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basket-of-cats-and-witches · 9 months

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All the World's a Stage, and You're the Playwright

Hello! It's been a while. Life really catches up to you, huh?

In the interim, book 1 of one of my favorite interactive fiction novels just dropped, and I've been devouring it.

Speaking of which, this is set post book 1 of The Night Market, in the interim between book 1 and 2 (since 2 will be a wip for a while and I'm impatient and I adore this work so much).

If you're not entirely sure what's going on, use dream logic. Because I intended for this to be a very different piece and then Milo Next said "no I want to be sad and tormented".

There are SPOILERS in this for the ending of Book 1, and mentions of Child Death, and Death in general. I don't get explicitly into detail about it, I'm not that kind of a writer, but if those heavy topics aren't for you, I recommend avoiding this piece.

Ember/Blaze is my OC! They use any pronouns.

Without further ado....

He knew he was dreaming.

Milo remembered the acrid smell of blood in his nose, looking down at the crimson stain on his hands (or was it silver? Or chrome? Or an oil slick spill of color?) and seeing their wide eyes staring back at him accusingly. A pearlescent tear sliding down their cheek as they gasped their last.

It was a dream he'd had many times. One he'd have many times more.

He shuddered, holding them close. His handsome lover, reaching out and cupping his face, their lips trembling. The black smoke of their hair drifted out to mingle with the late-night mist of the gardens, almost as if desperate to cling to the fabric of this world.

The world he'd excised them from.

"I'm sorry," he whispered. Apologizing the way he never would have in the waking world, baring his bleeding scarred heart.

In the dream, he always did this. Like two actors upon the stage, a single lantern dangling over them like a spotlight.

If he looked out, he knew he'd see a full amphitheater, their breath held tight with anticipation.

A sea of masks watching his mistakes over and over again, witnesses to his crime.

"Save him!" A voice shouted from the audience, soft and sweet even in its anger. A mask made of woven willow branches, with glistening sap tears that spilled out of the eyeholes.

"You deserve to rot for your crimes," another called, from out behind a featureless onyx mask cracked and gilded with silver, heartachingly beautiful in its kintsugi design.

A third raised its voice, powerful and commanding even amidst the crowd. "You didn't deserve her. You've killed us all." Eyes stared accusingly at him from behind an ornate devil's mask, the golden snarling mouth turned copper from lipstick made of blood.

As always, he braced himself for the last voice, the voice that never came.

The empty seat in a full theater that terrified him as much as he was desperate for it.

He stared down at the lifeless body in his arms. He had once embraced this body with his own, whispered frantic words in hidden alleyways mingling brightly with loving laughter.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. If I could bring you back…" He held out a wooden heart, the red paint cracked and peeling. A prop on the stage of his dream. Red fabric slid down his chest in stop motion across the empty courtyard.

He knew how this would end. The curtains would draw on his false heart, the audience booing in dissatisfaction.

They wanted a proper ending. His body at the gallows, his crimes paid for.

They wouldn't get it.

He would relive his guilt again and again, night after night upon the stage for all the world to see.

Milo bowed his head and waited for the lights to dim.

That's it?

A voice slid across his mind, and he gasped, jerking his head up. Looking frantically around.

The dream always ended afterwards. No one else had lines.

Hands slid around his own, grasping the wooden heart.

Squeezing tightly, punishingly.

Don't you think I deserve more than this? A false caricature of your heart?

He looked down.

To his horror, his dead lover stared back at him. Hollow, empty eye sockets stared back at him, keeping his attention.

A perfect pair of lips moved, and he heard their voice become clear, as if he had been listening to them from underwater, and only now had begun to surface.

"Don't let the curtains draw, Milo. The audience deserves a proper ending. It is you who expects the Gallows." They tugged at the wooden heart emphatically, and he watched as it rotted and crumbled between his trapped hands.

"If you truly wish to change things, you must change the ending. Malcolm has always been the Gatekeeper. You knew this from the start." Ember reached out, cupping his face. Her hand was incredibly warm, almost searingly so.

"Become the Storyteller, Milo. Make the ending your own. After all, I'm not the only one who you made a promise to. I'm not the only one you left behind."

They glanced out to the audience, and he followed their gaze.

A lantern slid down from an invisible ceiling, a spotlight on a single seat.

Malcolm's seat.

Milo's eyes widened with horror.

Wood became metal, and the corpse in his arms grew warm, hot with life. Skin became unbroken, and cheekbones swelled, eyes forming and staring at a spot in Milo's warehouse.

On the woven circular rug in the epicenter of his room, sat a little girl clutching a stuffed cow. She watched in anticipation, a child listening to a story told by their parents.

Milo's hands trembled.

He had forgotten.

No- he had purposefully pushed thoughts of her away.

He'd left her behind when he ran away, and here, in his dreams, he couldn't run any longer.

Ember's hands squeezed around his own, and he glanced back at the man in his arms.

"She deserves a happy ending, Milo Next. Not everything has to be a tragedy. We adults soak in the jaded pain of our lives, we sometimes forget the children we once were. We have to teach them to hope. That death is not the result of punishment, or despair." He nodded towards Ever. "That her death may have been frightening, but it is not the end. Death is just another part of life. The cycle that always begins again."

Ember looked up at him, warm amber eyes flickering like lantern lights-

No. Like a blaze of fire. Burning brighter, with no intention of stopping.

"Show her, Milo. Show her this is not the end. Show her that you can be kind. She needs you. She needs to hear it."

Milo shuddered, feeling tears beginning to leak down his face. "But death is scary. It is the end. How can I lie to her? How can I tell a kid that sometimes people die?"

Ember, no, Blaze laughed softly. "It is adults who are afraid of death. Children don't know to be afraid until we teach them." Their gaze was sorrowful. "And sometimes, children die. Lovers die. People die. It is our duty to ease them into the inevitable. To twist the story into something hopeful. Show her, Milo."

Another voice spoke up over his shoulder. The voice he had been dreading from the start.

"Show her that death is not the end." A hand grasped his shoulder tightly. "Show her that even you know how to forgive and be kind. Show her your heart."

Milo didn't look at Malcolm. He couldn't. Not when his gaze remained captured by Blaze.

Tears streamed down his face, and finally, he sighed.

"Okay," he whispered. "Okay."

Milo Next reached into his chest, pulling out his bleeding heart. Beating wildly with the frantic pulse of life.

The audience in the theater gasped.

Ever leaned forward, her eyes wide with wonder, with the innocence of children.

In the garden, in the still quiet by the fountain, he leaned down.

Just the two of them.

Blaze and Milo.

A corpse and its murderer.

He pushed his beating heart into the keyhole of Blaze's chest, and watched it be swallowed whole.

"I'm sorry," he said. Milo watched as color began to bloom in those cheeks, filling pink lips with life. A chest that began to rise and fall, as it had done so many times before.

"I'm sorry," he repeated firmly, trying not to choke on the words. "I love-"

"-you."

Milo woke up with that last word on his lips, and gasped, sitting upright in his makeshift bed. His chest heaved, and he clutched at it, feeling for the frantic beat he'd known his entire life.

It was still there.

Hastily he scrubbed the tears away from his face, night sweat drying on his skin, and felt something smear across his face.

He pulled his hand away.

Silver/red/chrome/oilslick blood still lingered on his fingertips.

In the silence of the waking dawn, Milo Next wept.

#my writing #the night market #Ember (my oc for tagging)#milo next #Ever TNM #tnm book 1 spoilers

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