think...He reminded me of—I think I tried to remember something and then poof!" They illustrate by tossing their hands from their head in an explosive gesture. "Head kaboom!"
Siffrin presses his fingers to his temple. "Remembering the loops or before?"
"The..?"
"Time loops."
"Time loops! Right! Those are certainly what's happening! Time loops and not brain in a jar being electrocuted or something. And um. Some things you were telling me, I believe. The things I was trying to remember. I don't think I could handle forgetting my past too! Well...some of it I could do without. But—Oh stars what if I've already forgotten things? Oh no how would I even know before it starts getting bad? Oh no."
Okay, they only understood half of that, but the last part digs into their chest.
"Loop?"
"What!?" They snap and their head jerks toward them, sending bits of bark flying at them. "Erm, I mean, yes, stardust?" They close their eye and shake their head for several seconds. When they still, they look at them with their eye curved up in a grin. "How can I help you on this wonderful new loop?"
"Uhm...do you want to talk abo—"
"Nope! Give me the lore dump. Or maybe not; I might rather just sit here in silence until this goes away."
>>>
He remembers.
They remember their allies.
They remember why they grew to love them so so so much.
Pineapple! Bonnie's third favorite food is pineapple! The food that kills him! Yum! They love to cook and are very good at it because they want to feel useful to everyone. Siffrin hopes one day they can understand they don’t need to be useful to be important to him.
Mirabelle's taken over a hundred and fifty classes in the house! She once helped her friend nurse an injured pigeon back to health, and sometimes still sees him flying around! She’s so brave and kind and caring to start this journey all on her own and continue on even after the Defenders refused to help. 
Isabeau admitted he was thinking of quitting the Defenders before Mirabelle asked for help. He said he started to notice a lot of shady stuff going on behind the scenes and Mirabelle's plea was the push he needed to get out. He’s also so so brave and kind and caring for accompanying Mirabelle on his own and being the emotional rock for the party that Siffrin can only dream of being.
Odile doesn’t like to talk about herself that often, but Siffrin does remember her mentioning a Ka Buan Festival she went to after Bonnie begged to go to one on their next stop. She caught three of the stall owners rigging their games and showed the party what to look out for. It wasn’t long before Bonnie used those tips to catch someone and made such a fuss that he turned tail and ran away as a crowd gathered. Odile’s so smart and observant and has gotten the party out of many sticky situations since then.
>>>
On loop twenty-six (or twenty-seven? Have they already lost count again?) Siffrin finds Loop once again with their head squished up against the trunk.
"Oh, please just put me out of my misery already, stardust," they groan, massaging behind their eye.
"Loop??? Are—" Well, they're definitely not ok, not when they're stuck with him with whatever's happening with their head. He presses his fingers to his eye patch. "Um—"
"Kidding, just kidding!" They crack their eye open and it wanders to his hip where his dagger is nestled warmly against his side. "Though I do wonder what it's like to die. I'm curious. We are in a time loop, after all. Oh, hey I remembered! Time loop!" Their voice drips with sarcasm.
Something twists inside of him. "It's...not fun. Don't recommend. You don't get used to it." That last bit is partly a lie.
"Oh, I'm sure it's not. I've already come close a few times and would not like to try again. But it's never about what I like, is it?" They run a claw lightly down the side of their throat. "If death isn't permanent here..."
They don't like where this is going.
They turn to him. "Since I'm at least partly aware of the loops, if I die, would the loop restart, or would it continue on until you die too?"
"Dunno," they shrug and shrink into their cloak. "When any of my allies… die… I still loop, sometimes."
"Oh?" They tilt their head. "So this whole—" they gesture at the sky in a circular motion, "thing is centered around your whole party? Sometimes?"
"I guess. It only happens if they die before we make it to the King, though." They grind the heel of their palm into the branch.
"Interesting," they hum and scratch at a feather on their chest. "But time continues on if the King kills them before killing you?"
"Yeah." They dig their heel into the bark.
"Do you have any idea why?"
He shakes his head.
Loop sways their tail gently. They tilt their head and chew on a claw for a moment. "I dunno! Perhaps it's because your poor, fragile little heart just can't take leaving their broken bodies behind to continue on to the tyrant alone." They lean back and press the back of their palm to their forehead, letting out an exaggerated whine. "It finds it a fate worse than death and restarts."
Siffrin grimaces.
"But!" They straighten up and lock eyes with him. "If you make it to the King and die by his hand, you're still together in those final moments. Truly a tragically romantic end fit for a storybook."
"Loop."
"Kidding, only kidding, tee hee~!" They kick their feet out. "Though who knows, there always could be a nugget of truth in there, what with this weird-ass fantasy storybook world and its strange—er—properties."
"This isn't a story, it's real life."
"I know, I know—Well, no, I don't know! Because I'm still not thoroughly convinced I'm not having a very vivid, fucked-up coma dream. And this headache isn't just from a massive concussion or aneurysm or something."
"Why would you be in a coma?"
"That's none of your business, stardust~!"
"O-okay."
"If you want an answer, I fell and hit my head getting out of bed." They knock gently on their skull a few times.
"Is that the correct answer?"
"No~!" Loop giggles. It's light and airy but with an unmistakable manic twinge in it.
"But I still do wonder, maybe I need to get a game over to get out of this hell. But I'd have to be pretty full of myself to think this world's existence centered around me, so probably not!" They close their eye and let out a long, quiet hum.
"But it won't hurt to try." They pry their eye open, then choke. "Er—actually, it will probably hurt a lot to try! How sharp is that knife of yours?"
"I'm not killing you."
"Aww... Aren't you even a little bit curious about what would happen if someone not from your party dies?"
"Wh—it doesn't matter what happens! It's bad either way!"
"Really? Because to me, the outcomes all seem pretty positive. We either loop back and have an answer that may or may not help, we don't loop and I get some reprieve from the agony of existence until you die too, I wake up from my coma or escape the matrix or whatever, or I die for realzies!"
"What? Those don't sound positive at all!"
"What? You don't want me to wake up from my coma? I suppose this world may vanish from existence if I do, but that wouldn't matter if it's not real in the first place. Or maybe it would matter if my mind is capable of constructing such an elaborate world. Truly a philosophical conundrum."
"Not that! It's the—the other—Loop, are you okay?"
"No~!"
"I—do you—" He's definitely not in the position to help, but they have to at least try.
"I know you've done it before, stardust." They're looking straight into their eye, unblinking, steady. "Kill an animal with that knife, watch their life drain away."
"Well, yeah," they begin, near silently, "but I didn't have much choice."
"I'm sure you didn't."
"It's not like I like doing it."
"I would hope not." Their tail twitches.
"..."
"Anyway~! We don't haaave to do it if it makes you that uncomfortable, but the offer's still open. Just...warn me before you go swinging that thing at my throat. Kay?"
“........”
>>>
Another few loops and Loop still hasn’t opened up about themself.
Siffrin has to try again.
"Where are you from?"
"I was created as an unethical experiment in a shady lab somewhere across the globe~!"
>>>
"Born and raised in a dump~!"
>>>
"In an underground bunker at the South Pole~!"
>>>
"Louisiana."
Sigh .
>>>
"Why can't you talk to people?"
“People? Are you saying I’m not a people ?”
“...Why can’t you talk to humans?”
“What do you mean, I’m talking to you right now, aren’t I? In your language, even!”
“...Why aren’t you allowed to talk to humans?”
"I was cursed by a wizard and now my head will explode in seven days~!"
>>>
"You might spread some gross disease~!"
>>>
"I might lose myself and eat some of your faces~!"
>>>
"I'm allergic."
Well, this isn't getting anywhere.
>>>
Siffrin takes a wrong turn on loop twenty-nine or something.
The moment they touch the star crest to the line of tears he realizes his mistake. Cursing silently to himself, he starts turning to find another tear, but...
Might as well check out what's in there. Enrichment~!
They push open the ancient door and wipe away the layer of dust their glove picks up from the handle.
It's--oh!
Oh!
Siffrin gasps quietly as he takes in the sight. Telescope, globe, maps, star charts--they're in a star room! No... there's another name. He stops to think, staring at the massive window on the far end.
"Woah!!! Where are we???" Bonnie rushes past them and starts spinning a globe as fast as they can.
Isabeau follows close by. "There's a big window over there, see?" He meanders over and stares out over the frozen hills, hands held neatly behind his back.
"What...? Was there a room like this in the House?" Mirabelle stares at the rolls of star charts.  "Y-yeah, I remember! Someone was working here... Studying... They looked like..." Her face goes blank and she stares off into the distance. "Um... Sorry, I can't remember."
Siffrin drifts over to the window and stops right next to Isabeau. He pays no mind to the small noise that squeaks out of him or how his cheeks seem to darken.
The sky is clear and millions upon millions of stars litter the darkness.
He can't remember the last time he looked at them. He can't remember the last time he talked about them. He can't remember the last time he thought about them.
But they're still there, twinkling and brilliant as always.
Bonnie scuttles up to his other side. "Those are... Stars, right? I remembered just now."
Siffrin perks up, heart rate spiking. They remember? Do they know!? "Yes!" He tries to keep his voice steady. "Yeah, they are! Were in an um..." Come on, Siffrin. "In an... observatory!" They gesture at the telescope. "All this equipment is for watching and studying and recording stars and planets!"
"This whole room is just for looking at stars?" Bonnie squints at all the equipment littered across the room. "That's stupid, they're just dots in the sky!"
...
Something breaks in him. He holds his smile steady, dead eye twitching. They can't keep quiet. Even if nobody cares.
"They're not just dots," he tries to keep his tone even. "They're big balls of fire and gas and light."
Please listen.
Bonnie spins around and smushes their face to the glass. "FIRE?!"
Siffrin nods with a hum; something wavers in his chest. "Most are bigger than our planet, they're just really far."
Please listen.
"Huh?! Really???" Their voice is somewhat muffled against the glass.
"And they don't 'appear' at night, they're here during the day too."
Please li--
"WOA--"
Odile sighs and drops her hand on top of Bonnie's hat. "Okay, that was interesting, but stop telling the kid lies."
"Aw, Frin, really?" They grab their hat and looks at Siffrin, hope and betrayal painted across their face.
He digs his fingernails into his hand. He takes a deep breath--
Mirabelle giggles. "I almost believed you, Siffrin, but that one is too much!" She peeks at some rolled up charts. "I mean, if stars are also here during the day, then why can't we see them?"
...
...
...
Of course. Of course! Why would you expect anything different?
His chest tightens.
"Haha got you!"
"Frin!" Bonnie stomps a foot and shakes a fist at them. "You lying crabhead! That sounded so cool!"
Because it is...
"Tee hee~!"
Right. Nobody else cares about the stars.
They tried before. Way before this all happened and nobody listened.
Yay~ another thing to remember...
>>>
He finds his way back to the observatory a few more times to gaze out the window until the pain of his allies' disinterest becomes too much to bear.
>>>
On loop thirty-something, Siffrin can barely make it to their branch and opts to drape themself over it instead, back facing Loop. They let their limbs dangle, and he picks at a stray twig with a single sad-looking leaf.
They're both silent for a while. He briefly glances between his legs to see Loop's own limbs dangling behind them.
Maybe Loop will listen to you about stars.
Probably not.
Don't even bother.
They stretch out, reaching toward him before letting them fall. "Honestly, stardust. I'm surprised how quickly you decided to trust me with all this."
"Huh?" They shift their hips so they can get a slightly better view.
Loop shows their teeth and slowly runs their tongue over them. "How do you know I'm not secretly a scout sent by an evil overlord who wants to take over the world and harvest humans for their eyeballs?"
"What?" He scrunches his nose.
"I'm big and scary~! And yet you just plop yourself down across from me and tell me your life story for several hours a day—er—thing... loop?"
"Well, you haven't killed me yet, so..." He lets his head go limp.
"But I could one day~!” They twist their head upside-down. “Maybe I want a little snack after this is all over, I don't know!"
"...I can catch you some fish if you're hungry." He kicks his legs. Maybe not right now. Can't move. Ugh.
"No." They grunt and fold their ears down. "Anyway, we're getting off topic. I'm just surprised you didn't try to kill me or scream bloody murder when we had our first introduction. Unless you did and I forgot like I forget everything else..."
"Do you want me to not trust you?" He raises an eyebrow, sniffling as some dust tickles his nose.
They're still helping you, even if they're suspicious from head to toe.
"Well, no," they snort. "That would be inconvenient. But you have to admit I am suspicious from head to toe~!"
Siffrin twists himself up.
"Can you read my mind?"
"Wha—?" They jerk their head back, eye wide. "Of course not. Unless you're telling me mind-reading Craft is a thing here, too."
"But you just—never mind."
Loop shrugs. "You're just pretty easy to read sometimes. Er, I think."
Siffrin blinks.
"You are weird and suspicious." They fiddle with the hem of their cloak. "But you're trying to help, at least. And you're the only one who sort of remembers the loops. So..." He pulls at a loose string. "It doesn't really matter if I trust you or not."
Loop tilts their head. "I suppose."
Try again.
"Why aren't you allowed to talk to humans?"
They sigh and droop their head. "Well, it's more complicated than that , but just look at me ." They gesture at themself and snap their jaws with an audible click. "I'd rather not cause mass panic with my existence."
"Oh, right."
That seems pretty lonely.
And honest, for once.
"What? Were you too distracted by my soft, huggable feathers and charming personality to see my teeth and claws?"
They do look very huggable.
He can't deny his occasional urge to bury his face in them.
"Are there more rukemis?"
"Yes."
"Are there any nearby?"
Loop seems to deflate at that. Their gaze seems to wander through the foliage, but before Siffrin can say anything, they perk back up.
"That's classified. Tee hee~!"
So, no.
"A-ne-way, are you going to show me your ass for the rest of the day or are we going to sit properly now?"
"..."
>>>
Siffrin trudges to the base of the Favor Tree after another badly failed loop—somewhere around forty this time. The sound of their head caving in from a rock-type sadness’ ambush still rings through their skull. They haven't died to a sadness in a long while; even the particularly strong ones at the end of each floor seem to be getting easier every Loop.
He was just careless.
They look up at Loop as they peer through the thick leaves at him. "Can I just skip the loop lore dump this time and get to whatever other lore dumps my brain lets me remember?" 
"Ehm...sure?" They twist their neck ninety degrees.
He keeps staring, neck and eye straining from the angle and contrast.
He's...tired of climbing the same blinding tree each loop.
"Are you going to come up here or just stand there until your neck cramps and your head falls off?"
"Do we have to do this every time? It's not like anyone ever comes here after Isa leaves."
"...Does he come here every day or someth—wait...wait...don't tell me. Loop... Time loop, right?"
"Yep," they grunt. "You're a rukemi, your favorite season is late winter, you like cats...uh..."
Is that everything they've said? Besides the lie about emerging from under a rock and the coma and… everything else.
"Ah...well, that’s not the most compelling evidence to present, but sure. We’re in a time loop! Why not?"
Siffrin slumps down on a gnarled root almost perfectly shaped for a human to sit on.
"Hm..." they contemplate for a long while. "I suppose it won't matter if someone else does see me, then, assuming this really is a time loop and I didn't just eat the wrong mushrooms." They rub their throat. "I've already done a big nono talking to you, anyway, so might as well."
Slowly, Loop stretches out and flaps their wings once, then, with little fanfare, steps off the branch. They flutter down, using their wings to slow their descent; their body dips as their feet touch down in the leaf litter without a sound. A few dry leaves swirl up into the air and come to rest a few feet away.
They look out into the sunlight, squinting, scanning; the long fluffy feathers between their ears rise up and seem to vibrate in a nonexistent breeze. They tilt their head a few times until they seem satisfied and find their place on another root across from Siffrin. It's too small for them to sit on entirely; it seems perfect for a human but not someone as massive as Loop. They drape themself over it, front legs sticking way out and crossed over each other.
"So!" they begin, stretching out and repositioning themself several times. "Lore time?"
"I'm tired, Loop."
They blink and sigh. "You and me both, stardust."
They're both silent for a while.
Siffrin kicks their feet out rhythmically while Loop seems to lock onto their movement and, after a moment, mimics it.
"Have you, er...asked your friends for help, yet?"
"No."
Loop stares. "You..." They grimace and cover their eye with a hand. "I ask you this every time, and you always say no, don't you?"
"Yep."
"Why are you so allergic to asking for help?" Loop groans. "Except from me, I guess."
"Well, you're stuck here too...and I was kind of desperate when we first met."
"Oh, stars. So, how desperate will you have to get to ask your party for help? Do I have to grab you by the scruff and dangle you in front of them and force you to tell them?"
Siffrin grunts. "Do not. "
They flick an ear. "You know they care about you. I can't remember fuck all, but I remember that."
"I guess." They rub their arms until they hurt. "But..."
The leaves rustle as Loop's tail twitches.
"But what? But what if one of them has the answer? But what if you do manage to break free and they find out you went through all of this alone? That you didn't trust them enough to lean on them? That you—" They hiss as another wave of pain courses through their head. They shrink in on themself, digging their palms into their eyes.
Siffrin's heart skips a beat. "I d-do trust them!" he gasps. A chill runs through them, and a tingling tightness gnaws at their chest. "I—"
"Do you think they maybe perhaps would feel like they failed you? Do you really want them to hold that regret in their hearts for the rest of their lives?" They narrow their gaze and speak slowly, voice lowered. "Do you want them to die knowing you tried to be the hero all alone ?"
"I—"
They… they… it’s fine! They won’t… I can’t… let them...
"..." 
<<<
"Have you, er...asked your fri—wh—what the fuck was that?" Loop's feathers puff out immediately, and a violent shudder runs down their body. 
"Nothing!" Siffrin smiles and straightens himself out. "Just something that happens sometimes."
They dig their claws into the bark, cracking bits off and scattering them everywhere. "Wait, was that a loop? Was that... Did you die???" They shake their head and blink several times. "No, you... we... What were we talking about..? Your...your party." They go silent for a moment, squinting at nothing in particular.
Stars.
They gasp and then sigh. "Oh! You... Fine. Don't ask them for help then. Keep us both trapped in here forever. I don't care. Maybe there is a hell and I'm stuck here with an idiot that keeps making the same mista—" They choke and snap their jaws shut.
"Loop."
"Anyway~! Enough about that! Maybe you're right! Maybe they can't help and I'm just too clueless about this world to understand! Lore dump time?"
"..." The twisting won't go away. He digs his nails into his arms. Deeper, deeper, maybe this time he'll finally bleed from it.
Loop rests their head on their hands and lets out a huff. "Orrr maybe we can just sit here until you think about whatever I said?"
He chokes. "I'm stuck in a time loop trying to kill the King who's been freezing everyone in time and I'm stuck and you said you'd help me and you're a rukemi and you told me to splash him with chemicals and it sort of worked but he still..."
As Siffrin rambles off whatever words fill his mind as fast as possible, Loop can only sigh.
They don't have to know.
I'm just a footnote in their lives.
They'll forget about me when they leave.
When they leave.
>>>
The next loop, Siffrin opts to skip their meeting entirely and goes to the Clocktower early. They stay awake all night staring at the stars through the dirty window. They feel empty.
>>>
On another loop where Siffrin doesn't quite feel up to shredding his vocal cords, he decides to wander the town. There are certainly a lot of conversation starters around. Maybe they can try talking to the other residents again. They probably forgot everything about them, so it could be a nice refresher...
A nice refresher of people he doesn't really care about.
Nah.
He approaches Mirabelle and her mysterious papers, smile plastered back on his face.
"Hey Mira, I'm done with all my preparations. Are there any good books in the library you recommend?"
"Huh? Oh! Well, maybe!" She glances at her papers, puffs up her cheeks, then shoves them unceremoniously back into her dress. "Yeah I could use a break from this. Let me help you pick something out!" She pats her legs and heads in the door with almost too much haste.
When he enters, she's already talking to the bored librarian.
“Siffrin!” she calls them over. “The librarian knows all of the books here. I know there isn’t much, but I'm sure we can find you something!"
The librarian nods. "Happy to help. What sort of books do you like?"
"Oh, well." They didn't think this far ahead. "I like...tragedies." Definitely don't like being in one though.
"We have a few over here." They walk over to the center shelf and point to some books near the top right of it. Both Mirabelle and Siffrin have to stand on their tiptoes to even see the titles.
"Oh! I've read a few of these!” Mirabelle chirps. “I'm not as into this genre as much, but there's some good ones still!" She struggles to pull out a medium-sized book and presents it to him. "'Ramsey and Julian' is probably my favorite of them." She starts describing the book in detail while Siffrin smiles and nods along. It doesn't sound interesting at all, but they're spending time together, and that's what matters! They learned a new important fact about her! She's not as big on tragedy as monster horror or romance! They'll remember it!
Siffrin takes the book and drops it on the nearest table.
They plop themself down and flip through the pages.
No pictures. Boo.
Do they even want to read it? They make it a few sentences in before their eye starts to wander. It flits across several empty spaces on the shelves then lands on the librarian as they fiddle with the frayed cover of an older book.
...
Have they...
Have they ever asked them if they know about Crafted shields?
...
He glances back at the empty spaces.
What if they did have something and it was just checked out?
What if it was somewhere else in town this entire time???
Did they really never think to check before?
Did they?
While Mirabelle is still distracted by looking for something she hasn't read yet, they drift over to the librarian. Giving one more glance behind them, they ask in a low voice.
"Do you, uh, know of any books that have Crafts that can help you survive very powerful attacks?"
"Oh, hmm," they look up, tapping their fingers rhythmically against the cover of their book. "Definitely not here, that'd be some pretty advanced Craft. I doubt even the House's library would have anything."
He sighs.
"But maybe..."
They perk up.
"...Maybe it would be in the secret library?"
The what.
"The WHAT? "
"The uh. Secret library. The secret library whose entrance is hidden in the library? That library. One of the walls looks normal, but if you check it carefully, it'll reveal the secret library's entrance."
"...WHAT? Why would they—? That's so stupid!"
They catch Mirabelle looking over in the corner of their eye. They smile and give her a wave, which she returns with her own genuine grin. She buries herself back in a book.
"Oh! Well, it’s usually just personal information on the residents, outdated books, and sometimes books on Crafts that may be too dangerous for someone inexperienced to attempt. Technically only the librarians know about it. But you ARE trying to save Vaugarde, so... Don't snitch on me? And don't lose tomorrow?"
...
...
...
"Yeah, I'll try."
"Heh. Cool."
...
.....
.......
............
.......................
THERE WAS A SECRET LIBRARY THIS ENTIRE TIME???
Well, no, no, there might not have been! It could have been one of those weird changes!
But DID YOU EVER ASK ABOUT IT BEFORE?
Though WHY WOULD YOU?
SECRET LIBRARY???
Okay. Okay. Just be normal. It's fine.
Don't get excited.
Might just be more boring administrative papers and two-hundred-year-old biology textbooks on the reproduction habits of newts!
Don't get excited!
Don't forget you're here forever!
Tee hee~!
Just...don't even think about it.
It's not like killing the King will end the loops anyway.
Let's go squeeze a few more memories out of them...
"Hello? Are you okay?" The librarian waves a hand in front of his face.
"Fine! Fine! Just great!" They smile as wide as possible and stiffly head outside. Mirabelle calls after them, but they wave her off with a flimsy excuse about needing to use the bathroom.
They need a distraction.
A secret library???
He finds himself wandering back to the Favor Tree, almost forgetting to talk to Isabeau on the way.
Loop is there as usual, head and limbs dangling limply from the branch as they watch a beetle crawl up their leg. They perk up when they see him.
"So, have you made any progress?" They say as he plops down in his usual spot. "On the uh...regicide?"
"Yeah, we—no. Not really." Don't get anyone's hopes up.
They massage the sides of their head. "Unfortunate. My head is killing me today. And I suppose yesterda—loop? Whatever."
A pang of guilt curls up behind his lungs like a spiny worm.
He hasn't tried to fight the King again this entire time.
Like a coward.
Coward!
Prolonging Loop's suffering.
Keeping your fri—allies trapped here with you forever because you want to fill your sieve brain!
You're going to run out soon! This... blessing will only last for so long~!
But haha! It's not like you're getting out anyway! So Loop is screwed either way.
"Stardust?"
"Huh?" They jolt.
"Is this a...normal thing for you?"
"Huh?"
"The zoning out."
He shakes his head clear. "Oh...definitely. Yeah."
They study him, squinting. "Hm, well, given the situation, I can't really blame you."
"Ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhh,"
"A-ne-way...it's probably time you tell me your life story...again. Give me a reprieve from this damn headache." They wince. "Or not, if you can’t do it quietly."
Siffrin wraps up a little earlier than before, which was a little earlier than the time before that. He has the loop 'lore dump' down to a science; sand down the bloated repetition just to their bare bones summary to get Loop back up to speed so they can hurry up and dig up some more memories of their allies.
He feels like it's only taking half as long to run out of fresh memories as when he and Loop first met. It's not a good sign at all, but it's still better than nothing!
Though the memories are getting older and older—many from years before meeting their party and therefore less important and interesting—there's still the massive wall in their mind that blocks off everything before they were around Bonnie's age.
Their home. Their family. Their life before they washed up on a beach half-dead and became a nobody traveler.
Oh well. It's not like those were coming back either way. As long as they still have their allies, they're happy! They're so happy!
Loop mulls over Siffrin's words for a while, running their finger across the uneven bumps on their hand.
"Welp. I got nothing. As usual.  Do hurry up with this loop. It's soooo booooring here." They stretch out and roll slightly sideways, and yelp as gravity yanks at them. Their back legs slip off and they wrap their claws tightly around the branch, flapping their wings wildly as they haul themself back up. It creaks in protest but doesn't break.
"Be careful Loop!"
"It's fine, it's fine. It's not like anything will happen if I fall and snap my neck anyway. Though with my luck I'd probably just end up paralyzed and pinned beneath the branch, unable to be saved by your tiny little stick arms."
"Hey."
"I'd just have to endure the monotony of being chewed apart by insects and shat upon by tiny birds." They shrug. "It's probably not much different than what I'll end up doing either way."
Wait.
"What?"
“ What ?”
Have you ever asked Loop what they do when you're not there?
Did you really just...not think about it?
Do they just sit in the tree the entire time because they can't talk to other humans?
You're a bad friend, Siffrin! You don't even deserve that title from Loop.
"What do you even do when I'm in the House?"
They hum and tilt their head side to side. "Not sure. Probably just nap, stare at birds, doodle in the dirt, stargaze ."
His heart skips.
"Stargaze!?"
12 notes · View notes
starly-amazing · 2 days ago
Text
isat text posts part 3!
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
793 notes · View notes