#eldritch nightmarch

[k45p3rrr]

“day” 4 Nightmarch

eldritch

i rlly like how it turned out lol

[sollilua]

Nightmarch Day 12 – Eldritch

"Don't go outside after midnight. A stranger with mysterious powers now lives near the town"

[wyrm-in-the-apple]

Nightmarch 2023 - Prompt: Eldritch

“You’re a liar,” said Night.

“Am not,” said Mare.

“You told me that a tree’s siblings are its rivals. That’s not true. Trees care for each other, even feeding stumps that can’t photosynthesize on their own. They all support each other.”

“In certain situations. That doesn’t discount what I said.”

“You said ‘a tree’. You were talking generally.” Night let his legs dangle from the decaying edge of the fire tower’s cabin. “I was right. Altruism is a base instinct, and denying it is denying reality.”

“You need to care for each other because the universe won’t,” said Mare.

It sounded like agreement, which made Night suspicious. He thought about it, and his mood fell.

Mare continued, voicing the realization Night had come to, “Your hypothesis - your way of viewing the world, that altruism is a necessary part of your bauplan - requires that others care about you. If they don’t, you’re forever crippled.”

A chill crawled up Night’s spine. He looked out into the forest - the gnarled roots and limbs, the soil packed with hyphae and mosses, the terrain rippling and undulating, living thing and landscape nearly indistinguishable. Dying and dying and dying, life feeding on unceasing death.

Everything needs allies.

“Denying reality doesn’t change it,” said Night. He felt very cold.

Haha, why was “eldritch” such a difficult prompt?

I wonder if it has to do with the association with the uncanny, and how difficult it is to describe the ineffable in prose or picture. Instead of Mare being eerie, I chose instead to reinterpret the dread of cosmic horror: the universe is uncaring. Of course the universe is uncaring; it’s people who care for each other.

But what does that mean when you aren’t cared for?

Night’s initial comment refers to some of Mare’s narration in “If You Were a Tree”. Both Night and Mare are asserting factual information about tree behavior. However, the facts they choose to focus on and their interpretation of that behavior is, of course, biased by their respective worldviews.

[thatwonpersons]

Nightmarch Day 12

Eldritch

[drizzle-raine]

Eldritch • Nightmarch

Original Creators

Nightmare - jokublog

Nightmarch - @the-anxious-axolotl

[k45p3rrr]

heres the other three that i might have done for the eldritch prompt of nightmarch since i just rlly wanted to share them-