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ckret2 · 2 months

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A symbol had been illegal for centuries. So illegal that it wasn't even drawn or described in the very law that banned it. Many people knew the symbol anyway; rumor had it that from time to time someone would see it in their dreams and feel compelled to recreate it. From childhood, everyone was warned that it was strictly forbidden to recreate any symbol you'd learned in your dreams, just in case one was the symbol. Kids got detention for doodling odd shapes, in case they were lying about whether they'd seen them in a dream, even when the teachers themselves weren't sure whether any of the doodled shapes were taboo. Every once in a while some bold rebel would take a dream symbol and carve it into a bench or spray paint it on a wall—but how could one know which one was demonic?

The otherwise secular government claimed the symbol was banned because it invited in a "demon" that wanted to destroy the world. There were, allegedly, both monks and scientists dedicated exclusively to searching for a way to permanently block entry to the demon. And there was, allegedly, a high suicide and insanity rate among these monks and scientists. Until they succeeded in their work, the law remained.

Some people railed against the ban—calling it absurd, backwards, primitive—every other law rooted in religious belief had been abolished decades ago, why not this one? The controversy had most recently flared up a few years ago when a politician had campaigned for governorship on a platform of repealing the ban, along with several dozen other laws he said unduly restricted the people's freedoms and civil liberties. "Where is this demon," he'd asked in a televised debate, his yellowed eyes darting around the room. "Can anyone produce him? Can you prove he's real? Why are we deciding national policy based on superstition?"

When he'd lost the election, he'd called a press conference, railed against the ignorant voters—"what's so liberating about democracy if you vote against your own freedom?"—and then held his fingers in front of his eyes. All the cameras had cut within a couple of seconds, but not before catching his shrill, taunting laugh.

In rebroadcasts of his scandalous speech, his face was censored by a thick black square. The disgraced politician killed himself in police custody. He'd wrapped himself tight in his cloak and set it on fire. She thought about that a lot—what it would be like to feel flames crawling up your limbs.

Enough kids at school had happened to see the live broadcast that they could teach the symbol to other kids when they thought the teachers weren't looking.

And that was how Pyronica had learned the forbidden symbol: a single eye inside a triangle.

Today, she pulled out a can of spray paint she hadn't yet converted into a makeshift flamethrower and followed in the footsteps of countless weird little girls across the multiverse seeking a remedy for their rage:

She tried to summon a demon.

#gravity falls #bill cipher #pyronica #my writing #(I just like the worldbuilding here. There's so much happening under the surface.)

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clovreat3r · 12 days

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