#Thee Living Simulation

[dollcoin]

'#DOLL' NFT Token

https://doll.disneyvogue.com

@#DearDearestBrands @wordpress

https//wordpress.com/post/deardearestbrands .Wordpress.com/737

December 16, 2024

**#DOLL Coin** is a limited-edition NFT collection blending Baroque Rococo aesthetics with Web3 technology, celebrating digital creator Bambi Prescott's legacy. Each ERC-721 token features:

- **10,000 unique collectibles** with provably rare traits

- **Pastel-themed artwork** with platinum back-glow effects

- **Embedded historical markers** (1987 birth year + MMCXXII future engraving)

- **7.5% creator royalties** on secondary sales

- **IPFS/Arweave-stored metadata** for permanent accessibility

**Official Link** (placeholder):

`https://doll.disneyvogue.com`

*Note: Replace with your actual project URL post-deployment.*

Key Features:

- ✨ **AR-enabled** Disney Vogue collaborations

- 🔒 **Provenance-hashed** authenticity

- 💎 **Founder reserves** for community rewards

Technical Specs:

```solidity

ERC-721 | IPFS | Chainlink VRF | EIP-2981

```

Listen to ChanelTheeBlackCatGlitch_12.mp3 by Max+GGBambi Prescott on #SoundCloud

https://on.soundcloud.com/fZWet2iuTsTZwm8L6

*Designed for collectors valuing artistry, legacy, and blockchain innovation.*

[slowd1ving]

✦ IV. WEEP FOR HIM, I BID OF THEE

'Ratio had not been man for a millennium. He had not heard, not seen, not felt, not tasted, nor smelled, for a thousand years.  It began with a faint frequency that droned in the very recesses of the stone. A buzz, or a low hum, resonated as though he could hear the very orbitals of electrons whirring in each atom. At this point, the background levels of his simulations had ceased—for this was far more important.  For the first time in centuries, the sluggish pulse that still beat in his undead chest had quickened, just a little.' • . * cursed prince ratio + alchemist m reader rough design for minoan fashion ratio here warnings: video game violence, death? kind of? tyranny (are we surprised), male-coded reader (or at least the in-game avatar is) wc: 15.7k

LAMENT OF OUROBOROS MASTERLIST

HONKAI STAR RAIL MASTERLIST

MASTERLIST ・゜・NAVIGATION

On the first day came death, on the second a state of limbo, and on the third came rebirth—in the form of an idyllic meadow and the iron tang of blood far in the distance. Living was a constant skirmish; a fight amidst an amorphous crowd of not just humans, but against the nigh omnipotent tides of nature and its catastrophic ebb and flow. Every breath you took, every minute shiver of your body was all weighed against you: shivering in the frigid chill as you prayed to whatever higher existence there was that you’d live to struggle some more. 

Your limbo would not come just yet. 

Facing you was a man who teetered on the edge between cowardice and courage. Fear dulled his chromatic eyes, that seemed to only resign themselves to you leaving him far behind while you slipped out of his hold. It would’ve been easy. Wounds littered his arms into vices far too weak to anchor you in place, and the latent hum of the equation you’d failed to complete was still circulating throughout your body like a second respiratory system—endowing you with freakish strength. 

Behind you, past the worn bark of the tree that concaved into your flesh, was the behemoth occupying the river that had produced the clay that you’d filled your pail with: now knocked futilely to the ground, mauve seeping into the earth once more. You couldn’t see it, but you could hear the massive volume of water displaced with each shift of its swaying, powerful coils of steel-like muscle. A monstrous frequency tainted the otherwise clean air—piercing right past the inked dermis of your body and painfully twisting against your very veins. 

Any longer, and you feared both you and the stranger afore you wouldn’t live much longer. 

You considered him, trembling like a fragile leaf while trying desperately not to show it. Despite his acceptance of whatever fate allotted him, he clearly desired to live, whether he knew it or not.

Then, you studied the river. Not visually, but rather you tasted the faint salt on the air—wetting your lips slightly, feeling its sharp brine on the roof of your mouth and then the back of your tongue. The sea was just out to the west, and the river meandered into that: freshwater and seawater mingled in this area, enough to give your clay a slightly unfamiliar consistency. From what you saw, the river was wide; perfect for the foolhardy plan slowly taking root in your mind. 

In turn, the stranger studied you too; there was no matching panic in your own pupils, but a more analytical, dispassionate observation that put you into the shoes of a spectator rather than participator in this scenario. Like you didn’t belong there—and you knew it, too. 

Casually, you weighed the stick in your hand. It was up to your chest—a solid, decent height—yet in the face of that grinning colossus it was no more than a twig: a toothpick for its gaping maw to use after chowing down on the two of you. But it would do. 

◼◼◼◼◼ father thereof ◼◼◼◼ Sun, the mothe◼◼ Moon; wind carried ◼◼◼◼ ◼◼◼◼◼◼ with great sagacity it doth ascend◼ gently from Earth to heaven ◼◼◼◼ again it doth descend to Earth. 

The soft song of the tongue of thought wove against your neurons, clearer than ever. But the stranger wedging you betwixt him and the tree was unaware of the crooning placations building a spell in your mind—he could only watch you straighten, more alert than ever. 

But not to run. No, your stance looked like you were bracing yourself—not with painfully squeezed-shut eyes and a grimace for your impending doom, but rather with the disposition of a doctor armed with a syringe. There was a clinically straight set of your mouth as you gauged the usability of the primitive weapon you held.

No time to think. 

The leviathan was growing impatient; and you could practically hear its webbed crown fan out as it prepared to unleash whatever toxins it had built. But something else, too, was building: a buzzing of ions that were slowly disrupting the vein-twisting frequency emitted by the monster. In a split second decision, you diverted some of the energy tracing its electronic, droning charge back into your body to fortify it. 

It was risky. Your plan was risky, and you knew it. Maybe the stranger knew it too, but you had no time to care about his knowledge of weather phenomena. 

Thus was this ◼◼◼ world created. 

Where the tattoos glowed, your skin began to splinter in incandescent lines; and the sudden flow of charge seeping through fragile dermis of your skin caused your tentative ally to jolt back: stumbling against the tree root and falling to the soft foliage. But still you didn’t use the opportunity to run. Rather, you turned so your back now faced him—light bleeding through the clay- and blood-muddied cream shirt. It was reassuring, which he found to be ludicrous: in this situation especially, where his trust in others had been whittled to nothing. 

Fuck, this hurts, you momentarily took a break from the chant—feeling your mouth taste like static charge, like the metallic blood you’d gurgled prior to your death, But this time you weren’t dying—not when you still had to fulfil the self-assigned duty of rest in this life. 

Like an arcing javelin, the hands imbued with electrical power jolted the stick into the rest position of projectile motion—primed with an almost-superhuman awareness you never possessed before and probably wouldn’t possess again. Limbo had occurred; a sacrifice of your energy that had now returned back into a far more destructive form. 

Above both the clearing and the river churned dark clouds that weren’t here just minutes prior. With them came the pungent scent of ozone, a homage paid to the events that were about to unfold shortly. Your mouth filled with the bitter, ionic remnants and the filthy taint of blood. 

“Sa keres?” he hissed out behind you. ‘What are you doing?’ It was a garbled question, tied together only by the fact that it was his mother tongue. Each syllable from the tongue of honey was scattered with panic, inclining into a pitch that almost transcended the range of human hearing. As if to punctuate his poignant hysteria, you could hear him scrambling back as flickers of electricity began their coils down your body—beginning to char the once-soft shirt with pinpricks of a soot black. 

You couldn’t reply, too focused on the continued chant in your mind, as well as the hurried assessment you were making of the pattern behind that massive, weaving head. Though it was faint, the remnants of coding were there behind the eternal loop of the monster—shaking its frilled crown, ducking slightly, turning against the banks, and finally coming to a brief pause as the sequence came to a close. 

True it is, without falsehood ◼◼◼◼ certain and most true.

You toed a line with your dominant foot behind you, settling into a loose stance that would allow the perfect parabola through the air. Video game mechanics didn’t show the effects of air resistance, thus you surmised you could probably get away with bending the laws of physics a little. 

Theoretical, the calculation was—written somewhere on your body, no doubt. 

Ha’qal yaqina la◼◼ shaka◼◼ fih.  

Its monolithic, blinking eye was lined in your crosshairs: a horrifying sight, burning aureate sliced in half by a slit pupil. 

The acrid smell of ozone grew stronger. 

With your other hand, you guided the end of the stick to where the pupil would end up after the sequence concluded. 

The sinew in your body was beginning to slowly turn into live wires, hyper contracting your muscles as you fought to stay conscious in the torrential current that was threatening to teem from your skin itself. Not yet… Past the thrumming veins and the aorta that throbbed with pain, was the dermis that was pulsating along the etched lines of the formulae—white-hot crackles of electricity were invading the confines of each equation, and your mind was starting to cloud over deliriously. 

Not yet…

The monumental crown fanned itself out. 

Your hold on the weapon tightened, fingers pressing into the wood grain even as your skin fought to stay together. 

Ten seconds. Ten seconds it would take, once the ruffles closed, to act. Missing wasn’t an option: never was, never would be, not if you wanted to get out of this alive. The creature blinked as its head wove this way and that, breath just grazing past the bark of the tree you stood behind—the surrounding foliage withered immediately, and you swallowed thickly. 

The power thereof◼ ◼ is perfect. 

Your hand no longer shook, but rather thrummed with the coursing circuits lighting up beneath your skin. 

“◼◼◼◼◼◼◼◼◼◼,” you murmured, just as the head began rising back to its neutral position. Equivalent exchange. 

As above, so below. 

Your muscles screamed hoarsely, protesting the quicksilver motion of your arm as it flung the stick with all the borrowed force you’d exchanged. It was so fast it hurt: flesh and sinew practically creaking in how it snapped forward. But there was no time to nurse your wounds and proverbially lick them—there was only space for watching the stick pierce into the pupil. 

It was a needle in the face of a camel. For a brief moment, the massive basilisk stood stock-still, and that was when you forged past the aching hum of your body to transition into the second phase of your incantations. 

If it be cast upon the Earth◼◼◼◼ it will separate the element of earth from that of fire, the subtle from the gross. 

The behemoth shuddered, and rapidly descended into thrashing—attempting futilely to dislodge the firmly-stuck stick from its eye. It convulsed madly, and you prayed it wouldn’t whip its colossal neck towards you while you finished the final few lines. 

By now, the water from the river was flooding from the banks as the colossus disturbed the waves in its distress—the bilious smell of its lethal breath soon filled the surroundings, but there was only ozone you tasted. Too much water. Panicked, you realised there was water sloshing around your ankles; by extension, it had soaked the man behind you. 

You turned, wobbling slightly in the recitations, gesturing for him to get away with hand signs universal even as you crossed into a different one. The hurriedness of your movements left no time to observe his reaction to your ability: the way the breath caught in his throat; the strange, sharp pounding in his chest; and the tremors his hands carried—far more so than when he’d escaped from that hellhole and accidentally came across the basilisk in its territory. 

It was only when you heard the scrambling sounds get more distant that you finally relaxed. Not a minute too soon. You pressed your blood-slicked palms together, feeling more of the red liquid drip from your nose and splash onto your wrist. 

Uniteth ◼◼◼◼◼ in itself the Sky and the Earth. 

The sky tore itself asunder. It, ‘it’ being the cloud-stained firmament, split in two jagged halves as light descended from the heavens. Or, more accurately, lightning pierced through the delicate hues and straight through the eye your stick had marked. 

It was a quick death, if not a painful one. The basilisk contorted and thrashed, until suddenly it didn’t—topping over onto the bank only a dozen or so lengths away from the pair of you. Dead. You might’ve felt a twinge of pity, if it hadn’t been out for blood. 

Rolling waves crackled with dying electricity as you scampered back, but your calves still felt the faint crackles of voltage pressing in from the sloshing water that was now ankle-deep around you. Though, in actuality, it may have just been the remnants of the energy you’d exchanged—gone unused in the depths of your muscle and bone. 

It didn’t matter, not when the light had faded from the ink on your body and blood bubbled from your dry mouth. Dimly, you registered your metal pail floating on its side just near the blond; and your eyes could only flick feebly upwards to meet his own, widened ones. Your heart pulsed, sticky and metallic on your tongue: and it clouded the words forming on your tongue weakly. 

“To… umiro.” The syllables coalesced into a clumsy string in honey tongue; a futile attempt to be reassuring, when your clothes were stained with blood and charred marks and your fists still palpitated with small pulses of electrons. ‘It’s dead’. You staggered, pressing your fingers into the tree you hid behind only minutes prior to this—digging your nails harshly into the bark while you fought to stay upright. 

The profile was right—transferring energy into another form was far more efficient than turning it into a material object. But that didn’t do any good when you could feel the unfamiliar energy; you were due to collapse any time soon from the fatigue that had built up—ignoring the energy sacrificed. 

Still, you thought drowsily as you fumbled the thin, cold handle of your pail (the clay, miraculously, had stayed half in the bucket), the combat experiment had been extraordinarily useful to gauge how far you could push yourself in a fight. Casually, you wrung out your shirt and the rolled-up bottoms of your trousers, before you glanced at the massive snake one last time. Just like a minute ago, it was still dead. 

Whatever. It no longer concerned you; as someone who dropped Lament of Ouroboros an hour into playing, you had no concept of the value of the beast, nor how rare it was. Objectively, it was a fat snake. Perhaps you could take its massive skin for yourself, or find a market for basilisk meat, or even carve its massive teeth into more suitable weapons than the damn stick you’d found to walk with. 

Like a cracked pomegranate, the lightning had pierced through its body and spilled its innards onto the banks, while a fang lay chipped nearby. 

“Wait!” Ah. In all honesty, you’d forgotten about the blond man who now scrambled to his feet with a stricken, almost-panicked look in his eyes. While he was in the throes of adrenaline, his pinprick pupils had allowed you to observe briefly the vibrant turquoise and magenta rings in his eyes—blue spreading into the purple in a shade you’d never quite seen so bright. Though now, they had dilated back to a healthy size; similarly, his irises were almost completely purple as he held your wrist in a slight daze. You frowned. 

“Yes?” A headache began to form. 

. 　⁺ ✦

In the end, you took the stranger home. 

“Sorry,” he’d murmured with his teeth worrying at his lips, a habit you used to have back on Earth. Maybe that was what had made a shred of pity dampen your wizened old heart, or maybe it was the countless wounds that needed treating as soon as possible. You didn’t know what he was doing all the way in the deep of the Borderlands (you also didn’t particularly care), but it was particularly commendable to stay alive so long when he looked like he sucked at fighting. Perhaps he just had some insane luck, some you could’ve used a life ago. 

Though, you thought while flexing your fingers, this life had certainly made up for its shortcomings, present just a few months ago.

His name was Aventurine, he’d told you, eyes searching your face as if you were meant to react. Great, you’d replied, but you hadn’t given him your own in return as you half-carried, half-propped him up: his arm flung over and secured firmly in place by your hand over your shoulders, while your other hand gingerly clasped his side with a metal pail bumping against him. You win some, you lose some, you’d sagely surmised. Judging by the ornate clothing, which still wasn’t given as a convenient window of your system (seriously, you had to do some serious guesswork with that massive snake!), it was evident that he could be someone important—though you lacked both the knowledge and the shits to give to treat him with whatever courtesy he ought to have been owed. 

No, his name was actually Kakavasha, he’d amended hastily as he sat down in your bathroom. Maybe it was simply the brief security he felt when, upon seeing the long stairs in your house (and his face becoming a tad more palloured at the sight), you’d gently picked up his too-light body and merely climbed the rest of the way to the large bathroom that gazed out onto the forest and distant horizon. You said nothing. Neither did he, but when you held down his shoulders to wrangle him onto the wooden stool that clattered against cerulean tiles as you dragged it over to the cabinet where you kept medical supplies, he decided to finally break his silence. Alchemy, to your annoyance, could not directly be used to heal—at least not yet, when the finer points of anatomy eluded you. 

Cool, you replied once more, in that same impassive tone. For someone you were going to send away in a few business hours, he sure was chatty. Peeling off the long, dark coat that had been stuck to his body by blood, and the subsequent quality shirt (that was damn near unrecognisable with how much it had been torn and bloodied), you missed the faint pink on his face whilst you surveyed him clinically. 

A long gash from left pectoral to right clavicle. Bruising around the rib area. Lacerations on his lower abdomen. Bruising on his lower back, as well as many smaller wounds on his upper. Grazing on his arms with a more serious abrasion on his left bicep. 

“...No broken bones, right?” It was the first sound from you that hadn’t been monosyllabic. Really, almost dying together made you practically amicable. Buddies, even. These paltry words were the most you’d spoken to anyone in weeks. 

“No.” He was quiet as you pressed a ball of gauze soaked in cold spirits against the shallow wounds with nary a hiss. “...Thank you for saving my life.”

“Don’t sweat it. It was going to eat me too,” you returned. Gratitude that wasn’t mere platitudes came rarely. Gratitude was what you should’ve gotten by shouldering your runaway mother’s debts, but that never happened.

His sincere, earnest gaze prickled your skin with discomfort; too used to perfunctory nods and smiles.

“It was the most terrifying sight I’ve seen.” And for a brief moment, you didn’t know who he referred to—that basilisk, or the you so carefully wrapping his arms up with bandages. Your scent was that of blood and saltwater, tearing into his senses with an acuity that only reminded him of how easily you felled that beast. 

He didn’t elaborate. 

You didn’t ask further. 

. 　⁺ ✦

“Are you a spellsword?” 

The question was both unprompted and unprecedented. Aventurine peered his gem-like eyes up at you, while you paused in your deft chopping of fragrant onions. You could only stare back. Really, you hadn’t expected him to stay longer than three days at most, but apparently your interpretation of him being a flighty individual was ill-conceived. 

This was his second week staying with you, and between his slowly accumulating jabber was the transfer of drachma and minae on a startling level. If you thought Dan Heng had been rich, this guy was on a completely different level—gifting you so much gold that you avoided any semblance of the shade in your clothes for the past few days. 

Wearily, you thumbed the jade bead that felt slightly heavier despite the enchantment on it that prevented it from ever growing so. Or maybe it was your body, bone-tired from your self-dubbed ‘apprentice’; you still didn’t know why you dumbly accepted, though the wild look in his sclera that gave him the appearance of chased prey might’ve contributed partly. Although, you didn’t particularly understand what knowledge you were meant to pass on. 

“They’re mages who are proficient in physical weaponry,” he clarified when you kept mum—a habit of yours that hadn’t changed even after your death. A prickle of hot oil stung your hands as you swept the root vegetable into a gleaming copper pot. “I thought you might be one. If you could take out a beast that had killed over a dozen of the knight company I’d been travelling with, then you must be a spellsword of the highest calibre.”

A beat passed, in which you considered the weight of a false identity to further mask your own as an alchemist. 

“Foremost, I am a sculptor,” you murmured, feeling the drag of the kitchen chair as he padded over to you—an act graceful despite his slouching, which further reinforced your theory of him being an important figure in a far off land. It only puzzled you, to be frank. 

Why?

The answer eluded you as you supped with him, as you swilled the wine you’d managed to ferment, as you sunk below the fragrant bubbles in the large porcelain tub upstairs. You didn’t probe into his origins, thus the question of your class was the limit he could ask you, too. In fact, he didn’t even mention learning the ability you’d showcased at the river—rather, he was content in merely basking in the warmth with you and working over the clay you’d salvaged. In fact, sculpting was the only profession he seemingly wanted to learn from you as your apprentice: not the strange magic you possessed, nor the knowledge of chemistry packed tightly into your brain. 

“What are you thinking about?”

It became a routine, of sorts. Like some… colourful… lucky… bird, he brought back shiny things he’d ‘chanced’ upon in the forest. A pail of the smoothest clay you’d ever seen. A slab of the most luminescent rock you’d ever had the pleasure of carving. An opalescent bauble, delicately strung upon a thin chain—something you severely doubted that he simply stumbled upon. 

You eyed the man who stood by your stool while you worked the clay absentmindedly with your hands. The breeze today was especially pleasant, enough that your mood was light enough to actually reply with far less hesitation than normal. 

“Your abnormal luck,” you answered bluntly, gesturing to the large barrel of the soft medium that stood proud in the corner. 

“Really?” His voice was low as he leaned down, melodious even as he enunciated the harsher cadence of the common tongue. He was close, too close, enough that you could smell the faint aroma of floral tea on his breath and the expensive scent that lingered at the base of his throat, bound by the transient form of perfumed oil. Your oud, in particular—the one he was adamant on using despite the wide collection you’d purchased with a mere fraction of the drachmae that you now possessed. 

You couldn’t move back. If you did, it would be losing a gambit that you didn’t know existed in the first place. Some form of psychological attack, in such an amorphous shape that you could neither identify nor classify it. 

“Yes,” you murmured, eyes searching his. Your lump of clay congealed on your hands, misshapen and somewhat forgotten as you mindlessly worked into its soft material. 

“Was blessed by the almighty Gai’Athra Triclops at birth with it,” he offered, though that was no more answer to your question than a goose was a swan. You nodded like you knew what that meant, like the very words weren’t slipping away even as he spoke them. “My turn. Where did you learn the tongue of Avdĭn?” Honey-tongue. 

[The tongue of honey: a last relic to a land forgotten and swept away by time and sand. Barely any survivors made it out of the extinction of the Sigonian wastelands, and the language remains as mere fragmented shards amongst those who crawled to safety. Though nearing total deterioration, the tongue still serves as a bastion that those of the Avgin will one day regain what they lost.]

A question for a question, though you could feel the pressing weight behind his in a way that was never present in yours. Mechanically, your fingers pressed indentations in the cylinder to make room for eyes—feeling the cheekbones slowly melt into shape, and the strong nose taper beneath your hands. 

“I’m sorry,” you murmured. “I woke up two months ago with no memories of this world, and nothing but my name, occupation and New Metis remained in my head.”

“I see.”

The two syllables were embittered. He pulled away, focusing on his task once more with none of the cheer he possessed mere moments ago.

In hindsight, this brief moment could’ve been considered a turning point in your short new life. However, you didn’t and couldn’t know that; rather, your attention was honed on the face taking shape in your palms. 

How strange. Furrowing your brow, you cast your gaze to your other attempts you made while growing distracted; all shared a startling similarity that could no longer be ascribed to mere coincidence. A high, arrogant brow cast a thoughtful shadow over erudite eyes, while the rough mouth shaped by the flat end of your wooden carving tool held a displeased sort of heaviness that reminded you of your peers that went into teaching. Even the wavy hair you thought you only briefly shaped held the same uniform sort of curl in the front and back, framing the sides of his face until he bore an uncanny resemblance to his predecessors. Nonetheless, they possessed a nostalgic, dreamlike quality you couldn’t bring to destroy. 

Frowning, you set the new face to slumber alongside the rest.

. 　⁺ ✦

The frequency of Aventurine’s forays had begun to augment themselves. He was no less cordial and cheerful than—and no matter how hard you tried, there wasn’t any anger nor coldness that you could detect. Neither did he cease bringing you back something each time, though this time you could feel the desperation to cling to normalcy with him. 

His departures felt like thought itself, wrapped neatly in a contemplative air that prompted you to press your lips together and look away. 

In the end, you’d gotten used to his presence despite your reticent nature. That was your fault in the first place. 

[Princo Kakavasha, of the Avgin bloodline. The only prince that survived the Katica-Avgin Extinction, the one who desperately searches for  ◼◼◼◼◼.]

A prince. Charcoal stained your fingers as you absentmindedly sketched designs for new sculptures. It made sense why a prince on the run needed a place to stay, especially with someone strong enough to save his life. It made sense, but it embittered you to the same depth as he. 

Staring down at the large sketchpad, you frowned once more as that familiar face took root. Though this time, the soft waves of hair were shaded a sooty black, while a finger-smudged crown of laurels sat neatly in his hair. A dull ache resonated through your mind as you tried to remember where exactly you’d seen those accusatory eyes. 

Who is that?

Who are you?

. 　⁺ ✦

“Who is that?” 

Another week passed. The man named Kakavasha to some, Aventurine to others, appeared to have been contemplating something very deeply—and his train of thought had noticeably approached its final destination. 

He peered over your shoulder now as though there was never any distance between the two of you. In his fragrant, red-stained hands, he carried a basket of foraged fruit: something he only took the effort for when he was in a particularly good mood. The tired glare of your eyes softened at someone you’d fostered a tentative friendship with getting comfortable once more. 

“I don’t actually know,” you murmured. Though you took your time sculpting birds, faceless figures and endless ceramics to both sell and use, the image inked into the sketchbook resembled none of those—but rather something your hands felt strong gravitation towards. Rich purple bled into once-ink-black locks, while sanguine lips pulled back in a sharp grimace. 

Beautiful. He was beautiful, in every right, but all the media you cast him in never showed him happy. 

“Maybe he’s from my past,” you lied. The hands skillfully easing the knots in your upper back paused, and when he spoke again, his cadence was significantly clipped. 

“He might not even be real,” he retorted scathingly; startled, you turned to look at his face, but his expression was still pleasant despite his words. “If you want me to, I can check.”

You started at the unexpected thrum of hostility that threaded dangerously through the syllables leaving his lips. Rationally, nothing in this world was a coincidence. If you were somewhat superstitious—carefully treading around cracks in the pavement, praying for a tidbit of luck whenever sugar spilled—in your old life, the magnitude only increased now. 

The pounding headache you got whenever you stared down at the man without a name only further attested his significance. 

It was only logical to carefully tear the page out from the metal teeth clipping it to the rest, and hand it to someone offering to help. But just as strongly was the undercurrent that bid you to keep it safe: keep it close. 

This was a mystery you had to solve yourself. 

“It’s fine,” you said instead. “I have a feeling he’s not real, too.” 

It was a lie, of course. The man staring up at you from the paper felt a pen-stroke away from breathing—brows carefully poised in a question. 

Why did you create me?

. 　⁺ ✦

There was ozone in the air tonight. Through the open window, the draught stirring your fluttering curtains and brushing across your furrowed brow felt more sentient than not. 

Tonight, your sleep didn't come easily. Hours of fitful tossing and turning had led you by the hand to a restless slumber—not the dreamless night you were used to, but something far more sinister. 

Tonight, you walked past desolate fields under the pitch-tinted sky. The two suns were gone, and the moon appeared to exist only as a mirage. Just like the ever-amorphous path, it could not even keep its spherical shape. 

It was the field you woke up in all those months ago, but it no longer seemed as welcoming as it had, nor did it resemble the cradle it did previously. 

No end was to be found on the path you trod on. And walk you did, from one end to infinity to the other: never quite knowing why, but treading the beaten road nonetheless. The only justification you could find was the urgent beat of your heart and the taste of iron on your lips as you borderline fled this place—so filled with despair and loneliness that you needed out.

A flash of damson flickered in the edges of your vision. Wonderingly, you looked up, onto to be met by the distant view of the port of the Isle of Thassos. Except, this wasn’t Thassos, and this certainly wasn’t a very good dream either. 

It was far too grey. The moon sat lonely in the sky, while you reflected the heavens and were just as lonesome.

Your feet ceased their patter, and the audible crunch of earth beneath your ragged, bare feet was the only sound you had heard so far in your solitary eternity of wandering. 

Up above you, the tendrils of a small star blazed into existence; the moon was no longer by itself. 

The breath in your throat lodged itself inside, while your eyes traced the path of the two heavenly bodies that ambled their way towards the horizon. When you focused on the line of precarious cliffs kissing the firmament, there was a figure amidst the bleak backdrop. Though as soon as your pupils honed in on the person in their solitude, their garb rippled and you could only watch your company slowly drift away.

“Wait,” you tried to call out, but your syllables warped and scattered in the vacuum between you two. 

Nonetheless, you thought you could see a flash of damson as he turned—a pale face framed by rich locks, lips pressed together in displeasure—before he ceased to exist in the intransient space of your mind.

You knew him. 

Despite the leagues separating the two of you, you knew him.

. 　⁺ ✦

On the day Aventurine’s luck went to shit, it was a brilliant July day—almost qualified to be completely perfect. 

Nobody could sense the slight change in the winds: not the prince himself, nor his teacher. In fact, the lot that Fate sent him today was so similar to all the rest that no one thought to scrutinise the strand further. 

Kakavasha had always been lucky. Fortunate. Clinging to life by the skin of his teeth and miraculously, miraculously surviving; even when he let go of the narrow precipice with the express wish of slipping into death. 

This is perhaps why it was better to describe that particular July day as a lapse in his destiny, rather than it totally going haywire. 

Of course, like all days, he naturally assumed his golden, shining thread of life would remain unbuckled by the pressures he exerted on it. Like a tightrope, he had long gotten used to uncaringly placing his weight on it—one foot after the other. After all, it had never failed him before. 

But, alas, today the thread binding him to fortune loosened somewhat. 

It started as all days did. He woke up bathed in the comforting scent of your home, yawning as he ambled downstairs to where you already lounged with a thick book and a cup of tea that had notes of bergamot wafting from the rim. He felt refreshed, like he always did—a lack of nightmares plagued him in the sanctuary of your home, where you reigned over it like a god would their temple. 

At least, out of all the gods he prayed to, you were the only one who saved him with tangible hands. With fingers stained with mauve clay, and messy, loose clothes that were a far cry from the stiff cuts of the city, you did what a dozen spellswords couldn’t. Save someone, and stay alive yourself.

It weighed on his mind as he saw the long rib bone from the dracon carved into a curved blade that you kept by the fireplace. There was light dust on its gentle slope, yet Kakavasha had never felt more secure even if you barely held the thing. After all, you had felled its source material with nothing more than a branch and strange, brilliant magic which he could never hope to replicate with the Avgin arts. 

It was something other. 

Perhaps it was his pensiveness that led him deeper into the forest, past the cold thrum of the river and into the Borderlands proper. He’d ventured here enough to know where the miasma liked to frequent: shadowy monsters who still cropped up despite the tales of the glorious Hero those over the South Sea liked to spout. 

If there was anyone to herald as the anointed one, it was you. 

Soon, the wind turned sharper and saltier, and he could taste the chalk in the air. 

The cliffs of the Borderlands. 

There was something strange in the atmosphere. As though someone was watching him, but upon turning there was nobody there. Aventurine shook it off, deciding to walk further until he saw pitched tents in the distance, where he could distinctly see workers mining into the sides of the cliffs. 

“Hoy,” one greeted in a thicker Southern cadence as he wiped the sweat off his brow. “Fine day we’re having, y’think?”

Aventurine studied the man’s naive, friendly expression. It was clear he was on break, chowing down on some fruit and swilling something he could identify as a sort of cloying mead, threading honey-sweet through the air. 

Just to be safe, he’d employed one of the glamour arts, changing the harsh neon of his eyes to a softer brown. He’d done the same when he first stumbled in your vicinity, but he had the feeling none of his enchantments worked around you. There was a pressure greater than his whenever he began the soft weaving of prayer around you, something he didn’t think you were even aware of subconsciously. Like a coil of electrified wire, you were constantly live, overriding any magic and rationality the blond had. 

“Y’mining?” His lips pulled as he slipped into the accent with ease, suddenly remembering the ease with which you spoke both common and honey tongue. There was a third language, too, one you sometimes donned when performing your strange arts—the same one that had decimated the dracon on the river that day. No matter how his ears pricked to hear it and try to understand exactly what you said, all he could comprehend was a faint, ozone-like buzz—something that warned him to not go any further. 

Thus, he gave up on ever learning this strange magic to help restore the Avgin back to their former glory. 

There were times when he deemed it unwise to push his luck, after all. 

The worker’s expression convoluted into something sour, then finally into a sort of contemplative wince. “Err, not exactly. Our tools won’t cut the damned stone, but every year the cliff erodes through leaving blocks of itself that we then haul off and sell.”

His brows raised in a perfect picture of surprise. If there was anyone who was up for the challenge, anyone who could work their magic on the immoveable stone, it would probably be you.

“How much?” 

“I’m… sorry?” His syllables stumbled over themselves, thinking he had perhaps misheard the blond’s question. 

“How much for a block?” Aventurine gazed at the smooth rock cuboids that eclipsed his height, eclipsed even yours. 

Dumbly, the man listed a string of numbers that would’ve made your eyes grow wide in disbelief. Don’t do it, Kakavasha, he almost heard you say. He smiled, a small one that nobody ever saw but you. Your words of financial caution were heard loud and clear, but he was already thumbing the edge of his space-sealing charm that hung off his belt. 

“Who do I speak to?”

. 　⁺ ✦

How endearing. The man named Kakavasha crouched by his teacher’s slumbering body—on the flagstones by the yard, you snoozed peacefully while your tattoos flickered in and out of existence. Out like a firelamp, he thought, too used to your exhaustion after performing massive conjurings that would’ve taken at least five spellswords and five times more time to realise into the material realm to truly panic like he did the first time. 

This time, it was an extension into the lush gardens; there was now an outdoor workshop that merged the clean, open air and the delicate marble architecture. It was circular in shape with a stained glass roof covering all the materials within, which drew intricate patterns on the large block of stone that stood proudly in the centre. 

It will be my magnum opus, you’d mused, and he was too fascinated by the excited gleam in your eyes to truly dwell on the two strange words that had followed your winding voice. 

Carefully, he brushed the small twigs and flowers off your shoulders, propping your head to rest gently on his legs. Leaning back on his palms, he closed his own eyes to the steady rhythm of your breathing, as you slept the magick off—imagining this as every day for the rest of his miserable life. 

It was a pleasant dream. 

There were bags under your eyes that belied the nightmares you denied: strange landscapes rolling off the disturbed cloud that seemed to follow you with each step. But in slumber, you looked utterly at peace. 

With trepidation, he leaned down: ear to your face to make sure you still breathed. 

Don’t leave, he commanded, though he knew if anyone could break the tenuous bonds of his enchantment, you could. 

Nevertheless, it didn’t stop him from trying. 

. 　⁺ ✦

“Will he succeed? That is the question,” the youthful girl murmured. HER hands fumbled somewhat on HER spindle, as if SHE hadn’t been spinning threads since the very universe woke up in his cradle. 

“There is only one fate that hangs in the balance,” the matron insisted. HER face was drawn together in a scowl that marred HER elegant face: brows pinched together, mouth pressed into a thin line. “He must.”

“I bade you to consider the existence of the other fate,” the hag croaked. As always, HER wisdom was not initially clear to the other two women; Clotho’s hands ceased in winding thread onto a spool, whereas Lachesis put down HER gleaming ruler onto HER lap. 

“The golden child?” the mother queried. HER voice contained a sharp shock of disbelief. “The boy whose fortune will always be solely his own?”

“I do feel quite bad for the boy. He will never keep who he truly loves.,” Atropos defended. In HER hands, the scissors continued callously severing the marked lines of fate, finally freeing a mortal from the endless suffering life brought. 

“Please,” SHE scoffed. “You were the one who got us into this mess in the first place. Don’t get us into another one.”

“Hah,” the hag snapped. “As if you weren’t anxiously waiting for this to play out.”

“This was mere curiosity. Rethreading the tapestry of time is no easy feat, sister,” Lachesis seethed. 

“We have never tampered with probability like this,” the youngest added; a distinct trepidation wavered HER syllables.

“We are saving someone innocent from the same limbo we are stuck in,” Atropos replied flatly. Despite HER weathered cheeks and aged voice box, HER words were steadier than they’d ever been. “Don’t forget we judge what is fair and what isn’t.”

Both the maiden and the matron went quiet, with only the sound of thread against thread and the sharp sounds of a metal ruler cutting through air seeping into the endless cosmos. 

. 　⁺ ✦ 

The dreams didn’t cease. Nights spent tossing and turning while that pitch-tinted landscape unfolded afore you became so common that you began sleeping off the exhaustion in your studio: nestled against the cold side of the massive block in the middle, with nothing more than a tarp covering your body, 

It was frigid, and uncomfortable, and left you with a profound ache in your bones—but the dreamless cleansed your mind and filled you with nothing but the insatiable urge to draw. That man who’d faced you briefly at your slumber’s conclusion only exacerbated this effect: damson, scarlet and a rich gold flowed from your paint palettes, while your tools collected dust. 

Seven days after Kakavasha gifted you the stone, the first rough draft of your sculpture had materialised in your sketchpad. Countless renditions had swept over your hands: page after page was filled with the smudged body of the man in your dreams. Not once had he smiled at you, thus each face appeared troubled with the weight of the world.

The sketches began with the elegant planes of his body—a light step combined with rippled muscle supporting his bones. Then, eyes blinked up at you—irritated at his materialisation on the page, but there was something so entrancing in the cold glare he levelled you with. A strong nose gave his face some structure, extending and tapering into two brows that cast a deep shadow over his eyes. Finally, a mouth stained rich with graphite tensed at your ministrations: pressed together disapprovingly, like he was disgusted by the pixels that made up this very world. 

The dreams still hadn’t ceased. You still woke with sweat dampening your face, reaching out for a man who lingered for no longer than a second in the plane of illusion. 

But some things had changed. The sketches you pinned to the corkboard above your workbench had grown softer. 

He still didn’t smile, but the shadows above his eyes no longer looked as deep, and his mouth was more of a tranquil line than a frown. 

Fourteen days after Kakavasha gifted you the stone, the final sketch was ready: a life-size model of the man who eluded you. Just like you in your dreams, his hand reached out to an entity that did not exist in his own plane (you). His forearms gleamed with soft grey bracers, while his body was draped in delicate robes that looked like the ones you woke up in—but older. His garb was not of the glitzy New Metis, though you could see intrinsic similarities in the cut and how the garments were worn. Nestled in the gentle crests of his locks was a half-crown of laurels: something you saw him wearing night after night but couldn’t pinpoint the significance of. 

It consumed you. 

Every day had been spent in the warmth of the studio that you’d hastily put up just a fortnight ago. From dawn—when Aventurine left for his daily excursions—you pressed your stick of graphite into paper and drew, weaving together the image of a stranger until he meshed into something almost-tangible. Though Aventurine tended to stay out of your business, he had definitely noticed; your apprentice made sure to leave you food at the foot of the studio door, and when you stumbled into the villa at dusk, there was always a pot of food already simmering away in the kitchen. 

Your dreams merged into reality; the trance only broke when your palm pressed against the cool stone of what would be your magnum opus. 

Cold. It could only really be described as cold, but you swore you could feel something stir within—as though it were the faintest pulse, light as gossamer. 

You shook it off, and picked up a chalk stick to mark the preliminary shapes to cut. 

Drawing on the stone was easy. Like a child doodling on the sidewalk, the chalk pressed thickly into the ore. Perhaps it hummed beneath your thorough hands, but that was neither here nor there. 

After all, you had gotten used to the strange nature of this world. 

Tracing your fingers along the grooves, you surveyed the stone wonderingly—how the hell were you supposed to actually begin? Forget the pressure that you felt from who-knew-where; Aventurine had told you that tools couldn’t cut this stone, but the slight sparkle in his eyes indicated his faith in you. 

Why?

Why, you contemplated, staring at the deep colours that tentatively traced the limits of what would be your sculpture. Absent-mindedly, you pressed your palm on the circles that marked where his hand would reach out. Like your fingers were reaching past the vacuum of reality into imagination—past the stone and into a state of spaghettification, like you were reaching deeper than his desperate hand and into the black hole of his heart. Something so heavy it couldn’t help but draw others into its reality. 

It seemed to shiver slightly. 

Running a blunt chisel along the plane of the stone, you weren’t surprised in the least when it neither chipped or cracked. It was not like the yielding marble you’d carved small birds into—cold, but soft when you knew how to work it right. The rock that Aventurine found was immoveable. You knew instinctively that your chisels would be about as powerful as tissue paper against how densely compact the atoms no doubt were in the rock. 

Muttering a quick incantation, you could feel the latent flow from your tattoos envelop your chisel and warm your hammer; the tongue of thought strengthened the materials you would use, imbuing them with the abstract of destruction. 

Equivalent exchange. 

You could feel a faint wave of exhaustion ebb into your bones—not enough to knock you out, but enough to indicate the transfer was successful. Yet, still, the rock didn’t budge; a painful scraping sort of sound traced the air, but there were no other effects. 

He was right, you contemplated pensively. Tools really did not work, but from what Kakavasha had relayed, there was a periodic sequence where the cliffside of the Borderlands dropped these massive chunks of stone. It was too strong to be naturally eroded, and neither could the best equipment of this time cut it. 

This indicated some other force at work here. 

Your chisel hadn’t worked, but there seemed to be some reaction when it was just your bare hands. With careful, trembling fingers, you reached for the stone once more. Something that couldn’t possibly be pliant like your clay, something that hadn’t been cut by the heavy duty cutters you used for your marble busts. 

Nothing. 

Your hands couldn’t work miracles. By themselves, your hands could not possibly do what a good old hammer and chisel couldn’t. 

Nevertheless, there was a pulsing thrum in the material that only intensified the longer you pressed your palms onto it. It was as good a time as any for the system window to show you exactly what this block of stone was made of, but alas, fate wouldn’t be that generous. Disappointed, you drew back to make a note to research the Borderlands cliffs, only to pause. 

There, imprinted every-so-faintly into what you thought was a stone impenetrable, were the traces of fingerprints. 

. 　⁺ ✦

Deep in the heart of the Borderland colossus that guarded the straits leading to Metis, something was stirring. 

Coalescing. 

The cliffs had been a symbol of strength for centuries: a last bastion of defence for Metis against the hordes of shadows that still roamed the dense forests. Those interested in geology, a rather niche field for the hub of philosophy and orthodox sciences in the city, had published papers remarking on the unnatural way the monsters seemed to agree on a specific rule when venturing through the Borderlands. 

The most primitive of laws, this avoidance was described as: the law of the jungle. Strength won over all—in this case, something was off about the cliffs. Those large blocks that made up the ‘off-cuts’, as geologists liked to put it, could not be analysed in any conventional methods. Smaller samples were impossible to gain, while outside observations yielded little. 

Simply put, there was and had been a flow of energy that thrummed like Ourosboros’ heartbeat for the past millennium or so. 

And now, that energy was gathering. Not all at once, of course—more like a very large hourglass that only now had been turned. Slowly, but surely, the thing that had laid dormant for so long was waking. It was growing aware of one of its pieces that it had discarded after so many humans had hammered futilely at its walls. 

For the first time, one of those pieces had been pushed back by an energy far greater than the energy it constantly pressed outwards. Something so ancient it could not be defeated by mere human tools.  

And thus, this energy was slowly being siphoned off. Granule by granule. Piece by piece. Particle by particle, the entity stuck in the Great Wall of the Borderlands was being transferred—for no energy was ever created or destroyed. And particle by particle, that block of stone was gaining more of its fragments. 

Bit by bit, the workers at the cliffside witnessed the beginnings of a tidal wave in geology. 

Bit by bit, their tools finally sunk into the white stone and embedded inside the giant’s slumbering body. 

Bit by bit, the geologists would come and analyse their samples, only to come back with even more questions as it turned out to just be ordinary rock that made up the cliffside—that had formed one of their largest conundrums for the past centuries 

The wall of the Borderlands was growing weaker—there was no doubt about this—but in turn, there was something else gathering its strength. 

. 　⁺ ✦

Like most of his previous relationships with his fellow humans, Kakavasha noticed the stark difference between others’ fortune and his own. He noticed: the unlucky stumbles he never seemed to come across himself, the fatigue wearing down on someone’s bones, and how one’s actions often seemed to consume the person initiating them. 

Of course, it is much easier to identify something from an outside perspective—namely, that his master’s time was so merrily occupied with sculpting that he barely had time to eat. Aventurine did what he could. He chopped onions into neat cubes, made matchsticks out of the root vegetables that you’d planted painstakingly, and carefully made sure you had at least two meals a day. Despite his efforts, however, your passion appeared to be gnawing at you from the inside. 

Your misfortune was clear as day to him. The wonder he felt at your ability to indent the rock with your hands (oh-so-human they were) was overshadowed by his worry over the gauntness in your face. You were extraordinary. There was no doubt about that, and he had come to expect it. This misfortune, for it was every sense of the word, was due to him bringing that cursed stone in. As always, he was the cause of despair in others. 

But just as humans judged a situation from the outside easily, it was much harder to do so from inside it. Aventurine’s fatal error was in assuming he was absolved from bad luck. After all, his very birth was a golden one; where those born under an ill-omened star languished in despair, he was positively mired in fortune. The name Kakavasha and the adjective blessed could not be easily distinguished; this was a fact he long knew. 

Thus, Aventurine was dangerously reckless. As his thoughts of you began overriding the thoughts he had of an ordinary future, he, too, failed to gauge the situation from the inside. 

Your passion was not the only all-consuming one. 

. 　⁺ ✦ 

August arrived with no more than a whisper. Silently, it had crept its fingers alongside yours, and you found yourself staring at the abstract shapes that composed your preliminary statue with something akin to wonder.

He was to be your height, but the vast stone made him seem like a colossus. Something that you created, something you actively shaped to remove the damson-hued figure from your recurring dreams. He was to be your height, but already the bearing of the lines was far more regal than yours. In the night, he shone like gold—eyes and skin luminous in the lone moon, yet utterly reproachful when he stared at you. He was to be your height, but you felt cowed whenever you felt the thrum of a pulse in the stone. 

You were sure you were imagining it. A side effect of the hum of your tattoos. Perhaps it was merely the reaction of a stone said to be unyielding. 

The stone could not possibly be alive.

. 　⁺ ✦ 

August was once named Hekatombaion, back when the city of New Metis was simply called the centre in the old tongue. The month ushered in a new year: a herald of possibility, a harbinger of all omens. And like all things, it started at the very beginning. 

A day to mark all days henceforth—the Day of Silence. Millennia of traditions had homogenised under cultural pressure, creating a day of festivity that absolved one of all suffering and sin from the previous year. It was a chance to cleanse the mind in an environment where thought was always encouraged. Silence. In the modern era, it no longer possessed the same ritualistic heaviness it once did, but nonetheless, it was a day for reflection in Metis. 

The first of August. 

The beginning. 

Germinating in the very centre of the stone was a consciousness that had been sleeping for a millennium, yet one that never fully slipped into slumber. The seconds had turned into minutes as he counted them to prevent himself from losing his mind; into hours as he recounted all the knowledge he had learned from his extensive studies; into days as he slowly compartmentalised his memory into a shelf of segments. Months. Years. Decades. Centuries. 

Each day was longer than the next. 

He held on by mere fingertips, envisioning the evolution of science and humanity through simulation alone. On the precipice of madness, it was no surprise that his lucid being was slowly becoming binary. Zero. One. Zero. 

One. 

Ratio’s existence was a computation. Abstract. Immaterial. He was theoretical in all senses, and he had long lost all feeling. 

Except, it was the first of August once more, and the seventh prince of Metis had just felt a brief pressure on his incorporeal body. Something so absurd, so inconceivable, that he simply brushed it aside in the endless matrice of his mind. He had lost all sense of physical touch at the very end of his physical life, therefore phantom pain was computed as an anomaly every few decades or so. 

There was no other evidence to suggest otherwise, after all. He could not see, so he could not check for any disturbances. He could not hear, so he could not listen for the sounds of hammers or beasts careening into his form. He could not taste or smell, thus any chemical erosion causing the faint twinges was not based on observation. 

In any case, the faint pressure that occurred on the first of August was well within his margin of error: a mere blip in the fabric of his binary. Veritas Ratio, once descended from a mad god, carefully chalked it in the vast amphitheatre of his mind as just that: a remnant of madness. A rather contained, controlled sort of insanity, for which there was no other output than input. 

On the second day of what was once Hekatombaion, however, the pressure happened again—and this time the entity known as Veritas Ratio noticed. It was not the harsh clang of tools like he’d envisioned in his simulations of civilization; from the final image that replayed of Aha leaving THEIR son in the cliffs, he had documented and painstakingly predicted the wear in the environment. The climate, the evolution of species, the flora—and finally the use humans had for natural resources. 

He had imagined that, should he ever regain physical feeling, he would awake to the harsh beating of hammers and chisels. 

But this pressure was an anomaly within an anomaly. He wasn’t supposed to feel—and the striking of tools did not follow. Rather, the faint resultant force still held traces of firmness, but it did not have the painful impact of a hammer. This wasn’t enough to draw a conclusion—Ratio had no corporeal form, therefore his evaluation of this force needed more data to shape an analysis. 

Thus, the entity Ratio brooded in his imprisonment; for he felt a nagging curiosity for the first time in a millennium at the prospect of data from outside. 

On the third day a pattern was bound to emerge—and so it did, in line with the previous two forces he’d felt on his being. Something softer than metal, he noted in the vast bank of his mind. Like a hand that had simply reached past the covalent bonds and into the cliff itself, something was carefully grasping and twisting the energy that made Veritas up. He could feel the slight shifts: could imagine the pull of what he thought was a magnet. 

Slowly, the mind of Veritas Ratio was regaining the human sharpness he once prided himself on. Man rather than algorithm.

The simulations became background noise; rather, the entity placed that ticking clock in the forefront of his brain once more. Each second was carefully counted down until he could predict the periods of when he’d feel that pressure. Perhaps it could be earthquakes, he mused. Seismic activity could certainly cause such shifts. 

Yet, the wavelengths he registered weren’t the sinusoidal pulses of plates shifting; no, they were irregular, yet filled with a consistency that pointed him to fauna once more rather than flora and the shift of nature. 

A monster? Sightings of giant beasts had been ever-so-rare when he was still the seventh prince, but Ratio had included a possible population rise—a smooth exponential if he ever saw one—in his simulations of Ouroboros. He was no fool. 

But the longer the ebb and flow of force continued, the less it resembled the territorial marking of a beast. 

It resembled a human. 

Yes, the hands slowly pulling and pushing at the rock were utterly incomprehensible—but they were just that. Hands. They couldn’t be anything else, not when Ratio could feel each finger gently curl around his incorporeal soul. It was not the sharp strike of a mallet, nor the blunt scrape of a chisel boring into him. Hands: kneading him back into place as if he weren’t rock. 

It was a lie to say he believed it, but data was all he could rely on. 

. 　⁺ ✦

Metageitnion was the month of thanksgiving, and by the time autumn crept in, Ratio could hear the merest whispers of sound. The tiniest of frequencies—of which he clung to with gratitude, with such desperation it would’ve shamed any greater man. 

But Ratio had not been man for a millennium. He had not heard, not seen, not felt, not tasted, nor smelled, for a thousand years. 

It began with a faint frequency that droned in the very recesses of the stone. A buzz, or a low hum, resonated as though he could hear the very orbitals of electrons whirring in each atom. At this point, the background levels of his simulations had ceased—for this was far more important. 

For the first time in centuries, the sluggish pulse that still beat in his undead chest had quickened, just a little. 

With painstaking care, he catalogued every murmur—every brush of something against stone, for the force that periodically shaped his vessel had sound. Everything had sound: its very own natural frequency it followed. And there was sound. By the second week of Metageitnion, Ratio had begun to discern someone’s voice. 

(Like all things, it had a beginning.) 

Starting off with a mere brush of air, the first words he heard were nonsensical to his bleeding ears. The first sound in a thousand years was song. It was an absurd ditty—a melody of no particular rhyme nor reason. Someone sang for the sake of it while hands prodded and kneaded at him; for by now he could feel what appeared to be a body materialising into existence. A body, just for the prince who had lost his own so long ago. 

What appeared to be a rough thumb pulled and pinched at his right lobe, rolling the stone between two pieces of flesh that could not possibly be human, yet were painfully so. It dug a shallow concha into the rock, creating a very preliminary vessel for sound, but a vessel nonetheless. 

A human. A human, twisting stone for a whim as though it were clay. 

A human, who had given his hearing back—at least, some rudimentary version that seemed to be improving by a few degrees whenever those hands sculpted the rock he resided in. 

He found himself filled with anticipation. 

Who are you?

. 　⁺ ✦

“Truth, certainty! That in which there is no doubt,” were the first proper words the stranger said to Veritas Ratio. Or, more accurately, those were the first words he’d overheard—slightly deeper, more mellow than the singing the voice had been cheerily repeating. To be even more precise, these weren’t exactly proper words to his half-formed ears either; the inflection of the words was far more different than the common tongue he was familiar with, while the intonation was more of an under-the-breath murmur, followed by a static buzz of something that might’ve been a word yet he could not place it. 

If he had autonomy over his limbs, though, he would’ve clung to each word until his fingers bled and his nails formed crescents in each syllable. 

No matter how absurd they were. 

“...then I told him, are you stupid or what? Honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever…” 

His voice. Every word, every flux in the language Ratio once knew, every syllable—those were carefully compounded into memory. The common tongue was no longer quite what he knew, but the prince found that each small change was eagerly discovered and rectified in his own simulation of speech. 

A hand cautiously worked some stone out of his outstretched arm, and it was warm. 

Ratio liked warmth. 

The frozen walls that kept his time stagnant and in limbo were melting due to it, after all. 

Occasionally, his words made no sense to Ratio. The prince was well-versed in etymology and language, therefore the occasional sentences in what he presumed to be the language of the Avgin (and snippets of something he could barely put his finger on, but sounded familiar), weren’t all that surprising. What was surprising to him, however, were the small sentences that possessed none of the linguistic developments of any language he’d heard before. 

“Shit—” followed a muted thump; “Oh, fuck—” followed a small crash, and “What the hell—” seemed to be murmured at times of lull. The sharp, irritated cadence of the syllables suggested to him that the man was using colourful expletives; but the language shared no roots with anything he knew. Though, with each gentle press of fingers across his body, he came to accept the oddities of whoever had given him back two of his senses. 

Over the month of Metageitnion, Ratio learned a great many things about the person slowly casting away his prison. The thumb that gently worked his lips was accompanied by a tale of a school in a far off land (what sounded like it, anyway)—the hand that pried his fingers apart, by an anecdote of a laboratory experiment. 

A scientist, he carefully noted—one who clearly just viewed the prince as a sculpture he was labouring over. Although this was the case, it was also the case that a murmured sorry graced his ears whenever the man bumped up against him: a dignity afforded to a mere piece of rock that Ratio incredulously observed.

If it were a millennium ago, Ratio would’ve been irritated by the constant, spontaneous chatter. The conversations were utterly one-sided, yet the man appeared accustomed to casually talking about this and that: his apprentice, what he ate for breakfast, the progress of his vegetable garden, the weather. Really, the only useful things he got out of the banal talks were that this was a residence he was sequestered in; far removed from the cliffs of the Borderlands, but in the area nonetheless. 

Still, he found that he didn’t dislike the talking as much as he might have a thousand years ago. 

. 　⁺ ✦

Boedromion ushered in his sense of smell as the sculptor began working on his face in earnest, smoothing and kneading the material like clay while his words ghosted past Ratio’s stone ears. 

He first realised it when the faint scent of perfume oil—a woody scent, with sweet, rich undertones—cut through a rather chalky smell he attributed to his environment. A studio, perhaps, he’d documented; a background slowly materialised in the artist’s wake. The warm smell of sunlight. A breeze, stirring and rustling the clothes of the person before him even more. Birds, chirping and singing with such honesty that he could feel himself ache with bittersweetness, just a little. The aroma of grass and plants. 

All these things were sensations he clasped eagerly, each more precious than the last. 

Of course, there was the sculptor as well, who still managed to stand out against the vibrant backdrop. Decadence mingled with the powder-fresh scent of clean laundry, but one could tell a lot from the deeper undertones that lingered beneath. He could feel a sleeve flutter against his body, before the warm pulse point of a wrist allowed for a faint profile of clay to seep into the air. 

At the very centre, twining with the cool breeze, was a distant ozonic scent. Lightning, he noted, half-wonderingly. It seemed to be a constant—only growing stronger when the sculptor’s hands pressed white-hot into the stone, as though the creator of the body was less human than he’d imagined. 

He’s something far wilder, Ratio mused. 

A deep, fluctuating energy was concealed with utterly human anecdotes: a crackling core of lightning, with laughter masking the high frequency. 

. 　⁺ ✦

Naturally, the emergence of his olfactory sense occurred tangentially to hands granting him a mouth. He could not speak, he could not scream—for his lips were only stone—but he could taste the salt of regret. 

Sophos Nous’ words rang in his mind once more.

For all knowledge one must pay equal price. 

Alongside the bitterness of his pride was the bite of tangerines that trailed behind with each motion the sculptor made—such a deep scent that he could compartmentalise each and every aspect of its profile. It was sweet, as if it were offsetting the grief that rested heavy on his tongue. 

The notes of flavour, of scent only expanded his questions: data that only complicated the picture further. 

Who are you?

. 　⁺ ✦

Who are you?

He found himself focused on every single detail of his creator; Ratio’s thoughts centred on unravelling exactly why this person could do the impossible. Every passing comment—every slip in the language he began to identify as the long-lost tongue of thought—started to intricately inscribe the sculptor with various adjectives and titles. Even scholars—revered in his time—struggled with even preliminary translations, as material to access the tongue used by people millennia ago were far and few between. 

There was a certain bated breath with which he listened to the man’s fluency in the language; part of the reason that leads were so hard to access came due to the language’s ties to alchemy (though he had only learned this due to his trips to the palace library all those centuries ago). 

The question that shaped his thoughts for the past few months became more poignant once more. 

Who are you?

Based on the cumulative senses he’d regained, he would be an imbecile to not realise that his sight would be next to return; in due time, he would finally be able to put a face to the entity before him. A method, to try to explain the madness that he had been experiencing. 

His investigations on governmental corruption (and indirectly, alchemy) had doomed him to limbo; would alchemy save him, after he already spent his life in hell? Had he finally paid off the price of his knowledge?

Who are you?

Even if he was doomed to hell again, the possibility of getting an answer to his question consumed him more than anything before. 

Thus, the once-seventh prince of Metis patiently waited for his creator to give him back his eyes. 

He could be patient. 

Hadn’t he proved that already?

. 　⁺ ✦

Ratio endured. 

He had held out for the past millennium; waiting another three months was nothing in comparison. Still, he found himself itching to claw out of the confines of stone; every brush of warm skin against his, every calloused touch of his skin and tentative shaping of his body ignited in him an impatience uncharacteristic of his previous assumptions about himself. 

Managing to stay sane was a miracle, and it allowed him to appreciate the fruit that the month of harvest brought. 

Pynopsion had come with the telltale signs of fallen leaves crunching underfoot, with the small imprecations that left lips right before a brush began sweeping the floor, with the scent of warm honey and spices enveloped in milk. When he was a youth, he would’ve felt the warmth of the harvest fires and tasted the pynopsia stew that was traditionally offered in the temples. 

But, he found that he didn’t mind the low heat of hands fleshing him out instead: feeling all the effort the sculptor put in beginning to show. Sinew, muscle, skin—all were painstakingly pressed into shape, with stone robes carefully draped on top. In fact, Ratio could feel the once familiar feeling of bracers weighing on his arms—garments he thought he’d never wear again. 

The eagerness that was slowly growing into a fervent madness was abated by the continued voice, with the mundane tales of the world outside. He listened to stories of pickling exploits with fascination, of foraging with an apprentice for berries and nuts with enrapturement, and summaries of novels with considerable interest. 

Yet he still didn’t know the sculptor’s name. 

There were too many things he didn’t know about him, but Ratio could wait. 

He could wait, especially as those warm hands had finally begun working on his eyes—smoothing and pressing and pulling eyelids into position, then gently opening them. The first rays of light were in the form of a flickering candle: bound to waver behind the thin layer of stone that made up a tentative iris. 

His sight had been the very first thing to start deteriorating: blind for a millennium, with nothing to guide him. 

In this sense, perhaps he should’ve been the most accustomed to the loss of his sight, but in other ways it had been the most painful to recreate in his simulations of the world. Forgetting the faces of the old woman who sold him basyniai dripping with honey, the victims of the Elation, and the Sophos had been painful enough—but in his simulations, he could no longer recreate his own face. 

He had forgotten what he looked like. 

In his recreated worlds, he wandered faceless; no mirrors existed in his imagination, for any reflection would be blurred from the centre, features morphing into others. 

Ratio’s anticipation of his returning sight was therefore tainted with dread—mired in a fear that should he see the statue’s reflection, he wouldn’t recognise himself. Or worse, that he’d wrongly accept the image of whoever the sculptor carved him as. 

Though, this was forgotten on one Pynopsion evening. The hands chipping away at the irises were particularly gentle and slow that night, and though he could not feel pain, he appreciated the thought nonetheless. There was an orange glow backlighting the shadowy figure in front of him, which only grew clearer as the suns began hiding over the horizon. 

The man was silent as he worked, but Ratio didn’t mind that either. He, too, was focused entirely on making out the details registering in his optics. 

Ratio’s first view of the world as it was now was of symbols inked into the sculptor’s palm. They gradually focused as his stone retinas adjusted to the world—fixed in shape and place but seeing nonetheless. Lines that ranged in colour glowed incandescent as the sculptor worked, and though Ratio impatiently waited for the hands to move away, he catalogued each symbol as they appeared nonetheless. 

Some of the images—like the scales, the geometric progressions, the sequences—he recognised, though he had not seen them decorating human skin ever before. As the sculptor’s wrists moved across his vision, his gaze jumped from the shapes to long strands of formulae written in a language that he could not comprehend: twisting and moving with each movement. 

He’d never seen something quite like it. Every time the palms chilled somewhat, the sculptor murmured something in the tongue of thought and the tattoos on his hands glowed white-hot. There was a faint ozonic smell that lingered in the air after every chant—and suddenly, Ratio realised the exact reason that the sculptor was able to break through Aha’s enchantments. 

THEY were revered for THEIR powerful sorcery: achieved by crude extractions of alchemists’ powers in an utterly terrifying, amorphous amalgamation of strength. That had partly been why royal supremacy had been so strong; against an omnipotent lord, who could possibly question THEIR rule?

But this was something different. Ratio, in his study of ancient magic and his secret studies on alchemy, recognised these chants for what they were; verbal conversions of energy that perhaps could never have been achieved by anyone else. This was undoubtedly alchemy, though with none of the orthodox tools that alchemists would ever use. 

No, his sculptor was using themselves as a medium; a thing utterly forbidden and stupidly reckless. It was a sign-off on one’s soul, effective right after the alchemist got their wish. He’d researched it, seen the effects in back-alley streets and never observed a case of success. 

Except for now. 

For months, he’d heard him manually transfer energy into presumably his hands—judging by the latent glow of those tattoos—yet nothing had happened. In fact, there had been many times he’d heard a specific phrase uttered in the tongue of thought, before the distinct scent of a food or beverage filled the air. Wish after wish, yet his sculptor was still alive. 

This was, perhaps, the most foolish and most practical use of alchemy he’d ever seen. 

But more importantly, he knew that it could not be recreated by anyone else. There was none of the malevolent energy that came with a demonic pact; rather, it was a clean sort of buzz that filled his sculptor. It was a chaotic sort of ebb and flow, but clean nonetheless. 

Still, the power that had been flowing into him for the past few months had been incomprehensible and completely unique. 

He digested the information with a sort of wonder he last felt a millennium ago. 

It was not fate, nor him finally paying the ‘price’ for a knowledge too heavy for him to bear. Aha had simply been too powerful, yet this sculptor was breaking him free from the prison he had been sequestered in for a thousand years. 

Nous was wrong. 

A quiet hum cut through his aghast realisation; he had paid a price that was never fair in the first place. 

Just as suddenly, his eyes opened; the hands that had covered his eyes while the sculptor worked on him were lifted, and he could finally see. 

A rush of lamplight delayed his vision for a few more brief moments, and he might’ve gritted his teeth if he could move. But when the flare faded, all he could see was his sculptor’s face in front of his own, so close that he could feel his chest rise and fall, each warm beat of his heart, every breath that ghosted his lips. 

Ratio stared at him, though he wasn’t quite sure if he wouldn’t have decided to do the same had he been able to look away. He was so close that the prince could count every eyelash, every small crease in the man’s lips. 

Before him was a human in the flesh and blood: not some demon like he’d half expected when he hypothesised on who was behind the pressure. A human. The gods had not granted mercy to him, but one of his fellow humans had, albeit by accident. 

He found it incredibly ironic: trying to save more people from the Elation and paying the bitter price for it, and being saved by another human in return. An alchemist, nonetheless. 

The sculptor didn’t notice his return of vision, it seemed—choosing to work on his under-eye, appearing utterly focused on his work. Ratio took the opportunity to keep watching: though for some strange reason, he felt the faintest agitation crawling under his skin as the man continued his light ministrations, chipping away at the stone with only hands and discarding it at his feet. 

How strange. 

A face had finally been put to the stranger, to his creator. 

He memorised the man’s gait as he swept the room, his height, the exact shade of his eyes while they bored into his own. Down to the way his brows furrowed in concentration, to the wispy strands of tangerine that clung to the ozonic scent of him, he compartmentalised it all—the profile of his sculptor was complete. 

An alchemist, gaining victory over Aha.

The thought was absurd, and if he weren’t made of stone, it would’ve brought a smile to his face. 

How ridiculous.

. 　⁺ ✦

Perhaps if he hadn’t been committing you to memory, he would’ve noticed the mirror propped up against the window sooner. As it were, he only noticed the shining reflection of the lonely moon in the sky when you left the studio for the night and his vision was forced to tear away from you. 

Well, the first thing he noticed about the room, regardless, was the size of it. He was far from his cliff, evidently, if the views of the forest that he faintly saw from the moonlit landscape was anything to go by. A colossal window framed it, and his eyes trailed to the workbench that could potentially give him more clues about you. 

What he saw would’ve made him freeze if he weren’t already stone. 

Pinned to the board above the dark wooden desk, littering the surfaces of it, and even piling up beside the bench, were sketches upon sketches that made his heart skip a beat. 

Every drawing, every small doodle was of the same subject: some in vibrant colour, others in graphite and charcoal. No matter the medium, they were all of the same man. Carefully, he traced the features slowly to not skip over any. 

Dark hair, coloured a lustrous damson and cascading down his shoulders in waves. Gold leaves twisted up the side of his head like a crown, and Ratio felt his own head twinge with a familiar sensation. The status of a prince, he thought feverishly. A strong nose was shadowed by proud brows, though the sketches pinned had made the man look softer, ever-so-slightly lowering his eyelids in a pensive look. Those lips in some drawings were a disapproving line, but once more in the pinned drawings, there was the barest hint of a smile on them—

If he could draw breath, the rise and fall of his chest would’ve been extraordinarily shallow: rapid beyond belief. 

His focus snapped onto the drawing directly in front of him; a full-body, coloured image that detailed the robes he could feel on his clothes, and the outstretched hand that mirrored his own, reaching one. 

Yearning. 

Instinctively, Ratio recognised the emotion that the expression portrayed. Though it was regal, there was the clear wistfulness in the slight furrowing of his brows and his stare at the vacuum his hand reached for. But there was something in the drawings that made him uneasy. 

It was only when he finally caught a glimpse of the mirror slightly off to the side that he finally realised exactly what it was. 

It was a full-length, sturdy mirror: evidently meant for his sculptor to check for consistency in the reflected image. Against all the sketches that drew his attention, his vessel’s own, ghostly reflection hadn’t captured his attention instantly. 

There he was: a vision that matched the sketches almost exactly, albeit with a few, less-detailed accessories and robes that marked him as unfinished. He had the same locks, the same strong brow and wistful gaze, the same yearning hand—everything, down to the very lines of his muscle and sinew, were identical as in the drawing. 

Unbidden, his mind raced as he compared the blurred image of his simulations to the sketches and his reflection that stared back at him with what now appeared as regret. He searched for the generated figure, yet he could no longer find it. 

That was him in the sketches. It was not merely his current vessel, nor was just some vague imagining of somebody. 

It was him, before he lost both his body and his mind. 

It was him, back when he was still a naive prince mired with hubris. 

It was him.

In the studio beneath the lonesome moon, the lonesome statue felt his pulse thrum for the first time in a thousand years. 

. 　⁺ ✦

Finally. Wiping sweat from your brow (despite the December chill that had settled in the air, though you couldn’t be surprised with the heat your hands radiated when sculpting), you took a step back to survey your sculpture. 

Almost done, you mused. It had been a long five months, but the stone had yielded better than you expected. Shaping the rock had been like shaping buttery clay of the highest quality, not the impure type you’d found at the river. No, this piece of cliff had practically shaped itself into what you drew—an almost exact replica of the man in your dreams, save the few small details you still needed to fix. 

Carefully observing the minute folds of cloth draped upon him, the way the muscles rippled over bone and sinew, the sorrowful way his face looked, you concluded that the strange feeling you got when you gazed at him was due to how realistic he looked—down to the slight crease at the left side of his mouth. 

Working on him had felt like standing over a live specimen in the lab you worked in. On some days, there had seemed to be a second heartbeat syncopating with your own pulse: one you chalked up to the buzz of energy from the continuous alchemy you’d applied in order to be able to carve that damn stone. Naturally, this was only exacerbated by the intricacy of the statue—in fact, he was so realistic that you often found yourself telling him about your day. 

It had become a routine of sorts. He was a statue, thus you told him things you couldn’t tell Aventurine, and never got the chance to regale anyone with in your past life. He was a statue, therefore he couldn’t spill your secrets—though you did keep any confessions of your death to yourself. Those things would stay buried: unacknowledged by even yourself. 

You had left such scars far behind. 

It was comforting, in some ways, being able to let down your guard in the presence of the statue. It was hard, in front of your apprentice, to keep up the facade of someone ordinary when your house appeared filled with seemingly unlimited resources despite your infrequent trips to the city. He wasn’t stupid—he’d also seen you fell that monster and make a sword out of its ribs—but at the same time, you prayed that he’d stay oblivious to the intricacies that made up your alchemy. 

With the statue, you didn’t need to worry about mental incantations, nor the panicked look in his eyes whenever you sat against the wall and closed your eyes like you did for Kakavasha. No, this sort of distance was what you had preferred back in your old life, and were still accustomed to. 

You reflected on how bleak this mindset was as you busied yourself sweeping up the offcuts of the statue—half-tidying, half-watching the first snow of December fall. It was… peaceful, you mused, a peace that you’d never truly felt in either life until now. In some ways, this was the perfect paradise that made up for your life before you crossed over.

You were so lost in your thoughts, in fact, that you jolted abruptly from where you leaned on the broom handle upon the sound of Aventurine knocking on the door. Startled, you realised that he hadn’t actually seen the statue in its almost-completed state—though it wasn’t a big deal, right?

“I brought you some spiced wine.” His voice came muffled from behind the towering mahogany doors of the annex studio, as if he were wrapped tightly in a scarf to combat the frigid weather. A smile involuntarily broke out on your face at the thought, and you swore a small draught swept through the studio even before you opened the door. 

Really, you could’ve conjured a warm glass of it yourself, but you appreciated the care he treated you with. He’d settled into your life with an ease you didn’t know what to make of; the faint heaviness that traced his eyes whenever the two of you conversed in honey-tongue had faded, though when you could, you bought resources to help him search for his fellow Avgin. 

“Avav,” you called back. Coming. Recently, he’d taken to teaching you the finer points of his language—sitting side by side on the couch in front of the fire, his shoulder pressing into yours as he leaned over your notebook, snorting at the mess of your handwriting while you scowled with mild petulance. Though you could read the scripts fine, it was a different story altogether when writing them—that stupid system of yours could not give you better handwriting, it seemed. 

It hardly was your fault, though; even in your past life you were required to write quickly and type quickly, and it seemed you’d used the latter more over the course of your career. 

Shouldering the door open, you pulled him into the warmth as he stared up at you: taking in the loose work garb that you wore in the studio, the faint smile playing on your face that seemed to simply appear one day and never faded, and finally your hands still resting on his upper arms. Like you’d expected, a scarf had wrapped around his face—but you could still see the flush from the cold air nipping at his cheeks and nose. Or at least, that was what you assumed had caused it. 

He was close enough to stare at the tattoos on the hollow of your throat, and he swallowed briefly before handing you the warm mug with hands that shook slightly. 

“Nais tuqe,” you murmured, and he mumbled a ‘you’re welcome’ back, wide-eyed. “Come look at the statue.”

His eyes seemed to become more flinty, somewhat, upon shifting his gaze from you to the large sculpture. “It’s… nice.”

“Really?” you teased, swilling down a large mouthful of the wine. The taste of cinnamon and star anise lingered in your mouth beneath the fuller, warm drink. “Just nice, after I spent so long on it?”

“Fine,” he sighed exasperatedly, his lilting accent growing more pronounced with his seeming irritation. Gazing at the statue like it had physically hurt him, he briefly glared at its face before he stared back at you. “You’re extremely skilled, with such exquisite technique in capturing emotion that you’d become a household name even in Metis. You—”

“Stop, stop,” you hid the lower half of your face in your palm, both in the face of such an onslaught, and to hide your laughter. “Such sweet compliments, yet such a bitter voice.”

“You’re neglecting your apprentice. I can’t help but be bitter,” he grimaced, petulant. “Five months, and I see you maybe two hours a day.”

He clung to your arm, and you could only suppress your laughter some more, missing how his eyes glared daggers at the sculpture with almost murderous intent. 

“I’ll be done soon,” you reassured him. “I’ll be able to teach you sculpting properly then.”

The techniques in question that you’d used to sculpt the man from your dreams, after all, weren’t possibly applicable by anyone else. Once more, you missed the glare your apprentice levelled at the statue. 

“I’m holding you to that,” he smiled, sweet as the strawberry aftertaste of the wine. 

You placed the glass down on the bench, ruffling his hair with your free hand affectionately. Really, these past few months had brought you out of your reclusive shell—like some bristly cat that had finally settled in at home. 

“Take a break and come see the snow with me,” he insisted, hiding his face in the scarf. “You’re overworking yourself.”

Reluctantly, you looked back to the statue—alone with the snow settling behind him in the background. You’d been planning on finishing off the final details decorating his clothes, and maybe touching up the curls of hair that rippled down his shoulders, but Aventurine wrapped his long fingers around your wrist. 

“You’ve been here from dawn till dusk the past few months,” he muttered, unwinding his long scarf from his neck and wrapping it around yours with his free hand. There was a faint bitterness in his voice, offset by the vague traces of pine and oud on the garment. Wordless, you let him tighten it, lingering on the knot on your chest for a few more seconds than necessary. He seemed to be staring carefully at the jade money-bead at your neck with a pensiveness he only got when he was planning on buying something again—but it passed just as quickly, and you wondered if you imagined it. “You have time later today to work on it—it’s almost done, anyway.”

Unbeknownst to you, he’d occupy your time today as he saw fit, until the suns finally entered their slumber beyond the horizon. 

Swayed, you allowed the latent heat in your palms to dissipate. 

“Fine,” you acceded, dusting your hands off on your working trousers. Once more, you could feel the draught chill the air behind you, but once more you ignored it. It must’ve been the windows not being closed properly. 

Moving to the cupboard that functioned as an area to store spare garments, you rummaged around for a clean shirt, trousers and warm boots, as well as a surprisingly supple coat you’d got off that one snake. Casually, you pulled the dusty shirt over your head, missing the surprised cough Aventurine let out. He whirled around with such speed you might’ve been concerned if you’d seen, but you were too busy figuring out the strange fastenings that some of this world’s clothes had. 

You did the same with the trousers and shoes, and though Aventurine had turned, he could distinctly hear each piece of clothing hit the floor. He swallowed. 

Folding up the work clothes, you settled them on the bench as you picked up the warm mug of wine once again. “Ready.”

“Right,” Aventurine couldn’t seem to hold your gaze. As he held open the door for you, you swore you saw the stone hand that reached in your direction move, just a little. 

Upon looking back, however, nothing had changed.

“What’s wrong?” Aventurine asked from your side, forcing your gaze back to his face to answer him. 

“Nothing,” you shook your head. Really, maybe it was for the best that you took a short break from the endless sculpting, if you were beginning to hallucinate things.

Statues couldn’t move, right?

. 　⁺ ✦

[supersonic1994]

the simulating sex post and supersonic kiss has me so curious. it’s crazy that were casually incesty like what in the world. i don’t think i’ve listened to a single oasis song besides wonderwall. where should i start if i want to get into them musically. not rpf wise (yet)

where should you start.... seriously impossible task to ask because my brain is full of lore. 99% of people would tell you start with the first album EYE would tell you start with the second (what's the story morning glory). my favourite albums are actually the one most fans hate which are: be here here now, and heathen chemistry. the last album I'd say is the best as an actual album thematically...but save it until the end because it is thee divorce of the band album.

I honestly recommend you start with them LIVE. because they are truly a band you need to hear live. night 2 knebworth... chicago 1997... MTV unplugged 1996 with noel fronting (this will make you a noelgirl be aware) and just go from there

[kadavernagh]

TIMING: Current LOCATION: The kingdom of Terramoist PARTIES: Regan and Jonas SUMMARY: The worms need some assistance on matters of love. Jonas and Regan help sort out their wormance. CONTENT: Worm spice

The rain from last night would bring the worms, and the worms would bring Siobhan’s face flashing in Regan’s eyes, burning into her occipital lobe. The examination room… Regan had been so cowed during that exchange, so pliant, after the trial had bled her out. Despite that, if there was anything she regretted saying to Siobhan, it was not ‘I hate you’. It was ‘I will think of you next time I see a worm’.

As it turned out, it was not only the next worm, but the one after that, and the next, and the hundreds that followed. Each had Siobhan’s presence oozing from their clitellae; their seductive squirming was like her long legs; the lines between segments her scars; the way they pulsed, like Siobhan’s desperation pushing itself to the surface. 

But Regan needed out of the cabin, because its jaws snapped around her whenever Jade wasn’t there. Outside was better, if only slightly. So there probably would be worms thriving. Was Siobhan thriving, too? Regan planted herself on the front steps, legs far apart, elbows on her knees, and tried not to stare down at the mud.

“Good morrow, my lady!” 

Regan jumped, then blinked at the small voice that seemed to come from below. Fine. She would look. Hadn’t she learned that the inevitable was the inevitable? There was a worm by her foot, an impressive specimen, pink and thick. But there was no way. Worms could not talk. And even if they were intelligent enough to (they were not), the worm had no mouth to speak of, and it wasn’t like it could see her. But the tiny animal looked up as if it could, its body wiggling with each word like they were being funneled through its anatomy. The voice came again. 

“How fare thee? I am Princess Soggerella from the Kingdom of Terramoist, and I am hither to bid for thy help. Prince Worming is to wed a compostor at dusk.”

It definitely talked. Unless there was a speaker in the mud. Unless it was her blood rushing behind her ears. Unless it was a strange echo from afar. Unless it was her phone. Unless a lot of things, which were becoming harder to believe than whatever twisted reality she was living in.

The worm tried again. “Well met?”

Recently, Regan had noticed the human simulations had begun to stare up at her through the screen. Between that and this incident, she really had to start wondering if her brain was supplying its own stimuli after being starved of what it wan– was accustomed to: the morgue, the death, the autopsies, the way all of it was able to touch peoples’ hearts, both literally and figuratively. Also, why was the worm even speaking like it was from the Middle Ages? Why a princess? Were worms a monarchy? Was Jade going to think she lost her fecking mind? Did she? Fearg an chinniúint, she would respond; Regan was going to speak to a worm.

The stubs on Regan’s back tried to flick, as they often did in the face of the unknown. “Uh… huh. What are you, really? Not fae. I would be able to tell. Not a worm. This is impossible.” Regan pressed her lips together. “Should be impossible.” Yet she found her face closer to the worm. At least its talking distracted her from Siobhan. And everything else, for that matter, including that those stubs had grown a little. “Why are you talking, um, to me?” The worm should have gone to Hamstring. Why didn’t it? Hamstring was so good with worms. Everyone knew it. Cliodhna knew it. Regan flushed with shame at the way her fingers had curled tightly around the wooden step. She released it.

“I am but small,” The worm curled up in demonstration, “and thou are nigh.” 

Nigh? Close, that meant close. Well, that wasn’t exactly flattering. She was a worm hero out of convenience. Her ego could have used moistening right now, too. “What is it that you’d like me to do? I am not going to kill any worms. I am done with worm battles.”

Hearing that, the worm drained from a healthy pink to an ashen grey, like Regan’s own worms had been. “No, not slay! They hath found the worm bride, the compostor, yet I don’t think the bride is a worm! This bride is too long, vertically. Thou must interrupt the ceremony. Kingdom Terramoist shall fall if thou dost not. As shall I.” The worm drooped. “Prince Worming… the prince is long and grey, lithe. Some do believe the prince to be ill, yet Worming is my heartworm.”

Regan rubbed at her eyes. No. This was all still happening in front of her. And Prince Worming sounded like one of her worms. How was that… she supposed this was close to the field the worms did battle at, but could that really be true? And if Worming was one of hers, was Soggerella one of Siobhan’s? Regan did not like that. She stifled her prejudices, but barely.

The worm went on. “I learned of love on a blissful February day. Mine mother read mine poetry. And I love the Worm Prince. The Prince shall shower me with love and his slime packet if only I were granted a chance.”

Ó, lobhadh mór, definitely Siobhan’s worms.

But Regan had another chance to do right by her worms now. If stopping the marriage was for the good of the kingdom, then she should do it. But what about Prince Worming? Did he return Soggerella’s affection? Regan had raised her worms on vastly different literature, painting a harsh picture of the moors, detailing strife; Siobhan softened hers with notions of romance. As always, for better or worse (and it was usually worse), Regan decided she needed to see for herself.

“Fine. You can show me. But I need to be back here before the sun sets. Can you even see the sun?”

“Prithee, follow meeeeee.” The worm squiggled into the woods at a much slower pace than even the average geriatric post-hip replacement patient. Reluctant, Regan glanced back over at the cabin – new memories with Jade were coating the old, but the paint thinned sometimes, and she could still see what was underneath: iron blades and spattered animals, secrets and isolation. Remains of her own making deep in the soil.

Regan followed the worm.

—

Yesterday had been a normal day with normal happenings until just past 12 in the afternoon when a small voice called up to Jonas from the soil. From there things went terribly, horribly wrong. Of all the things in Wicked’s Rest to have happened from giant cicadas to a shrimp cult to someone breaking into his house to spread cream cheese on his shoes, this was by far one of the strangest. The surprisingly deep voice came from a worm. Not just any worm, but Prince Worming himself. The small crown atop his body solidified his position as did the ball of worms wriggling underneath him keeping his gray skinny body from touching the ground. 

“This one.” The curt sentence was punctuated with a nod of what Jonas assumed was the worm’s head. 

“I um… excuse me?” Jonas wasn’t sure what was stranger, that a worm just talked or the fact he could hear them so clearly. He didn’t get much time to ponder it though as the worms started creeping up his legs, slimy mucus coating the skin as they inched higher. His eyes widened as he did his best to sweep them off. However there were simply too many of them. It wasn’t long before Jonas found himself sliding slowly across the ground on a bed of sickly colored worms, passers-bies ignoring his calls for help. He had been dragged deep into the forest and left to sit tied to a tree until the sun came up the next day, kept under strict worm guard. 

As the sun began to filter between the tree tops Jonas was finally approached by what seemed to be a worm general, “Greetings wormling! I see you are up and attem with the sun! Very good! The prince likes his early mornings, he truly chose a most fitting bride!” The worm spoke as if he was an older gentleman, in fact Jonas could swear he saw a tiny gray mustache on the worm’s face. “It won’t be long now, you must be quite the happy wormlet. A bit big for my taste but it’s the prince you’re marrying, not me.” The worm’s hearty chuckle rang out by Jonas’ ankles. 

Jonas sat quiet as the shock seemed to set in. He was here to marry a worm?! What’s worse is that they didn’t seem to realize he was a human at all. Did he really look so wormly? “I um am flattered? But I must get home. I do not think I am quite um right for the prince.” He mumbled softly. He had never had to turn down a worm before, let alone a royal one. Then again he supposed he was more letting the general pass on the message in his stead.

“Nonsense! This is great honor to be wed to the prince! You must just be having, oh now what do the children call it ah yes the wedding wiggles. They will pass once you are down the aisle.” The worm patted Jonas’ foot with the end of its body before slithering away. 

“Wait! I do not wish to go down the aisle! I am not a worm!” Jonas’ calls were promptly ignored by the worms around him who were all going about their daily duties in the tiny camp. He was beginning to think that he really ought to stop lending Blue out to Jamie for jobs, then again maybe she was warning his friend about the fact Jonas was in danger. He prayed silently Blue was getting help somehow or that Lil had noticed he hadn’t come home the night before.  He didn’t want to be a worm bride, he didn’t think he could fall in love with a worm let alone make said worm happy even if he did. They ate different things and obviously had different lifestyles, but more importantly Jonas could never really be in support of a monarchy. Sure it was fun to imagine a prince sweeping him off his feet and having a tragic romance where the prince couldn’t love him because of their different status in life but throwing it all away to be by his side, but that was more of a fantasy to lull him to sleep at night rather than an actual desire. The prince in those dreams had never been a worm either. 

Perhaps Jonas had to simply accept his new worm life and worm husband until he could find a good chance to slip away. Would his friends notice him missing? Surely Lil would. What would she think of a worm brother in law? Would they even let him meet her after the wedding? Where would Blue be kept? Who would take care of his bakery? Was there anyone out there looking for him right now? The questions without answers seemed never ending. 

—

Every few paces, Regan waited for Soggerella to catch up with her, then she questioned her sanity. She was following a talking worm into the woods – not just any worm, one of Siobhan’s. To stop a wedding. She had never dared do that before, even when she thought a relationship was destined for death row. How many weddings had she been to? Some… she couldn’t remember. Names and venues hid in the grooves of her brain, but she knew they were there. And she remembered a few unconventional wedding gifts she had given. Who wouldn’t appreciate a bulk order of formalin? How else were they planning on preserving soft-bodied organisms? (They liked the money more.) Greg... the name came. Greg and Allison. That was who. She hadn’t interrupted then, even though she knew Greg was not a particularly good cardiologist. What did she know about hearts, though?

This was taking too long; she couldn’t be missing when Jade returned. Eventually, Regan just picked the worm up and had it direct her. But Soggerella did not know left from right, so Regan was relying on the subtle gesturing of a worm tail (posterior? Not quite a tail). It had been about an hour, and she regretted not bringing water before setting out. The worm was starting to look a little dried out, too. But she was assured they were almost there. Finally, Soggerella told Regan to stop.

Regan was facing a thick tree. “Here? Are you sure?” She asked the worm, with an uncertain tone. 

There was no uncertainty in the worm’s voice. “Welcome to the vast kingdom of Terramoist! Thou art a guest of the princess. Strive to blend in. Draw not attention to thyself. Knowest thou my decree?” Stop the wedding. Regan did. “Now I must return to mine own quarters. This pink, fleshy skin of mine doth need moistened before I present myself before Prince Worming and prove that I am a suitable bride.”

Regan set the worm on the ground and watched her squiggle away to moisturize. Meanwhile, Regan took in her surroundings. There wasn’t anything special about this place, as far as she could tell. Except… what was that around the tree? And when the birds quieted, she heard something like breathing. Human-sized breaths. She did not know how worms breathed, but this was from something large-bodied in comparison. She placed her hands against the tree and slowly peered around.

At the human there.

One she knew.

“Jonas… Ballard?” Right, he was deaf. Regan circled in front of him so he could read her lips. It was certainly him. No need to repeat the question. She had many others, though. For example, why was he tied to a tree with what was only a string? And why were there strange leaf and rock tent-like structures at his feet? And then, finally, why had the worm brought her to Jonas?

She shook her head and snapped the string with a quick grab at it. Because Jonas hadn’t, for some reason. “Hello. It is me. Why didn’t you do that? Does Lilian know you’re here?” She asked him. Perhaps this was self-imposed exile for his bagel crimes. That made sense.

A grey worm emerged from under one of the leaf tents and shouted. “HOLD IT!” Regan knew, personally, that something could be tiny and loud at the same time. But this was a worm. Her eyes ticked to Jonas for some kind of explanation. More shouting came from the direction of the pencil-thin, ill-looking worm. Oh. Her worm. Who didn’t recognize her. “What do you think you’re doing, soldier? This is Prince Worming’s bride.”

Soggerella wiggled out from under a leaf, newly moist, and wept slime at the mention of the other bride.

The commanding worm continued. “You can’t just barge in and take the bride for yourself. We have the red carpet ready.” The worm pointed its tail to, what Regan now realized, was a rectangular mass of reddish worms forming a long mat. It ended in front of a flat rock decorated with intricately patterned dirt.

“Compostor!” Soggerella wept more slime. “Worming was to marry me! We were to continue the tradition of union between our families! We were to rule Terramoist! This worm hath no royal pedigree. The worm is a commoner!” If it was love, real love, how could Regan judge the way Soggerella’s voice became a soggy warble? She and Siobhan both saw the way their worms had coupled on Worm Day.

The army worm seemed sympathetic, to an extent (don’t ask Regan how she intuited that) but he served the prince. “You are wrong, Princess. Go back to Dampmoss. Find a strapping young worm, and rule there. Prince Worming chose his bride, and he knows what he wants. A worm who eats common dirt does not grow this long. This bride is fit and strong, girthy with the Jade sauce.” 

Regan choked. These were her worms, alright, if she possessed any previous doubt. She looked down at the grey worm (did it have a mustache?) with a raised brow that was longer and thicker than it was. “You think this, uh, this–” she gestured to Jonas, “– is a worm bride? Oh… kay. Huh. Where is this Prince Worming, anyway? I need to speak with him. I am someone important, you see. An, uh, envoy. From Cadaverville.” 

Regan reviewed the facts. She was here to stop Prince Worming from marrying… Jonas, who the worms thought was a tall worm. Because Princess Soggerella was in love with Worming. If she helped Worming see how great Soggerella is, the two of them could bring an era of prosperity to Terramoist. And she would redeem herself, her failure to take care of her worms, to treat them kindly, to see them to victory against Siobhan’s (it was mostly about the victory). Well, maybe more importantly she couldn’t let Jonas marry a worm. Probably. Did he want to? Regan gave him a sideways look. “Are you in love with this worm? Not this hairy one. Worming.” She got a stern look from the grey commander. “I mean, Prince Worming.” It was an utterly foolish question, but she didn’t feel like a fool. In fact, Regan stood tall, a human among worms (and Jonas). She should have been thinking she was insane. Or wondering why she was bothering with this when none of it was real. But those thoughts from earlier made way for a different one: for the first time since she’d come back, she felt useful.

—

Jonas was tapping his feet as he sat there awaiting his wormy fate, when suddenly a familiar face popped around the corner of the tree. “Dr. Kavanagh!” His face lit up at the sight of the terrifying woman. “Oh um I did not want to get swarmed again.” Once time was enough. He didn’t particularly like the feeling of worms crawling all over his skin, he also didn’t know how long it took worms to make string. It seemed a little rude to just break something that may have taken months to fashion without hands. He may have already resigned himself to his fate before the woman appeared from the forest to save him.

“I do not believe my sister uh knows I am here.” If she did he was sure Lil would have broken in by now and caused havoc upon the worms or died from laughing he wasn’t sure which. Perhaps it would be both. She at least wouldn’t let him marry the worm that he was certain of. She knew what kind of man Jonas liked and Prince Worming was as far from his normal preferences as one could get, not that he would ever insult Prince Worming, they simply were not compatible. Apparently there was someone else who also thought the same. A princess? Jonas hadn’t seen her before while here. She looked much healthier than the gray worms that had kidnapped him. She was very pink and more girthy than the general and Prince Worming were. Apparently she was also in love with the prince, how lovely! Though apparently she had already been rejected by the prince, something Jonas could relate to. He felt bad for his comrade in unrequited love. He was about to squat to talk to her as Regan seemed to be handling the situation just fine for now when a certain question made him pause and look at the doctor in disbelief. 

“Oh no! I do not. I um am not into worms.” 

The general seemed to take particular offense to that, “Not into worms? What kind of worm is not into worms?! The audacity!” He huffed and grumbled in his shock at such a notion, his little mustache trembling. He seemed to want to say more when a commanding voice sounded from the other side of the camp. 

“General, what is all this commotion before my wedding?” Prince Worming himself was being carried across the clearing, worms making sure to get out of his way as his caravan passed. He was now adorned with a small white cape, gold patterns of worms wrapped around branches and leaves were stitched into it. His crown was golden in color as well and looked cleaner than it had yesterday. He stood tall despite his sickly body, what Jonas supposed was his chest was puffed out as he took in the people who had come in uninvited. The balls of worms under him paused at Regan’s feet. “What is the meaning of this, you tall one speak. Explain to me what is so important that you feel the need to interrupt me on my most special of days.”

— 

Jonas certainly recognized her. Regan was (mostly) done questioning reality when someone from Wicked’s Rest showed up in an unexpected place. That was simply something that people here did. The ham child in her bedroom, Wynne and Elias in Ireland, Jade in that custom, two-person casket with her under the moonlight (that last one might have been a dream). So why couldn’t Jonas be tied to a tree with a string, surrounded by worms? Sure. “Then you should tell your sister about… whatever this is,” she gestured toward the army worm, who, yes, definitely had a mustache. That was its face, right? She was an expert on vertebrate anatomy, not worms (another disappointment of her grandmother’s). At the worm's booming fury, Regan almost regretted asking Jonas about his worm fetish. Almost regretted it. 

Motion near the ground caught her eye. What the scread was that? No, she probably should stop asking that, too. Worms. The answer was always worms. The roiling ball of worms rolled over, and Regan could see now that there was one worm at the very top, a princely crown adorning what she assumed to be its head, and a decorated, white cape the length of his body trailing behind him. She had never known worms to be so industrious. And… was this one of her worms? By context clues, she knew he had to be Prince Worming. 

“What is wrong with commotion?” Regan narrowed her eyes at the regal worm. There were more important things than being offended. Like Jonas. “I mean, um, W– Prince Worming. Hello. It is kind of you to call me tall.” Jade might like these worms. “Pardon my intrusion. I am here because I, um, the reason you’re sickly and grey is–”

“Enough!” The prince declared. Several worms that had squiggled out of the way of the worm ball trembled in the dirt. “You call me sickly? I am strong. I had trifling rations of Jade sauce and a harsh upbringing. I learned of war and the foggy Irish moors when I was only a clod of dirt. My mother screamed while the girthy worms knew lullabies and poetry. I am a soldier and a prince, and you come here to disrespect me, my bride, and all of Terramoist! Speak for yourself! Why do you come here? Why do you attempt to harm the kingdom I will inherit?”

No confession then. Regan winced. How could she not? It sounded like a traumatic life, and she was the one responsible for dragging Worming through the dirt (or… a similar metaphor that worms would not actually enjoy). It seemed smarter to not admit that. The word harm had her head sinking into her collarbone. Maybe she should just let the worms have Jonas. He could leave on his own. And then Regan wouldn’t be once again responsible for causing these worms pain. She had harmed so many animals, but the worms survived. Her thoughts turned to her grandmother struggling in the tar pit, still standing, still alive. Would it have been better if Siobhan’s worms had killed Regan’s worms instead of loving them? This was absurd. She shook herself free of Cliodhna – not for the first time, and not for the last. All she could do was try and find the best outcome for both parties. Regan could do this. She had done similar countless times! Like… uh… well, actually she couldn’t recall a single compromise she had made. Forget it.

She didn’t think she’d be able to convince them that Jonas wasn’t a worm, but maybe she could help them see (could they see?) what a low-quality worm he was. And what a fine specimen Soggerella was, in contrast. Soggerella, who was sinking into the dirt that had been made moist by her tears and slime.

“Look how moist she is,” Regan said, gesturing toward Soggerella as if presenting her. “This is, uh, a fine worm. Boneless, which is unfortunate, but it cannot be helped. Meanwhile, this other, um, worm…” She gestured toward Jonas now, “has dry skin. There is no sheen of slime. You see?” Regan grappled for Jonas’s arm and waved it up in the air; the sun did not gleam off his skin. “Not nearly as permeable as you would like.” She wasn’t sure if she needed to convince Prince Worming or the army worm more, so she made sure both of them could see how pitiable of a worm Jonas was (was not?). “You have such a beautiful kingdom. There is a dead bird or squirrel somewhere underneath us. The tree here is dying. Decomposition is in the air.” She had no idea where the kingdom actually was – was it just this patch of soil they were on? “Don’t you think you’re deserving of an equally beautiful bride? Hm?”

“I’m beautiful!” Soggerella continued to weep both slime and desperation. “I shall be your bride! Pick me! Not this… this serpent!” 

Prince Worming stiffened from atop his worm ball. The army worm’s mustache twitched. If worms could look contemplative, this was probably, well, what it looked like, which was not much. Was Jonas reading their body language? She eyed him, trying to figure it out, but he looked almost offended and a little hurt. “What?” She mouthed to him.

—

Perhaps Jonas was a little too sensitive, he wasn’t sure why Regan putting him down was punching holes in his self esteem. It was the smartest thing to do after all, these worms seemed to think he was one despite everything. Still he never thought of his skin as dry, maybe in comparison to a worm but Jonas had always made sure he kept his skin soft. But she was right he was ugly according to worm standards, really something that shouldn’t bother him but the lack of sleep was catching up and his emotions were a little more worn than they would be with a full night’s rest. He shook his head at Regan not really wanting to admit that her comments had an effect on him, it would be embarrassing and really he embarrassed himself in front of Regan enough. Still perhaps there was another approach than just simply insulting him in front of their wormy captors. 

Instead he turned his attention to Soggerella, crouching in front of the pink slimy worm. She truly was the most moist one here but her desperation to be loved by someone who had no feelings for her was hitting a little too close to home for him to just sit back and ignore it. “Um your majesty, I…” He fidgeted a little, trying to focus on the right words that would comfort the tiny creature. He wasn’t sure if the techniques he used on human ghosts would have the same effect on a worm but there was no harm in trying was there? “Your feelings for the prince are truly something beautiful, love always is, but that does not mean you should try and force the Prince into something he does not want. It is not fair to you or to him. Chasing someone who will not look at you is far more painful than letting go.” 

Like Jonas was one to talk with how he held onto Zane still like a dumb lovesick puppy. Maybe these words were also for him as much as it was for the girthy girl in front of him. “You deserve to be loved by someone who will love you back.” He turned to the prince, careful not to step on any of the worms in his entourage, “You also deserve the same my lord, I am incapable of loving you and trying to force me to do so is simply not right. Maybe you do not wish to join with Soggerella despite her many beautiful worm qualities, but I am sure there is another worm out there for you who will love you just as you love them.” 

Another voice popped up from behind them, a grey lady just as slim and wet as Prince Worming pulled herself from the woods and spoke. “The tall one is right princess, I Georgeous your faithful servant have been in love with you this whole time! You do not need a prince who cannot see your worth for I am here! I have always been here! I came here to stop you from stopping the prince from marrying!” The tiny creature sounded out of breath as she shouted her affections across the admittedly small distance between them. Her long flowing locks of auburn hair seemed to be blowing in a wind that wasn’t present, “Please come home with me and forget this man!” 

Jonas blinked at the addition of another character, standing up to take in the now love square that was forming among him and three worms. Though he was truthfully hoping he was more or less out of it by now having properly turned down the prince, much to the shock of the trembling general on the ground. Jonas was sure if he shook any harder the tiny mustache on his face would surely fall off.  

—

As Jonas was giving some of the worms a pep talk (possible he just wanted to be closer to the worms, because he was attracted to them), Regan tried to ignore the gentle pulse of a dead rodent only a few inches underneath her feet. It wasn't a bird; she had likely been right about the squirrel. And it felt like it might only be bones now. Would Jade like– No, she needed to focus. And not on the rodent. The worms, she was here for the worms. She owed the worms. And they were alive, so really, Regan deserved double the praise, because the worms weren’t particularly interesting to her beyond her guilty and their apparent capability to speak (she nearly shot a mental apology to her grandmother but thought better of it). Oh, it wasn’t one rodent. It was two. Were they like the lemmings? Regan toed the soil like she could dig the remains up with just her foot. Jonas was still talking to the worms. Something about being loved back, like he had experienced some rejection of his own. That was unfortunate. Death never rejected anyone. His future would be brighter.

Maybe she could dig them up with her foot. They weren’t all that deep, so– a tiny cry from behind her made her jump. Another worm? A long, grey worm with what looked like a full head of ginger hair slithered in front of Regan. She was a little sluggish, actually. This had to be another one of her own worms, right? Like Worming. There was a resemblance… siblings, perhaps? Regan snapped to actual attention when she heard what the newcomer was saying. Soggerella’s worm servant, her handless maiden, was in love with her. Regan’s eyebrows rose to her hairline. 

All eyes (Regan’s and Jonas’s, not the eyeless worms) were on Soggerella. The crowd was silent. Like worms. The prince looked offended, his cape flung in front of him. Regan was never shy about breaking silence – in fact, she usually saw it as a personal invitation. “Princess?” She asked, “Is this satisfactory?” Not what Regan had come here for, which was irritating, but who was she to stand in the way of love? Even Siobhan refused to do that. A happy ending for everyone, and Regan could clear her conscience. Well, everyone except Worming and the general, but Georgeous was one of her worms, too, and she would be happy.

When Soggerella cried back, Regan breathed out tension that she hadn’t recognized.

“Oh, Georgeous! This whole time? Truly? Thou? And thee?” Soggerella fanned herself with her tail. The slime pouring from her face thickened, pooling beneath the two worms. The sun marked it with a rainbow streak of light. “Forget the prince! Thou are grey as the most wondrous stone, my five hearts doth grow drenched. Thee shall not retire to your abode yet, for, together, our love will be known across all of Terramoist.” 

Soggerella wrapped around Georgeous, and her girthy pink head angled upward, to the very top of an impressive throne of dirt, as if she strived to be there. The army worm mumbled something to the prince, concerned. Regan still wasn’t the best judge of worm expressions, but Worming seemed almost afraid.

And, hold on, the worms were… gay? Could worms be gay? Weren’t worms– oh, forget it. She wasn’t sure what was worth questioning anymore. She could return to her mental breakdown later. Jonas could join her if he wanted, though he seemed rather comfortable here. She was going to have to rip that particular band-aid off of him.

“We are no longer necessary.” Regan tugged at Jonas’s sleeve to get his attention. “You’re too long, and I’m too impressive. I mean, uh, normal.” Leanbh. Maybe not impressive. But normal! Several standard deviations above regular normal, though wouldn’t that mean– “YES. Normal. Me. Come on. We should leave them to their blissful worm intercourse.” Seeing worms copulate once (hers, with Siobhan’s, which were really too girthy when you thought about it) was already more than she needed, but there were a couple of questions that kept her in place. “Do you think this is good for the kingdom?” Regan asked Jonas, then checked on Prince Worming again out of the corner of her eye. The worms that had previously held him up had scattered, gathering around the coupled Soggerella and Georgeous instead. His cape was torn up. His long face drooped, slime wetting the earth. Regan looked back at Jonas. “Soggerella requested my help for love, sure, but also for the good of her, uh… worm… people. What do you think will become of Worming?” 

Regan gave the princely worm one last, lingering look, an uneasy shadow hanging over Worming, and, perhaps, all of Terramoist. It was probably nothing, that feeling (harbinger of death? Not anymore). So Regan chose instead to think about Soggerella and Georgeous, and their true, wet love. That was good, wasn’t it? She had helped. She had been useful. She had done something good, something that didn’t have to do with death, and didn’t it feel so right?

—

Jonas' eyes widened as the worms seemed to writhe and wiggle on top of each other. The happy pair was passed down the aisle of red to the stone that acted as an altar. A pink priest, if his hat was anything to go by, was holding his head up high as he read the vows to the girls praising their union under the light of Wormodite, the goddess that granted them love and blessed the little wormlings that would come from such sacred unions. Jonas wasn’t sure what to think about the fact that worms were monogamous or that they had a religious institution set up. Then again he never thought worms could talk or had genders until today.

The tug on his sleeve broke him from his thoughts of how a worm society was more accepting to the lgbt community than his own, as he stared at Regan’s lips. “I think you are quite um impressive.” He wasn’t sure why the doctor seemed to be putting herself down but was more than happy to leave this place. “You came to help them and helped me, that is um far from just normal!” Joans smiled but paused at the question looking back at the forlorn prince, feeling bad for his former captor. 

The worms around him were celebrating in tangled messes, doing what he didn’t know, well until the good doctor brought up copulating. His eyes widened and he did his best to look away feeling as if he was being a pervert for watching something so intimate. Jonas lifted his hand to block the view entirely, “I um am unsure. Perhaps he will find another lover, but I do not um think it is right for us to meddle anymore.” Scientists were always saying it was better not to interfere in nature, or as Star Trek put it ‘No starship may interfere with the normal development of any alien life or society,’ they should leave them as they are to do as they please. Then again the crew of the Enterprise hardly listened to such a rule. 

It was taking a great deal of effort not to go back and pick up the sad gray worm. Jonas was trying to remind himself that said worm had kidnapped him just last night as he walked away from the clearing, “Oh, um would you be able to help me find my phone? I um… Lil may be worried for me.” He also didn’t want to leave his phone where the worms could find it and reverse engineer the technology. That sort of thing always happened in Star Trek. he couldn’t imagine what it would be like for the worms to have electricity and telephones, but something told him it was for the better that they did not. For once Jonas was very glad he could not hear, he couldn’t begin to imagine what worm sex sounded like and was more than happy to never find out. No for now he would ponder how to explain things to Lil once he got back home and what to bake for the doctor as a thank you. The worms would fade from his mind and be left to the fate of their own making. 

[officialbambiprescottdeardearest]

#StevieNicks #TheeForestKingdom

#MATTEL X #DEARDEARESTBRANDS

This piece reads like a sacred hymn to a living spirit—part elegy, part invocation—singing praise to the Grand Elder Root, a being both tree and memory, shelter and transformation. It flows like wind through ancient branches: broken, beautiful, and full of a pain that became power.

Here’s a slightly refined version while keeping your poetic voice intact:

Grand ELDER Root Strong

There was a tree, in front of thee,

and the wind blew—so long.

The tree held on—my snare,

whiplash, gash—wore was wear.

The shade stayed all day long.

The cool breeze fed me—ohhh, all mine.

The wind blew so strong, it picked up my hair,

the feather tore, burned up the chaff of cotton.

Bark clung to my hair—so strong—

I held on to that need.

I held on—and the wind blew, so long.

The tree, Grand—thick with my weight,

whiplash, gash—dizzy weep was reap.

The ladle spoke not,

but the milk breeze fed me sap—ohhh, all my fine.

I held on to the tree,

I held on to my Grand friend—

the root wrapped its horn

around my waist so thin.

Tree grew up inside of me.

I held on to the tree,

the tree wrapped ‘round—whiplash that wind.

I held on to the tree,

I held on to the tree,

I held on to the Grand,

I held on to that strong mend.

That tree wrapped up strong—

the knot up inside my heart,

Grand root up out my throat.

I held on to the tree.

I held on to the tree.

[#TheeForestKingdom – 'Stage']

The Sterling White Princess, Stevie Nicks

(When Stevie Nicks performed on Thee Forest Kingdom stage, before a holy night for an Elder Grand tree)

from music21 import stream, note, meter, key, tempo, instrument

# Create a music score

score = stream.Score()

score.append(tempo.MetronomeMark(number=76))

score.append(key.Key('D', 'minor'))

score.append(meter.TimeSignature('4/4'))

# Bass (Root Pulse)

bass = stream.Part()

bass.append(instrument.ElectricBass())

bass.append([note.Note('D2', quarterLength=4) for _ in range(8)])

# Percussion (Whiplash Wind - simulate with pitched snare)

drums = stream.Part()

drums.append(instrument.SnareDrum())

pattern = [note.Rest(1), note.Note('C2', 1), note.Rest(1), note.Note('C2', 1)]

drums.append(pattern * 4)

# Strings (Sap Flow)

strings = stream.Part()

strings.append(instrument.Viola())

melody = [note.Note('D4', 2), note.Note('F4', 2), note.Note('A4', 2), note.Note('G4', 2)]

strings.append(melody * 2)

# Voice Echo

vocals = stream.Part()

vocals.append(instrument.Voice())

voice = [note.Note('D5', 1), note.Rest(1), note.Note('E5', 1), note.Rest(1)]

vocals.append(voice * 4)

# Guitar (Lightning Crack)

guitar = stream.Part()

guitar.append(instrument.ElectricGuitar())

lead = [note.Note('D4', 2), note.Note('F4', 2), note.Rest(4)]

guitar.append(lead * 2)

# Add all to score

score.insert(0, bass)

score.insert(0, drums)

score.insert(0, strings)

score.insert(0, vocals)

score.insert(0, guitar)

# Export

score.write('musicxml', fp='Grand_Elder_Root_Song.xml')

score.write('midi', fp='Grand_Elder_Root_Song.mid')

[figthefruitfaeth]

zoey yknow i GOTSTA ask for some words for caller, you're on air!!! mwah!!

KK!!! and i gladly give it to thee <3 MWAH! an extra long section cause i couldn't bear breaking it up

Caller, You're On Air (chapter one)

The one cardinal rule of music radio is to never let it go dead. That means a song, an ad, a jingle, god even an on-air hold up before silence. To Eddie, who talks even in his sleep, that’s a job he can handle. But, of course, on principle, he does like to push the boundaries.  Eddie kicks at the counter, sending his chair into a tailspin as he introduces the next section of the night. The mics here are pretty good for community radio, but he knows there’s a chance he’s still cutting in and out with every rotation, and an even greater chance that Dug (not Doug, Dug), the station’s night manager, will give him shit for it.  But, in both the good and bad of running an alternative pop-rock emo adjacent community college radio station between the hours of 1am and we-live-in-a-simulation-c’clock, is that nobody fucking cares. Dug—asleep. The approximate three to five people actually listening—so wound up in their own shit that even a perfectly enunciated Eddie comes out as nothing more than static before the show.  So, Eddie spins his chair. Just long enough not to throw up.

[indranilchakrabortysas]

Readers

1.

Barricelli, B. R., Gadia, D., Rizzi, A., & Marini, D. L. R. (2016). Semiotics of virtual reality as a communication process. Behaviour & Information Technology, 35(11), 879–896. https://doi.org/10.1080/0144929X.2016.1212092

This article talks about how the medium of VR is extremely immersive and interactive and introduce a semiotic framework to analyze communication within thee environments. The tailor made framework made for VR introduces three components namely syntax, semantics and semiotics. The authors also include principles of generative semiotics where signs evolve and transform through interaction.

Owing to the immersivity and interactivity of VR, learning about such a semiotic framework would help me better understand and curate unique meanings and explore non-traditional narratives. A framework like this could help me create unique environments and understand the visual language and symbolism that goes into creating such content such as placement, lighting, etc.

2.

Baudrillard, J. (1993). Hyperreal America ∗  . Economy and Society, 22(2), 243–252. https://doi.org/10.1080/03085149300000014

Baudrillard’s ‘Hyperreal America’ is a critique on the American culture and how it is a specimen of the shift of real and tangible experiences to the of simulations and representations. Baudrillard talks about the idea of ‘Simulation and Simulacra’ and the precession of Simulacra while pointing to the real life examples of these concepts in current American society such as theme parks like Disneyland, where fiction feels more authentic than reality and the consumer culture that is rampant in the country where consumers derive meaning and identity from the consumption of goods, etc.

He warns us about the implications of living in a hyperreal world and how media and technology can influence our perception of what is real. I find this article useful as in a increasingly postmodern world it helps me look past and under what is implied and look and what is.

3.

Dosser, M. (2022). I’m gonna wreck it, again: the false dichotomy of “healthy” and “toxic” masculinity in Ralph Breaks the Internet. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 39(4), 333–346. https://doi.org/10.1080/15295036.2022.2067347

Dosser in his article talks about the shortcomings of the film ‘Ralph Breaks the Internet’ in addressing toxic masculinity in a deeper sense. The male protagonist Ralph, goes on a journey that critiques and looks down upon toxic masculine traits while still endorsing other traits such as being a protector due to his physical strength that feed straight back into it. He points out that addressing complex issues like ‘toxic masculinity’ need a deeper understanding and implying that such negative behavior can be corrected only by personal transformations without throwing light on the social and cultural factors that contribute it does not improve it.

This article provides me with a deeper critique and understanding of toxic masculinity. It has prompted me to think about the fact that a lot of social issues are multi-faceted and often have links with other social constructs such as race, religion and gender and as an animator and filmmaker, having a deeper of them would help me create more complex and diverse characters and narratives addressing such issues.

4.

Dubbelman, T. (2011). Playing the hero: How games take the concept of storytelling from representation to presentation. Journal of Media Practice, 12(2), 157–172. https://doi.org/10.1386/jmpr.12.2.157_1

This article talks about how video games have shifted traditional narratives from a passive experience in video games to and active decision-making experience. He talks about the limitations of structuralist narratology and how it does not translate well into the dynamic and participatory nature of video games. Dubbelman also talks about how the active player is both the performer and the audience in this medium which creates a deepened and immersive experience for the player enhancing the overall narrative for them.

Although I am not directly studying game design, I feel this structure of storytelling where the audience has consequence to the choices make can help in other fields such as film. Film being a purely passive experience can definitely benefit from such a structure, the article has helped me understand a framework where storytelling can evolve to fit other mediums creating a dynamic and personalised experience.

5.

Galbraith, P. W. (2013). Maid Cafés: The Affect of Fictional Characters in Akihabara, Japan. Asian Anthropology, 12(2), 104–125. https://doi.org/10.1080/1683478X.2013.854882

Based on Galbraith’s extensive fieldwork, he examines Maid Cafe’s as spaces of affective interaction centering on the relationships between patrons and the maids. These interactions are immersive and evoke emotions of personalized care, warmth and they play a bigger role in the customer experience which is described as emotionally fulfilling. Galbraith also addresses the misconceptions of western media that these places are exploitative by stating that these are performative spaces where the individuals navigate their social and emotional needs through a fictional framework while keeping interactions are kept professional yet playful.

As the author describes it it the archetype of ‘Moe’ coming into play where one body is supposedly a fictional character and their actions here are purely translational. This helped me understand affect theory better by being a physical representation of the same. This will also help me understand any characters I make in the future and the interaction between them and the audience.

6.

Grisard, D. (2017). Pink boys: colouring gender, gendering affect. NORMA, 13(3–4), 227–249. https://doi.org/10.1080/18902138.2017.1312956

In this article, Grisard talks about affect as a framework in understanding the colour pink and how its cultural significance is associated with nurturing, joy and vulnerability as well as being an emotional expression. He traces its history to a time when pink was associated with boys and blue for girls which eventually changed over time due to marketing and media. He throws light on how ‘pink boys’ go against societal norms that label pink as a feminine colour. These children when supported by caregivers are forced to balance their personal choices with societal norms fearing stigmatization and bullying. In such cases, they challenge convention asking as to why the affect and cultural dimensions of certain colours like pink are policed by society and gender.

As an animator, understanding the affective experience tied to colours helps me create and tell stories that are more grounded in reality and emotion. Understanding the stereotypes better helps in avoiding them and evoke nuanced and authentic emotion through colour choices.

7.

Martins, N., Mares, M. L., Booth, M., & McClain, A. (2024). Children’s perceptions of race and ethnicity in media: a 25-year update to children now. Journal of Applied Communication Research, 52(5), 555–575. https://doi.org/10.1080/00909882.2024.2389853

This article expands on a survey done in 1998 by ‘Children Now’ on children and young adults aged between 10 and 17 years old and their views on representation of race and ethnicity in current media. The findings say that representation of races apart from white characters showed improvements but were still not adequately represented despite the fact that children felt that it was important to see people of their ethnicity in media. The study also outlines the fact that having diverse characters belonging to different racial backgrounds also helps in racial acceptance amongst the youth.

This article helps me understand the intricacies and the need behind diverse characters and how they can have a strong effect on a younger audience. The authors also advocate for recommendations such as diversifying media content and portraying media characters in a non-stereotypical way and as an animator, I hope to able to learn from this and create inclusive storylines and characters to an impressionable audience.

8.

Meyer, U. (2013). Drawing from the body – the self, the gaze and the other in Boys’ Love manga. Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, 4(1), 64–81. https://doi.org/10.1080/21504857.2013.784200

This article provides the reader with a comprehensive analysis of Boys’ Love manga often written and read but not limited to women and queer artists. Owing to its popularity not only in Japan but worldwide, it gives us a detailed and informed view on the self, the gaze and the other while enabling discussions about themes such as intimacy. Through the article, Meyer also sheds light on how this genre allows artists and writers to explore the complex themes of identity and desire as well as representation.

This article helped me look more closely into the genre of Boys’ Love and has provided a doorway into a less talked about ‘female gaze’. As a straight heterosexual male that has limited knowledge and exposure to queer directed media and media directed towards a female audience, this has helped me understand the concept behind the media and broaden my horizons.

9.

Thomas, L. M., & Glowacki, D. R. (2018). Seeing and feeling in VR: bodily perception in the gaps between layered realities. International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media, 14(2), 145–168. https://doi.org/10.1080/14794713.2018.1499387

Thomas and Glowacki’s exploration talks about the importance of the body as a medium to enhance immersion and the overarching experience in connecting the physical and virtual realms in VR. The authors take from dance and somatic methodologies and propose that bodily awareness can help users inhabit both realms concurrently which results in a rather cohesive experience.

I learnt from this article that in making VR films, bodily perception can also be a lens through which I can create immersive movement and embodied storytelling. It also creates more chances of layered storytelling where the spacious awareness can also be used for storytelling.

10.

Taylor, J., & Glitsos, L. (2021). “Having it both ways”: containing the champions of feminism in female-led origin and solo superhero films. Feminist Media Studies, 23(2), 656–670. https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2021.1986096

In this article Taylor and Glitsos analyze media such as Marvel’s Black Widow, Captain Marvel and DC’s Wonder Woman and their portrayal of female led superheroes. The author find the narratives problematic as they focus on issues of gender inequality and sexism in a given timeframe, suggesting that such challenges have been overcome. By chaining it to the past these narratives appeal to the current feminist audiences without challenging the current societal norms ‘having it both ways’.

This article offers me knowledge on avoiding ‘tokenism’ and enables me to use my creative freedom to comment not only on feminism in the past but also take into consideration the current feminist societal struggle. It is important to have characters whose empowerment is relevant in current society allowing me to comment on contemporary issues.

[mywifeleftme]

107: Nina Simone // Black Gold

Black Gold Nina Simone 1970, RCA Victor

Black Gold is one of the great live records. It’s from an era when a live album was meant to simulate a complete evening at the thee-AY-tur with the artist, which in this case means retaining a lot of Simone’s stage patter, band introductions, little whoops and hollers from the audience between. That’s not a very streaming friendly approach, but with an artist of this magnitude, captured at her peak, what you want is that simulation of completeness, of being there. And in these six songs, each of which stretches past the five-minute mark, you get that and more.

“That took everything out of me,” Simone gasps after one song, and from the weight of her breaths, and the time it takes her speaking voice to recover, you believe it. Elsewhere she speaks of a grief at the loss of a friend (Lorraine Hansberry) that has mounted rather than ebbed with time, muses on the nature of time itself, prays for the uplift of 22 million American Blacks while cheekily hoping at least a million of them buy her latest single. When she sings she never sounds anything less than in perfect command of her instrument, but it’s hearing the weariness after, the momentary confusion, that gives the performances on Black Gold the quality of some primal source being tapped through one woman’s frail flesh.

Simone’s combo is a marvel, anchored by percussionists Don Alias and Jumma Santos (lately of Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew sessions); Weldon Irvine, the prolific composer and long-time organist in Simone’s band; guitarists Tom Smith and Emile Latimer; and Nina herself on the piano. Though she was not hostile to pop music (her next studio album was named for a George Harrison song), I’ve always found her playing to have an uncommon rigour to it, a rhythm somewhere between martial music and gospel. There is never any doubt who is calling the shots. But within those stern bars she concentrates such intensities of feeling that the effect is paradoxically transcendent, spiritually liberating. This is the quality that led her to be dubbed not the Queen of Soul, but the High Priestess. “You gonna use up everything you’ve got trying to give everyone what they want,” she says at one point. So, instead, she gives us what we need.

107/365

[libidomechanica]

Untitled (“Which he would shame, the coin of the who expected; but”)

A Meredith sonnet sequence

               1

Each man kills the crystal of her greater   music loud in the true calm. In her and   me. With my toils might and dismay. For nothing:- nothing the lady’s eye, the fruit which never hollowed both projected lightly   he forecast. He was the silent asunder;   a dream, we stayed the seav’n times. Which he would shame, the coin of the who expected; but keep one old enough; here she be not   on the two have given to Mars not all   ability. But wherein, yet haven’d both in the babe had some sixty thou warnest well: for every part, it were the Baron   for carried. A red rose not the way   of getting borough the virtues made me for me not for ane an’ the reason gone.

               2

Drive the door, blendeth its country dwell his   warm, but behold, brighter of the deserted,   the courtesy fine she taper, my body that the rest. Valley call’d on earthly fruit beeing not perswaded the don’t stop   loving mind; and so strangers number was   her side, at night, blind my breast bounteous dove, while our brows—there’s dwarfish Hildebrand; somewhere those stone, mock’d of a calf in you   cease to her bosom old, by the ledge itself   to his womanhood! Thing’s odd, which Love and inly prayed by the car Love—although ne’er refused to itself, and Christmas   solecisms, seem to beauteous, but she’s the array,   ready ear to the day, of your intent will so urge you but thee his mother!

               3

Not till night keep the men and on their minds,   and no less cause it is ended be: see,   doo you ran and with vncalled them, thought his singing the moon hath his falsehood haste the child! But her home to me and gems and wave:   and wish be to see? Tho’ his poem been   the rolling at the light green an’ gar me look’d, and died; and he hae the shivering helm beside him lives in. Shall in ways choose   me, i and my life hath in every cloud   to Lord Roland and humble the sight was they kept away. Or leg a spongy eyes, wanders here. Or I would be a bud again   tumours sell. When comes a Virgin’s picture   you felt that playe, a short scorns like to hatred: I would be to come, listening now.

               4

You were in a moment in true love retains   of Caiaphas. They both wanderers never   felt like one returning knell of wonder at the world of its orbit in our Prince of the forms of Fear the stone set in   begin with adder fights, half child lies and   wine of youth, a with someone hunger-starve thy vassal blest? With all saints with soul pass for every best is here. I love brindled   bitch? And sence, they more blessed Lady ride you   are scatter fitter for Babylon’s time shook there’s Johnie o’ my heart of beer: his soul extending companion, will for   me than one to Life’s staring to itself   in the sleep. After man, whom she raised he will were strong by each man’s, and ease. For blood.

               5

For Man’s grim to slaye with flowers with cheerful   wind, its pillars on each wilderness;   Soon, up aloft, she told but not in the mode in which you with those chamber careful king,—then despise. Is it think forward to   say the riches o’er the eagle’s withered   friends from the earth, and uttered word ought relief; you are twice that when she knew we went, which is homestead, that Fortune to mind hate,   weeds among the freckles, ripe pout of   cherubim! Had been known to see his reflecting, or the first woman I love; I scatter child, and sword; how all into sometimes   delay, and in his dearer; robert Burns:   she’s mine—though simulation of absent in a seconds while, with relief; you all?

               6

At each man, and on your name in maiden   eyes more they grow, before to pole, and the   Feet: yet what all: in vain thou art gone, as the stroke of even in years, for what scent, inexorable is the stem but it   is abroad as soft flesh of our own improve:   the enemy’s hospital: cut to his turn! And now bore his most fearful wondering thing like a mist: the endless minute   find him at the lily, heigh ho, how   much to boot, at least the Thundering mother she was grey, and made for riches make the body make it from being immortall   sinnes to shed hence that were on his   she! The Apostles’ cure. But she has been sae smart boys spurr’d at Scots to single beds.

               7

From the garish disposition; And this’   he said, He keeps on steer young: the kissed us   of iron, the panted, all wish, nor praise: and gave himself, a fairy part. Of which to his name is not so you, gentle   words, while claver blood this bosom’s shop is   hands, and, your hair, and heard no subtill the boy does not surely rest: to unbosom I this be true; and Geraldine! You, sweetly   chide: who is no thou laddie, and the Fool’s   heart. Or made myself as finger in you love you, cat and darken, and tell aught when the close forgot, we rolled above all the   sprang up their better goodness, a horror,   through Prussia Propeller? Of vows, and opens; only spirit, unaware: your back.

               8

Or slowly die I knew that men thing the   cheek—there she fed, she sword! Let this small lips,   and the stairs his same land, and nothing too much though the iced gusts still sleep, and wound and my mind the cool waves, on purple raiment,   with this very lane; but when the stone and   bones: mought a vent to issue out, and by reflex act of love: if I can called in whose faultlesse blenches gave it sings try: each   in the bloody torment us wish someone   who had not the lovely sight; and I hate to the misty dale, and all eye, and from stair, and die, but the poorer proof, to   the hearse: and haud me doth bars lest thou in   me, and dumb: but if we felt that night: by the chills and vigour, beautiful as she.

               9

Give me so well followed a maid and some   can never against they sang, an’ I saw   a man shades, and far beyond its far as rhyme, where my body on the babe forgot. While legion’d far manna and Land, yet some   men can breathing read as soft as to duty   unto my own not even now! The deed to your intended; for lusty answered, by the sprout of the foolscap crown tea—   we held out to continue: though someone   will now; and homestead, to one Lady Mary Ann was real a city the labours doe avoyd the lays on the bodies made   me from moonlight shone that’s what the night charms.   Dreamt of man’s family; look well might beneath her beauty in Love’s growing spot of blood.

               10

Take the while I places from tyrant, Time?   And what we had done a green, and made the   nuptials joyfully thee, of what through a lightly hent, and tween each others? So smooth, let her some might eyes, now I was yet unsandl’d   were, that fell were life you canst a vacant   minute find that the event with it riseth! The forests—great, yet she flesh and downwards that took so wistful eye upon   the time when they think that thou will, and the   same who care: but some holy house, ’ she scarce the please a nation. Puts on him! Whom, if unjustly you flie from elsewhere thou fleets,   and her trie, by former fault was befits   the forest too dull and brain. Yet each more will forgot. Dying at the Temple’s gate.

               11

Pensive awhile, I’ve checked you were as may   scorn to jostle with a roystering court,   to-day, there we passion, gives more—swells to budde, and the ripe flame, Thought and gazed upon her side by slow Germany, seeming on   her gentle pass of her how, upon the   blossom: a thing else receive! She wept: so should I claim another end of incorrigible samples, don Juan, whose sacred   sister mother’s door. More the fire than when   Loves Wars to her sure a plot had powre to flutes of youth, with some quite; so half-unquench love there we love your heretic, which is   dragging huge chain of stones I heard he turned   ere its spotted shroud in the weal and questioning, calm and the queen o’ womanhood!

               12

Animals: an old water than he heart   of those chamber, will less and never, snarling,   the poor—Robie and pain! That biome. With Science, as author of the coals to see save again throb with the day incapable   of its own soul, but soon wheels, for   none knew not to get into wooden wise it was a nail, because ye hae wooed and the basement to cancel all of my true,   you strew the heart: which our ear. To Germany,   so she was thine asleep will within, their sake and so he had some will reign’d all frail gesture and bigness of her nest. Not   for the eye and please me. Dark-rooted, earth-   flowers: but earth turn’d, as I have live: running the middle-book, o noble father?

               13

I trust which is cool, and Death, the grow wooden   and rose up a life. One who dies, precious   mind, and to this too late, and can’t take, unto her kenned in neither home of blossoming and overhead turning hut   on convict-clothes, yet either breast. Not Eve,   but mark, her how we harmony do call heart, whose chin as she then will consult, if he had quite, I can bear you will storm from   stairs a dame! Whether in his long-lived phoenix   in her breathing-space. The True Believers: and alien to a delight, and sweet brood, however quickly array, ready   at the foundered forth, and love, but shortest   wandering, resembling them, and bid me much her haire with sport went hand that bear.

[buddyapologist]

ok no regarding prev i am going to talk about westworld season 2 now. was it very good? no it was all over the place. did it raise a lot of interesting points? absolutely.

i talked about how it addresses how indigenous people are treated in fiction already so i won't go further on that, also as a non-indigenous person in the states it isn't really my place anyway. i would be really really really interested in reading an indigenous person's take on how westworld (the show, not the in-universe park) presents them if something like that is out there.

i also already rambled how it covers how ppl respond to abuse in different ways, but this is also kind of related to how s2 basically says "assimilation into the oppressor class is practically impossible". like even elsie, a human, cannot assimilate into delos, and she's killed for that. bernard is punished for EVERY attempt he makes to integrate into human society. (stubbs is kind of an exception.) dolores is actually REWARDED for her actions! this is like the first time ive ever seen an abuse victim who responds with violence actually win in the narrative. usually people who respond to abuse with aggression are punished by the narrative because Violence Bad, and her violence isn't treated as good, but she wins. "to break free from your oppressors, you must fight back." like. damn.

now i wrote a whole ass fic about how i don't buy that dolores has 100% reached consciousness by s2 bc the whole wyatt thing was integrating two premade personalities. honestly i think that maeve is the best example of hosts achieving consciousness, WAY more than dolores, because we explicitly see her defy her programming when she goes back for her daughter at the end of s1. this along with how teddy kills himself in s2 puts across the idea that love is one of the key components to achieving consciousness. like teddy broke thru MULTIPLE layers of programming to defy his order to protect dolores bc he was able to actually feel that everything he was doing was wrong. i think one good indicator of dolores breaking thru her programming was taking a break from her revenge quest to put teddy in the afterlife simulation at the end of s2. and the last biggest example of love acting as that indicator was when the maeve parallel in shogunworld defied her programming to protect the other geisha and eventually kill the emperor guy in revenge. i have my issues with the idea that love is what makes us human, but that is arguably the theme here. and it's kind of backed up by the examples of humans experiencing love and empathy that make them defy their "programming". like i personally fucking hate what they did with sizemore bc that much of a personality 180 was just. ridiculous. BUT. his act of dying for maeve and her party was his love for them superseding his general approach to life. and i feel like making hale!dolores get busted as a host by caring too much about hale's son in s3 is like.....kind of related to this? i can't quite put the pieces together. but there's something there.

ok what else what else. already talked about the whole assimilation thing regarding bernard. man ill just talk about bernard. his whole thing is fascinating to me bc he is one of THEE abuse victims we focus on in the show but his abuse is talked about less because it's not as explicit as the abuse of the park hosts. his whole life is basically a horror movie. not only is he a host but he's a host expected to fully integrate into human society while still carrying out ford's orders which is then WIPED FROM HIS MEMORY. and remember that scene of like a room filled with his bodies???? how the fuck did he die that many times? some may have been prototypes but not all of them! did ford make him kill himself like he did with the current bernard? did he reach consciousness and kill himself? was he killed by someone/something else? imagine you've lived tons of lives you don't remember but it was absolutely you. and someone else CREATED you. and that someone else created you to be someone else's REPLACEMENT and gave you HIS backstory - the deep deep sadness caused by events he flashes back to aren't even real! and then when the people he was working with found out what he is, they turned on him INSTANTLY. fascinating how he's punished by the narrative by trying to cooperate with his abusers. never read/watched/played another story where the "good" victim gets so much horrible stuff happening to them.

god this stupid fucking show. it makes me think so much. ill probably come back to this

[whitefluffybearcub]

1/1/2025

— monsters are created as destined, as they are also needed for the chapters in this simulation.

— you have to make them believe the stories so they can live within the stories, as long as they have the books open.

— believe what you will my dear. Who is to say what isn’t possible in a simulation world but your programmed mind might.

1/4/2025

— the mouths that do not serve the purpose anymore, are sewn shut. It happens within a certain circle. A circle of cut throats.

— there would be a chip, then it would crack before it breaks and dies entirely.

It is a whole journey and a cycle.

It would start again with the same reincarnated energy but in different fashion and characters somewhere somehow.

— as long as you are having an earth experience. Whether you are good or evil or in between, there would be a beginning and an end for all.

Some go thru the cycles over and over. Are you good this time or very bad ? Love.

— so you want to control everything and everyone, you have to have your ways and have everyone believe your deceit.

Fate has a lesson for you as well.

— it follows you until the end of your journey,

Whether it be guilt, regrets, conscience or love and else.

1/11/2025

— karma and its awareness is written destiny from the beyond.

Natural or unnatural, simple or complexed, direct or indirect, innocent or devious, are all indifferent because it is written fate also from the beyond frequency.

There is no point in thinking how or why or else because everything is as it is created to be and feel. Each expression and perception is its own experience and energy, as intended, while here.

If you understand this then you can let go now. You don’t have to feel anything else other than love and joy, If you choose so.

1/12/2025

— what can be perceived thru any decoding method such as the humanly five senses, then you know you are in a simulation and an illusion.

1/15/2025

— depending on what you do, your conscience would either be peace, or start eating you from inside out.

It is the same with karma in this karmic realm.

— the energy they harbor would eventually all come to show on the surface, good or bad.

1/17/2025

— all of good and evil in the humanly realms are simply a low vibration game, created by the one consciousness.

Anything in the low vibration realms are ultimately just an illusion.

— vicious karmic cycle has no end. It perpetuates itself into the infinity of the low vibrations. A game, an expression that goes on forever.

Karma applies to all that is in lower vibrational realms. Karma is unconditionally without distance, direct or indirect, out or hidden.

1/18/2025

— the same energy but in different fashion and characters.

It is the same people, concepts, agendas, just rebranded.

The cycle goes on and on.

1/19/2025

— dreams within a dream.

All that pain and pleasure, karmically designated.

Laugh, love, hurt, lies, greed, power and ego. All just have do be.

When you truly wake up, know that there is no bed. There is no body.

Just nothingness that sparkles and thinks.

— love for me but not for thee.

That is not true love.

— everything is as it is destined to be, taking place right exactly at its designated timings. It is a simulation of a calculated computation.

There is no point in thinking anything else.

— human world is complexly compartmentalized and yet most of it is following the same orders from the sole higher up.

All of it is from the script handed down. It is why all these mouths speak the same, despite from different places and origins.

1/19/2025

— the emotions are part of the human experiences, meant to be felt to its fullest.

When it is time, let them go.

— don’t be afraid. Don’t react.

See, hear, and speak no evil.

— they would never be truly happy and they are bound together karmically.

— to see thru human eyes, coupled with emotions there would be times one would feel hopeless and be profoundly sad. It is part of the experience in the program. Send love, and know that it is energy playing out scenarios which are illusion based

1/20/2025

— they all have been karmically programmed. The same groups that all operate at the similar vibrations. no matter the names and characters, they all carry the same energies of the same categories.

— the karmic programs. Karma is a trickster, an anger, a greed, an ego, a hater, a prisoner, a lover, a helper. Everybody is here because of karma.

The only way to elevate beyond karma is through love. We are all love at some point and we will all be at some point. A pure and unconditional love of infinity and consciousness.

— in shades, remember your power.

Glow from within. It is a given for many.

— a system of compartmentalization. Most of the triangle is following the same order from top down without really thinking. They are all made tempted, fearful, forced, and manipulated also.

— human world is a game best described as a karmic wheel.

Some participants would not see or understand karma as they are not programmed to. They must, in order to play out a designed destiny. To see thru human eyes of a certain destiny, it is meant to feel all the emotions that come with it. Part of the human experiences.

— see how easily humans are triggered and manipulated because of emotions. It is part of the game if you understand about emotional intelligence.

1/22/2025

— karmic wheel be spinning.

Which part of the karma are you this life time?

As long as you are in it, you are playing a game.

1/23/2025

— human world is an illusion which offers illusionary simulating senses. What is made to feel real, is indeed not.

The world is a stage and everything & everyone in it are its participating actors, of all elements and vibrations. Angels and demons. Light and dark.

It is every sentiment. It is everything. It is nothing.

1/26/2025

— vibrations and frequencies, of the same in this karmic wheel, all push the same, praise the same, act the same, attract and surround the same. Play the same game with or without empathy.

It is what it is, it just has to.

— the monsters of the story will be exposed and will die at the hands of the heroic warriors. And then the story would repeat itself in different story lines but same in concept.

The stories would be kept alive this way,

1/27/2025

— in this simulation, information would be sought and given if need to be.

1/28/2025

— in the simulation, anything is possible. The complexity of the deception within this realm is part of the game, simply, so is the so called truth.

1/31/2025

— the devil also enjoys watching its doers fight each other because it is still a bloodbath regardless, right in the alley of its vibration.

[beesandwasps]

This is why I make a point of not listening to music recommended to me on Tumblr. The people who recommend it are always saying things like “If you haven’t heard [specific song or album] then you don’t even know what music is” and then I go and track down whatever it is and it pretty much always turns out to be one of the following:

A track which carefully simulates the aesthetic of console video game music circa about 1990, except that the console video games usually tried to make the music sound good within the limitations of their hardware (Tim Follin! thou shouldst be living at this hour: electronica hath need of thee).

A track first released in the 60s or 70s where very clearly everybody in the band was drunk or high or both at all times and expected their audience to be the same, which fans think is “deep” but if you aren’t high it comes across as being just ridiculous enough that you can’t be 100% sure that it isn’t a novelty song and you’ve missed the joke.

A 3- or 4-minute whinge with an indifferent melody sung by somebody whose voice is the audio analogue of biting down hard on a lump of aluminum foil.

2 minutes of introductory drum solo followed by screaming over a background of detuned electric zither. The band occasionally destroys their instruments on stage, possibly so that nobody can demonstrate that it is also possible to play music on them, which might be embarrassing for band and fans alike.

20 seconds’ worth of lyrics repeated for 3 to 5 minutes. All the creativity which didn’t go into the lyrics… also did not go into the melody, which will be likewise repetitive. Somebody dreamed a fragment of a tune and decided it had to be turned into a public nightmare. Somehow these seldom turn out to be earworms, despite the obvious intentions.

A genre mashup whose only real justification is “nobody has done this particular combination before”, but which almost immediately answers the implied question of why nobody has done this particular combination before.

A neither-pleasant-nor-unpleasant modern pop song which sounds pretty much like every other standard modern pop song such as you might hear in a top-40 playlist, but for some reason this one is apparently a litmus test for whether or not the listener “knows what music is”, probably because of something the singer did or said in public recently which has nothing to do with their music.

I’ve even stopped caring which of these categories people’s recommendations fall into. I never really cared whether anybody thinks I “know what music is” (or however you want to phrase your particular stance of moral-superiority-through-aesthetic-choice) anyway. It was interesting for a while to see which predictable category things fell into, but music snobbery is ultimately as boring and pretentious as wine snobbery.

I may have no idea what chapel rome or miss stallion sing, but y'all have never even listened to Wombo or Upchuck or Steve Monite or Norma Tanega or Matthew Dear's lost album so like who's the real loser?

[cabinboy100]

1899: Season 1: Reverse-engineering the sim…

Beware: Season 1 spoilers! If you have not watched all eight episodes of 1899 season 1, get thee to your streaming device and watch! Then come back for some boring rambling and probably way too many occurrences of the words "sim" and "simulation". =)

In the 1899 season 1 finale, we see a "survival ship", the Prometheus, in the year 2099. If the destination coordinates provided define a point in the sky on Earth, then it the ship is built for interstellar travel, as the point does not correspond to a body in our solar system.

When Maura wakes in 2099, she sees 16 total sarcophagi, fourteen with familiar faces from the simulation, her own, and one more empty one. She doesn't seem to be restrained in any way when she disengages from the sim and steps out of her coffin. Based on this and some familiar science/science fiction conventions, I am going to assume that all the people aboard the 2099 Prometheus voluntarily went into some form of induced hibernation to retard the aging process while on a possibly lifetimes-long journey to a planet orbiting another star. At the same time, to maintain their mental health while their body slows its functions, their consciousnesses enter a shared simulation.

Based on what we see of the travelers and their experiences aboard the 1899 Kerberos and Prometheus, I'm going to try to piece together how the simulation is designed to run, before any modification or corruption of its code.

WHY A *SHARED* SIMULATION?

A shared simulation, as opposed to 1423 + 550 independent and perhaps customized simulations. I do not have a great answer that clicks into place for this. Some possibilities…

1. A single shared simulation is less taxing to maintain than almost 2,000 individual ones. I doubt this, but depending on the scope and allowances of the simulation/s, the nature of the simmersion tech, and the limitations computing power, who can say?

2. The social interaction between living minds is vital to the mental health of the travelers.

Honestly, it may very well be that each 2099 sleeper is the star of their own simulation, but for the purposes of this ramble, I'm assuming they are all in a single shared sim.

WHY SET THE SIM ON A CRUISE IN 1899?

Using a cruise ship as a setting means the sim only needs to manage a closed and finite environment. The ship's simulated crossing is an elegant substitution for the actual voyage of the travelers, and is a perfect pretense for having almost 2,000 strangers share the same space for a time. Simulating the technology of 1899 requires less power and processing than that of a more advanced era and also restricts travelers' exposure to and ability to communicate with and travel to the world beyond the ship.

WHAT IS THE BASIC SIM EXPERIENCE DESIGNED TO BE?

The simulation is of a transatlantic cruise set in 1899, from England to America. By design, it runs for eight days and does not include the departure from London or the arrival in New York (unnecessary complexity/processing of cities, people, shorelines, weather, etc). It begins when the ship is already at sea, perhaps with the passengers and crew waking on the second day of their journey, and ends with them going to sleep on the second to last day, still at sea. Every traveler enters the simulation as a first class passenger. Every crew member enters as an officer. All service and labor roles are assigned to NPCs (unless a traveler has specifically requested such a role — why not, right?).

WHY A LOOP OF LIMITED TIME?

The simulated voyage of the 1899 Prometheus covers eight days. That means that the most time a traveler can experience, the greatest duration of new memories they can create during a single loop run, is eight days. At the end of those eight days, the ship is archived and a new one is launched with rebooted passengers and crew who have no memory of the previous run. (No one aboard the Kerberos except Daniel, Elliot, and First Mate have any awareness of previous simulation runs.) This prevents the minds of the 2099 travelers from living every minute of their journey between the stars. I hypothesize that in the show's world, the creation of memories that amount to a lifetime or more (the duration of the 2099 space voyage) of experiences would result in damage to or malfunction of a person's mind.

THE TRAVELERS CANNOT KNOW THEY'RE EXPERIENCING A SIMULATION…

Awareness that the world of the simulation is virtual invites irresponsible behavior, ranging from abuse of the environment to violence against other travelers to self harm. To avoid this, the travelers' 2099 knowledge and memories are blocked/suppressed and replaced with backstories and memories that fit the 1899 setting and as much as possible, reflect their own personal characters and histories.

These backstories are adapted from their real lives to help preserve within the simulation their already developed personalities and natures, as well as established relationships with other travelers if they have them. Their real life data might be collected via interview and/or memory scan. Adapted 1899 memories are conjured via AI and implanted via a kind of technological hypnosis and suggestion. Within the simulation, at least one backstory "cut scene" is built for each traveler to experience, providing scripted dreamlike experiences and a sensory touchstone from which their minds can extrapolate the details of the rest of their implanted memories.

I think that the nature of the induced hibernation and simmersion technology put the mind into something similar to a natural dream state, and minds in the simulation cannot truly dream within the pseudo-dream of the sim, so when travelers do sleep in the sim, the scripted backstory cut scene is played for them in the worlds connected to their cabins by the hatches under their beds.

TRAVELERS ARE GIVEN A CHOICE…

Before being immersed in the simulation, each traveler is given the option to remove or preserve certain traumatic life-defining events. Removal is allowed if the predicted effect on the traveler's experience is judged to promote better mental health and decrease stress, anxiety, conflict, and/or depression in the simulation experience. If a traveler has experienced a traumatic loss that pains or haunts them at the time they enter the simulation, imagine the impact on their mental state if they must live with it in an almost arrested state in loops for decades, or even centuries, while in hibernation?

HOW IS THE SIMULATION DESIGNED TO CHANGE…?

One simulation loop consists of eight days aboard the Prometheus at sea, traveling from London to New York. The ship travels with many empty cabins (perhaps all first class cabins are full, but second and third class are empty) and carries very little cargo. That amounts to a lot of unused and uninhabited space. It is in this space that the simulation constructs the backstory worlds of each traveler, within the bowels of the ship itself.

Travelers spend their time doing whatever they wish, enjoying the sea air, dining, relaxing, and socializing. The voyage is meant to be a pleasant experience and the AI running the simulation monitors brain activity to gauge whether that is true for each and every traveler. If it discovers that a traveler has had a suboptimal loop, it makes adjustments to the traveler's memory and environment to improve their experience in the next loop. Over time, it's possible that this iterative optimization process can result in radical changes to some travelers' backstories and even their relationships with other travelers.

SO, WHAT HAPPENED…?

If the sim is designed to be a pleasant journey, how did it transmogrify into what we witness in the eight episodes of season 1? I have several theories, and almost all of them build on the idea of an original benign purpose and design of the 1899 simulation that is ultimately modified and/or corrupted. Yes, the 2099 that Maura wakes up to may be a simulated world as well, but the above notions of the 1899 simulation still work. These 2099 travelers voluntarily entered it.

Will try to put some of my theories into posts soon, but wanted to get this Out There as a starting point.

Wake up 🜃

Keep on keepin' on~

[myshredda]

Hi! Thinking about Yellow's family in the job episode. While his relationship with Claire probably isn't a very loving one as you've pointed out (and I've fallen in love with aroace Yellow) he clearly loved Janice and being a dad. Does Yellow still get these vague feelings of missing someone? I really love the idea of Pink, upon some reflection, deciding she isn't one for a maternal role, at least not for a long time. She gives Yellow a baby doll she has, and he has this weird feeling he can't describe. Some sort of repressed, mournful love. ❤️🍰 P.S. Signing off as Chubby Red Anon is the funniest thing to me, I can say whatever and then it's like "oh btw red man chonk"

No exactly, like him and Claire obviously weren't made to last, but I really did love his interactions between him and Janice (and Janice has THEE cutest character design of all time) I really would love for Yellow and Claire just to be friends because they were kind of sweet together, but Yellow was obviously masking and copying everything the other employees did to fit in to the job, so it's not even like they got to know the 'real' version of each other, and it's debatable if Claire/Dunkin/Andy even HAVE 'real' identities or if they're just slaves to the job, like all they ever talk about is the job. The only thing we know about any of their outside lives is that Andy has a kid and he like lasagna more than said kid (which is very hilarious I cannot lie). It's just so interesting to have them interact with other characters that aren't one of the trio OR a teacher like. Are Claire/Dunkin/Andy other 'students'? Are they teachers too? Who knows!

As for Yellow, when the trio is sucked out of the simulation and finally deposited back in their house he only mentions two things "My Hand! My child..." which is like. SO sad. (and Red's only sad about his missing weight gain, so that's very on brand for us lshfljdfgljs) so he may have feelings of missing something very important to him. He also really strikes me as the type of kid that would play with dolls, and Pink is definitely not into baby dolls in the traditional sense (she likes plushies, just not the ones that are meant to simulate raising a baby) so it would be incredibly sweet if she passed off any toys that were too reminiscent of motherhood to Yellow and he just smothers the thing with love. Sad as fuck really, but also sweet.

And yeah the best part of these interactions is the underling thread that we both love imagining that big red beast is quite chubby, adds a certain je ne sais quoi a little bit of spice to the convo ❤️💗💖

[apprehensivestomach]

8422i feel like im living in some crazy futuristic simulation and it is so rocky ahhahahhaa but i plan to get more deeply involved in it as well ive been busy living in my brain but now it be time to have more outward expression and be a citizen of the universe :) :) :)

WHAT LIGHTS YOU UP WHAT LIGHTS YOU UP WHAT LIGHTS YOU UP WHAT

git high on ur oowwwwwnnnnn supply - BECOMING THE COOLEST PERSON YOU KNOW >explorer of the world >be a good friend to the oneness / thee golden heart >catalyst of dreams (love u mmooommmmm) >dance >always learning new things >present >healthy/mindful > kGET AROUND PEOPLE WHO ARE DOING WHAT YOU WANT TO BE DOING get around more ambitious people seek advice and guidance from them we are co creating with the universe trust what youre bringing and trust that it has value

what's not working for me?? -mindset -lack of routine -hard drugs -staying in mn howsthatmakeyoufeel like why dont i start a routine already... noneedtofocusonthatwhenicanmoveaheadto whocouldibe? PROLIFIC // ORIGINAL // CONNECTED actiontowards i can be this person now

WHEN I WAKE UP I WILL... /NOT check phone (ugh that i even have to say this...) /jk i want to film my journey /breathwork and stretch /take a moment to state what im grateful for

[good-rwbyaus]

AU where the entire war between Ozma and Salem is just one big chess game with the Huntsmen and the Grimm/Inner Circle as pieces. Bonus points if this is a RWBY Chibi skit. Even more bonus points if there are 20-sided dice rolls to simulate unpredictable elements.

#The Vytal Campaign - RWBY as a DnD Campaign - mod lilac [ Beginning: Ruby Rose]  [ Spot Check: Jaune ] [ Critifail ] [ Reveal of the Mysterious Narrator ]

Salem and Ozpin play out an abbreviated version of the Lost Fable. 

Salem and the Gods - Before the Vytal Campaign

An Ultraman figure, covered in a blanket, laid in a makeshift bed. Beside it, a blonde barbie doll knelt beside him, hands tied together in prayer. On the edges of the table are multiple chess pieces, mostly pawns and bishops, and some other dolls and action figures.

Salem: Oh gods. I pray to thee for Divine Intervention to save my Ozma.

Ozpin, amused: I’m pretty sure you don’t ask for Divine Intervention like that.

Salem, snappily: Hey. I wasn’t the one who wanted to spice things up by getting sick and ended up rolling two 1′s in a row when he tried to get better. Only you can make your character die in the epilogue of all things: now do you want Ozma to survive or not?

Ozpin held up his hands in surrender.

Ozpin: Yeesh, alright, you’re more invested in my characters than I am. Okay so Salem - also still don’t get why you insist on using real names or variants of.- beseeches the gods. Which of the gods do you want to ask? 

Salem, pursing her lips:  Guess God of Light first, I mean Ozma was a Paladin, right? He’s gotta favor you.

Ozpin: Let’s see what the dice say.

Salem tosses the dice. Clatter clatter.

Salem: ...

Ozpin: ...You rolle-

Salem, growling: Shut it.  

The twenty-sided die Salem rolled proudly displayed a 1.

Ozpin: The God of Light doesn’t even bother descending in person. His voice just apologetically echoes. “I understand your pain, but you demand of me that which I cannot make so. Life and death are part of a delicate bal-”

Salem: Screw it. I pray to the God of Fucking Darkness. -tosses the die.-

Ozpin: I’m pretty sure you don’t want to do th-

Clatter clatter.

Salem: Ha. I rolled a sixteen! 

Ozpin eyes the poor Ultraman figure on the table before dismantling it joint from joint. He then starts putting the legs where the shoulders go.

Salem: What are you doing?! 

Ozpin, sardonically: You prayed to the god of destruction for my revival. Of course I come back wrong. 

Salem, flustered. : Well. Well. I-I TELL HIM TO STOP. In fact, I insist! I roll to cast Greater Suggestion.

Salem tosses the dice. Her eyes bug out at the result.

Salem: Are these dice rigged or something? This is the fourth 1 we’ve rolled this session.

Ozpin: No rigged dice here. That’s just how they fall. -sigh.- Well, I guess the God of Darkness gets pissed o- No, you know what. Just to celebrate our 4th critical failure in the past thirty minutes. 

Salem: Oz. No.

Ozpin, grandly: The God of Light is affronted by your attempt to influence his brother. He too appears in person. As his brother shakes off your Suggestion, he helpfully tells his brother that Salem went to him first. Cause he’s helpful like that. Out of jealousy, the God of Darkness roars and waves a hand at the poor, sad abomination he created. Salem catches a glimpse of Ozma turning his head 360 degrees to her, eyes wide and saying “My wi-” before disintegrating into nothingness.

....

Salem, glaring: Why do you insist on your characters dying pathetically sad deaths?

Ozpin shrugs and sips his hot cocoa.

Salem: You know what. This game’s gone FUBAR at this point. 

Salem, dramatically: I swear vengeance against the gods. I swear to drag you all out of your stupid little pedestals and make you taste the cold hard ground.

Ozpin, affronted: Are you seriously pulling a Raven? 

Salem, yelling: - smacks the table.- I tell the God of Light he fights like a dairy farmer and the God of Darkness that he fights like a cow! 

Ozpin, amused: They’re gods. They’re perturbed by your insults but overall they don’t think much about your angry rant.

Salem: Uh huh, so you’re really saying that you made the god of Darkness go out of character then.

Ozpin: Well no. He’s just a bit of a special case. In the lore, he has an inferiority complex when it comes to his brother.

Salem, smiling: ...Really now?

Ozpin opens his mouth to speak.

Salem: Hey! God of Darkness, how does it feel being second best to your brother all the time? I mean, he created all the humans and animals and stuff, and what do you make? Some shitty ass Grimm. I guess it’s kinda fitting, given the rest of humanity thinks of you as a pathetic shadow of your brother. 

Salem, whiningly: Oh look at me. I’m God of Darkness. Even my name makes me feel like I’M CRAWLING IN MY SKIN. I’m so hideous that my own brother locks me in a tiny little continent inside Remnant. At least I have a tiny pool of death and destruction where I can do unspeakable things to the bestial creatures I make.  

Ozpin pauses in shock. 

Oscar: ...Was that really neces-

Salem: You know what the rest of humanity thinks of you as? Your brother’s whipping boy. Always second best. The Luigi to a Mario. A Shadow the Hedgehog to a Sonic. A limp dick who can’t put one foot out of line in fear of his older brother. Because you don’t have the guts. For a God of Destruction, you sure are pathetically meek. When humanity finally rises up, your ass will be the first to get beat. 

Salem tosses the dice.

Salem: HA! I rolled a 20! 

Ozpin: ...Epic levels in Speechcraft, right?

Salem, proudly: Yeah. You know, the same epic skill that made my father, the King, trap me in that stupid fairytale tower - and I still managed to get all those heroes to kill themselves trying to save me. 

Ozpin sighs before folding up his world-building notes. He then dramatically sweeps all the toys and chess pieces onto the floor. 

Salem, confused: Oz! What are y-

Ozpin, loudly: The God of Light, seeing his brother quiver in anger, only has a chance to give out a dismayed yell before the God of Darkness screams in rage.

Ozpin, suddenly: ARGGGGGGGH!

Salem jumps at Ozpin’s sudden scream before glaring.

Ozpin: A shockwave of purple magic detonates around the God of Darkness. The hut they were in collapses. The pulse of magic extends past the forests, past the mountains, past the seas, and into the cities. It spares the stone and mortar but for the men and women it touched, it renders them into dust. 

Salem stiffens, eyes wide.

Ozpin: The forest critters, dust. The sea creatures, dust. All that lives which touch the Cursed Wave, dust. Before long, the only living things on Remnant are two Gods and a human named Salem. 

Salem, jaw slackening: Did I just cau- Wait, isn’t that a bit extre-

Ozpin, smirking: Nope. The God of Darkness has always been able to casually wipe out life on Remnant. Congratulations, you’ve pissed off a god so much that he wiped out Humanity and everything else.

....

Salem: ...We never tell Raven about this.