That was the sky above them: a suffocating void, with random assortments of escaping stars. (17.2k words)
-
Info
Selenophilia / The Goddess
Author:
Wynths
Total Wordcount: 17220 words.
Estimated Reading Time: 1:02:00If you enjoyed this work, consider checking out some of my other stuff over at the SCP Wiki!
This will be worked into an upcoming series which I am going to release for the Backrooms wiki. If you enjoyed this article, check in sometime for more content like this :)
Thanks for reading!
SELENOPHILIA
a FOREFRONT interlude
1
14121 words
The spear grasses to the north were short and fat, wretched things unlike their thin and elegant fathers from true East Texas. The smell of the nectar which oozed from their lower stems had been forgotten by the world, and their sweet smell — the one that the villagers could not help but loveⓘ"Entity 9" - FacelingsA strange, ancestral people from the Backrooms, borne out of its desire to be like its big brother. They were here long before us, and will be here long after us. - — was now to human perception something like rusted air, the kind that comes from a sun-drenched odorless twenty-two pellet. When the light from the sky was greater, the grasses and their seeds were good to walk in, and the little ones loved playing within them, for it was one of the few things they knew would be pleasant to the touch. Some of the older ones might have objected to this at some point, but in the present moment, it was seen that the large weeds with burst buds that dispersed little sharp blades had not sprouted that year, and having taken their leave for the next, it was safe to play now. So they were invited to, the little ones, and they made beautiful times in the field with the things that were within it, buried in the ground and suspended just outside of unassisted reach in far trees. The mud was a good favorite too, just below the field, and the tradition that had been started by one little one to sign the ground before it became hard to even the grown one's spears remained alive.
In lesser light, they — and especially their seeds — were to be avoided, and it was a recurring topic of discussion, the removal of the patches which did not starve for wont of heat and food. There were other things which endured, like the animal-sized sowthistles which burst in summer and grew from the darkness. And it was other older one's jobs to keep the thistles from becoming too great a problem, from occupying a scale wherein discussions would lead to actions. It was these ones' contribution which made the play of the next summer possible. Taking the sowthistles which had cut the little ones' arms and grinding them to a revolting mash of green stranded paste with lumps of viscous inky black sap, then using the poisonously burning salve to suck illness from little ones' wounds: that was an important job. And it was a winter job, which was done because flesh bookkeeping is the only thing you can do when the flame of concentrated bark under the high ceilings of your HoRe-Tapenol1 is the thing which keeps you alive through wind-blasted nights.
For they did not need health, not necessarily, but they did need other things, crucial things, things that were important. And important-ness was not something that came easily to the little or the grown or the ancient, it was one of the things that was lost in the vast gulf of time which enveloped them in shades of security and complacency, which got them to continue onward with the eastern spear grasses to the north and the waters — flowing waters, that went on longer than any of them could walk, and which held in it good food that was picked because it was slow and fat and would therefore be a good offering — to the west. It got them to continue onward with the fires in the night and the grunting men who would light it from cut kindling. Those fires were important because they had in them vestiges of things forgotten, and they had a right to never forget and to never die, and the things that would kill those rights needed to be killed from the shadows through the light. And under this framework, the one that they threw themselves to because it was right, they knew that they themselves were not the most important thing in the world, and that was alright, it was accepted, because they would give themselves up if it brought the memories forwards, so that another people might one day have the privilege of killing themselves for it.
All that has been described came through the web which bound them all to each other, the head-web thing, and it expressed itself in the form of love and devotion and infatuation. It grabbed at their hearts and was, without justification, found good. It was a fixture in the mind, approachable and hurtful the way that the speargrasses were when little ones came to play within them and traveled with bare feet over uneven, crunchy ground.
Now, right now, there are a group of little ones who play in the grasses the way they, in living memory, always have. The air of pretty morning is of average humidity and room-temperature; it is of a type invisible and unfeelable, a medium to exist in rather than a substance to interact with.
There is a little one that is coming from the grasses, and he is cloaked in sun's gold that washes his logskin figure and gives him a respectable appearance. It walks with a strange gait, it's seen, and the grown ones look at it through very sunken eyes and know, even if they do not have the memory of being with the Eastboy, and with the creators of it, that it is going to become a grown one soon, and it might — if serendipity descended — have that privilege, the one of mind-immolation that some of the grown ones walked with. Mostly, the mind-immolation was a fine thing, one that could be forgotten about by those not under it if they had no cause to interact much with its subjects. Ma-PhOlitos2 figured the same way that the others did, and they thought the way the others did, their voice in the thin strands that touched all their heads polished and sharp and, most beautifully, precise. There was no need to be precise when they opened their heads to each other and gave their feeling and their thinking and their figuring to each other, not really, but to have heads so clean, so focused upon the memories, was a great privilege and a great sacrifice.
All the grown that wandered about the surface, who did the semi-important things and kept the vessels that had those memories whole were capable of holding them — at least, this presupposition had not been challenged — but it was intensely difficult. Some heads would become too full of little running things — little things that came into vogue only when they were needed, and sat taking space otherwise — and others of them were too small, by no fault of their owners, to be able to contain the words and messages of the past, for they were big and concerned things that had not been seen by any members of the village, necessitating a great deal of training to be able to hold properly. It would have been evil to allow the drawings of the ports that moved independently or the images of the forest when it was made from gray materials or the impossible tongue sounds that comprised the confounding English to perish.
So, they did instead. The Eastboy that came from the plains at a resounding and public call, having played anxiously the whole day — the whole month — in a sincere attempt to enjoy its sabbatical, could be one of them. Yet it was the greatest of honors, and the Eastboy conducted itself courageously in the journey from the speargrasses to the trampled people's places.
The floor was dried straw on dirt, stiff and firm and exquisite, and it was adorned with cloth of all colors, even blue, so that the Eastboy coming in and setting down the thin wood guard that let in food and kept out noise knew, at first touch, that it was the home of a very holy thing. Its walls did not hold pictures or glyphs or artifacts of the past, a sign as to what kind of holiness could be expected here — a practical kind, one that does not concern itself with the worship of the things above them and instead chooses to Expend Things on the great mental reams that kept a kind of symbiosis active. From across the simple structure, a sound of exertion came. A frail figure emerged and came to the hall and went to sit on a dark mat. The Eastboy flinched backwards when it focused and received an image of it.
It was a very old thing, and it said that it had seen eighty winters. The Eastboy believed this because it was the most damaged thing in this place. The effects of ice shards and age were made known through a missing arm and many, many cuts that blanketed the body in different shades of white or black-red. The thing then told the Eastboy that it saw the kid, and it saw its honorary and descriptive title, and it knew already the rituals that had to be organized. Curiously, the Eastboy saw, there was no sign of intrusion, no pressure at the gray and calloused scalp like was normally felt with direct communication. If the thing had been with him, and connected with him, and saw now through his eyes — and thus knew what he felt, like everyone did when they shared large things — then the signs should have happened. To no one, the kid frowned. The downturned hammered black line that was its mouth was a motile crack in stone. The figure felt the tension at the lips and gave a sort of sorry, a sympathy for the struggles that the Eastboy would — for the next few days — be unique in experiencing in real time and real space. And there was a silence after this wherein the Eastboy thought, and the figure chose to gave it the burgeoning, lost right of personal privacy.
Eventually, the Eastboy came to a full understanding of how he felt — though, to do this, he had to dim his light a significant amount, an amount that might have been almost dangerous. Having done this, however, he could now articulate what arose from the depths of his consciousness. There was, within the motivation for facade-stone an assassination of doubt: the spines were better than this, or at least better when considering the depth and the richness, because they had no ability to interface with you at the deepest level, and because the best healing methods, the ways in which the Ma-PhoLitos maintained their ascendancy, were definitely more painful than the most ampitheatrical battles to find good medicine and good weapons and efficient defenses. And the old one — it couldn't have been grown, grown ones were more able than this, the Eastboy reasoned — sent him another word, telling him that it was fine, he didn't need to take the Eastboy into himself in order to tell him what he needed to remember. But there was no sign of recognition for the greater problems of the day, so this was only a minor assuagement. Not right now was the sentiment pushed to him by the figure that sat cross-legged, straight-backed, and zen-calm. Later was the time, and even then, it was and would be only under cracking fires that stretched past crumbled foliage and which were feared (or respected) by all.
The young one raised and slammed its heel repeatedly, keeping time to an odd and disturbed inner metronome. In the ground, under the bending straw, a root from a flower was trampled, and somehow, the Eastboy became vaguely aware of this, such that it perturbed him enough within his mind to cause him to stop. The figure sat there, and continued to sit there, and remained still and remained patient. It would sit as long as it needed; it would be better the longer it sat, actually: it would be more time to become pure.
But the Eastboy did not have the luxury of a still ritual or the patience of old age. It slouched against the wall, taking all the weight of its body off its self. There was a shared moment — the figure understood the sentiment of the Eastboy, for the gnawing desire was in them all, and patience was something that could be afforded only to the fat and slow. But it was known by all the people that it was desirable to be calm, and the figure brought images of others who had been celebrated for their ability to wait for the gifts of the Ma-PhoLitos to prove this. The Eastboy saw, and understood, and was not affected. Impulsively, it then leapt out of its head and touched the figure. The kid bent its head towards the figure and probed about, tapping the temples and massaging the chin, to let it see what the Eastboy wished to do. The figure smiled, and then, the head became clear. The Eastboy respected the disclipine very greatly, bowing once to the figure and then setting down one foot and kneeling with the other. And the Eastboy gazed into the center of the precious matter.
The substance coating the figure's head, as he looked at it and squatted down and touched it, running spindly fingers along its surface and feeling twinges of guilt at the natural hand oil it excreted, was something like water, but it was fixed in position, and was unable to be sullied by any feeling observer's dirty, dirty hands. It rubbed off like wax and burned slightly as it found creases and pores in the skin of the hand and buried itself into them and sealed them off, making them perfectly smooth and delectable. The light holes in the roasted hay ceiling drilled down onto the mass with bounced light, light that took on almost a beige tone from its confusing journey, and in the mass a kaleidoscope was observed, for the first time, and beige became the mystifying and unseen colors of purple and violet and, most astonishingly, blue. The little one gasped at the coolness of it, feeling the sudden and welcome and true warmth of his surroundings — though it was deathly frigid in the shed — and he let out a small breath and took into him the cold air, feeling wholly unworthy of the frictionless clear coat and feeling pleasure in the knowledge that, even still, he could touch the good thing. The Eastboy told the thing that it would take it now, and it would kick up from its cross-seated position and dive headlong into the brain, and the thing had to think only for a moment before it laid itself down, looked to the left, and deactivated thought.
The little one was hungry, real hungry, and it set to the task with rushed precision, as though it had done this before and was merely volunteering a demonstration. Usually, an acknowledgement of the generosity and the charity and the luck required would be uttered at mealtime; now, there was no need for it. The Eastboy knew in his heart what the figure had done, and it knew that it was a good and dis…..disorganized business.. In reality, there was no precedent for this in the Eastboy's knowledge, and there had been nothing given to him by the other peoples of the village. The Eastboy had little choice but to kneel before the figure, inspecting it . The passions of the moment elevated it to that prestigious, vaunted slot of Now, and Now, there was the exploration of the figure's insides, swiftly, while he could abate his defenses and prevent the iron traps of the cultivated, educated mind from activating. Within the casing he had stroked, there was a cache of red and gelatinous, sickly viscous stuff. This was bad, because the Eastboy knew he needed to materialize, from the raw components of what his ancestors might call neurons, the memories of deep past. Even when the flesh was not in fight or fright, the images and scents and especially felts were difficult to come to. A warm wind came through the shed, and in a lower level of awareness, the fact that the Eastboy was beginning to freeze was registered and filed for later use.
It put its hands fully into the mass, and some of it went onto the ground, and the figure shivered — as it had a right to — for the mass was sticky and oppressive around the Eastboy's hands, like poorly wetted cornmeal. And it stuck to the fingers in globs that would not separate themselves even in the harsh open air. In a more immediate sense, the Eastboy realized that it was failing its task, and it set about it with a vengeance, knowing Now that if it couldn't perform the miracle expected of it, it would return to the speargrasses whence it had come, and then, there was no guarantee that it would not stagnate forever. And the Eastboy knew it would be a forever sin if this came to pass.
The knees were dulled Now by the homogeneous and unsuspecting texture of the straw floor beneath them, and it was Now that there was a sensation unreal: the kid floated, and was chained to the ground below him through self-imposed measures, and the cold steel links of said chains covered his back and were merely awaiting orders to break off. In an unseen, but near, place there was a mammoth fall, and the shocks of it went through the muscles of the Eastboy's body and shifted the grain of the floor, and the Eastboy felt the motion of its flesh and the groaning of the walls ringing him and the figure. Outside, there was a collection now of grown figures, and their presence went to the west wall, where the Eastboy couldn't afford Now to go to. And they discussed what in the world the fall could have meant. The sounds of their standing, their oscillating foot-pressure on the dirt and mutual contact of flesh, were all much more immediately felt to the kid than the subject of their abstract and non-memory conversation.
For the grown ones, it had been a long while since such a commotion had happened, and there was good reason to be moved over it. But the kid somehow felt it right to rebuke those outside now for ignoring its work, for ignoring the fact that the plains of the west were secondary to the planes of the Eastboy and to the bared soul of the virtuous one before it.
Without warning, the Eastboy found — by what grabbing means, it was impossible to say — in the treasures of the old one's mind a genuine focus, a point of hardness to grab onto that might free the Eastboy from the humiliation of lack of total success. Though it was horrific to do so, it knew what had to occur next. Steeling resolve, the little one grasped the point of hardness and the slippery sheen around it with its right hand. There was a rending pain, and the Eastboy knew if it could not remove the point of hardness from the figure's head, and somehow keep it alive and keep it remembered, the point of hardness would destroy. The Eastboy held the point so tightly that the palm muscles, twitching from exertion, let loose, and the point was held by the fingertips. It sweated along with the carcass of the figure, and they were in swinging time together. In the Forefront consciousness of the Eastboy, it became known that no more time could be wasted.
It grabbed onto its right arm with the other, and leant backwards.
A light stronger than day shone. It pressed itself on the back of the Eastboy's head. There was screaming in the distance. Reacting on instinct, and feeling the base elements of ███ mind simplify and rearrange into a more perfect way, the ███████ ran, stumbling over the figure and feeling the mass of thick gel that was formerly the figure's brain and thoughts and wholeness splatter in between the ███████'s toes. And it would be impossible to clean ██████ of it, it stuck to ██ and held ███ foot to the ground. And, inexplicably and incommunicably, the slime travelled up ███ foot. ██ felt it edge up the grooves in the ball of the foot, and the ███████ felt black terror in ███ heart as the slime felt about the skin-touching veins of the arch, and decided to enter. The coolness of the air came in with it, and in the dimming light of a moon rising, it was augmented. It became more bitter and anxious by the second, making swirls in the higher places and working to go down, as far down as possible, to attack the target. ██ lay immobilized on the ground.
The figure whose mind had been eaten twitched and disturbed the weird flies' pathing, and when the twitching ended, the amount of flies had increased such that, at the first sign of safety, a mobile fog of biting things came down on the figure, ensuring and sealing the death of its idea. Taking a moment to focus on the awesome sight, the ███████ saw that the flies were composed of a shaded hue which looked to serve as a sort camouflage. Their razormouthes were suitable to tear into deeply-seated assumptions and stubborn opinions, slicing and disassembling them into their component emotions. The globs of runny white spittle which they spat out, and which would hang in the air for a moment before attaching itself to a delicious thing, hurt to the touch. It made blisters on the skins of logical progressions, and its venom was a dull coffee burn which distracted one's spirit and which made one scratch at the skin and spread splintering irritations of unmet expectations.
The strong light appeared to come from the point of focus, which had dislodged itself from the ███████'s grasp and landed somewhere immediately behind ██. With a start, the ███████ buckled, as ██ could finally feel the force that nailed ██ to the ground. It came from somewhere in his mouth, and stretched backwards. It was a fibrous thing, multi-threaded, with vein-like protrusions which beat against the ███████'s cheeks and compelled wracking, large shivers. It wanted to enter the mouth. The ███████ wrenched ███ head forward with such force that the rest of its body came, but this succeeded only in flipping ██ and letting ██ look at the point of focus.
The point had grown to a fine height, and the withered branches that it produced from its trunk were pale and weak and numerous. It came out with a root, and the root pulsated with the drink that had been forbidden from the ███████. The waters that flowed through it were intense, enough so that the dying thing could still put pressure on the vibrant. The ███████ only dimly recognized it as a threat it had been warned about in vague, uncertain terms a long, long time ago. Before it could properly think about, and defend against, and fight back, and cry because of, what it was presented with, the root continued, and ███ ███████ felt the press of the root in ███ █████. It throbbed in █████ and parted ███ █████ and it investigated ███ ███████. It was covered in a soothing sap, that of love and happiness from a greater force, and it kept entering ███ █████ and fondling ███ ██████ as it entered ███ ████ of ███ ███████'s ████. It looked for a certain kind of knowledge now. It wanted it, very badly. It raised ███ ███████ to its eye, and the whit and blemished face of the Moon shone down ████ ██ and its beautiful, throbbing ███████.
Outside, the villagers had returned. Encountering the ████ ████ ██ ███ ███ and the consumed meat of the holy figure which had wanted to share with ██ good and important memories, the villagers could not help but stand for a moment in paralyzing fear. Then, one of the older ones, who had seen in the Spring Tides something that was too, too close to this, broke out of the coffinesque inaction and went to ██ ███████. He ran past ███ ███████ and into the figure's room. This spurred the rest of the villagers into action, and at each leg, 4 or 5 people pulled, but no work was done. ███ ███████'s cries grew, and its hair came over its face and down to its eyes in a ruffling and hungry sort of motion, the type of motion one would use to move mud through a sifting pan. Images of spears and shields and pulleys and weights flitted about in the air like a cloud of dragonflies as the people buzzed around ███ ███████, hurrying to find something that would work, and acutely aware that the threat before them was something that they could not fight.
██ was there in the air a moment longer, then the older one returned with an odd looking implement. It was the hilt of a sword, scratched and beyond its years — and that was it. On the hilt were some enigmatic scribblings — regular in pattern, undecipherable in content. The older one raised the sword with some effort, and grunted like a press as he brought it down and to the right, slashing the air around the ███████'s caught foot. It made contact with an unseeable thing, and black blood spouted out from the cut in the air for a short while. The ███████ was thrashed in the air, and was too deep into trauma and stupor to do much more than limp and make a low whine. The people, this time, were able to secure, in a small extent, the ███████. The older one looked and readied for the next slash; after a moment, ███ hair flew out to the side voraciously, then pulled up in a conic form. He let out a groan as his body was mechanically pushed to action, and before the hair fell, the air was so completely cut that the Eastboy was showered in the blood.
Separated from the influence of the titan thing that had taken hold of it, the Eastboy crumpled in the arms of its protectors, letting even its shoulders drop and dangle. It could barely look at them, making giant sweeping motions with its eyes and stepping out its breath in an irregular, walking way. The people ran, the Eastboy carried on many centipedinal shoulders, and the night drained. Cutting into the crowd, coagulating around the dying boy, were healers who doused the Eastboy in an array of elixirs. The ground was unsteady and jumped out at them, occasionally making a villager stumble, but the central shape remained as they traversed through the foot-beat roads, through the watching homes, and finally into a central clearance, near the sea.
It was there that they worked, interminably and restlessly, to bring the Eastboy to health. None of them could stand the idea that, in spite of these efforts, the Eastboy might not return. It was not good to think such things — they had not happened. They were paranoia.
They labored. People left, and then, a doctor left. They were a doctor of flowers, the lowest kind, but still respected and powerful. They sent to everyone, with an ashen face, the putrefying lilacs and minty bluebonnets and liquidy sap of the dandelion cores, and the complete lack of reaction from the body to any of the doses and combinations. They labored eight hours.
Two hours later, a doctor of elements admitted defeat, confessing to frozen people that they believed the case to be impossible. Everything had been wrung out of the Eastboy, consumed and brought to an outer place that, if luck had it, none of them would have to ever witness. And it was exponential: two of them had fallen, and none them, with their specialties of natural and supernatural things, were particularly more skilled.
Death would not stop for them, no matter the way in which they begged and railed.
Light from the fire stabbed the dust motes in the air, and the tendrils found themselves fondling the peeled sticks which held in them plants and medicine and ritual-things. The dye from the roots came onto the fire, and after a short while, the members of the tribe that would be consecrators tonight were bathed in the dark light of hot blood, the streams of concentrated root juice stamping out the fire with a sort of mild, multitudinous crack. They poured something of themselves into it. The close members sat either on the ground — tapping the dirt to ensure no errant needles or thick sticks as they inched themselves downwards — or stood over the fire, their hands naturally gravitating towards their spears in an unconscious effort to prepare themselves to protect the vulnerable from threats that they knew logically could not exist. The dead child remained at the foot of one of the sitters, who stroked his cheek and curled his longer jet-black hair about his little finger. On the perimeter of the encampment, birds perched on old trees, and they peeled away the delicate mossy bark with their talons, revealing pink. The specks of bark fell down on occasion on one of the ringers who were the far members, and whose jobs really were to keep the meeting secure, and with the specks, their hair was like the sky above them: a suffocating void, with random assortments of escaping stars.
Turning his head, one of the outer men came to look at the inner ones, who looked at the fire and did small gestures, distracting themselves from the greater purpose of the meaning, attempting to mute through rote action the intense radiance of the mind. Two things which were like dogs were among them,ⓘ"Entity 8" - HoundAlthough, it was felt by some, there was something that had been transformed in the gulf of time.- and they laid on the grounds and carried on their backs hard canvas which did not flutter in the heated night air. Wrung out of juice from the minute that had passed, the plants began to shrivel, letting go from themselves their form and making crumbs of ashy stuff that fell onto the fire and came out as an evil-smelling smoke. Among the present, there was a shimmering of inner radiance as the minds caught the new stimulus, acknowledged it, and pressed it down into the tight space where they kept the outer world. The outer man, making sure to ameliorate the stress, went to the fire and took out the hot leaves. His hands shook from the hotness of the fired plants, and the bowl that held them began warming from the moment of contact.
Just like the plants and the bowl interplayed, so now did the stimuli of the known objects beat rhythmically against the fortifications of the observers, adjusting its pitch and volume to the individual in a concerted effort to make them break. At least, this is how the villagers saw it, in the recesses of their minds. This sort of meditation, the one that enhanced the power of the area and bolstered the ability of the foliage in the bowl, relied deeply on focus, and focus could only be achieved through complete indifference. Were a predator to come out of the dark, any of them could defeat it — but they could not watch for it, could not put into their selves the idea that anything existed in concrete space until it came to them. The theory of mind and the theories of permanence, through this, was abolished. Their remnants played in the air, and it came out, to the outer man who walked with the bowl of cooked and readied ritual-things, as a sort of haze which permeated the air and gave off a sickly-sweet smell. And the root juice sizzled away, finally, returning the villagers from their bloodied state and placing them into the realm of real things.
It was not the job of the outer guard to do this, but he figured Now that it would be rude to the wise, the ones who already spent so much of their energy simply moving about in the world, to not begin the Thing.3
He inhaled and felt his ribs expand with the lungs. He focused on the bottom right, where a pain was summoned, the memory of the previous ritual night and the idea of a large, unbearable trauma fresh in the bone's spirit. Frowning, he went to the rib, and he told it that it would be quicker this time, there wouldn't be as much time in the air and in the smoke or fire. He reminded the spirit of the rib, as it contemplated the other breathing things and anticipated the loudness and brightness, that all that was to pass was good. It would come back, not without pain, and it would bring the body yet greater honor and recognition — even if it is just for one action — and it would elevate another one of them from being a lowly item to a newly birthed Ma-PhoLito. And with these reminders and these promises, the rib was quieted.
The shallow and contorted choking which was required to allow just the bottom right rib to move was something that the Kelpsman would never be familiar with. The motion wrenched at his heart with avaricious digits, and the tissue that was torn off bled tonnes. He felt himself losing a great deal of energy, so with what he could muster from his diminished spirit, he stumbled to the Eastboy, slain and pale in the warm light, and he thrust the bowl and its contents over the Eastboy's face. Leaves fell onto it and stayed where they were, covering the eyes and the top of the plump right cheek, while the incinerated bits which were the fault of the fire lay strewn across the mouth. It was almost there.
Wanting nothing more than to dull the pain at his sides, the running and out of oxygen pain, the Kelpsman fell. He threw his arms out and caught himself on all fours. He felt his knees striking nothing, and he could not tell if he had feet. Using twilight, nadir stores of energy, the Kelpsman succeeded in stretching past his arms. It was a horrible affair to with a bout of wind, his appendages pushed some grams of the burnt plants into the mouth of the Eastboy. Some of the stuff was filtered by its teeth, but most either fell through or worked its way down the tongue.
Only the words were left, the ones that needed to be grandiose and loud and imbued with a sense of urgency. The pain in the Kelpsman side made this requirement easier to fulfill than it might have otherwise been.
InFic BoNu-Artifec, Regre-Ete Ver-Foru.4
Empty and expended, the Kelpsman fell to the floor fully and entered a state of restful, unconcerned nothingness.The whitenessⓘ"Royal Rations"They sold the secret of our people / To the low of the Earth. / They took the food of our fetal things, / And they became themselves devoid of worth.-entered the stagnant blood a long time after the Kelpsman fainted, launching an unchallenged invasion through the nose and the tongue and the stomach. Soon thereafter, color returned to the face.
The Eastboy awoke.
All stood before the fire, capturing the news, absorbing it, and then immediately taking action. The affair was like a party of catapults.
Figures let loose, shouting for a moment as though to awaken themselves from the conscious dormant sleep in which they laid. Their muscles sore from the endless repetition, and the awkward moments as different body parts seized up and were not found.
Flurries of dust which entered the air and spun wildly as the people ran through the clouds and kicked up some more dust with their footfalls. The dryness of the throats when this happened, and the almost-mucous running of tears and thicker spit in response.
Dozens of extended arms taking the boy in every conceivable angle and joint, and holding him gently, so gently, making sure not to turn him or allow himself to turn — and he didn't, not when restrained by a collective thousand different wishes.
Setting the Eastboy down on the canvas carried by the dogs, and leaving a member to raise the Eastboy's head until the resultant winds made the branches shake. Feeling the dogs yelp under the weight, and yet remain still, for the sleeping spell was known even by them to be delicate and easy to break.
Taking up the logs that would be around the perimeter now, with the guards always attentive, and bringing them all together so that the form of a raft was made, a big thing, and then a teepee over it. A brave villager, shaking like a thunderstricken tree, rising to the top, and receiving the blessing of the gathered — then stilling.
All the spearmen hoisting themselves onto the logs and laying there, thinking. The rushing and muffled sound of waves, coming suddenly and cutting off as the thinking dark enveloped and brought them to another place. The wind coming in to fill the void left by the formation, and the Caretaker bracing itself against the sharp explosion of noise that drops many leaves to the ground.
And, then, finally, a calm one, the Caretaker, who continued to stroke the hair of the now-abandoned and desolate and isolated Eastboy, removing detritus off his body and casting itself out — bracing, really — for the killing time ahead.
Streams of salty sea-air came up from the hot underbelly below the raft that held them, and the undercurrents moved about below them in a nervous and unpredictable way. The air was a monstrous and oppressive force, blanketing them in sheens of sweat which had the consistency of cold jelly. The ocean waves to the distance shimmered about, and it made the ocean more miserable than it should have been, made it appear something like the surface of an half-cut old lime — shriveled and dessicated, devoid of moisture. On the raft with them was a warm and comfortable notion of interdependence, bolted down into the concrete-like and smooth foundation deck of an odd wood, and upon it was held the totem of confidence and assured victory that repelled bad and interruptory things. A villager at the port bow fingered a viewing glass, and after a moment, she looked at the others who were studying the ship and its flaws, and looked to the sea, and decided that it was the most qualified. Another villager repeated this process for the starboard and the transom, each of them gazing out into blue nothingness, and glazing over their eyes so that dichotomy of colors would not ruin the true purpose of their seeing — that being, to spy the whale of the sky. Those who did not seek sorted, and their backs would have glimmered in the moonlight if she did not descend from heaven to try and make a life for herself in the ocean. It was a good boat, and it was gloriously bright, with many shooting lights which were caught and discarded instantaneously, but which did make the stacking of some heavy and unsanded boxes below deck and the arming of the people with hand harpoons.
The business of the harpoon was found to be a time-consuming one. Under the material dark, there was little that could be done by a single villager. The risk of erring in tie-stranding — in putting out the wishes of oneself and telling the gargantuan entity which would be stabbed by the massive tips of viscera-tipped barbed darts to go fuck itself — was a great one. And the hatred that needed to be broiled was a tiring one, carried by a select few: those who had seen the night darknesses and the undefinable terrors within them, and, furthermore, those who had left the moment of attack more embittered for their horrible loss to an inhuman nature force than shocked at the improbability of survival or relieved at the continued feeling of circulating blood. They sat around, not knowing what to do. They looked out over the ship and the laboring people. Then, they spat out vitriol vigorously into the baskets of the hurrying supply men when they were told that it was the necessary thing to do.
The spittle was foamy and the raw liquid was rough and raspy. Eventually, the flow of hate stopped as time went on and it became clear that the moon was a patient, astral being. As more time elapsed, the villagers slowed their rate of production in order to entwine the strands of wish and care and opposition together. It was noted by one that for the thinner darts — which would attack at the boastful neck and the indirect appendages — only the former two were required. The discussion was brief on the matter — some felt that the rope would chafe internally without the drive to continue onto its target, and while it was found that the main whale line would likely require a strong dose of determination, it was not necessary to hurt oneself by handling the powerful feeling in the composition of the hand harpoons. Bouncing in their barrels, the strands released begged for use, but no one could bear to look at them as the villagers nodded in concordance.
Having settled the rope, they now came to the body of the harpoon. There was a blank note as some left to work. Once they had gone, there was a flurry of different colors which came almost through the boards, and which came out the sky in little spurts and settled there, across, a yellow and green aurora which illuminated the work and alleviated the tired body somewhat. Inside, there was a variety of different proposals made, using the material which had been brought and showing how best to kill the goddess. Very quickly, most of the proposals were struck out, having been made moreso out of a lack of perceived ally-ship than a knowledge and expertise. Five remained, and it was these five which took up the bulk of the time.
One said that the best way to slay the beast was to stab it through the gray and deep breast, wherein its allegiances would be held. Having the allegiance killed, there would be nothing that the world could offer it, which would include the Ma-PhoLitos and the boy who remained there in the forest, who was dead and loved and still.
Another said that it was good that the Ma-PhoLitos took on them the burden of remembering what had happened before, and contended that it was good that the tradition had continued; this one looked about herself as she spoke and was deeply troubled by the meditative faces. She spoke about the angel of Luna, who brought the humans of the past under her self, and she said that all that could be done was to abate her abrupt motions and tell her to free the innocent kid. Her face came away wet from the energy that she released into her surroundings as the third one went to speak.
Brisk and calm, even fewer reacted — total death. That was all that was required, and the only thing that was right.
The fourth came forward from a spot which was kept dark, and all apologized and kept themselves to a good and quiet level as it revealed a lantern of clarity. It sent to them not a course of action, or a finalized image of the open guts of the demon, but a specific memory. It was a nighttime moment, in an odd, cave-like enclosure — walls of roughened rock, floors of smooth stone, many layers of pigment and features — where the air was cold enough to note, though not to do anything against. There was a sleeping place, and on it was a woman, 40, who laid in a strange position: looking upwards with her eyes closed, her palms stretched wide out, and her legs relatively straight. A strange machine, a past oneⓘHBP MachineThe advent of science, especially of the old kind, was one that was looked forward to by the increasingly ravaged and ancient thing. This machine, in particular, always seemed to…-, was fixed around her arm. A young boy with an unstoppable attitude cooed, stroking the bedend pillow which took up a third its body, and an older person — still a son — stroked the mother's hair and whispered soft graces through pounding fear. The fourth showed that this process, with intermittent bursts of poor-off sleep, had occurred the whole night, and was without significance; the mother was healthy, and was not due to die despite her concerns. The fourth looked at the mother's face, and showed in careful detail the emotions therein, even the unexpected ones such as irritation and contentedness. This was its argument, the one that came out of the bedridden past. All nodded gravely, and some went to their good friends to ask for clarification — none was to be found.
The fifth was hard to notice for those that were unaware of it, as it blended into both darknesses and was content to formulate its response over some minutes. It laid on a slab that was to the left of the group. Its hands grasped one of the chains that was below it, and its eye rolled about in its socket, following the thought light. Anticipation was a rushing thing that came to them, and, realizing that it would be countered by the slowness of the next speaker, went and sat cross-legged on the floor. After some time, the fifth one clicked its tongue. It massaged its cheeks in a circle motion, and then it spoke in that way that only it knew how to. Its voice was weak.
"I figure we got to be waiting. The moon wants to love the Eastboy. She's tired, and her walls are worn down. Like the water she hides in, she will flow out eventually."
There was some agreement among those who had never hunted a deity; even among the experienced, modifiers could be made to correct the statement.
"And her walls keep her safe. We will speak to her, and we will ask her to leave."
Now there was the disagreement that the Fifth one estimated. Concerns were raised about the feasibility of alleviating the hunt's pain, and there were biting fears, nipping away at generosity, that decried the moon to be malicious. He might have responded, if it were not for a sound that came, over the blue plains and past the jutting and high waves. All heard, and though it was .
Preparations were not done when the Moon was found.
Water came over the railing of the boat and pounded on the cannons and the stationed harpoons, beating it desperately with its fists in a battle that was subjectively sempiternal. The planning which was to take valuable time had now stopped, and in the battle that was to be waged out of the water, in the skill notion of the villagers and the identity of the Goddess, the urgency of desired death overtook the more measured propositions made below deck. And the darts grew sharper.
Sweat built on their hands as the starboard called out clipped notes on the progress of the whale through the water, and the sky cleared out the little light that remained from the stars, bringing the dark pigment of night to its natural climax. There was no seeing now to be done. The material dark descended on them slowly, as though it were treading through deep mud with heavy boots, but it outpaced the hunt. Surrendering their ignorant opinions to the people looking at the bow, the villagers tensed themselves, and were soon launched forward as the spyglass-viewers took an educated guess as to the whereabouts of the whale, sensing it from fathoms away through unfathomable methods. The boat sliced through the water, splashing up a great deal of excitement and focus that went over the deck in thunderous waves and caressed the old in rivulets on the inside.
The boat came to water that was harder soon, water with a consistency like oobleck at the surface, and grimy tar in the deep. A watchwoman remained at the fore while the other two, having done their job to triangulate the hunted thing, went to the deck to investigate the chattering of the working souls. Their communication, under this enormous pressure, came out almost human-like. There was the music of tapping rhythms on wood and warbling, stopping words from the timid at heart. The salt air was a nuisance now — it was omnipresent, and it took only hours for the roughness and brine to enter into eyes and ears and skin pores and inflame them with itself, like an infestation of mold in a wet place. It was almost enough to wear at the structure of the boat itself, except that their will to continue was much too strong to let tensile and compression strength become limiting factors.
The salt was made so omnipresent so that, when it was usurped with sulfide, it would barely be noticed.
Outside of the dream, the Eastboy's face twitched, and the Caretaker stopped stroking. The Caretaker looked at the Eastboy. Its face was embalmed half in shadow, nose and chin bones chiseled through the shading. Its eyes, closed, were depressions that slowly jittered, lingering mostly to the sides and the nose. The expression of its mouth and cheek muscles was held unsteadily and cycled through fear, terror, relief, ecstasy, and solemnity. It muffled itself, with halting sounds coming from the trachea and pushing unsuccessfully against the tight throat. Against the white backdrop, the burnt skin and night hair seemed dirty, and somehow, it had the air of being unworthy of even an animal's love.
The outer guard constricted around the fire as a wind blew that forcefully yanked it to the right, so much so that embers came out from the bottom and dotted the Eastboy's laying place. There was something that would come now, and it was fast and it was loud and it was dangerous and it was monstrous. The five of them drew their weapons from their sides, and set about the Caretaker, who was still figuring the thing that would need to be watched for — no god telegraphed their attack.
Several minutes passed like this before the Caretaker felt a large drop of water land on its head from a high-up place. Without looking up, the Caretaker looked at the Eastboy, who still writhed in place, and at the guards who had tired themselves out with myriad mental games. The Caretaker adjusted its hair, pulling the drop out from the wetted locks, and touched the nearest guard. He stiffened, looked around, and thus alerted the rest of his compatriots. They were discreet, but they needed to be silent, and so the Caretaker gyrated its head vigorously, doing everything in its power not to scream. The guards took note of this, but instead of processing silently, they instead went directly to each other, not realizing that the mere act of speech was enough to demonstrate life.
Or, to demonstrate the presence of a hostage.
The bark of a nearby tree sloughed off, revealing a mass of flesh within that extended far above them and featured uncountable failed faces. Its plentiful eyes looked at each of them, piercing through their defenses and imagining victory. The five guards flinched at the appearance of the enemy — now, after all the vigilance expended — but came quickly to themselves and assumed their training. The five sticks were each different — they had to be, definitionally — and each, in the sight of all the parties, glinted firelight in complimenting mixes of red, orange, and black. From the downed bark, fogs came and coalesced into big globs. And the soldiers held their ground.
Beneath them, the underbellies of the ocean flipped at the volume of the Goddess, even though they were a horizon's length away.
The watchwoman saw it first, and in the luminous dim, it was the sudden absence of her light that, even more than her yelps and immobility, were instantly observed. Two grabbed her by the arms and hoisted her from her place. She shook her head the whole while as the darkness lifted, and sight was restored to the more keen-eyed. Radiating from her, and then from half the voyagers, was a pressing, pressing, pressing — they had not realized what killing a Goddess meant.
In the far place, her gargantuan arms came up level to the totems at the peak of the ship, and her back was light, probably ivory, and polished against the brightening words of the villagers. Silhouetted against darker patches of sky, the shape of her body was large and menacing — her sides were flush with her ribs and hips, her shoulder blades were raised, cap-like things, almost armour-like, and the arch of her back was slight, but enough to reveal the thickness of the muscle behind the glassy skin. She descended almost immediately, having come up only for air. The waves she sent, though they were tempered by the distance, were rabid and pushed against the dogs in the real world, making them yelp and making the Eastboy stir and almost fall from its place. All their stomachs churned as the boat rocked at that power. A lone voice called out for all to notice, and though it was first ignored, it was then gravely and duly noted that, just as it had claimed with its eyes and heart, a cloud began to form on the opposite end of their plain. If it could be called theirs.
Momentarily, they considered the idea of aborting the mission — no, not one of them bucked this trend — but, with the shivers of the sight gone, they came together and, after much shouting and many shared feelings of devastation in the sea and the ship and in the forest and the canopies, a portrait came out dominant. Composed from all their visions and plans, it showed the Goddess, shrunk so that she was merely a giant among them, and bound to a large place at all points, and a teary face with snot and bile and rudiments of vomit. And she would be prepared, in the daylight and the icy air, to pay penance for the crime of killing one of their own. Of shedding his blood so vividly that they could not help but ring her shadow in a hue of crimson. This, it was determined, was all that they could do if they were to honor their ancestors, if they were to honor their words when they spoke of pain reduction and life bliss and life fulfillment and delayed death.
On the sweating faces, many revulsions and hopes were recorded, and their average came to mercy.
The Kelpsman lunged forwards, bringing the idea of the blade down in front of him. It stuck in the air, and out of nothing, there came brooks of blood which poured out of the now-perceived arms of the Goddess. The tree almost shrieked, a high portion of its body flinching against the blow like a net writhing with motions of caught fish. The Kelpsman began slashing vigorously around him, mostly at the ground, so much so that a copper blade shimmered where it, in the space of minds, would have been. He made many trenches in the ground, but could not connect with another tendril.
There was a hissing that came from the outer areas — beyond the cover of foliage or the safety of the desolate plain — which penetrated the air and their feelings, and left in both spaces an evil feeling. The Kelpsman remained wild — though the tree reacted no more — and he kicked up dust with his passionate assaults. The others fell in with him. Two ran to the tree and ran their blades and determination around and up the tree's length, one went to the Eastboy and shielded him from incursion with a swatting motion, and the last looked to the sky, examined,ⓘ"Level Keys"Some of the eccentric liked to collect them, though no one knew what they were for or what they could be used for. There was simply a security that came with having them…- then looked knowingly at his friends before vanishing into the forest.
The Eastboy began to think now: new, strange, and exclusive thoughts. Visions of a sea disturbed, crawling with numerous living things, came to him; refracted through the water, the auras and essences of life were rendered beyond exaggeration, a fractal-esque form that threatened to never die. Then, in the margin-spaces, a strange substance stretched through the submerged earth — shifting around fixtures, betwixt coral filters — and maneuvered to a dense pocket of life.
A strange feeling came now to the Eastboy: its stomach was constricting, the veins were disappearing, and it could have sworn that it had been splayed open — somehow — and its insides were being excavated and replaced with packing foam. Taxidermy was the term that came to the Eastboy, though what its meaning was or why it was relevant was kept from it. It felt like it was being taxidermied alive, and it watched the vision intently, wanting to know why this was.
Greeting it into the message was a soreness in the Eastboy's throat, unique in its pounding and rasping, which made it cough and tense itself in real life. It felt bile lining its throat and slime sloshing around in its mouth. It couldn't endure the feeling — not even a moment — so it bent and coughed out the vile stuff onto a grey, unfamiliar kind of ground. Gravel, it must have been. It looked up, forcing itself to confront the enemy.
It stood on treacherous ground, and around it, the skyline was dotted with black lines that, were it a real place, might have passed for nature. The gray gravel extended for many meters in all directions, and when it stopped, it met worn, beige, heat-baked dirt, closer in texture to shattered glass than normal grass. Nothing stood around him, not even weeds. The roads went off into several distances. Each seemed identical against the clear blue sky.
The moon hovered in the midsection of the sky, its gray blemishes gone and replaced with thin lines of lighter gray that had the air of makeup — perhaps bronzer — and came out deeply unsettling. Around it were a cohort of stars which were pinpricks against the pale blue, as though they were little holes in a vast and suffocating fabric. The sun came lower, repelled by the moon, and yet shone down as though it were high noon. The air did not know what to be. It seemed to settle, when the Eastboy had felt enough gusts, on being humid and body-temperature, which made walking around an exercise in breathing.
The Eastboy ran to the dirt paths, a paralyzing and uncanny sense threatening to take it over, but before it could reach them, an errant sinkhole came from the gravel and sucked the Eastboy into it, whistling through the gravel and making mouth sorts of sounds. The Eastboy bounced back onto the ground, stayed where it was, and thought. Clearly, escape onto the road was an illusion. Travelling by the endless and nebulous gravel plains would also be a mistake. The Eastboy sat, its ear set to the ground, soon becoming abject and miserable.
Recognizing that it was liable to become stuck in that loop of despair and listlessness, the Eastboy went up again after a little while, gazing up to its aggressor, gauging patience and amity. Precious moments passed in which the Eastboy could feel no thing towards anything else around it. The spirits here of the floor and the walls and the jutting things were as captive as it was, and it was unfair to place on them expectations that the Eastboy itself might not be capable of. In the freezing sun of the dreaming day, the Eastboy went on, east, wondering what it could use, what things it knew from the past that would secure the future. That was how these spaces worked, was it not?
And it was. Its calves wore out and its feet squashed against the soft soil until it was red and hot, but the Eastboy knew that these were good signs; progress was being made. The chill of the air now was a blessing, as it rejuvenated the Eastboy, stripped him of stopping thoughts and physical sensations like it did the twisted trees of their proud branches. The Eastboy set to work recounting to himself the entirety of his life, buying precious hours in the biting nothingness where he could be. It knew that it was not destined for that named greatness, but that was fine. Sensory existence was enough; legacy was an overwhelming and massive cloud, to be dispersed as soon as possible.
It had come to the time in which a well was found with ancient fluid that helped all the children present with just its vapor, a remote and awesome panaceaⓘObject 1 - "Almond Water"They enjoyed it for a long time afterwards, and it was the memory of the silk water, which went down its throat the way that it cut past rafts and spears, which helped him penetrate into that place.-, when it saw, out a minute's pace, stalks of speargrass.
Being betrayed and tired and utterly destroyed, it could do little except walk raggedly to the stalks, a force of familiarity — and perhaps, peace — pulling it to him magnetically. They grew from the grey and ravaged plains mysteriously, punching through microscopic holes in the little stones like vines or fungi, standing obstinately tall and pressuringly rough regardless. They reflected and bounded in the hostile light, and they drove the Eastboy mad when they disappeared from sight behind the blinding white. A minute passed and he came to the stalks. Nauseated at the possibilities, the Eastboy knelt, feelings its knees buckle into the gravel, and removed a stalk from the ground. Its body was long, and the brown roots which were iconic when it came time to prune the fields, were present and sinewy and relieving. This, at least, was real; it was something placed here for him.
The Eastboy gasped as it thrown to the floor, and it felt its body heat escape through shallow cuts on its arms and belly and thighs. It tried to turn around. The Moon was engorged, and he had a vivid mental picture when he stared at the Moon of the Goddess, looking down on him with her thin and magnanimous face with a motherly sense. The Eastboy retched. Above him, vultures flitted about.
All of them, even those who spoke English and held incredible memories, were at the deck, looking starboard at the Goddess who presented herself before them. The ocean below them swallowed their tears and blood and vomit, subsuming them into itself with ruthless efficiency, leaving no trace of the impact that intelligence could have had. Though there was no wind, the sweat that erupted over them was cold and bitter, as though bugs had come and spread their poison throughout their skins. All of them, even the ones that had seen a god killed long ago, back before their forefathers were born, begged for mercy in their hearts. Begged for merciful, quick release.
The Goddess turned slowly, expanding as she slid upright through the sea to them. Soon, they could see her unhindered. Her stomach was flat and featureless, but full enough that the sight of her hips stretching against her skin defied proportion. Her unruly and dominant hair, shining bronze despite the lack of illumination, fell halfway over her breasts — which were slightly taut and athletic, a stubborn sign of youth in an otherwise slackening spirit — and halfway away from her body — where it frayed and spilt wildly into dozens of brushlike strands.
The swaying of the boat was a reflection of the swaying of their souls. They went around it, looking for things that could help, but found nothing that would kill the Goddess, which was the only thing that they needed. The hand harpoons, after the debate about it, was simply too small and too few to make a meaningful difference. High in the boat was a large gun that could shoot hooks that would potentially embed, but it lacked the leverage needed to pull on the hooks once they were embedded. So they roamed about, sprinting across the boat in an attempt to find something.
It was when the Goddess has come midway to then that one of them realized what had to be done.
One of the sailors, their hands chafed from the rope, looked into the cannon and saw that it fit their head. They had attempted their shoulders, and by holding their hands to the back, they were able to comfortably fit inside. The stupid, horrible, and yet incredibly alluring prospect implied by this spread throughout the ship quickly — though to confuse the Goddess as much as possible, different things were spoken about, so only the dimmest idea would form in her mind.
Inside the ship, deliberations were made. In order for the plan to have any efficacy, the ship would have to be sacrificed in the process — the Goddess would immediately attack and destroy it as she saw the hostility, and without a great majority, there would be no way to escape the sea that surrounded them. Quickly, they sorted themselves — those able to swim well, those with any doubt. Those who would be willing, those who were unwilling or too slow for the desperate kamikaze that this was. Lots were drawn, and people divided and subdivided. All the while, the Goddess waited patiently, perhaps a sign that she believed herself far more in control than she was — or, perhaps, a sign that they were engaged in sheer, hopeless folly.
The Goddess went down as she neared the ship, clearly expecting some sort of fire, then surfaced as she came directly to the ship and found no hostility. She settled herself in place, and as she did so, barrels were dropped from behind the ship, tied to individual pieces of hull. Sailors went inside, looking and exchanging images of goodwill to each other in an effort to combat the oppressive fear.
The Goddess towered over them, though she was not authoritative. She slouched slightly and handled with some curiosity the top of the ship, feeling the contours of the totem in a way that must have been blasphemous. She looked directly down, seeing the sparse crew, and wondering if the people had advanced to the point where they spent diplomats rather than warriors. After deliberation, she saw that there was likely no one who would know English, and as such, she expanded her mind's eye to include all those conscious things around her.
The people knew that she would do this, and to combat it, they had executed the simplest, most dastardly solution possible: they slept.
Finding only a select few on the ship and perhaps a dozen below, she sent to each of them a greeting: A solitary white bud, burst in the wind, with the sharpness taken and replaced with good fluffiness. She showed herself, in smaller form, picking the bud and walking around with it, eventually planting it down near a river bank. She showed herself leaving through tall grass, and getting cut for it, and she showed herself bearing the small pain with pleasure. She showed the bud, now mud-brown, and her despondence over being unable to leave it for but a night.
The few left on board debated what to do next. To engage her in her conversation was to buy time, which would be necessary for disarming… but it would be to lose dignity and respect — platitudes and empty talk with a being who had killed was dirty, and the Goddess knew perfectly well that they would believe that. There was no point, it was eventually settled upon, of being obscure.
They sent to the woman before them an answer: It was the spear grass in which the Eastboy loved to play in, and the hanging things above it which were either ignored there or ignored at home. They emphasized to her the roughness and warmth of the area: how the bodies of the spear grasses held the heat so that it was like an open sauna in the immediate night, or how the skin grew less sensitive as time went on, how it aged much, much faster than the Goddess could imagine.
She squatted down so that her knees barely broke the surface of the sea, and she held her hands out in front of the boat, making what was supposed to be a disarming, calming gesture. She began to formulate an image, and she closed her eyes as she imagined a vanishing line and a large, foreboding forest. As she drew in herself at the head of the forest, the attackers came.
She immediately opened her eyes, but because of her squatting, she was unable to stand for a few seconds, in which time perhaps a dozen people went onto her and climbed near to her scalp. She backed fiercely away, splashing up mountains of water in her escape, and she rubbed at her hair endlessly in a futile attempt to remove the hostiles. For perhaps the first time in her life, the Goddess felt completely betrayed, and not knowing the emotion, she gave into the natural inclination: anger.
Somewhere above, a lone soldier cheered.
The Goddess finished standing and kicked the ship's hull, immediately opening it, and then looked inside in disbelief. Almost nothing was left inside except the structural necessities. Her face contorted in rage, and she let out a low roar which left everyone who heard it questioning the wisdom of the plan, even though they were confident in it. She began to trudge the water, pawing at her hair in an attempt to stop the pounding pins that hooked themselves in her hair, and then.
The Goddess saw nothing but white for a horrible moment as she stood over the sea. While she was able to keep herself right with the first event, the second is when she realized what had happened… and that second was the first time the Goddess felt terror.
She opened her mouth, and fell to one knee, eviscerated by the pain in her sides, her thighs, and her belly.ⓘ"Mortality Shards"The only way to kill a god worshipped in the public consciousness is to remind the god that it should never worship itself. The people who had launched themselves in a desperate attempt to bring the Goddess down were surprised, but hung on at the follicles. They all looked around, seeing what was to happen, and began to unfurl the canvas of the lower deck.
"Parachutes", they were called in the memories. It was a new thing, but as the Murderer clutched herself and bent further to her upright knee, the more it became clear that they had to use the things to escape. Each of them looked around for friends, and looked down — perhaps 80 feet — at the random sea below.
And as the Goddess fell, the harpooners rained down, steering themselves to little bits of rubbish in an attempt to land with a group. Those that succeeded were proud of themselves, and those who were not so lucky were given a handshake from one of the larger groups and encouraged to join.
They all — young, old, healers, fighters, builders, woman and man — joined hands, bound in soul by what they had witnessed, and jumped upwards, outwards, into the vast unknown.
Celestia split for them.
The ravine that formed in the sky was bright and almost without form, for it killed the shadow throughout the world, and thus flowed out without border or restriction. It was jagged and thick and difficult to look at with the naked eye. The Eastboy opened its eyes and covered them immediately at the blinding sight.
It then collapsed itself, an obscenely bright point in the sky, seeping back and letting a dull, matte steel color take its place. It flitted around in the sky a while, the way a fly might, then stopped dead when the Moon came back to visibility, removing its camouflage of lighting and preparing for a horrible battle. The Caretaker, the guards, even the dogs, did not notice that the raft had come back until they were shaken, nearly brought to the ground with the number of grateful and satisfied.
United under the heat and the light and the stench of disturbed ashes and hope, they watched and waited, hoping that their hope might be of even the most minor help.
The pinprick dilated with the people, oscillating between star and asteroid, and the moon drew itself back until it hardly fit onto the horizon. For several minutes, this was all that happened, and it was enough that some questioned whether anything might happen at all. Too swiftly for them to realize they were wrong, the thing happened.
Dashing across the stars, the pinprick made an arc of lightning and attacked the Moon. It scraped her, and she flew up and down the length of the sky, so quickly that it seemed impossible to hit her. The pinprick condensed into its original form and went over them until it occupied a noon position in the night sky. It became closer to a square of whiteness, where different types of voids clashed: nothing, and everything. As it formed the third corner, the Moon attacked again. This time, it came from out of view, so quickly that it could only have been premeditated, and struck through the point of light.
However, it simply split into two globs which recombined and took the centerpiece of the sky into itself, becoming several times larger than the Moon. The moon slowly rotated so that its main bruise was fully shown to the zealous intruder and, with jealousy, it lunged forward…
and was swallowed up.
Upon their return to the greater family, adorned with the splendor of a godhunt and the honor of a new Ma-PhoLito, a dinner of kinds was hosted, though there was almost no amenities, except for a few small portions of sweet delicacies, reserved for the ones who went out most spectacularly. And there was a silence in both real and imagined space, for the soldier who dashed into the forest never returned, and it was probably through their divinely-intuited plan that the Goddess was capable of being harmed.
Going back home was therapeutic, the Eastboy found. Though it had been gone a night, the sheer magnitude of what had happened because and through and with him made it feel somehow ruined, as though by virtue of being elevated, it would be now impossible to feel loving touch. But it was not so — they were determined not to make it so, the people who cared for the Eastboy — and there were many touching stories and chest-heaving, cough-spurring comedies. Despite always being surrounded, the Eastboy saw that its his area was the quietest of all, and the measure taken but unspoken to preserve that was deeply, confusingly, lovely.
Cast on the wall behind him were moving shadows, bouncing and coming off of one another as though they were a shaking prism's light. They were all good and soft and undefined, and, in the reverie of the early morning, confusable as his. In this state, with wood glasses thumping and warm colors saturating, was when the Eastboy heard a voice at his side. It wasn't something that could be made out, and, having gone through danger immaterial and inconceivable, the Eastboy felt generous enough to leave the venue by himself and find the person who wanted to talk rather than connect. The danger had died, and mirth had sprouted over its corpse.
The people saw him and almost moved out of the way, assuming that the Eastboy's lack of fibering and connecting was simply an attempt to be alone for a while, the way they had all experienced after difficult times. They let him go through the halls, until they were not there anymore, until the floor of the hall was not tile but soft grass, until the grass crawled over the walls and tore them down, subsuming them into nature and presenting in their stead distilled absence that towered over everything and which was barely stopped by the thinning lawn that was now the floor. It was here that the Eastboy finally considered… but he continued, realizing now that it was a space in which to share thoughts, and being confident in himself that he was the loudest, most candid person now… at least, while the danger was fresh in memory.
The air was still here. Crouched on the grass, gazing out into space over squatting heels, was a woman in silver and gray. She was adorned with a single, Grecian cloth which tumbled over her body and was held by a simple latch on her shoulder. Her skin was smooth, and her arms were slim and defined — swimmer's arms. Her hair was slicked back, and was stone-like in texture and storm-like in appearance. She wore a tiara over the waves in her hair, featuring little outlines of what appeared to be stars. She rested her left hand on her knee. She raised her right, and pointed backwards at the Eastboy.
She vanished. It took a moment for the Eastboy to realize that was because the whole world had gone with her.
I tire, down to my head, of looking for you. Who are you? Why must you meet now?
My… you take quick to English, don't you?
Wait… where in the world am I? Where did you take me! I will beat you for this, I swear it on everyone's souls that I will, you don't unders-
I do! I swear as well, I fucking understand. And I apologize for it.
I.
Where did my pictures go? I'm blind I can't see anything I can't escape help HELP
Listen to me! Do you hear the subtle waves and crashings of my voice? Do you hear the scratching presence of rocks and dust? Do you hear the-
I hear nothing, I see nothing… I only hear… something I'm speaking in.
I'm speaking.
Does it surprise you?
Yes. I feel I can't breathe.
You will be okay. Do it manually — feel the air flow through your weight when you pause, and taste the way that air leaves through your teeth and gums and mouth when you speak.
It's… hard to do.
You will be fine. And do you understand how to listen?
I think… but it's incredible. It's as though chirping is light, and you are giving it shadow and shade and form. How do you do this?
Thank you. I suppose I am still good at raising a Ma-PhoLito.
Is this what you are doing? I… cannot be one, my elder. I am sorry. Let me leave you in this knoll, and I will le-
I am not your elder. It's worse.
Worse?
I am your enemy.
I can feel the heat of your breath on my skin. Do not make me stop feeling it.
Why did you bring me here I can't send you what I need to send you why can I not stop myself and I can't breath it's because of you I need you dead why aren't you dead
Do not shut me out, please. Give me sixty seconds, and I will tell you all that you need and want me to tell you. But I can't do it, I can't help you, if you don't, at least, open the door.
why should I open the door to threats
Is that all you think of me as?
you are so entitled what do you mean by think of you what image comes to your mind what sense is boiling in you because I will tell you what is boiling in me it is the hot urge in my hands to throw you off that cliff and into the blackness.
That… is. Terrible. It is terrible that you feel that, and that I made you feel that, I know. But you accomplish nothing by doing that, except chaining yourself to what you feel now! The "hot urge in your hands" — that's not a good thing. Please, I need you to know that, before I can speak to you honestly and sincerely.
And what if I don't want you to speak to me, to bind me and to make me walk through the soft catgrasses and then make me roll around in mature spear grasses? This is what you will do to me. I will leave now, and you cannot stop me.
It is impossible for us to leave. I'll tell you what I feel. You will listen. That is all I want to do.
where is the door it was here you brought me to this place and now I see nothing please let me go I haven't done anything to you I would have but please no you can't do this please don't make me speak to you more I hate you
Okay then. I don't care if you listen, you deserve the right to not listen, but I need to say it to you and you need to be here with your body, at least.
I'm dying. You and your people did that. I'm alright with dying, I have lived for so long that soon, I'm sure I'd see the chance to die as a blessing. It's remembrance that I want. The way you're killing me, you will remove my name from memory for forever, and that is something that I can't bear. So, I don't care if you hate me, but please, I ask that you never forget me. Do you understand? Do you think you can begin with that?
Fine. Leave me alone then, as if by putting your head in the sand you can save yourself from obligation. I was asking for you to remember me as I am now, speaking to you, but I have something that you cannot simply refuse, even if I myself am almost sorry for it, given what I had to do to give you that power.
You, right now are a Ma-PhoLito.
You can't do that. At least now I know how foolish you are; you want to intimidate me with some mere lies, not realizing how baseless you are on anything, how lost you are in the planes of sense. You will let me go, now.
You're weak — you see how I escaped? You, your stup-
Insult me, that doesn't change the fact that when you leave this place, you will seek for an old memory. And you will look for dead ones, and find none clearer and brighter than I.
I will resist you, then. But, first, you will let me go, do you understand me? I refuse to fear you, you are no Goddess anymore.
What makes you think that holding this knowledge is violatory?
What?
You heard me, did you not? Why do you feel like carrying the memory of me when I was younger, more graceful, and completely essential to the past you wish to protect… bad? I want to know. Really, I do.
Because I hate you. And because, if what you did to me is what you experience as love and favor, then all the people of the world were fortunate to move past you and your barbarity.
No one else will do it.
No one else will ever want to help someone like you, even if you gave us the assurance of constant light. We will simply find a new way to navigate — via the stars, via the wind, via the things on this Earth, for-
-I never gave you Earth!
I found it. You are weak, I told you that already.
…What do you know about her?
I know that she was much-
No, no, no-
-Much, much more beautiful than you will ever be.
It takes a great deal of effort not to smite you where you stand.
You and I both know that's not true.
That's true… partially.
Wait, what are you doing?
No, no, get back!
Show me yourself! I know how you move, where you move, where you are! Don't hide yourself like this — you just make your threats weaker!
I'm not going to hurt you. I just want to live forever with you.
You — agh! Get off of me! Eugh, I, ye-, -I-, -I, will — AH! —
Leah-veh
You
Fohr-Ef-Er.
He's here! He lays at the foot of the door! Yes, bring him in! An elder comes now!
Lock the door. Let no one go in there.
"He'll win. He must."
"He has us with him."
2
3099 words
001 Roughened, coarsened men, I beg you listen closely
To the words that I share through my love’s body
For while you’ve held him in your sacred place—in your containment —
My words have run dry, and my minds've begun to run.
Consider now the way in which your group breaks,
What strategies you use to raise a mere place
In which to hold what you deem to be dangerous —
I tell you, only occasionally are you correct.
Please ask yourselves to what end you may go —
010 What vicissitudes you will justify —
To prevent your people from being in the know,
From learning yourselves from that moondust brick.
Please, I ask that you cease conceitedly
Making vain efforts to a fake kind of peace.
Surely, I know, my existence is not fearful,
My life is like yours, and my mind has always shone.
Though it may have been in different forms,
Ones that you forget, and must soon relearn.
I give my sign to you, Bureau, and trust that it shall be shared
020 Throughout the entirety of my sister's being: her rushing, pulsing skin.
I send to you the greatest man my eyes have yet beheld
His hidden treasures and my humble blessing will soon manifest
Even in that rough and sharpened place, which you stubbornly erect.
His mouth will bleed out gold, and his many friends will see
The talents that you collect.
Now let me tell you, though brief it is, a recounting of my life
So that when you see the words pushed out, you know not to be surprised.
I wish for you to be transparent, but I know the people you are
030 And I've learnt throughout societies that loyal guards do not break prison bars.
When I was young, I saw the walls collapse
On my natal nursery.
I saw my many siblings, still babies
Bite and chew and fight to last.
I flew away, swift and out of sight,
And saw the great gestalt evolve.
As rocks accrued more and more gore,
Expanding celestial — planetary — shores.
The myriad shots that they inflicted are still present today,
040 Though my sister hides them well, she knows the force,
And it's her maroon magma relieved there's no more.
You know nothing of the scale of those days, except in imagination
I hope that some of you understand, now, how our wills were forged.
And how it is I condemned my past-present state,
And still hated the subsequent time.
These days were dry and uninteresting, though fraught with my made peril,
For what role had I to play back then, except to never die?
I did it all, though I was quite marked, and found myself one day
With luminous peace and a stable orbit and no screaming feral things.
050 Then there was a still worse threat, the threat of a life boring
And suddenly, without warning, I wished for a brand new fray;
Something that would be imperfect, and which I could manipulate,
So that somehow, just maybe, I'd have a new purpose.
The red edifices of magma which erupted from my sister's skin
Were something aligned with what I wished, though it was certainly extreme.
Love and pride and a sororal sense flashed then through my mind,
And stupidly, serendipitously, I found myself staked amid
Great plumes of planetary muscle… and for a moment, I reflected on my fate.
060 Then, I suppose subconsciously, I found a will to fight
I ran screaming across the stars, and found my former, comforting house.
Through that juvenile and foolish stunt, I gained my iron face.
Yet I was still young, not remotely strong, and my days
Were slow again.
Indescribable, or perhaps ineffable,
Is the best description of that emotion.
For I reasoned then that the cosmos had
Nothing, and to this I was confined,
Until.
070 The suddenness of the moment is stored deep within my soul.
The lurch of that thing's gravitational field is still without compare.
It said it was the rightful Moon, that I had come and stole its role.
It said that I would leave or die, for isolation it couldn't bare.
A power rose up inside myself — my mouth gone mute, my eyes sharpened.
A bruise on my fresh and silver hide served now to confirm my natural right.
I swore to God, knowing not who it was, this would not be my final time
Circling her, with her precious hair and deep blue skin and soft green eyes.
I raised myself then launched myself and felt the inertia take over
My systems, seeing the intruder and its spinning in place and its evil eye.
080 A bright sanguine that threatened to kill, to rip her apart from the inside,
For it was then I felt the massive pull and determined the best way
Was to take a cue from the past and coat myself and let the magma
Rise.
Her plan, now apparent, was to ensure the vacancy by any means necessary.
She would not die, but her cushion of innards
Only served to weaken her power.
Trivial it was to drag her, kicking and screaming,
Far away, where she would not again find the Earth.
In a place, I knew, where there was a great dearth,
090 Of that sheen that I used, and of any orientation,
I shunted away the broken challenger and its split, writ commands:
It had no station in the future histories: Those of eons
And of minds and of spirits.
We came around again as our mother Sun waxed bright,
And the Earth whom I had loved had gotten time to realize,
A proper form, with light and shadow, with depths and peaks,
Which would become fertile and teem with bastard children.
The ones that carried the stars within microns, that had motion through contact,
100 That were locked within crystalline structures, with only a dim hope of escape —
Yet, unbelievably, they came, and landed, and survived anyways.
Like the remnants of explosions, like the cancer of a body,
The interlopers spread, and they knew not any bounds,
They are your parents, the seed that bore your heart,
Along with the rest of the moving ones, and the rooted things too.
In the morning they multiplied, footprints increased slightly;
By sunup they were railing, and I could hear dim, unanswered cries.
Perhaps it was my susurring, reassuring those little babies,
That gave a voice to their pleas and a reason for them to take
110 A new kind of liberty, one I'd never before fancied —
Direct conscious voice, in vessels that were beat.
Swiftly they developed, and rapid was their flight,
Such that in only a little while, they combined through some beguile,
And seized opportunity — a novel thing to do.
They formed their own bodies, cells from diacylglycerides:
Elementary, honored things — even their waste was used for wine.
Yet they were not satisfied, and this instinct led to growth
Which I loved so much, which I desired not to be slow.
Then — I figured after a little while — there was something that I could do
120 I observed myself more completely than I ever had before,
Taking into account the fibers and threads and currents of my core.
I felt the snailsludge of the inside, and rushing waves near the exterior —
Eventually feeling the difference between, the invisible crashing therein.
Creeping into position, a seed within my mind
Kept flowing its way in and out of clear view…
Staggering through, carelessly and thoughtlessly,
My orbit slightly deformed, and uneven was my time.
Earth told me, quite confusedly, a new pattern she'd find
Until an inspiration you'd call divine.
130 The energy collated was completely mine,
Yet I shivered within as I tried to tilt right.
The thick arms of force and fate joined together in one unit,
And only through great evasion did I leave their behest.
They compacted my labors until it was pressed to a point,
Reaching out them selves to ensure that there was no point
I attempted to resolve the matter, to render children blessed.
Rather than execute that, they tried to convince my guts to flip.
With the gifts afforded to me, I bid the cumbersome curses away.
Expelling through the most violent motions signs for a greater world and peace,
140 I flung open my rings and fields, and one passed through a small and deserving place.
Thinking now to this time, I must wonder Terra's ramifications.
I question if what's left of her is good, and the punishment for this hubris.
Squirming within my soul is the mechanism of her adaptation,
That melting and shifting and endless delaying
Through which came to power those minor errors.
I do not regret imbuing mobility in life
Nor do I repent for granting intelligence and strife.
Concern comes always from a worried and anxious position…
I've simply observed your myriad deeds,
150 And been in vex since your origin.
I have seen the center of the hunter's dens,
I have heard the cries of their deer bone flutes.
I have tasted the taste of the bitter wood fruits,
I have smelt the smell of dirt-blood-sweat.
Your senses were like all the children before you,
Except more dulled, more thoughtful and odd.
I was flattered by the chalk paintings of Moon,
and I flushed at marriages under Bajdon5
And the people that lived then were like you now,
160 Killing the misunderstood.
Not all of them did, but enough of them shed
The blood of another homo.
Under the long hours of large open shadows
The circuitry of the brain did,
Revolve around madness and life preservation
Until mistakes in transportation.ⓘ"Level 0"You bound them up in your certitude / That they wouldn't be good even in servitude. / You found the holes that went past the ground. / You laughed as they cried at their family drowned.-
I cannot blame your cities or your emissaries,
for the coldness of the ancient past —
However, the time to fix ingrained behavior
170 Seems to have well and truly passed.
Repelled I am by the stench of your hands,
Yet my heart still remains with you.
The repressed memories of an ancient war fought
Appears to have left you wondering what is true.
Shadows flit through all you humans' minds
When confronted with a blank space to fill.
I must ask now, be quiet and still,
For I will recount now how I returned and enshrined
Him.
180 Alone in the night, a young boy peeked out
The window of the month's new home.
He loved the flight and the dances of light
Which flew out from acrophiliacs.
He studied the techniques and built models and went back
To the tiny libraries he had.
In amusement I watched the day and noon life —
The playing and working with his flock.
In curiosity I watched the late, late walks —
When he would jump out the window and go about the block.
190 I remember the curiosity I felt,
When it made me feel lovely
To see my form reflected in his eye.
The soft contemplation of the future of family and nation
Made in me a deep sort of whirling.
Later, when the lead became ink and his thinking clearer,
I thought back to the past, and to the men I had chosen.
Wondering on the subject, on the potential and the options,
I realized after soul-searching the problem's solution.
I would do all I could to bring that acclaimed smile to his face,
200 I wanted him to touch me, above the rest of the human race.
He wanted to devote his life and his passion
To the unflinching immutable sky.
Greater were his efforts and stronger was my interest
With the years gone by.
And when he went to serve battalions of air and sonic speed,
Always there was a plea:
To do service, to have strength to execute,
But to never need the training.
The warrior spirit that was cultivated
210 Emboldened his will to boot
His prior plans; the encounter fated
Upon that certain day slated
A new calling.
He tires now, I am sure, of writing —
So I will keep this brief.
But the night in the airfields,
when the clouds parted, and a fair view
of the man laid down on the hard grasses below,
was provided to me — it was something
220 i felt quite grateful for: a rounded
tip, a smile's warm ear, an unrestrained laugh.
Maybe they are human things, and I lie when I
try to use them to explain; maybe I should
feign some sort of different thought. But
I'm sure you all would dislike dishonesty wrought.
And it was then that I wanted to speak to him,
to give something to him which would stab the din.
I didn't do it — something that will haunt me
for as long as I live on to spread his memory —
230 but the boroughs and domains of his silver life,
rigorously enforced with a gold gauntlet,
disassembled themselves like gallium:
melting upon contact with a friendly spot.
When he saw that he could go to sleep,
I sent a dream that was the most
beautiful thing he'd ever seen.
What was in there is for him only, but you,
I can tell you what I did next.
I stretched out my arm to comfort him
240 And I felt the need to touch him
— yeah —
to carry him. I made sure that he didn't scream
as he felt my cool digits crawl across his cheek.
I examined him until I saw:
the reason why the serpentine had seemed alive
the reason why there was nothing but the present time
the reason why I felt the need to realign his life.
At the end of it, when I batted tears
and forced his heart to stop beating and his body shivering —
250 when I observed the body and held in hand the mind
as it tried to beat and my presence pulsed in time —
it was then that I saw why it was:
I enjoyed his presence more than royal company.
And for that I was sorry.
After that night, implanted in heart,
my presence was there in that funereal pyre.
He continued on, with money ambition,
But I knew bleakly that it wasn't with meaning —
The late night studies where he wanted to see
260 The functions of aerodynamics and see
The universe, writ large, was now under me,
In an off-kilter manner that wasn't quite "kosher",
The working of which I can still not describe.
As the months passed in service, he did little to hide:
There was the indirect supplies and armament tied,
But I followed him about, his pale worried complexion
Faded with tours where he didn't need to spray.
Morality enmeshed with the concern of mortality,
I saw him wash it down, a stoic and prepared bastion.
270 Confirmation of my theories, established with watching
Feelings that didn't or couldn't forget
Dreams which commanded the future their lord should beget.
September, and late, decisions were made.
October, familial movements await:
the kind that he once vowed he'd never repeat.
May showed him the limits of no gravity,
and I chuckled as he heaved at the experience.
Novelty became an exciting career
at the Forefront of everything science held dear.
280 For years there was training and duties and things
Until my efforts came true at the end of 70.
See the viewers at home, Bureau, and know that you were blessed.
They loved the presentation and the action, not the rest.
Though I am an ancient one, always visible…
Somehow, it felt right, to plug their antennae.
I knew that he would love me, the first time that he'd see me,
And thus I took some liberty, what you call flirt and play —
I took away his attention with little windy sparks,
and less and less sharp was his dart, the point within his heart.
290 When he stopped looking about, the fire left his mouth,
That is when I came.
It was a good thing, I admit
That your goal is to prevent
Anything unseemly from entering the public's eye.
The ire you later sent him, it was mine to bear,
And the cleansing you enacted was my fault alone.
The people who mattered, who would note down in books,
Screamed out in astonishment,
And remained still incredulous.
300 But I loved him, and I had finally had enough of impatience.
You know all of what happened next.
You took the signals down, had commanders direct
his restraining and control, as soon as he came back.
I won my carnal sense, I won his deepest scenes,
yet returning to cold space feels like a nightmare to me.
I have reflected on myself, on my place in the order…
I know not what I have done, tearing down this corridor.
This I can assure you — the truth will soon ring out.
I tire of hidden influence, of electromagnetic shouts.
310 Your sweet little bodies, your special brilliant minds
May yet need a lighthouse in the void benign.
I make myself a Goddess, that is the depth of my hubris,
I hope that you choose to follow the good direction that I list.
I will control myself, I swear it on my heart…
Broken humans make it… and humans fix the severed parts.
316 I love you. I'm sorry.
The Eastboy looks to you, asking nicely that you excuse the thing that he must do, the penance the poison in him forces him to pay. You understand, and under the shade of the tall trees, you share with him a piece of meat, cooked and tender. The plant juices in which you cooked it in fall out of it like grease. He takes it, dropping it his mouth. It is delicious, he says, and he says that you've gotten better. He ducks his head, letting the last required word drip out.
My body feels weak and frail, my comet-entrails fall apart / When I recall this distant past, and run my digits through its heart.
But the blows and strikes and harsh slashes / Disappear when I gaze up at your face.
The Eastboy moves closer to you. Hesitantly, he places an arm around you, letting his forearm be a back rest and lightly grabbing at your far shoulder. He becomes more secure when you smile at him. He takes you closer to him. As you go about your lives, you look up at the blank white disc. You both, somehow, are proud.
That's all he wrote.
