Eddie’s Words

[The Wandering Wizard he/him]

6 hours ago, Edema Rue said:

*hugs back* I'm a lot better now, today's just been a day of many emotions. 

I know dear sister

I'm always here

*hugs more*

[Edema Rue she/her]

10 hours ago, Lightweaver2 said:

How did I miss these?! *hugs*

If you ever need anything you can always PM me.

Thank you

4 hours ago, The Wandering Wizard said:

I know dear sister

I'm always here

*hugs more*

And thank you

You're both so wonderful, you know that? Shardbrothers are the best

[The Wandering Wizard he/him]

3 hours ago, Edema Rue said:

Thank you

And thank you

You're both so wonderful, you know that? Shardbrothers are the best

So are shardsisters

[Weaver of Lies he/him]

3 hours ago, Edema Rue said:

You're both so wonderful, you know that? Shardbrothers are the best

Thanks Eddie! I’m very glad you consider me your Shardbrother. Your an amazing Shardsister!

[Edema Rue she/her]

Okay, a couple strange and bizarre things that popped into existence because I haven't been sleeping very much  

Young:

Spoiler

To be young is to have wings. They come in every shape, size, and color. But that doesn’t matter, because when we were young, we could fly. We rode the winds and claimed the skies as our own. We were above all the wrong, above all hate, above all fear. In our infinite pettiness, we were above frivolity. In our unending shallowness, we thought ourselves deep. We lived on our pride and our charm, soaring above the sharp rocks of the world.

But to be young is to know that your wings will strain, and come short. We could only fly for so long, after all. And the rocks below were always waiting, always ready for when we fell. And oh, we would fall. We’d ride through the sky, higher than the mountains, then fall on our faces, dragging ourselves along, deeper than the oceans, blood dripping from all our cuts, bones snapping and hearts crumbling.

Oh, to be young.

I dream of those flights, some days. I fantasize that I am back in the air, soaring between clouds.

But oh, to be young.

I should never like to return to the world of extremes. To the world where all is rejoicing and wailing. Where there are screams of bliss when we fly, and gnashing of teeth when we fall.

To be young

Is to fly

But to be young

Is to fall.

We were birds, then.

Short lived and always moving, hopping from branch to branch, barely staying in one place long enough to make a nest and leave it behind. 

We left so many things behind, in those young years. 

They were years of change.

Oh,

So

Much

Change.

They were years of such pain, those days when we were young.

But they were the years of our purest joy. 

Because surrounded by change,

We learned to let go.

And we learned to hold on.

We learned as we fell. And we learned as we flew. You cannot fly with rocks on your back; you cannot fly when you are chained to the ground; so we let our rocks be misplaced, let our chains break free. We learned to forget our pain so that we could fly. We learned to ignore the things that hurt so that we could laugh. We learned to leave the world behind and live in our heads.

But we also learned that there were some things that couldn’t be ignored.

We learned through our pain.

We learned as our chains shot up from the ground below and dragged us back down; from the peaks of Heaven to the depths of Hell our chains would pull us, from the glowing skies to the muddy earth. They would yank us back down and shackle us to the world. They would force us to remember, pile our stones back on our backs, and tell us to keep moving.

And the higher 

You

Fly

The harder

You

Fall.

And we certainly learned how to fall.

But we didn’t like it. No. We didn’t want to fall, because when we fell, it hurt. And when we were young, the pains were so sharp, so deadly…

So we stopped flying.

Because if you do not fly,

You cannot fall.

Oh, to be young.

To fly.

To fall.

I should not like to go back…

I do not miss falling. 

But I do miss flying.

I miss my wings.

They were bright and feathered and so full of color and life.

But they weakened with disuse.

And as I grew, my feathers faded and melted into uniforms and routines.

I stopped flying, so that I would never have to fall.

But you,

Young one.

No longer a child,

But young enough to soar.

You are stuck between, but there is nothing between about you. I see the flights in your smile and the falls in your heart. 

Keep flying, young one.

Keep your wings.

Break your chains.

You will fall.

But oh, see how you will fly.

Rise above the clouds and bring the sun back with you so that when you fall it is as a star from the glittering sky.

Don’t get stuck between.

Don’t forget how to fly.

Don’t forget how to fall.

Don’t forget how to feel.

Fly,

Young one,

Fly.

Spoiler

I think this started because of a conversation with @Lightweaver2, but then I started thinking about an old poet turned soldier watching his daughter suffer through a heartbreak, and...it happened. I like it  

Soldier:

Spoiler

The first time I saw him was on a battlefield. It’s no wonder I was so awed; the battle was his palace, the mud his throne, the bodies his feast. If you’ve ever met him, you know what I mean. When he fought, he was a king. When he stepped onto the field, everyone knew it. Entire battles were fought and won and lost based on his presence or the lack thereof.

And yet, he was just a man.

Just a silly little human.

But he was so much more than that. He was so much stronger, so much greater…

I was a messenger, that first day. I didn’t want to be there. I was scared. I’d seen my first corpse only days earlier, and had promptly thrown up the entire day’s rations. I was wearing dark trousers, a recommendation from older messenger boys; if I lost control of my bladder, at least it wouldn’t be visible. Even walking between tents was a foreign feeling; there are different kinds of mud, you see. There’s the pure, earthy mud that comes after a long rain. There’s the sticky mud you’ll find in an animal pen, full of droppings and straw. There’s the mud that’s just barely hardening, the frozen mud that’s solid on top but oozes when you put too much weight on it, the mud that’s more water than dirt, the mud that covers stone and the mud that’s made of sand…and then there’s battlefield mud. It’s a mixture of all the others, but it has so much more mixed in.

Blood, for one. 

Blood has such a strange texture. You never notice it until you’re trudging through it day in and day out. It mixes with the dirt, so that even when you start fighting on a desert you end in a mud pit. At first, it stains the ground a deep red, but that quickly turns to black. From a distance, an old battlefield looks almost like a night sky. A pretty metaphor for something so ugly. But it’s a true one. Scattered across the dark canvas are little spots of light; glinting armor, white cloth, abandoned weapons and glinting bones, decaying arms and legs and corpses that weren’t worthy of burial.

Suffice it to say that I could see no beauty in such a place. Not until I saw him. I was running a message from my squadleader to the command tent. My boot got stuck in a patch of mud. And while I paused to pull it out, I caught a glimpse of the battle. I was on a hill, a perfect vantage point for a general trying to command his army…or a young boy, glimpsing true talent for the first time.

Message forgotten, I gawked. The sheer mass of people below was astounding. There were more, even, than at the festival I’d gone to in the capital last year. And they were all moving, fighting. Dozens of lives ended in the blink of an eye. I couldn’t tell if we were winning or losing. I couldn’t even tell which soldiers were ours and which were the enemy’s.

But even in the mass of thousands, he stood out. He always fought in white, as if he fancied himself some sort of destroying angel. Of course, if he was, I certainly believed it…his sword glowed. It sounds like a story, I know. It’s hard to believe it without having seen him. But if you’ve seen…then you know. He had a short sword in one hand, an axe in the other. His gleaming white armor seemed to push the blood away. And he was moving, always moving, dancing around his enemies. He whirled through the center of the battlefield, utterly competent and perfectly alone. I almost took a step forward, so as to see him better, but my boot was still stuck.

I fell on my face. I blinked, the shock of cold mud bringing me back to myself. I rubbed the mud from my cheeks and ran into the tent. It was crowded, and I could barely see the general through the press of bodies. But it was dead silent. 

“Get him in here,” The general said sharply. “We don’t have time for this. Someone has to go.”

I didn’t raise my hand. I know you think I did. And it would be easy to lie, easy to say I volunteered like a hero, like…like he would have. But I didn’t. Someone spit in the general’s face. 

“If we make it tha’ far, ‘e’ll kill us ‘imself.” They started filing out. I took the hint and started to follow, but a hand grabbed my arm and pulled me roughly back. 

“You,” the general said. “Boy. What’s your message?”

“S-sir?” I asked, terrified.

“Your message,” he repeated angrily, shaking me and nodding at the white armband that identified me as a messenger. 

I swallowed, throat dry. “Y-yes, S-Sir. 4th Squad, 2nd Division awaits your orders.” Everyone else had fled; now he and I were the only ones in the tent. He sighed, suddenly looking very tired. 

“I’ll send someone for your squad, boy. And you…oh, gods above. I’m sending you to your death, and I’m sorry, but there’s no time for anything else.” He wiped a hand across his brow. “I…I’m sorry.” I blinked at him wordlessly. What can one say to such a thing? He nodded sharply, face turning back to stone, and pulled me with him out of the tent. Others milled around, and the first dissenter saw me and spat into the stinking mud. 

“Yer a monster,” he whispered. Then he saluted me. Looking back, it wasn’t for me. It was a sign of rebellion; spit at the general and salute the boy. But in the moment, it filled me with bravery. I could see him down on the field, and so when the general shoved me down the hill and told me to run like I never had before, I did, my eyes blinded with visions of heroism like that of the man I’d been sent to fetch.

He never had a name. No one ever bothered to give him one; few people ever had a need. Those of us who tried to know him…we called him Brother. But you are not one of us. We’re all dead now, aren’t we? All dead, all worthless, all gone…you do not get to see him as your brother. So here, I will call him Soldier, and I will pray that, should we ever meet again, he will forgive me.

I ran down the hill. Only the gods themselves could have given me such bizarre strength that day; running as I was, I should have broken my ankles many times over before I even reached the battlefield. 

But reach it I did. And then I felt what I had never been able to see. And I smelled it. I fell, then, and I am not ashamed to admit that I was trembling. I hadn’t eaten, more advice from the older boys, but I dry heaved plenty. Most of you probably haven’t been around enough blood to really understand how strongly it smells. And how…how artificial. It’s disorienting. Blood is, perhaps, the most natural substance in this world. And yet it smells like one of those new factories the islanders are building; wretched and metallic and forbidden. 

I stumbled on, eventually. I had to reach Soldier. Someone swung a sword at my head. I screamed, but the battle was so loud, I couldn’t even hear myself. I ducked and ran. And kept running. I wanted to close my eyes, but there were so many enemies, so many people…So I ran. And the gods stayed with me. They must have. Because I made it to him without so much as a scratch. I fell more than once; soon I was covered in the congealing mud, my messenger’s band stained and torn. And then, suddenly, I broke out of the press of bodies and weapons. I was confused at first; where the fighting was thickest, there were corpses standing upright because there was no room for them to drop.  But I wasn’t out of the battlefield, and right here there was simply…room? No one dared enter this hole…

And then I saw Soldier. His eyes were black. At the time, I thought it a sign of his strength. I have learned much since that day. Sometimes it’s hard to believe I was ever that little messenger boy…but I was. And Soldier saw me. And he raised his sword, savoring the killing blow. 

“Wait!” I screamed. “I’m-we’re the same army! G-general wants you b-back…” I could barely hear myself; even in this safe pocket, it was so loud…I pointed back up the hill, to the tent that now seemed so far away…his sword came down.

But not on me.

Several enemy soldiers had snuck behind him, hoping to catch him distracted. The precision with which he cut them down reminded me of a tailor’s sharp scissors slicing through rich cloth. It’s funny, the pictures our minds see in these sorts of moments. My mind was so full of pictures that day…As he spun his sword around, he looked like an artist with a paintbrush. That’s all it was. Thick, red paint. And if it was only paint, why would it matter if it splattered across my face? Why would…I stumbled to my knees and dry heaved again. My bladder had long since emptied. I knew, then, that I was going to die. I was sure of it. And it brought me no peace, only terror. 

Now I almost wish I had died on that day. That would have been better. I looked up from the mud to see that…the enemy was retreating? A victory? Soldier had started back towards the command tent, and I stepped to follow. I was…I was alive. I had been to the center of a battlefield, and now I was going to leave alive…

But hands grabbed me, then, rougher than the general’s, and stronger, too. I found myself being dragged to the wrong side of the field. 

Towards the enemy, with their greedy hands and thieving eyes.

If I were braver I would have run, would have fought…

But try as I might, I have never been the soldier. I have never been my Brother. 

And so on that day, I followed my captors, meek as a lamb walking to the slaughter.

Spoiler

I'm...genuinely not sure where this one came from. I don't love it, but...I might write more, because I'm curious about where it's going.

...heehee I read so many books that sometimes I forget I've never actually been in a real fight, let alone on a battlefield.

Dreams:

Spoiler

He has dreams. He didn’t…he didn’t have dreams before. When he was with them. But he dreamed now. 

He saw their faces when he was sleeping.

He didn’t see them when he was awake. Not anymore.

Most of the time, the dreams were pain. Pain incarnate. He watched them scream. He watched them…he watched them die. They fell, one by one, eyes accusing him. Their faces filled his mind, cursing his name and begging him to save them. And he knew he could. If he were stronger, if he were faster, if he were braver…he would do anything to keep them alive. They were his family, weren’t they? But they died anyway. The sun went down and the ghosts woke up and called for him to join them…

But not always. Sometimes the dreams were…everything he’d ever wanted. They were together. They were laughing around a warm fire. There was nothing to fear, no one to run from, no one trying to remember a family that had been gone for too long. No one fighting over supplies that were growing scarcer by the day; no one arguing about problems that would never be solved; no one in charge of anyone else. Just friends. Sharing a meal and enjoying each other’s company.

Those were the dreams that hurt the most.

Because he couldn’t call them nightmares, even when he woke up with wet cheeks and a throat dry from screaming. 

How could he call his deepest wishes nightmares?

They were dreams.

And every time he woke up, it hurt just a little more. To see the anger in the ones who remained.

And to see the blank places where there had once been his…his brothers.

To hear the silences where there used to be laughter. 

To see the scars where there could have been beauty.

That was why the dreams hurt, he realized.

They were everything that could have been.

He didn’t let them see him hurt. They were too angry and he…

He wasn’t allowed to hurt.

When you’re the shoulder they come to to cry on, you don’t get to cry. So in the mornings, he brushed away the tears.

And he smiled.

It didn’t matter if he was falling apart, because he was holding the rest together.

He was their glue.

He would keep laughing, keep giving them the moments that swirled through his dreams.

Keep holding off the pain that shackled him to his nightmares.

But then the nightmares,

And the dreams,

Stopped setting with the moon.

The sun no longer burned them away.

The faces peeked from every window.

The laughter echoed in every corner, chasing away the silence until but one word remained, echoing through his mind like a promise to the fallen.

Please.

Please.

Please.

Spoiler

Okay so I lied. This is actually called Newt. As in, Newt from the maze runner (which I never actually finished). But...I insulted Athena, and she made me promise to write her something about him as payment, and I actually sorta like it. I also think it's funner to read when you don't know the context, so...yay!  

Welp, that's what I've got right now. If anyone has writing prompts, please give me them!!! PLEASE I BEG YOU!! I'll have more with Liz and the peeps at some point, but I really like just short lil things, and I need I N S P I R A T I O N

 

[Weaver of Lies he/him]

54 minutes ago, Edema Rue said:

Okay, a couple strange and bizarre things that popped into existence because I haven't been sleeping very much  

Young:

  Reveal hidden contents

To be young is to have wings. They come in every shape, size, and color. But that doesn’t matter, because when we were young, we could fly. We rode the winds and claimed the skies as our own. We were above all the wrong, above all hate, above all fear. In our infinite pettiness, we were above frivolity. In our unending shallowness, we thought ourselves deep. We lived on our pride and our charm, soaring above the sharp rocks of the world.

But to be young is to know that your wings will strain, and come short. We could only fly for so long, after all. And the rocks below were always waiting, always ready for when we fell. And oh, we would fall. We’d ride through the sky, higher than the mountains, then fall on our faces, dragging ourselves along, deeper than the oceans, blood dripping from all our cuts, bones snapping and hearts crumbling.

Oh, to be young.

I dream of those flights, some days. I fantasize that I am back in the air, soaring between clouds.

But oh, to be young.

I should never like to return to the world of extremes. To the world where all is rejoicing and wailing. Where there are screams of bliss when we fly, and gnashing of teeth when we fall.

To be young

Is to fly

But to be young

Is to fall.

We were birds, then.

Short lived and always moving, hopping from branch to branch, barely staying in one place long enough to make a nest and leave it behind. 

We left so many things behind, in those young years. 

They were years of change.

Oh,

So

Much

Change.

They were years of such pain, those days when we were young.

But they were the years of our purest joy. 

Because surrounded by change,

We learned to let go.

And we learned to hold on.

We learned as we fell. And we learned as we flew. You cannot fly with rocks on your back; you cannot fly when you are chained to the ground; so we let our rocks be misplaced, let our chains break free. We learned to forget our pain so that we could fly. We learned to ignore the things that hurt so that we could laugh. We learned to leave the world behind and live in our heads.

But we also learned that there were some things that couldn’t be ignored.

We learned through our pain.

We learned as our chains shot up from the ground below and dragged us back down; from the peaks of Heaven to the depths of Hell our chains would pull us, from the glowing skies to the muddy earth. They would yank us back down and shackle us to the world. They would force us to remember, pile our stones back on our backs, and tell us to keep moving.

And the higher 

You

Fly

The harder

You

Fall.

And we certainly learned how to fall.

But we didn’t like it. No. We didn’t want to fall, because when we fell, it hurt. And when we were young, the pains were so sharp, so deadly…

So we stopped flying.

Because if you do not fly,

You cannot fall.

Oh, to be young.

To fly.

To fall.

I should not like to go back…

I do not miss falling. 

But I do miss flying.

I miss my wings.

They were bright and feathered and so full of color and life.

But they weakened with disuse.

And as I grew, my feathers faded and melted into uniforms and routines.

I stopped flying, so that I would never have to fall.

But you,

Young one.

No longer a child,

But young enough to soar.

You are stuck between, but there is nothing between about you. I see the flights in your smile and the falls in your heart. 

Keep flying, young one.

Keep your wings.

Break your chains.

You will fall.

But oh, see how you will fly.

Rise above the clouds and bring the sun back with you so that when you fall it is as a star from the glittering sky.

Don’t get stuck between.

Don’t forget how to fly.

Don’t forget how to fall.

Don’t forget how to feel.

Fly,

Young one,

Fly.

  Reveal hidden contents

I think this started because of a conversation with @Lightweaver2, but then I started thinking about an old poet turned soldier watching his daughter suffer through a heartbreak, and...it happened. I like it  

Soldier:

  Reveal hidden contents

The first time I saw him was on a battlefield. It’s no wonder I was so awed; the battle was his palace, the mud his throne, the bodies his feast. If you’ve ever met him, you know what I mean. When he fought, he was a king. When he stepped onto the field, everyone knew it. Entire battles were fought and won and lost based on his presence or the lack thereof.

And yet, he was just a man.

Just a silly little human.

But he was so much more than that. He was so much stronger, so much greater…

I was a messenger, that first day. I didn’t want to be there. I was scared. I’d seen my first corpse only days earlier, and had promptly thrown up the entire day’s rations. I was wearing dark trousers, a recommendation from older messenger boys; if I lost control of my bladder, at least it wouldn’t be visible. Even walking between tents was a foreign feeling; there are different kinds of mud, you see. There’s the pure, earthy mud that comes after a long rain. There’s the sticky mud you’ll find in an animal pen, full of droppings and straw. There’s the mud that’s just barely hardening, the frozen mud that’s solid on top but oozes when you put too much weight on it, the mud that’s more water than dirt, the mud that covers stone and the mud that’s made of sand…and then there’s battlefield mud. It’s a mixture of all the others, but it has so much more mixed in.

Blood, for one. 

Blood has such a strange texture. You never notice it until you’re trudging through it day in and day out. It mixes with the dirt, so that even when you start fighting on a desert you end in a mud pit. At first, it stains the ground a deep red, but that quickly turns to black. From a distance, an old battlefield looks almost like a night sky. A pretty metaphor for something so ugly. But it’s a true one. Scattered across the dark canvas are little spots of light; glinting armor, white cloth, abandoned weapons and glinting bones, decaying arms and legs and corpses that weren’t worthy of burial.

Suffice it to say that I could see no beauty in such a place. Not until I saw him. I was running a message from my squadleader to the command tent. My boot got stuck in a patch of mud. And while I paused to pull it out, I caught a glimpse of the battle. I was on a hill, a perfect vantage point for a general trying to command his army…or a young boy, glimpsing true talent for the first time.

Message forgotten, I gawked. The sheer mass of people below was astounding. There were more, even, than at the festival I’d gone to in the capital last year. And they were all moving, fighting. Dozens of lives ended in the blink of an eye. I couldn’t tell if we were winning or losing. I couldn’t even tell which soldiers were ours and which were the enemy’s.

But even in the mass of thousands, he stood out. He always fought in white, as if he fancied himself some sort of destroying angel. Of course, if he was, I certainly believed it…his sword glowed. It sounds like a story, I know. It’s hard to believe it without having seen him. But if you’ve seen…then you know. He had a short sword in one hand, an axe in the other. His gleaming white armor seemed to push the blood away. And he was moving, always moving, dancing around his enemies. He whirled through the center of the battlefield, utterly competent and perfectly alone. I almost took a step forward, so as to see him better, but my boot was still stuck.

I fell on my face. I blinked, the shock of cold mud bringing me back to myself. I rubbed the mud from my cheeks and ran into the tent. It was crowded, and I could barely see the general through the press of bodies. But it was dead silent. 

“Get him in here,” The general said sharply. “We don’t have time for this. Someone has to go.”

I didn’t raise my hand. I know you think I did. And it would be easy to lie, easy to say I volunteered like a hero, like…like he would have. But I didn’t. Someone spit in the general’s face. 

“If we make it tha’ far, ‘e’ll kill us ‘imself.” They started filing out. I took the hint and started to follow, but a hand grabbed my arm and pulled me roughly back. 

“You,” the general said. “Boy. What’s your message?”

“S-sir?” I asked, terrified.

“Your message,” he repeated angrily, shaking me and nodding at the white armband that identified me as a messenger. 

I swallowed, throat dry. “Y-yes, S-Sir. 4th Squad, 2nd Division awaits your orders.” Everyone else had fled; now he and I were the only ones in the tent. He sighed, suddenly looking very tired. 

“I’ll send someone for your squad, boy. And you…oh, gods above. I’m sending you to your death, and I’m sorry, but there’s no time for anything else.” He wiped a hand across his brow. “I…I’m sorry.” I blinked at him wordlessly. What can one say to such a thing? He nodded sharply, face turning back to stone, and pulled me with him out of the tent. Others milled around, and the first dissenter saw me and spat into the stinking mud. 

“Yer a monster,” he whispered. Then he saluted me. Looking back, it wasn’t for me. It was a sign of rebellion; spit at the general and salute the boy. But in the moment, it filled me with bravery. I could see him down on the field, and so when the general shoved me down the hill and told me to run like I never had before, I did, my eyes blinded with visions of heroism like that of the man I’d been sent to fetch.

He never had a name. No one ever bothered to give him one; few people ever had a need. Those of us who tried to know him…we called him Brother. But you are not one of us. We’re all dead now, aren’t we? All dead, all worthless, all gone…you do not get to see him as your brother. So here, I will call him Soldier, and I will pray that, should we ever meet again, he will forgive me.

I ran down the hill. Only the gods themselves could have given me such bizarre strength that day; running as I was, I should have broken my ankles many times over before I even reached the battlefield. 

But reach it I did. And then I felt what I had never been able to see. And I smelled it. I fell, then, and I am not ashamed to admit that I was trembling. I hadn’t eaten, more advice from the older boys, but I dry heaved plenty. Most of you probably haven’t been around enough blood to really understand how strongly it smells. And how…how artificial. It’s disorienting. Blood is, perhaps, the most natural substance in this world. And yet it smells like one of those new factories the islanders are building; wretched and metallic and forbidden. 

I stumbled on, eventually. I had to reach Soldier. Someone swung a sword at my head. I screamed, but the battle was so loud, I couldn’t even hear myself. I ducked and ran. And kept running. I wanted to close my eyes, but there were so many enemies, so many people…So I ran. And the gods stayed with me. They must have. Because I made it to him without so much as a scratch. I fell more than once; soon I was covered in the congealing mud, my messenger’s band stained and torn. And then, suddenly, I broke out of the press of bodies and weapons. I was confused at first; where the fighting was thickest, there were corpses standing upright because there was no room for them to drop.  But I wasn’t out of the battlefield, and right here there was simply…room? No one dared enter this hole…

And then I saw Soldier. His eyes were black. At the time, I thought it a sign of his strength. I have learned much since that day. Sometimes it’s hard to believe I was ever that little messenger boy…but I was. And Soldier saw me. And he raised his sword, savoring the killing blow. 

“Wait!” I screamed. “I’m-we’re the same army! G-general wants you b-back…” I could barely hear myself; even in this safe pocket, it was so loud…I pointed back up the hill, to the tent that now seemed so far away…his sword came down.

But not on me.

Several enemy soldiers had snuck behind him, hoping to catch him distracted. The precision with which he cut them down reminded me of a tailor’s sharp scissors slicing through rich cloth. It’s funny, the pictures our minds see in these sorts of moments. My mind was so full of pictures that day…As he spun his sword around, he looked like an artist with a paintbrush. That’s all it was. Thick, red paint. And if it was only paint, why would it matter if it splattered across my face? Why would…I stumbled to my knees and dry heaved again. My bladder had long since emptied. I knew, then, that I was going to die. I was sure of it. And it brought me no peace, only terror. 

Now I almost wish I had died on that day. That would have been better. I looked up from the mud to see that…the enemy was retreating? A victory? Soldier had started back towards the command tent, and I stepped to follow. I was…I was alive. I had been to the center of a battlefield, and now I was going to leave alive…

But hands grabbed me, then, rougher than the general’s, and stronger, too. I found myself being dragged to the wrong side of the field. 

Towards the enemy, with their greedy hands and thieving eyes.

If I were braver I would have run, would have fought…

But try as I might, I have never been the soldier. I have never been my Brother. 

And so on that day, I followed my captors, meek as a lamb walking to the slaughter.

  Reveal hidden contents

I'm...genuinely not sure where this one came from. I don't love it, but...I might write more, because I'm curious about where it's going.

...heehee I read so many books that sometimes I forget I've never actually been in a real fight, let alone on a battlefield.

Dreams:

  Hide contents

He has dreams. He didn’t…he didn’t have dreams before. When he was with them. But he dreamed now. 

He saw their faces when he was sleeping.

He didn’t see them when he was awake. Not anymore.

Most of the time, the dreams were pain. Pain incarnate. He watched them scream. He watched them…he watched them die. They fell, one by one, eyes accusing him. Their faces filled his mind, cursing his name and begging him to save them. And he knew he could. If he were stronger, if he were faster, if he were braver…he would do anything to keep them alive. They were his family, weren’t they? But they died anyway. The sun went down and the ghosts woke up and called for him to join them…

But not always. Sometimes the dreams were…everything he’d ever wanted. They were together. They were laughing around a warm fire. There was nothing to fear, no one to run from, no one trying to remember a family that had been gone for too long. No one fighting over supplies that were growing scarcer by the day; no one arguing about problems that would never be solved; no one in charge of anyone else. Just friends. Sharing a meal and enjoying each other’s company.

Those were the dreams that hurt the most.

Because he couldn’t call them nightmares, even when he woke up with wet cheeks and a throat dry from screaming. 

How could he call his deepest wishes nightmares?

They were dreams.

And every time he woke up, it hurt just a little more. To see the anger in the ones who remained.

And to see the blank places where there had once been his…his brothers.

To hear the silences where there used to be laughter. 

To see the scars where there could have been beauty.

That was why the dreams hurt, he realized.

They were everything that could have been.

He didn’t let them see him hurt. They were too angry and he…

He wasn’t allowed to hurt.

When you’re the shoulder they come to to cry on, you don’t get to cry. So in the mornings, he brushed away the tears.

And he smiled.

It didn’t matter if he was falling apart, because he was holding the rest together.

He was their glue.

He would keep laughing, keep giving them the moments that swirled through his dreams.

Keep holding off the pain that shackled him to his nightmares.

But then the nightmares,

And the dreams,

Stopped setting with the moon.

The sun no longer burned them away.

The faces peeked from every window.

The laughter echoed in every corner, chasing away the silence until but one word remained, echoing through his mind like a promise to the fallen.

Please.

Please.

Please.

  Reveal hidden contents

Okay so I lied. This is actually called Newt. As in, Newt from the maze runner (which I never actually finished). But...I insulted Athena, and she made me promise to write her something about him as payment, and I actually sorta like it. I also think it's funner to read when you don't know the context, so...yay!  

Welp, that's what I've got right now. If anyone has writing prompts, please give me them!!! PLEASE I BEG YOU!! I'll have more with Liz and the peeps at some point, but I really like just short lil things, and I need I N S P I R A T I O N

 

These are really good Eddie!

Umm, inspiration…

you could do one about a weary person who doesn’t have the choice to stop moving. Not that they’ll die if they don’t continue, but they just don’t have the power to stop.

[The Wandering Wizard he/him]

8 hours ago, Edema Rue said:

Okay, a couple strange and bizarre things that popped into existence because I haven't been sleeping very much  

Young:

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To be young is to have wings. They come in every shape, size, and color. But that doesn’t matter, because when we were young, we could fly. We rode the winds and claimed the skies as our own. We were above all the wrong, above all hate, above all fear. In our infinite pettiness, we were above frivolity. In our unending shallowness, we thought ourselves deep. We lived on our pride and our charm, soaring above the sharp rocks of the world.

But to be young is to know that your wings will strain, and come short. We could only fly for so long, after all. And the rocks below were always waiting, always ready for when we fell. And oh, we would fall. We’d ride through the sky, higher than the mountains, then fall on our faces, dragging ourselves along, deeper than the oceans, blood dripping from all our cuts, bones snapping and hearts crumbling.

Oh, to be young.

I dream of those flights, some days. I fantasize that I am back in the air, soaring between clouds.

But oh, to be young.

I should never like to return to the world of extremes. To the world where all is rejoicing and wailing. Where there are screams of bliss when we fly, and gnashing of teeth when we fall.

To be young

Is to fly

But to be young

Is to fall.

We were birds, then.

Short lived and always moving, hopping from branch to branch, barely staying in one place long enough to make a nest and leave it behind. 

We left so many things behind, in those young years. 

They were years of change.

Oh,

So

Much

Change.

They were years of such pain, those days when we were young.

But they were the years of our purest joy. 

Because surrounded by change,

We learned to let go.

And we learned to hold on.

We learned as we fell. And we learned as we flew. You cannot fly with rocks on your back; you cannot fly when you are chained to the ground; so we let our rocks be misplaced, let our chains break free. We learned to forget our pain so that we could fly. We learned to ignore the things that hurt so that we could laugh. We learned to leave the world behind and live in our heads.

But we also learned that there were some things that couldn’t be ignored.

We learned through our pain.

We learned as our chains shot up from the ground below and dragged us back down; from the peaks of Heaven to the depths of Hell our chains would pull us, from the glowing skies to the muddy earth. They would yank us back down and shackle us to the world. They would force us to remember, pile our stones back on our backs, and tell us to keep moving.

And the higher 

You

Fly

The harder

You

Fall.

And we certainly learned how to fall.

But we didn’t like it. No. We didn’t want to fall, because when we fell, it hurt. And when we were young, the pains were so sharp, so deadly…

So we stopped flying.

Because if you do not fly,

You cannot fall.

Oh, to be young.

To fly.

To fall.

I should not like to go back…

I do not miss falling. 

But I do miss flying.

I miss my wings.

They were bright and feathered and so full of color and life.

But they weakened with disuse.

And as I grew, my feathers faded and melted into uniforms and routines.

I stopped flying, so that I would never have to fall.

But you,

Young one.

No longer a child,

But young enough to soar.

You are stuck between, but there is nothing between about you. I see the flights in your smile and the falls in your heart. 

Keep flying, young one.

Keep your wings.

Break your chains.

You will fall.

But oh, see how you will fly.

Rise above the clouds and bring the sun back with you so that when you fall it is as a star from the glittering sky.

Don’t get stuck between.

Don’t forget how to fly.

Don’t forget how to fall.

Don’t forget how to feel.

Fly,

Young one,

Fly.

  Hide contents

I think this started because of a conversation with @Lightweaver2, but then I started thinking about an old poet turned soldier watching his daughter suffer through a heartbreak, and...it happened. I like it  

Soldier:

  Hide contents

The first time I saw him was on a battlefield. It’s no wonder I was so awed; the battle was his palace, the mud his throne, the bodies his feast. If you’ve ever met him, you know what I mean. When he fought, he was a king. When he stepped onto the field, everyone knew it. Entire battles were fought and won and lost based on his presence or the lack thereof.

And yet, he was just a man.

Just a silly little human.

But he was so much more than that. He was so much stronger, so much greater…

I was a messenger, that first day. I didn’t want to be there. I was scared. I’d seen my first corpse only days earlier, and had promptly thrown up the entire day’s rations. I was wearing dark trousers, a recommendation from older messenger boys; if I lost control of my bladder, at least it wouldn’t be visible. Even walking between tents was a foreign feeling; there are different kinds of mud, you see. There’s the pure, earthy mud that comes after a long rain. There’s the sticky mud you’ll find in an animal pen, full of droppings and straw. There’s the mud that’s just barely hardening, the frozen mud that’s solid on top but oozes when you put too much weight on it, the mud that’s more water than dirt, the mud that covers stone and the mud that’s made of sand…and then there’s battlefield mud. It’s a mixture of all the others, but it has so much more mixed in.

Blood, for one. 

Blood has such a strange texture. You never notice it until you’re trudging through it day in and day out. It mixes with the dirt, so that even when you start fighting on a desert you end in a mud pit. At first, it stains the ground a deep red, but that quickly turns to black. From a distance, an old battlefield looks almost like a night sky. A pretty metaphor for something so ugly. But it’s a true one. Scattered across the dark canvas are little spots of light; glinting armor, white cloth, abandoned weapons and glinting bones, decaying arms and legs and corpses that weren’t worthy of burial.

Suffice it to say that I could see no beauty in such a place. Not until I saw him. I was running a message from my squadleader to the command tent. My boot got stuck in a patch of mud. And while I paused to pull it out, I caught a glimpse of the battle. I was on a hill, a perfect vantage point for a general trying to command his army…or a young boy, glimpsing true talent for the first time.

Message forgotten, I gawked. The sheer mass of people below was astounding. There were more, even, than at the festival I’d gone to in the capital last year. And they were all moving, fighting. Dozens of lives ended in the blink of an eye. I couldn’t tell if we were winning or losing. I couldn’t even tell which soldiers were ours and which were the enemy’s.

But even in the mass of thousands, he stood out. He always fought in white, as if he fancied himself some sort of destroying angel. Of course, if he was, I certainly believed it…his sword glowed. It sounds like a story, I know. It’s hard to believe it without having seen him. But if you’ve seen…then you know. He had a short sword in one hand, an axe in the other. His gleaming white armor seemed to push the blood away. And he was moving, always moving, dancing around his enemies. He whirled through the center of the battlefield, utterly competent and perfectly alone. I almost took a step forward, so as to see him better, but my boot was still stuck.

I fell on my face. I blinked, the shock of cold mud bringing me back to myself. I rubbed the mud from my cheeks and ran into the tent. It was crowded, and I could barely see the general through the press of bodies. But it was dead silent. 

“Get him in here,” The general said sharply. “We don’t have time for this. Someone has to go.”

I didn’t raise my hand. I know you think I did. And it would be easy to lie, easy to say I volunteered like a hero, like…like he would have. But I didn’t. Someone spit in the general’s face. 

“If we make it tha’ far, ‘e’ll kill us ‘imself.” They started filing out. I took the hint and started to follow, but a hand grabbed my arm and pulled me roughly back. 

“You,” the general said. “Boy. What’s your message?”

“S-sir?” I asked, terrified.

“Your message,” he repeated angrily, shaking me and nodding at the white armband that identified me as a messenger. 

I swallowed, throat dry. “Y-yes, S-Sir. 4th Squad, 2nd Division awaits your orders.” Everyone else had fled; now he and I were the only ones in the tent. He sighed, suddenly looking very tired. 

“I’ll send someone for your squad, boy. And you…oh, gods above. I’m sending you to your death, and I’m sorry, but there’s no time for anything else.” He wiped a hand across his brow. “I…I’m sorry.” I blinked at him wordlessly. What can one say to such a thing? He nodded sharply, face turning back to stone, and pulled me with him out of the tent. Others milled around, and the first dissenter saw me and spat into the stinking mud. 

“Yer a monster,” he whispered. Then he saluted me. Looking back, it wasn’t for me. It was a sign of rebellion; spit at the general and salute the boy. But in the moment, it filled me with bravery. I could see him down on the field, and so when the general shoved me down the hill and told me to run like I never had before, I did, my eyes blinded with visions of heroism like that of the man I’d been sent to fetch.

He never had a name. No one ever bothered to give him one; few people ever had a need. Those of us who tried to know him…we called him Brother. But you are not one of us. We’re all dead now, aren’t we? All dead, all worthless, all gone…you do not get to see him as your brother. So here, I will call him Soldier, and I will pray that, should we ever meet again, he will forgive me.

I ran down the hill. Only the gods themselves could have given me such bizarre strength that day; running as I was, I should have broken my ankles many times over before I even reached the battlefield. 

But reach it I did. And then I felt what I had never been able to see. And I smelled it. I fell, then, and I am not ashamed to admit that I was trembling. I hadn’t eaten, more advice from the older boys, but I dry heaved plenty. Most of you probably haven’t been around enough blood to really understand how strongly it smells. And how…how artificial. It’s disorienting. Blood is, perhaps, the most natural substance in this world. And yet it smells like one of those new factories the islanders are building; wretched and metallic and forbidden. 

I stumbled on, eventually. I had to reach Soldier. Someone swung a sword at my head. I screamed, but the battle was so loud, I couldn’t even hear myself. I ducked and ran. And kept running. I wanted to close my eyes, but there were so many enemies, so many people…So I ran. And the gods stayed with me. They must have. Because I made it to him without so much as a scratch. I fell more than once; soon I was covered in the congealing mud, my messenger’s band stained and torn. And then, suddenly, I broke out of the press of bodies and weapons. I was confused at first; where the fighting was thickest, there were corpses standing upright because there was no room for them to drop.  But I wasn’t out of the battlefield, and right here there was simply…room? No one dared enter this hole…

And then I saw Soldier. His eyes were black. At the time, I thought it a sign of his strength. I have learned much since that day. Sometimes it’s hard to believe I was ever that little messenger boy…but I was. And Soldier saw me. And he raised his sword, savoring the killing blow. 

“Wait!” I screamed. “I’m-we’re the same army! G-general wants you b-back…” I could barely hear myself; even in this safe pocket, it was so loud…I pointed back up the hill, to the tent that now seemed so far away…his sword came down.

But not on me.

Several enemy soldiers had snuck behind him, hoping to catch him distracted. The precision with which he cut them down reminded me of a tailor’s sharp scissors slicing through rich cloth. It’s funny, the pictures our minds see in these sorts of moments. My mind was so full of pictures that day…As he spun his sword around, he looked like an artist with a paintbrush. That’s all it was. Thick, red paint. And if it was only paint, why would it matter if it splattered across my face? Why would…I stumbled to my knees and dry heaved again. My bladder had long since emptied. I knew, then, that I was going to die. I was sure of it. And it brought me no peace, only terror. 

Now I almost wish I had died on that day. That would have been better. I looked up from the mud to see that…the enemy was retreating? A victory? Soldier had started back towards the command tent, and I stepped to follow. I was…I was alive. I had been to the center of a battlefield, and now I was going to leave alive…

But hands grabbed me, then, rougher than the general’s, and stronger, too. I found myself being dragged to the wrong side of the field. 

Towards the enemy, with their greedy hands and thieving eyes.

If I were braver I would have run, would have fought…

But try as I might, I have never been the soldier. I have never been my Brother. 

And so on that day, I followed my captors, meek as a lamb walking to the slaughter.

  Hide contents

I'm...genuinely not sure where this one came from. I don't love it, but...I might write more, because I'm curious about where it's going.

...heehee I read so many books that sometimes I forget I've never actually been in a real fight, let alone on a battlefield.

Dreams:

  Hide contents

He has dreams. He didn’t…he didn’t have dreams before. When he was with them. But he dreamed now. 

He saw their faces when he was sleeping.

He didn’t see them when he was awake. Not anymore.

Most of the time, the dreams were pain. Pain incarnate. He watched them scream. He watched them…he watched them die. They fell, one by one, eyes accusing him. Their faces filled his mind, cursing his name and begging him to save them. And he knew he could. If he were stronger, if he were faster, if he were braver…he would do anything to keep them alive. They were his family, weren’t they? But they died anyway. The sun went down and the ghosts woke up and called for him to join them…

But not always. Sometimes the dreams were…everything he’d ever wanted. They were together. They were laughing around a warm fire. There was nothing to fear, no one to run from, no one trying to remember a family that had been gone for too long. No one fighting over supplies that were growing scarcer by the day; no one arguing about problems that would never be solved; no one in charge of anyone else. Just friends. Sharing a meal and enjoying each other’s company.

Those were the dreams that hurt the most.

Because he couldn’t call them nightmares, even when he woke up with wet cheeks and a throat dry from screaming. 

How could he call his deepest wishes nightmares?

They were dreams.

And every time he woke up, it hurt just a little more. To see the anger in the ones who remained.

And to see the blank places where there had once been his…his brothers.

To hear the silences where there used to be laughter. 

To see the scars where there could have been beauty.

That was why the dreams hurt, he realized.

They were everything that could have been.

He didn’t let them see him hurt. They were too angry and he…

He wasn’t allowed to hurt.

When you’re the shoulder they come to to cry on, you don’t get to cry. So in the mornings, he brushed away the tears.

And he smiled.

It didn’t matter if he was falling apart, because he was holding the rest together.

He was their glue.

He would keep laughing, keep giving them the moments that swirled through his dreams.

Keep holding off the pain that shackled him to his nightmares.

But then the nightmares,

And the dreams,

Stopped setting with the moon.

The sun no longer burned them away.

The faces peeked from every window.

The laughter echoed in every corner, chasing away the silence until but one word remained, echoing through his mind like a promise to the fallen.

Please.

Please.

Please.

  Hide contents

Okay so I lied. This is actually called Newt. As in, Newt from the maze runner (which I never actually finished). But...I insulted Athena, and she made me promise to write her something about him as payment, and I actually sorta like it. I also think it's funner to read when you don't know the context, so...yay!  

Welp, that's what I've got right now. If anyone has writing prompts, please give me them!!! PLEASE I BEG YOU!! I'll have more with Liz and the peeps at some point, but I really like just short lil things, and I need I N S P I R A T I O N

 

*hugs*

Hmmm uhm a prompt. Uhhh I might have one later

[Edema Rue she/her]

8 hours ago, Lightweaver2 said:

These are really good Eddie!

Umm, inspiration…

you could do one about a weary person who doesn’t have the choice to stop moving. Not that they’ll die if they don’t continue, but they just don’t have the power to stop.

Thanks!!

Oo...that fits with an idea I got halfway through falling asleep last night... >:3

1 hour ago, The Wandering Wizard said:

*hugs*

Hmmm uhm a prompt. Uhhh I might have one later

*hugs back*

[Shardwatcher01 he/him]

On 3/7/2023 at 11:26 AM, Edema Rue said:

Hi! Um. Um. Um. 

I've been thinking about making one of these for a while. I don't know where it'll go, but...well, we'll see what happens. 

So, uh...here are a few little scenes I've written. These were kind of a fun little thing I did where I was trying to describe a scene or a feeling without creating any specific characters. So...here you go!

1.

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It starts with auditions.

The tense anticipation in the room is strong, but the excitement is stronger. Both feelings carry on through callbacks. Then, for a few days, the excitement leaves. What remains is absolute terror. It grows, it grows, and they start to wonder why they even tried. And then they see the list. Tears that have been held in for too long explode out. Tears of joy, of disappointment, and of more fear. And then the work begins. Day after day after day. Choreography. Blocking. Singing. Stage combat. Stage intimacy. The days begin to blur, then the weeks, then the months. And then it’s tech week. There are no words for tech week. But it’s only a week, and then come dress rehearsals, and then…then comes the moment that reminds them why they started. The curtains are closed. The cast is backstage, laughing quietly and helping each other ignore their nerves. Techs move silently among them, carefully sliding set pieces onto the faintly glowing tape. The props are set. The performers are prepared. It’s a perfect scene; the audience murmurs, the actors whisper, and the techs make no sound at all. Those in later scenes wait in the changing rooms, laughing and chatting loudly.

And then the black light turns off. The curtains slide slowly open. The lights brighten, nearly blinding the actors, almost completely hiding the audience from view. The first line is spoken, the first song is sung. The audience is entranced, the actors exactly where they belong. Magic happens in the theatre. An actor stumbles, forgetting a line. There’s a flash of cold sweat, a moment of panic, but the others onstage, their cast, their team, their family, recover for them. It’s smooth. It’s beautiful. And after…well. The audience leaves. But the ones who made it all happen…they’re doing what they do, showing why they love it. Oh,  performing is magical. But it’s what happens after. It’s the jokes, it’s the laughter. It’s the knowledge that they are part of something more. That they did that. They made that. When they were onstage, when there was no one but themselves, they came through. And they come through, again and again and again. And then it’s closing night. The cast strikes set. And then they cry, all of them together. It’s an ending. They’ve spent so many hours with these people. They’ve grown, they’ve cried, they’ve loved. They are, in the truest sense of the word, a family. Will they see them again? Even if they do, it won’t be the same. But all things come to an end, and eventually, the cast goes home. And it’s over. A period of their lives, gone. A piece of them, missing. Is it worth the emotions? The terror, the misery, the hurt, the utter exhaustion? And through the centuries, the answer has always remained the same. 

Of course.

2.

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The weights snap together on the bar, the thump sounding like a large book closing. Or perhaps like a cell door slamming; the painful finality is certainly the same. Straining, straining, and then the bar lifts. Sweat drips, drips, drips. It can’t be brushed away, so it rolls into the eyelashes, then falls, making it impossible to see.  Up, then back down. Then again, again, again. A shaky breath, a moment of rest.  And then it begins again. The pain never seems to end. Burning muscles, then sore muscles, day after day after day. Donuts were offered in class. But they said no. Their friends walked to a soda shop; they claimed to be busy. Candy, junk food, desserts…they forsake it all. They work harder than others can imagine. They miss parties, fail classes, and spend hours becoming stronger. They are not immune to the voices all humans hear, however. Your work does nothing. No matter how hard you try, you won’t win. These people you see, these people who don’t work for anything, they are stronger than you. They always will be. You can’t even beat yourself. You are worse than you were. You never change, no matter how hard you try, no matter how you work. Your pain changes nothing. These warriors, these heroes, these people who give their everything to change…they hide so much inside. They hurt. They hurt so much. There are days when they dream of the things they’ve left behind. They sit and wonder. What if I didn’t go to the gym today? What if I ate that candy, that cookie, that donut? What if I drank that soda, ate those pretzels? It’s been so long. Is there any worse torture than the pain they put themselves through? Things bring them less and less joy; no snacking on road-trips. No eating competitions. Eventually, there may be a time that makes it worth it. A finish line to cross. A day when they realize how far they’ve come. When the bar lifts more easily, when they’re less sore. When they see the people who did what they wanted for years, and they realize how much stronger they are than them. And even if they aren’t stronger physically, their self control is finely tempered steel. It has taken the hottest fires, the heaviest hammers, the largest forges. But the finished product is a work of art; they can resist any craving, ignore any temptation, become anything. Because they know that they will always work hard. Even if they are always slower, always weaker, always dumber, always uglier, they will never stop. No matter their weight or their looks, they are the heroes. But those moments take years. Years of work and pain for one moment. One day of slipping and they’re sent back months. Sometimes it seems as if those moments will never come, as if the pain will never end, as if their work is always redundant and useless. It hurts, but there is no other way.  And if they are asked the same question: is it worth it? Is it worth the blood and the sweat and the tears? The time and the failures, the knowledge that some people will always be better than you?

Well. Their answer is less definite. Those questions will take root, and they will think about them daily. And many of them will never be able to say more than “I don’t know.”

3.

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They have taken our power. They have robbed us of our identities. A thousand voices shout these words, knowing they will do nothing. Shakespeare shouts it: “My wisdom. ‘To be or not to be, that is the question.’ I wrote those words,” he says. “I gave the world my wisdom, and they gave it to children like a toy. They took my words, my spells, my power, and they stretched and abused them until they couldn’t do a thing.” Do people understand what they do? Do they know that by spreading our words to the unworthy, they have taken away the one power that we have? No matter how we say them, the words can’t be what they once were. ‘Traitor’, ‘coward’, ‘monster’. ‘Hero’, ‘warrior’, ‘strong’. Words that could change a heart, words that could change the world, once. Now, they are but letters strung together. They are tools for all to use. Instead of being too sharp to be used commonly, they are now too dull to cut in even the most extreme situations. We can beg. We can cry. We can shout or scream or whisper. The presentation doesn’t matter. The power is gone. Our hate, our love, our desires and our needs cannot be described. They can, but it isn’t understood. We use some words so often that suddenly, when we desperately need them, they don’t come through. A friend isn’t in class? “He died,” we’ll joke. Someone insulted us, even slightly? “I hate you,” we’ll mutter ruefully. A sibling is too scared to go off the high dive? “Coward,” we’ll taunt. Where are these words when we need them? They’re wasting away. Losing their shine, their luster, the things they might have been, the things they once were. How much more will we lose in this modern world? How long until we forget the purpose of these words? The pain they were once capable of causing? 

There are words that we need to speak. There are people who need to understand. But there’s nothing we can say. Crying is so commonplace, it’s hardly notable. If we shout, we’re dismissed as childish. If we speak rationally, we’re accused of not caring. How can they understand what happens in our heads? How can they understand the things we feel, the places where we hurt, the lives we lead? They beg us to tell them, occasionally. They promise to listen. And listen they will, but understand? They are utterly incapable of it. So we keep writing words that no one will ever see, keep telling stories that no one will ever understand. 

It wasn’t always this way.

Maybe one day things will be different.

Well...there you go! These are just something random I did while I was bored. I'll put more stuff here as it comes into existence. If you give me a prompt, I will gladly use it as soon as I get a chance! (Though I will warn you, my brain tends to connect odd things and go in bizarre directions). Constructive criticism and any feedback you have is always welcome!

Thanks! Bye!

*runs*

Truely Great

[Edema Rue she/her]

3 minutes ago, Shardwatcher01 said:

Truely Great

Heehee, thank you! ...wow, that was so long ago...I promise I've gotten better since then...thanks for reading!

[Just a Silvereye he/him]

On 12/25/2023 at 8:01 AM, Edema Rue said:

Heeheeheeheehee...

@Lightweaver2 @The Wandering Wizard @Just a Silvereye (can't remember if you're reading my Liz stuff)

LIZ AND MARI *giggles*

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Liz was sitting in darkness. It was fitting, almost. The Lady of Darkness was finally home, finally in her own domain. She wondered, faintly, what Ien would tell the people. Would he say that she was dead? Or would he hold her over them, a threat, a promise that if they didn’t obey him, she would get out? Liz hoped it wouldn’t be that way. It wasn’t a particularly heroic way to live, and the goal was a hero…but Mari would help with that. Her love would soften him, keep him from becoming too solid, too hard. He needed to be a tree, not a boulder. Because Siylna’s champion would be a rock. Their duel would not be beauty if they were only fighting each other like little boys with sticks.

No. Ien needed to be more than that. He needed to be able to grow. Roots could shatter stone, and her hero needed to be the same way. A slow smile spread across her face. Ien was strong. He would break Siylna’s champion, and then…his story wouldn’t end with their bet. And hers wouldn’t either. Someday, he’ll find a way to break me. Liz would never admit it, but she relished the thought. Looked forward to the day he would come for her and be able to destroy her.

Liz sat up, hearing a faint noise. After a moment, she heard it again, and she leaned back, letting out a quiet sigh. It wasn’t Ien. His footsteps were strong, brave. These were more like that of a mouse. Not quiet enough for one of her assassins, not loud enough for a guard…Liz could see the light now, casting long shadows into empty cells. The footsteps paused just out of sight and Liz smiled darkly, knowing what that mouse was doing. Preparing herself to confront an enemy.

“You coming, Mari?” She called, her voice silky and playful. “I don’t bite, little mouse.” Well, not most of the time. For this girl, she might make an exception…she forced the emotions away. You are above this. She is a tool. She is not worthy of your anger.

Mari rounded the corner, and only years of careful practice kept Liz from gasping, or even reacting. She didn’t look like a prisoner, though that was to be expected. But she didn’t look like a farm girl, either. She didn’t even look like a noble. No. The girl looked like a Queen. Her jeweled crown seemed like an extension of herself. Her golden hair cascaded down her back, glowing in the firelight. Her dress was a pale lavender, a mockery of Liz’s own deep purple silks, and her eyes were hard and strong. 

Liz saw it all and despaired. Despaired for the light that radiated from her. Despaired for the love this…this girl got to share with Ien. Despaired because she was alone.

“I am your Queen,” Mari said simply. “You must learn that you don’t control me, or anyone.”

Liz glared cockily. “I serve no one. Especially not you, little mouse.”

Mari smiled softly. Pitying, almost. Liz wanted to tear her to shreds. “I didn’t say you serve me. I wouldn’t want you to if you begged on your knees.”

Liz sighed and leaned back against the wall. “Why are you here?”

“Maybe I’m going to try my hand at killing you,” Mari said smoothly.

Liz’s eyes widened, just barely, but it was too much. She cursed inwardly. The girl’s just trying to get under your skin…she’s learned quickly. “Please do, little mouse,” Liz said, snorting. “Maybe I’ll kill you first.” She lunged forward suddenly, her chains snapping taught. They twisted painfully at her arms, but she was rewarded as Mari took a sharp breath and stumbled backwards. She laughed. “Poor child…scared of the dark? Scared of me?” She snarled, almost like a rabid animal.

***

Mari stepped forward again, smoothing her dress. “I don’t fear you,” she said. And it was true. She didn’t fear Liz. This wretch, chained in a cell, struggling to hold on to some shred of power? No. She was not afraid. In fact…Mari shoved down her excitement. It was not fitting for her to enjoy the pain of another, not even someone like this…but oh, she wanted to. After all this woman had done to her, had done to Ien… “Tell me,” she said bluntly. “How could you hurt someone you love so much?”

Mari couldn’t see Liz, her cell was unnaturally dark, but she heard the chains clinking. “Me? Love him?” Her voice was flat and emotionless. As cold and cruel as she’d always been. Mari almost doubted, then, but…she’d seen Liz’s eyes. She’d seen the longing even as the monster had been breaking Ien, poor Ien, to pieces.

So Mari laughed. She could play this game. Liz was nothing compared to the court she’d grown accustomed to. “Are you going to lie to me, rat?”

***

Fine. What harm will it do to talk to the girl? I only need to let Ien fall in love with her, only a little longer now, only until Siylna sends her message, and then I’ll kill her, no, worse, I’ll let her live. I’ll carve her precious face until even Ien will scorn her, I’ll break every one of her clever fingers, her blood will run until she begs for mercy…

“No,” Liz decided. “I love Ien. I’ve loved him since you were still moseying around your pitiful slum of a village. I held him while you were still traipsing around in the mud. He–and I–are more than you could ever be. You are nothing. You are a pawn in this game, a tool to serve me until your use expires. Ien is a king, and I am the queen. You have no place here,” she hissed. Even as the words were leaving her mouth, Liz knew it was a mistake. But stars, it felt good. 

Mari frowned. “You said…before. Before you brought Ien into the dungeon. You remember our conversation?”

Of course I remember…it was the last time Liz could really recall being afraid. Afraid that she’d messed up. That she’d break Ien. Break the only boy she had ever loved, and who had loved her back. Maybe. Once. She remembered her exact words.

“‘He doesn’t deserve to be alone.’ You told me that,” Mari said, as if echoing Liz’s own thoughts. “You put me in a cell next to him on purpose.”

“Yes,” Liz whispered.

“You wanted us to fall in love. You wanted it to work out like this.”

Liz nodded, then remembered that she was cloaked in shadows. “I did.” I did. Everything is going exactly the way I wanted it to. It’s all…it’s all going so well…so why does it hurt so much?

“Why?” Mari demanded. “Did you know Ien would beat you? Did you know you would fall? Does…does some part of you understand what a monster you are?”

Liz laughed bitterly, letting the shadows fall from around her. “You know nothing of my plans, little mouse. Scurry off, now. You gain nothing from being here.” And if you stay any longer, I might just kill you, and that would ruin everything…

***

Mari leaned forward, intrigued. She saw something in Liz’s eyes. Something past the cold, dangerous magic. Liz was…she was…she was angry. But it wasn’t the anger that came with insanity. No…it was the anger that followed sadness. It was the bitter rage that came from sharpening the edges of a broken heart into daggers. “You really do love him,” she whispered.

Liz bowed her head, and Mari found herself wanting to…to comfort her? No, no, she’s a monster. She doesn’t know what love is. She wants to kill you, and Ien, and she would do it…she would do it… “I do,” Liz said. 

“He’ll never love you,” Mari said, suddenly feeling oddly defensive.

“You think I don’t know that?” Liz snapped. “Do you think I’ve missed the hatred in his eyes every time he looks at me? Do you think I just haven’t noticed the way he looks at you? Do you think I expect him to put aside all his scars, everything I’ve done to him and to his people to wrap his arms around me and hold me like he used to?” Liz stood up, staring Mari in the eyes. “I know him, girl. I know all the pieces of him. I changed him from a scholar to a hero and I loved him all the while. And I know that he will never forgive me. I know. I know the road I’m on. This endless, lonely road.” 

Liz spat, then, and Mari ached for her. Ached for the pain she knew so well. Could this…

Could this have been me?

Would I have ever resorted to becoming this?

“You chose this…” She said slowly.

“Get out,” Liz snarled. “Get out now, unless you’d like to learn how little these chains are holding me back.”

Mari wanted to stay. She wanted to…

Oh, spirits. 

She wanted to help this monster.

So she left. Not because Liz told her to; because she needed to clear her head. Because though it was a queen’s duty to care for her people, it would do no one any good if she started trying to understand such a creature.

***

Liz watched her go, bringing her shadows back up and catching her breath. “Attend.”

A figure stepped out of the darkness in a cell opposite her. “You always know,” the man marveled. “How did you…?”

Liz didn’t answer. Instead, she asked a question of her own. “Are you doing as I commanded?” 

The man nodded sharply. “Yes, my Queen. We’ve told King Iendenn that we serve the sovereign. That we are his.”

“Does he believe you?”

The man smiled, a quick flash of sharp white. “Yes. And he needs all the help he can get, so as much as he hates us…we are very competent. He’s using us.”

“Good,” Liz said, leaning back and thinking. After a moment, the man spoke again.

“I…my Queen.”

“Yes?”

“I must say, I don’t…that is…some of the others. They wonder why we should obey a chained queen, even one such as yourself.”

Liz smiled darkly. “Do you trust me, Assassin?”

“Of course not,” he said.

“Good. Will you obey me?”

“I will, my Queen. But many of the others…”

“Bring them here,” Liz said. A purple glow spread into her shadows. “I’ll show them just how chained I am.”

 

 

On 12/28/2023 at 6:50 AM, Edema Rue said:

To the flower on my dresser:

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You’re so young.

You’re so alive.

There’s…

There’s so much I wish I could tell you.

You’re so determined to grow.

Do you know how much it will hurt?

Every flower that blossoms on your stalks will wilt.

Every bright color you have now will fade and die so quickly. 

It will hurt,

This life you have ahead of you.

It will be lonely,

My sweet Amaryllis.

You will struggle

And break

And be told

That it’s your fault.

You will desperately wish

For someone to tell you it’s okay.

For someone to hold you.

To tell you you’re beautiful,

That you don’t need to be anything more than you are.

And instead,

Their cruel eyes will callously leer at your blooded flowers,

Searching for every imperfection.

And they will find them.

Because you won’t be perfect.

It won’t matter how much you work.

It won’t matter how you turn out.

Because your life is ever-fleeting.

Always drawing nearer

To its inevitable end.

Will you find even a moment of joy in this existence of yours?

Oh, precious flower.

Oh, darling Amaryllis.

Oh, little sprout.

Oh, unknowing bulb.

You’ve no idea.

You don’t know.

And so you keep living.

You keep growing.

Keep striving for perfection.

Keep looking for a life that you’ll never find,

A life that isn’t yours to live.

Do you want to help people?

Do you want to make them smile?

Fix their broken parts?

It doesn’t matter what you want.

You are locked in your prison of wax.

You will never escape.

There is nowhere else where you can grow.

There is nothing you can become besides what you are.

And what you are

Is not what you want.

And never will be.

You’ll never be more,

Than a mildly pretty flower.

Temporary.

Easily forgotten.

Keep dreaming, though.

Keep imagining you’ll be more.

Keep hoping you’re worth something.

Keep thinking you can achieve the perfection you long for so deeply.

Keep growing,

Little flower.

Your blooms are as red as paint on the lips of a lonely girl looking for her love.

And maybe

When that girl finds you instead,

She’ll smile

And take you home.

And then you’ll die.

And she’ll go on living, never remembering that you were there.

That is the best you will ever have, young one.

That is the most your sprout will become.

That is all anyone expects from you.

And,

For you,

Their expectations are a blessing.

Because you can easily surpass them.

Some of us don’t have that luxury,

Amaryllis.

Some of us are drowning in seas of their hopes for us.

But you aren’t.

And you don’t need to care for anyone but yourself.

So keep growing.

Keep caring for yourself.

O,

How shallow you are.

O,

How petty.

Stay on your path.

Grow tall

And straight

And true

And green.

"Flowers bloom until they rot and fall apart."

So bloom, little bud.

Bloom.

And then rot.

Hermes:

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He was the fastest.

It was funny, in a twisted sort of way.

Even Zeus couldn’t match his speed.

If they’d been mortals, it would’ve made him important.. The races he won would mean something.

But they weren’t mortals.

And he wasn’t the strongest. Or the cleverest. Or the loveliest. Or the cruelest. He learned, though. There’s no other way to survive as a god. He learned to be fast. He learned to be tricky. And, because rumors only grow, he became the trickiest. The fastest.

And if he’d been a mortal, it would have been enough.

But he wasn’t a mortal,

And his pantheon wanted servants.

And as we’ve mentioned, Hermes was not the strongest, and so he was the one to bend.

After so many years, he should have been used to it.

The bending during every conflict.

The feeling of being known everywhere, and belonging nowhere. 

The feeling of being known by all and knowing none, like an actor on a stage, easily recognizable by the entire audience, but lost and alone in a crowd.

Hermes told himself he didn’t mind.

It didn’t matter to him.

He could befriend the friendless. He could visit places even the eldest gods had forgotten. There was no harm in being the messenger. 

Being the messenger also meant that with a few well-placed…untruths, he could alter history more than even Zeus, king of the gods.

He tried to be glad.

Tried to be grateful that at least he was “serving something greater than himself.” That’s what the others told him when he voiced his anger.

So he kept it quiet,

And o,

So

Slowly,

His soul began to wither.

His spirit began to die.

Sometimes the messenger gets shot;

Sometimes the constant movement gets so exhausting that there’s no way to

Think

When there’s so much to do it’s impossible to

Feel

You forget, forget everything, until

You

Are

Nothing.

And so Hermes faded.

He lost his colors, his spirit, his hope.

He moved without thinking,

Struggled without caring,

Traveling the paths that had been put before him,

Without pausing to wonder where they might lead.

He faded.

He floated,

Like a leaf on the wind.

He fell,

From a god,

Past a mortal,

To a machine.

To a tool.

After all, he was serving something greater than himself.

He was doing his job.

There was a form of beauty in that, wasn’t there?

Hermes didn’t play tricks anymore.

Didn’t laugh, either.

Once he had served the travelers, given homes to the wanderers.

That didn’t matter, though. Why would it?

Hermes was the fastest.

And so he was the messenger.

The servant of all.

And the friend of none.

Neither of those turned out very pretty or fun, but I'm glad I wrote them, and if you enjoy them then I'm doubly glad, because they'll have done good to others  

 

 

On 1/3/2024 at 8:20 AM, Edema Rue said:

Okay, a couple strange and bizarre things that popped into existence because I haven't been sleeping very much  

Young:

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To be young is to have wings. They come in every shape, size, and color. But that doesn’t matter, because when we were young, we could fly. We rode the winds and claimed the skies as our own. We were above all the wrong, above all hate, above all fear. In our infinite pettiness, we were above frivolity. In our unending shallowness, we thought ourselves deep. We lived on our pride and our charm, soaring above the sharp rocks of the world.

But to be young is to know that your wings will strain, and come short. We could only fly for so long, after all. And the rocks below were always waiting, always ready for when we fell. And oh, we would fall. We’d ride through the sky, higher than the mountains, then fall on our faces, dragging ourselves along, deeper than the oceans, blood dripping from all our cuts, bones snapping and hearts crumbling.

Oh, to be young.

I dream of those flights, some days. I fantasize that I am back in the air, soaring between clouds.

But oh, to be young.

I should never like to return to the world of extremes. To the world where all is rejoicing and wailing. Where there are screams of bliss when we fly, and gnashing of teeth when we fall.

To be young

Is to fly

But to be young

Is to fall.

We were birds, then.

Short lived and always moving, hopping from branch to branch, barely staying in one place long enough to make a nest and leave it behind. 

We left so many things behind, in those young years. 

They were years of change.

Oh,

So

Much

Change.

They were years of such pain, those days when we were young.

But they were the years of our purest joy. 

Because surrounded by change,

We learned to let go.

And we learned to hold on.

We learned as we fell. And we learned as we flew. You cannot fly with rocks on your back; you cannot fly when you are chained to the ground; so we let our rocks be misplaced, let our chains break free. We learned to forget our pain so that we could fly. We learned to ignore the things that hurt so that we could laugh. We learned to leave the world behind and live in our heads.

But we also learned that there were some things that couldn’t be ignored.

We learned through our pain.

We learned as our chains shot up from the ground below and dragged us back down; from the peaks of Heaven to the depths of Hell our chains would pull us, from the glowing skies to the muddy earth. They would yank us back down and shackle us to the world. They would force us to remember, pile our stones back on our backs, and tell us to keep moving.

And the higher 

You

Fly

The harder

You

Fall.

And we certainly learned how to fall.

But we didn’t like it. No. We didn’t want to fall, because when we fell, it hurt. And when we were young, the pains were so sharp, so deadly…

So we stopped flying.

Because if you do not fly,

You cannot fall.

Oh, to be young.

To fly.

To fall.

I should not like to go back…

I do not miss falling. 

But I do miss flying.

I miss my wings.

They were bright and feathered and so full of color and life.

But they weakened with disuse.

And as I grew, my feathers faded and melted into uniforms and routines.

I stopped flying, so that I would never have to fall.

But you,

Young one.

No longer a child,

But young enough to soar.

You are stuck between, but there is nothing between about you. I see the flights in your smile and the falls in your heart. 

Keep flying, young one.

Keep your wings.

Break your chains.

You will fall.

But oh, see how you will fly.

Rise above the clouds and bring the sun back with you so that when you fall it is as a star from the glittering sky.

Don’t get stuck between.

Don’t forget how to fly.

Don’t forget how to fall.

Don’t forget how to feel.

Fly,

Young one,

Fly.

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I think this started because of a conversation with @Lightweaver2, but then I started thinking about an old poet turned soldier watching his daughter suffer through a heartbreak, and...it happened. I like it  

Soldier:

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The first time I saw him was on a battlefield. It’s no wonder I was so awed; the battle was his palace, the mud his throne, the bodies his feast. If you’ve ever met him, you know what I mean. When he fought, he was a king. When he stepped onto the field, everyone knew it. Entire battles were fought and won and lost based on his presence or the lack thereof.

And yet, he was just a man.

Just a silly little human.

But he was so much more than that. He was so much stronger, so much greater…

I was a messenger, that first day. I didn’t want to be there. I was scared. I’d seen my first corpse only days earlier, and had promptly thrown up the entire day’s rations. I was wearing dark trousers, a recommendation from older messenger boys; if I lost control of my bladder, at least it wouldn’t be visible. Even walking between tents was a foreign feeling; there are different kinds of mud, you see. There’s the pure, earthy mud that comes after a long rain. There’s the sticky mud you’ll find in an animal pen, full of droppings and straw. There’s the mud that’s just barely hardening, the frozen mud that’s solid on top but oozes when you put too much weight on it, the mud that’s more water than dirt, the mud that covers stone and the mud that’s made of sand…and then there’s battlefield mud. It’s a mixture of all the others, but it has so much more mixed in.

Blood, for one. 

Blood has such a strange texture. You never notice it until you’re trudging through it day in and day out. It mixes with the dirt, so that even when you start fighting on a desert you end in a mud pit. At first, it stains the ground a deep red, but that quickly turns to black. From a distance, an old battlefield looks almost like a night sky. A pretty metaphor for something so ugly. But it’s a true one. Scattered across the dark canvas are little spots of light; glinting armor, white cloth, abandoned weapons and glinting bones, decaying arms and legs and corpses that weren’t worthy of burial.

Suffice it to say that I could see no beauty in such a place. Not until I saw him. I was running a message from my squadleader to the command tent. My boot got stuck in a patch of mud. And while I paused to pull it out, I caught a glimpse of the battle. I was on a hill, a perfect vantage point for a general trying to command his army…or a young boy, glimpsing true talent for the first time.

Message forgotten, I gawked. The sheer mass of people below was astounding. There were more, even, than at the festival I’d gone to in the capital last year. And they were all moving, fighting. Dozens of lives ended in the blink of an eye. I couldn’t tell if we were winning or losing. I couldn’t even tell which soldiers were ours and which were the enemy’s.

But even in the mass of thousands, he stood out. He always fought in white, as if he fancied himself some sort of destroying angel. Of course, if he was, I certainly believed it…his sword glowed. It sounds like a story, I know. It’s hard to believe it without having seen him. But if you’ve seen…then you know. He had a short sword in one hand, an axe in the other. His gleaming white armor seemed to push the blood away. And he was moving, always moving, dancing around his enemies. He whirled through the center of the battlefield, utterly competent and perfectly alone. I almost took a step forward, so as to see him better, but my boot was still stuck.

I fell on my face. I blinked, the shock of cold mud bringing me back to myself. I rubbed the mud from my cheeks and ran into the tent. It was crowded, and I could barely see the general through the press of bodies. But it was dead silent. 

“Get him in here,” The general said sharply. “We don’t have time for this. Someone has to go.”

I didn’t raise my hand. I know you think I did. And it would be easy to lie, easy to say I volunteered like a hero, like…like he would have. But I didn’t. Someone spit in the general’s face. 

“If we make it tha’ far, ‘e’ll kill us ‘imself.” They started filing out. I took the hint and started to follow, but a hand grabbed my arm and pulled me roughly back. 

“You,” the general said. “Boy. What’s your message?”

“S-sir?” I asked, terrified.

“Your message,” he repeated angrily, shaking me and nodding at the white armband that identified me as a messenger. 

I swallowed, throat dry. “Y-yes, S-Sir. 4th Squad, 2nd Division awaits your orders.” Everyone else had fled; now he and I were the only ones in the tent. He sighed, suddenly looking very tired. 

“I’ll send someone for your squad, boy. And you…oh, gods above. I’m sending you to your death, and I’m sorry, but there’s no time for anything else.” He wiped a hand across his brow. “I…I’m sorry.” I blinked at him wordlessly. What can one say to such a thing? He nodded sharply, face turning back to stone, and pulled me with him out of the tent. Others milled around, and the first dissenter saw me and spat into the stinking mud. 

“Yer a monster,” he whispered. Then he saluted me. Looking back, it wasn’t for me. It was a sign of rebellion; spit at the general and salute the boy. But in the moment, it filled me with bravery. I could see him down on the field, and so when the general shoved me down the hill and told me to run like I never had before, I did, my eyes blinded with visions of heroism like that of the man I’d been sent to fetch.

He never had a name. No one ever bothered to give him one; few people ever had a need. Those of us who tried to know him…we called him Brother. But you are not one of us. We’re all dead now, aren’t we? All dead, all worthless, all gone…you do not get to see him as your brother. So here, I will call him Soldier, and I will pray that, should we ever meet again, he will forgive me.

I ran down the hill. Only the gods themselves could have given me such bizarre strength that day; running as I was, I should have broken my ankles many times over before I even reached the battlefield. 

But reach it I did. And then I felt what I had never been able to see. And I smelled it. I fell, then, and I am not ashamed to admit that I was trembling. I hadn’t eaten, more advice from the older boys, but I dry heaved plenty. Most of you probably haven’t been around enough blood to really understand how strongly it smells. And how…how artificial. It’s disorienting. Blood is, perhaps, the most natural substance in this world. And yet it smells like one of those new factories the islanders are building; wretched and metallic and forbidden. 

I stumbled on, eventually. I had to reach Soldier. Someone swung a sword at my head. I screamed, but the battle was so loud, I couldn’t even hear myself. I ducked and ran. And kept running. I wanted to close my eyes, but there were so many enemies, so many people…So I ran. And the gods stayed with me. They must have. Because I made it to him without so much as a scratch. I fell more than once; soon I was covered in the congealing mud, my messenger’s band stained and torn. And then, suddenly, I broke out of the press of bodies and weapons. I was confused at first; where the fighting was thickest, there were corpses standing upright because there was no room for them to drop.  But I wasn’t out of the battlefield, and right here there was simply…room? No one dared enter this hole…

And then I saw Soldier. His eyes were black. At the time, I thought it a sign of his strength. I have learned much since that day. Sometimes it’s hard to believe I was ever that little messenger boy…but I was. And Soldier saw me. And he raised his sword, savoring the killing blow. 

“Wait!” I screamed. “I’m-we’re the same army! G-general wants you b-back…” I could barely hear myself; even in this safe pocket, it was so loud…I pointed back up the hill, to the tent that now seemed so far away…his sword came down.

But not on me.

Several enemy soldiers had snuck behind him, hoping to catch him distracted. The precision with which he cut them down reminded me of a tailor’s sharp scissors slicing through rich cloth. It’s funny, the pictures our minds see in these sorts of moments. My mind was so full of pictures that day…As he spun his sword around, he looked like an artist with a paintbrush. That’s all it was. Thick, red paint. And if it was only paint, why would it matter if it splattered across my face? Why would…I stumbled to my knees and dry heaved again. My bladder had long since emptied. I knew, then, that I was going to die. I was sure of it. And it brought me no peace, only terror. 

Now I almost wish I had died on that day. That would have been better. I looked up from the mud to see that…the enemy was retreating? A victory? Soldier had started back towards the command tent, and I stepped to follow. I was…I was alive. I had been to the center of a battlefield, and now I was going to leave alive…

But hands grabbed me, then, rougher than the general’s, and stronger, too. I found myself being dragged to the wrong side of the field. 

Towards the enemy, with their greedy hands and thieving eyes.

If I were braver I would have run, would have fought…

But try as I might, I have never been the soldier. I have never been my Brother. 

And so on that day, I followed my captors, meek as a lamb walking to the slaughter.

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I'm...genuinely not sure where this one came from. I don't love it, but...I might write more, because I'm curious about where it's going.

...heehee I read so many books that sometimes I forget I've never actually been in a real fight, let alone on a battlefield.

Dreams:

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He has dreams. He didn’t…he didn’t have dreams before. When he was with them. But he dreamed now. 

He saw their faces when he was sleeping.

He didn’t see them when he was awake. Not anymore.

Most of the time, the dreams were pain. Pain incarnate. He watched them scream. He watched them…he watched them die. They fell, one by one, eyes accusing him. Their faces filled his mind, cursing his name and begging him to save them. And he knew he could. If he were stronger, if he were faster, if he were braver…he would do anything to keep them alive. They were his family, weren’t they? But they died anyway. The sun went down and the ghosts woke up and called for him to join them…

But not always. Sometimes the dreams were…everything he’d ever wanted. They were together. They were laughing around a warm fire. There was nothing to fear, no one to run from, no one trying to remember a family that had been gone for too long. No one fighting over supplies that were growing scarcer by the day; no one arguing about problems that would never be solved; no one in charge of anyone else. Just friends. Sharing a meal and enjoying each other’s company.

Those were the dreams that hurt the most.

Because he couldn’t call them nightmares, even when he woke up with wet cheeks and a throat dry from screaming. 

How could he call his deepest wishes nightmares?

They were dreams.

And every time he woke up, it hurt just a little more. To see the anger in the ones who remained.

And to see the blank places where there had once been his…his brothers.

To hear the silences where there used to be laughter. 

To see the scars where there could have been beauty.

That was why the dreams hurt, he realized.

They were everything that could have been.

He didn’t let them see him hurt. They were too angry and he…

He wasn’t allowed to hurt.

When you’re the shoulder they come to to cry on, you don’t get to cry. So in the mornings, he brushed away the tears.

And he smiled.

It didn’t matter if he was falling apart, because he was holding the rest together.

He was their glue.

He would keep laughing, keep giving them the moments that swirled through his dreams.

Keep holding off the pain that shackled him to his nightmares.

But then the nightmares,

And the dreams,

Stopped setting with the moon.

The sun no longer burned them away.

The faces peeked from every window.

The laughter echoed in every corner, chasing away the silence until but one word remained, echoing through his mind like a promise to the fallen.

Please.

Please.

Please.

  Reveal hidden contents

Okay so I lied. This is actually called Newt. As in, Newt from the maze runner (which I never actually finished). But...I insulted Athena, and she made me promise to write her something about him as payment, and I actually sorta like it. I also think it's funner to read when you don't know the context, so...yay!  

Welp, that's what I've got right now. If anyone has writing prompts, please give me them!!! PLEASE I BEG YOU!! I'll have more with Liz and the peeps at some point, but I really like just short lil things, and I need I N S P I R A T I O N

 

I am catching up only now after my break, but this is incredible! Liz is really terrifying right now. And the short scenes are so good. Especially "Young". *hugs*

Also, completely off-topic, but can we be Shardbuddies?

[Edema Rue she/her]

4 minutes ago, Just a Silvereye said:

 

 

 

I am catching up only now after my break, but this is incredible! Liz is really terrifying right now. And the short scenes are so good. Especially "Young". *hugs*

Also, completely off-topic, but can we be Shardbuddies?

Thank you so much!! I had a lot of fun writing all of them. *hugs back*

Absolutely!!

[Edema Rue she/her]

Well...7000th post! Stars, that's a big number. I didn't want it to get lost in RP (like all my other milestones lol) but all I had was a short scene I was in the middle of writing...and that got significantly darker than I thought it was going to. I'm still putting it here, but uh...yeah. It's kind of long and kind of dark. Sorry.

TW: Suicide, death, lots of gore, cannibalism, being possessed, more gore...yeah.

Control:

Spoiler

I know what it is to be powerless. I know what it is to have no control. To be watched without ever being seen…to touch without being felt…I know these feelings well. It has been so many years…so long…but I’ve adapted. I’ve learned…

When the girl awoke, she couldn’t move. She tried to stand, but couldn’t, so she tried to cry out, but her voice wouldn’t make a sound…

That initial spike of terror is one of the greatest pleasures I still have. The panic that comes with not controlling your own body…oh, yes. When the one thing that has always been yours and yours alone is ripped from your control…and oh, how humans love their control. Taking it from them produces such a strong fear…but after that spike, every human reacts just a little differently. That’s where the hunt gets…interesting.

The girl felt her heart pounding. Her breathing would have sped up, but…but she couldn’t control her own breath. A tear dripped from her eye, soaking into her pillow. Then another, until her pillow was soaked. Still, she could not move. Her breath was steady…she felt a smile curl across her lips. 

I never have been able to figure out how to keep them from crying. Isn’t that strange? Every other part of her body is mine, and yet she still weeps…a pity, I suppose, but perhaps I should be glad for it. It keeps them from retreating into their minds, keeps them tethered to the bodies I now control…

The girl struggled for control. To take even a deeper breath, twitch her finger, anything…

They fight, sometimes. It used to give me trouble, when I was weaker. But I am not who I was, and I’ve learned a few tricks…

The girl felt herself stop breathing. Her eyes bulged as she tried frantically to draw breath with limbs that wouldn’t listen, into lungs that wouldn’t expand…

I let her stop breathing for longer than was necessary. How could I not? Her desperate struggle was utterly fruitless, her terror so sweet, and once I let air rush into her…

She stopped struggling. This was not a power she should fight. This was not a battle she would survive.

There is danger in controlling a body that isn’t your own. You have to be careful, if you want them alive. 

And I like them alive.

After all, I subsist entirely on their fear, do I not? 

And the dead do not fear…

She stood up. No, no, it wasn’t her. Just her body. She’d never thought there was a difference, but now it was stark and clear…her body was walking. She was not. Her body was moving and she was stuck inside it and there was no escape from the nightmare she was living.

Terror tastes the sweetest. Not to all of my kind, I am sure, but…humans are allowed their favorite foods. We are the same way. I like terror. It’s difficult to get it just right…like seasoning a particularly thick steak. It comes easily in small bursts, but prolonging it? There are many kinds of fear. I must be careful, lest I let terror wilt to simply fear, or evolve into anxiety, which fades to stress…so many variations of the same flavor.

There was a person in front of her. The girl knew the person. It was…it was her brother. She had no way of telling him she was not herself, no way of-

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey,” her mouth repeated, in her voice. She was still walking, walking closer to him, to the hunting knife at his belt…

The girl wanted to scream. Wanted to yell for him to run. Wanted to stop, stop, stop! But she was still walking…and then she took two quick steps, almost like a dance, and her hands were around the long hunting knife at his belt. He frowned as she held it in front of her, still smiling, still crying, still trapped in a body she no longer controlled.

Despair, though, makes for a much better food source. It isn’t as fun, because it doesn’t take as much of a hunt, doesn’t take as much effort…the hearts of mortals are such fragile things, and their broken edges are so wonderfully…routine, almost. Isn’t that funny? They build their lives around the assumption that everything they have will come to an end. And then, when it does, they weep salty tears to quench my thirst.

She raised her arm and brought the knife down, into his neck. He stumbled back, hands reaching for his throat, and her smile turned cruel. “Sleep well, brother,” her voice said.

The body collapsed. The girl ran over to it, barely noticing that she controlled her own body once more. Her tears were falling faster now, her face turning red and blotchy. “No, no, no,” she whispered.

You can’t take the body completely. If you do, they'll grow numb. Numb…is like hunger. It’s a void. If you push a human too far, break them until they can’t feel any longer, you’ll lose your meal. You’ve failed  your hunt. I rarely break mine. Not anymore. Practice makes perfect, I suppose…and I’ve certainly had practice. I do not like being hungry…but shock is unavoidable, sometimes. 

The girl stared at her hands, and the blood still flowing from…from…from the…the corpse. She stumbled back, horrified. She’d…she’d killed a person. Not just a person. Her family. Her breath started coming quicker. 

Breathing is a strange feeling. I don’t miss it. Humans always seem to, though…

The fear was returning. Growing, too. The girl found herself thinking about how she’d explain this to the people that were sure to be here any moment…any…she was standing up. Was that her? She couldn’t…couldn’t tell. Her breathing was speeding up, and she didn’t know if it was this…this thing controlling her, or if it was the fear, the terror, the panic, the…the…

Bliss. Utter bliss, distilled from the terror of the weak. 

A soft groan escaped the girl’s lips. It wasn’t hers.

It was mine. My pleasure, bubbling out of her.

The girl’s mouth twisted into a wide grin. It hurt. It was too big. It didn’t fit with the tears that dripped silently from her chin. Her hand tossed her brother’s knife into the air, and it flipped, and she caught it. 

The funny thing about fighting is that so much of it is simply practice. Muscle memory. I don’t have muscles. But I know how humans work. And all it takes is learning with one person…they’re all the same. And all utterly meaningless…but they feed me, and that is a worthy purpose. But that is beside the point. I can make them do things they never learned to do. I can make them dance…

The girl was walking again. The wood floor creaked under her bare foot. With a sinking sort of dread, she saw stain seeping from under the door…

She wanted to turn back. Wanted to leave. But her hand reached for the doorknob.

I spent a long while setting everything up. I couldn’t just let it go to waste now, could I?

The door swung open. The girl cried harder.

I’ve always wondered what I could do if I could control more than one person at a time. How delightful, to have two puppets dancing to my strings…what fun, neither of them in control, both of them producing terror enough that I could finally be filled…

The dead were everywhere. They must have been her parents. The must have been. No one else was in the room…but the remains were impossible to identify. A finger here. A blood-soaked cloak there. Splinters of bone arranged in a perfect, white heart that floated in a puddle that was surely too red to be blood…

It’s incredible, how much blood there is in a human body. 

The girl saw only fragments. Limbs, cracked and broken. A stomach, torn open and spilling organs onto the floor.

Human screams don’t satisfy me. But they certainly are a pleasure. So full of life, and emotion…everyone is allowed to enjoy their own music, right?

A face, peeled off of a skull and stuck to a looking glass…

I do love my performances. Some might think it a pity that they can only happen once…but those are the most beautiful sort of things. The most fragile.

A mismatched pair of legs, impaled on the same sword…

Only two bodies. But so much potential…their terror as I flitted between their minds, as they tore each other apart…

The girl wanted to vomit. There was some of that, too, splattered across the bed.

I do not need to be seen to be known. 

She sat down on the bed, between faceless heads with bloodied teeth. Her leg stretched out from below her dress. She whimpered, her pulse rising.

I can allow her such simple movements…such noises…After all, I must keep her connected to her pain…

Knife still firmly in her hand, it started toward her calf…and she began to carve, hand steady even as her eyes blurred with tears and her voice cracked from screaming…

With only one, I don’t get to dance. But the human body makes such a wonderful canvas…

Tiny swirls, at first, growing larger as she wrapped the design around her calf, her shin, climbed up to her thigh…

I don’t need to be tangible to be felt.

It continued for hours. The girl dropped into unconsciousness more than once.

I can control her while she sleeps, but there’s no fun in that…her pain is nothing to me if she doesn’t feel it.

Often, she thought she heard a voice in her head. “Do you like that, little girl?” “Would you like to see how they died?” “Are you ready to die yet?” She wept and wailed and pulled at the shackles that kept her imprisoned in her mind.

I do like talking to them. But not at first. First, they must be alone.

Eventually, I bored of the knife…

The girl clawed at her own face. Her eyes, her mouth, her hair. Jagged cuts ran across her cheeks. Blood dripped from an eyelid that was shut over an empty socket.

Face wounds are peculiar. They rarely do much damage, but they hurt…oh, they hurt…and they tend to crush whatever remains of a person’s hope. Once they can’t see, it’s as if they finally realize that they are stuck with me until I let them die.

The girl raised the dagger, one last time.

The end is near, now.

A slit for the left wrist,

But first, a final climax.

A slit for the right.

Her panic is at its peak, now.

Set the knife next to the mangled legs.

I take her other eye, too.

Put each finger into the mouth,

One at a time,

Now,

Bite,

Chew,

Swallow.

She flung her arms out,

Like a Queen on an altar,

And her terror peaked,

As tears dripped with blood from eyes that were no longer there.

And the girl died.

And I rose from the body.

Filled,

But never satisfied.

Um...

Yeah. 

So that happened. And on that note...happy 7000 posts?

[The Wandering Wizard he/him]

12 minutes ago, Edema Rue said:

Well...7000th post! Stars, that's a big number. I didn't want it to get lost in RP (like all my other milestones lol) but all I had was a short scene I was in the middle of writing...and that got significantly darker than I thought it was going to. I'm still putting it here, but uh...yeah. It's kind of long and kind of dark. Sorry.

TW: Suicide, death, lots of gore, cannibalism, being possessed, more gore...yeah.

Control:

  Hide contents

I know what it is to be powerless. I know what it is to have no control. To be watched without ever being seen…to touch without being felt…I know these feelings well. It has been so many years…so long…but I’ve adapted. I’ve learned…

When the girl awoke, she couldn’t move. She tried to stand, but couldn’t, so she tried to cry out, but her voice wouldn’t make a sound…

That initial spike of terror is one of the greatest pleasures I still have. The panic that comes with not controlling your own body…oh, yes. When the one thing that has always been yours and yours alone is ripped from your control…and oh, how humans love their control. Taking it from them produces such a strong fear…but after that spike, every human reacts just a little differently. That’s where the hunt gets…interesting.

The girl felt her heart pounding. Her breathing would have sped up, but…but she couldn’t control her own breath. A tear dripped from her eye, soaking into her pillow. Then another, until her pillow was soaked. Still, she could not move. Her breath was steady…she felt a smile curl across her lips. 

I never have been able to figure out how to keep them from crying. Isn’t that strange? Every other part of her body is mine, and yet she still weeps…a pity, I suppose, but perhaps I should be glad for it. It keeps them from retreating into their minds, keeps them tethered to the bodies I now control…

The girl struggled for control. To take even a deeper breath, twitch her finger, anything…

They fight, sometimes. It used to give me trouble, when I was weaker. But I am not who I was, and I’ve learned a few tricks…

The girl felt herself stop breathing. Her eyes bulged as she tried frantically to draw breath with limbs that wouldn’t listen, into lungs that wouldn’t expand…

I let her stop breathing for longer than was necessary. How could I not? Her desperate struggle was utterly fruitless, her terror so sweet, and once I let air rush into her…

She stopped struggling. This was not a power she should fight. This was not a battle she would survive.

There is danger in controlling a body that isn’t your own. You have to be careful, if you want them alive. 

And I like them alive.

After all, I subsist entirely on their fear, do I not? 

And the dead do not fear…

She stood up. No, no, it wasn’t her. Just her body. She’d never thought there was a difference, but now it was stark and clear…her body was walking. She was not. Her body was moving and she was stuck inside it and there was no escape from the nightmare she was living.

Terror tastes the sweetest. Not to all of my kind, I am sure, but…humans are allowed their favorite foods. We are the same way. I like terror. It’s difficult to get it just right…like seasoning a particularly thick steak. It comes easily in small bursts, but prolonging it? There are many kinds of fear. I must be careful, lest I let terror wilt to simply fear, or evolve into anxiety, which fades to stress…so many variations of the same flavor.

There was a person in front of her. The girl knew the person. It was…it was her brother. She had no way of telling him she was not herself, no way of-

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey,” her mouth repeated, in her voice. She was still walking, walking closer to him, to the hunting knife at his belt…

The girl wanted to scream. Wanted to yell for him to run. Wanted to stop, stop, stop! But she was still walking…and then she took two quick steps, almost like a dance, and her hands were around the long hunting knife at his belt. He frowned as she held it in front of her, still smiling, still crying, still trapped in a body she no longer controlled.

Despair, though, makes for a much better food source. It isn’t as fun, because it doesn’t take as much of a hunt, doesn’t take as much effort…the hearts of mortals are such fragile things, and their broken edges are so wonderfully…routine, almost. Isn’t that funny? They build their lives around the assumption that everything they have will come to an end. And then, when it does, they weep salty tears to quench my thirst.

She raised her arm and brought the knife down, into his neck. He stumbled back, hands reaching for his throat, and her smile turned cruel. “Sleep well, brother,” her voice said.

The body collapsed. The girl ran over to it, barely noticing that she controlled her own body once more. Her tears were falling faster now, her face turning red and blotchy. “No, no, no,” she whispered.

You can’t take the body completely. If you do, they'll grow numb. Numb…is like hunger. It’s a void. If you push a human too far, break them until they can’t feel any longer, you’ll lose your meal. You’ve failed  your hunt. I rarely break mine. Not anymore. Practice makes perfect, I suppose…and I’ve certainly had practice. I do not like being hungry…but shock is unavoidable, sometimes. 

The girl stared at her hands, and the blood still flowing from…from…from the…the corpse. She stumbled back, horrified. She’d…she’d killed a person. Not just a person. Her family. Her breath started coming quicker. 

Breathing is a strange feeling. I don’t miss it. Humans always seem to, though…

The fear was returning. Growing, too. The girl found herself thinking about how she’d explain this to the people that were sure to be here any moment…any…she was standing up. Was that her? She couldn’t…couldn’t tell. Her breathing was speeding up, and she didn’t know if it was this…this thing controlling her, or if it was the fear, the terror, the panic, the…the…

Bliss. Utter bliss, distilled from the terror of the weak. 

A soft groan escaped the girl’s lips. It wasn’t hers.

It was mine. My pleasure, bubbling out of her.

The girl’s mouth twisted into a wide grin. It hurt. It was too big. It didn’t fit with the tears that dripped silently from her chin. Her hand tossed her brother’s knife into the air, and it flipped, and she caught it. 

The funny thing about fighting is that so much of it is simply practice. Muscle memory. I don’t have muscles. But I know how humans work. And all it takes is learning with one person…they’re all the same. And all utterly meaningless…but they feed me, and that is a worthy purpose. But that is beside the point. I can make them do things they never learned to do. I can make them dance…

The girl was walking again. The wood floor creaked under her bare foot. With a sinking sort of dread, she saw stain seeping from under the door…

She wanted to turn back. Wanted to leave. But her hand reached for the doorknob.

I spent a long while setting everything up. I couldn’t just let it go to waste now, could I?

The door swung open. The girl cried harder.

I’ve always wondered what I could do if I could control more than one person at a time. How delightful, to have two puppets dancing to my strings…what fun, neither of them in control, both of them producing terror enough that I could finally be filled…

The dead were everywhere. They must have been her parents. The must have been. No one else was in the room…but the remains were impossible to identify. A finger here. A blood-soaked cloak there. Splinters of bone arranged in a perfect, white heart that floated in a puddle that was surely too red to be blood…

It’s incredible, how much blood there is in a human body. 

The girl saw only fragments. Limbs, cracked and broken. A stomach, torn open and spilling organs onto the floor.

Human screams don’t satisfy me. But they certainly are a pleasure. So full of life, and emotion…everyone is allowed to enjoy their own music, right?

A face, peeled off of a skull and stuck to a looking glass…

I do love my performances. Some might think it a pity that they can only happen once…but those are the most beautiful sort of things. The most fragile.

A mismatched pair of legs, impaled on the same sword…

Only two bodies. But so much potential…their terror as I flitted between their minds, as they tore each other apart…

The girl wanted to vomit. There was some of that, too, splattered across the bed.

I do not need to be seen to be known. 

She sat down on the bed, between faceless heads with bloodied teeth. Her leg stretched out from below her dress. She whimpered, her pulse rising.

I can allow her such simple movements…such noises…After all, I must keep her connected to her pain…

Knife still firmly in her hand, it started toward her calf…and she began to carve, hand steady even as her eyes blurred with tears and her voice cracked from screaming…

With only one, I don’t get to dance. But the human body makes such a wonderful canvas…

Tiny swirls, at first, growing larger as she wrapped the design around her calf, her shin, climbed up to her thigh…

I don’t need to be tangible to be felt.

It continued for hours. The girl dropped into unconsciousness more than once.

I can control her while she sleeps, but there’s no fun in that…her pain is nothing to me if she doesn’t feel it.

Often, she thought she heard a voice in her head. “Do you like that, little girl?” “Would you like to see how they died?” “Are you ready to die yet?” She wept and wailed and pulled at the shackles that kept her imprisoned in her mind.

I do like talking to them. But not at first. First, they must be alone.

Eventually, I bored of the knife…

The girl clawed at her own face. Her eyes, her mouth, her hair. Jagged cuts ran across her cheeks. Blood dripped from an eyelid that was shut over an empty socket.

Face wounds are peculiar. They rarely do much damage, but they hurt…oh, they hurt…and they tend to crush whatever remains of a person’s hope. Once they can’t see, it’s as if they finally realize that they are stuck with me until I let them die.

The girl raised the dagger, one last time.

The end is near, now.

A slit for the left wrist,

But first, a final climax.

A slit for the right.

Her panic is at its peak, now.

Set the knife next to the mangled legs.

I take her other eye, too.

Put each finger into the mouth,

One at a time,

Now,

Bite,

Chew,

Swallow.

She flung her arms out,

Like a Queen on an altar,

And her terror peaked,

As tears dripped with blood from eyes that were no longer there.

And the girl died.

And I rose from the body.

Filled,

But never satisfied.

Um...

Yeah. 

So that happened. And on that note...happy 7000 posts?

Woah...

*hugs fiercely*

[Weaver of Lies he/him]

1 hour ago, Edema Rue said:

Well...7000th post! Stars, that's a big number. I didn't want it to get lost in RP (like all my other milestones lol) but all I had was a short scene I was in the middle of writing...and that got significantly darker than I thought it was going to. I'm still putting it here, but uh...yeah. It's kind of long and kind of dark. Sorry.

TW: Suicide, death, lots of gore, cannibalism, being possessed, more gore...yeah.

Control:

  Hide contents

I know what it is to be powerless. I know what it is to have no control. To be watched without ever being seen…to touch without being felt…I know these feelings well. It has been so many years…so long…but I’ve adapted. I’ve learned…

When the girl awoke, she couldn’t move. She tried to stand, but couldn’t, so she tried to cry out, but her voice wouldn’t make a sound…

That initial spike of terror is one of the greatest pleasures I still have. The panic that comes with not controlling your own body…oh, yes. When the one thing that has always been yours and yours alone is ripped from your control…and oh, how humans love their control. Taking it from them produces such a strong fear…but after that spike, every human reacts just a little differently. That’s where the hunt gets…interesting.

The girl felt her heart pounding. Her breathing would have sped up, but…but she couldn’t control her own breath. A tear dripped from her eye, soaking into her pillow. Then another, until her pillow was soaked. Still, she could not move. Her breath was steady…she felt a smile curl across her lips. 

I never have been able to figure out how to keep them from crying. Isn’t that strange? Every other part of her body is mine, and yet she still weeps…a pity, I suppose, but perhaps I should be glad for it. It keeps them from retreating into their minds, keeps them tethered to the bodies I now control…

The girl struggled for control. To take even a deeper breath, twitch her finger, anything…

They fight, sometimes. It used to give me trouble, when I was weaker. But I am not who I was, and I’ve learned a few tricks…

The girl felt herself stop breathing. Her eyes bulged as she tried frantically to draw breath with limbs that wouldn’t listen, into lungs that wouldn’t expand…

I let her stop breathing for longer than was necessary. How could I not? Her desperate struggle was utterly fruitless, her terror so sweet, and once I let air rush into her…

She stopped struggling. This was not a power she should fight. This was not a battle she would survive.

There is danger in controlling a body that isn’t your own. You have to be careful, if you want them alive. 

And I like them alive.

After all, I subsist entirely on their fear, do I not? 

And the dead do not fear…

She stood up. No, no, it wasn’t her. Just her body. She’d never thought there was a difference, but now it was stark and clear…her body was walking. She was not. Her body was moving and she was stuck inside it and there was no escape from the nightmare she was living.

Terror tastes the sweetest. Not to all of my kind, I am sure, but…humans are allowed their favorite foods. We are the same way. I like terror. It’s difficult to get it just right…like seasoning a particularly thick steak. It comes easily in small bursts, but prolonging it? There are many kinds of fear. I must be careful, lest I let terror wilt to simply fear, or evolve into anxiety, which fades to stress…so many variations of the same flavor.

There was a person in front of her. The girl knew the person. It was…it was her brother. She had no way of telling him she was not herself, no way of-

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey,” her mouth repeated, in her voice. She was still walking, walking closer to him, to the hunting knife at his belt…

The girl wanted to scream. Wanted to yell for him to run. Wanted to stop, stop, stop! But she was still walking…and then she took two quick steps, almost like a dance, and her hands were around the long hunting knife at his belt. He frowned as she held it in front of her, still smiling, still crying, still trapped in a body she no longer controlled.

Despair, though, makes for a much better food source. It isn’t as fun, because it doesn’t take as much of a hunt, doesn’t take as much effort…the hearts of mortals are such fragile things, and their broken edges are so wonderfully…routine, almost. Isn’t that funny? They build their lives around the assumption that everything they have will come to an end. And then, when it does, they weep salty tears to quench my thirst.

She raised her arm and brought the knife down, into his neck. He stumbled back, hands reaching for his throat, and her smile turned cruel. “Sleep well, brother,” her voice said.

The body collapsed. The girl ran over to it, barely noticing that she controlled her own body once more. Her tears were falling faster now, her face turning red and blotchy. “No, no, no,” she whispered.

You can’t take the body completely. If you do, they'll grow numb. Numb…is like hunger. It’s a void. If you push a human too far, break them until they can’t feel any longer, you’ll lose your meal. You’ve failed  your hunt. I rarely break mine. Not anymore. Practice makes perfect, I suppose…and I’ve certainly had practice. I do not like being hungry…but shock is unavoidable, sometimes. 

The girl stared at her hands, and the blood still flowing from…from…from the…the corpse. She stumbled back, horrified. She’d…she’d killed a person. Not just a person. Her family. Her breath started coming quicker. 

Breathing is a strange feeling. I don’t miss it. Humans always seem to, though…

The fear was returning. Growing, too. The girl found herself thinking about how she’d explain this to the people that were sure to be here any moment…any…she was standing up. Was that her? She couldn’t…couldn’t tell. Her breathing was speeding up, and she didn’t know if it was this…this thing controlling her, or if it was the fear, the terror, the panic, the…the…

Bliss. Utter bliss, distilled from the terror of the weak. 

A soft groan escaped the girl’s lips. It wasn’t hers.

It was mine. My pleasure, bubbling out of her.

The girl’s mouth twisted into a wide grin. It hurt. It was too big. It didn’t fit with the tears that dripped silently from her chin. Her hand tossed her brother’s knife into the air, and it flipped, and she caught it. 

The funny thing about fighting is that so much of it is simply practice. Muscle memory. I don’t have muscles. But I know how humans work. And all it takes is learning with one person…they’re all the same. And all utterly meaningless…but they feed me, and that is a worthy purpose. But that is beside the point. I can make them do things they never learned to do. I can make them dance…

The girl was walking again. The wood floor creaked under her bare foot. With a sinking sort of dread, she saw stain seeping from under the door…

She wanted to turn back. Wanted to leave. But her hand reached for the doorknob.

I spent a long while setting everything up. I couldn’t just let it go to waste now, could I?

The door swung open. The girl cried harder.

I’ve always wondered what I could do if I could control more than one person at a time. How delightful, to have two puppets dancing to my strings…what fun, neither of them in control, both of them producing terror enough that I could finally be filled…

The dead were everywhere. They must have been her parents. The must have been. No one else was in the room…but the remains were impossible to identify. A finger here. A blood-soaked cloak there. Splinters of bone arranged in a perfect, white heart that floated in a puddle that was surely too red to be blood…

It’s incredible, how much blood there is in a human body. 

The girl saw only fragments. Limbs, cracked and broken. A stomach, torn open and spilling organs onto the floor.

Human screams don’t satisfy me. But they certainly are a pleasure. So full of life, and emotion…everyone is allowed to enjoy their own music, right?

A face, peeled off of a skull and stuck to a looking glass…

I do love my performances. Some might think it a pity that they can only happen once…but those are the most beautiful sort of things. The most fragile.

A mismatched pair of legs, impaled on the same sword…

Only two bodies. But so much potential…their terror as I flitted between their minds, as they tore each other apart…

The girl wanted to vomit. There was some of that, too, splattered across the bed.

I do not need to be seen to be known. 

She sat down on the bed, between faceless heads with bloodied teeth. Her leg stretched out from below her dress. She whimpered, her pulse rising.

I can allow her such simple movements…such noises…After all, I must keep her connected to her pain…

Knife still firmly in her hand, it started toward her calf…and she began to carve, hand steady even as her eyes blurred with tears and her voice cracked from screaming…

With only one, I don’t get to dance. But the human body makes such a wonderful canvas…

Tiny swirls, at first, growing larger as she wrapped the design around her calf, her shin, climbed up to her thigh…

I don’t need to be tangible to be felt.

It continued for hours. The girl dropped into unconsciousness more than once.

I can control her while she sleeps, but there’s no fun in that…her pain is nothing to me if she doesn’t feel it.

Often, she thought she heard a voice in her head. “Do you like that, little girl?” “Would you like to see how they died?” “Are you ready to die yet?” She wept and wailed and pulled at the shackles that kept her imprisoned in her mind.

I do like talking to them. But not at first. First, they must be alone.

Eventually, I bored of the knife…

The girl clawed at her own face. Her eyes, her mouth, her hair. Jagged cuts ran across her cheeks. Blood dripped from an eyelid that was shut over an empty socket.

Face wounds are peculiar. They rarely do much damage, but they hurt…oh, they hurt…and they tend to crush whatever remains of a person’s hope. Once they can’t see, it’s as if they finally realize that they are stuck with me until I let them die.

The girl raised the dagger, one last time.

The end is near, now.

A slit for the left wrist,

But first, a final climax.

A slit for the right.

Her panic is at its peak, now.

Set the knife next to the mangled legs.

I take her other eye, too.

Put each finger into the mouth,

One at a time,

Now,

Bite,

Chew,

Swallow.

She flung her arms out,

Like a Queen on an altar,

And her terror peaked,

As tears dripped with blood from eyes that were no longer there.

And the girl died.

And I rose from the body.

Filled,

But never satisfied.

Um...

Yeah. 

So that happened. And on that note...happy 7000 posts?

Yeah, wow.

*more hugs*

[Edema Rue she/her]

1 hour ago, The Wandering Wizard said:

Woah...

*hugs fiercely*

 

41 minutes ago, Lightweaver2 said:

Yeah, wow.

*more hugs*

It’s ok I’m okay I promise!! That one was 100% fiction, even more than Wanderer, I had no idea it was going to go that way…

[Weaver of Lies he/him]

1 minute ago, Edema Rue said:

 

It’s ok I’m okay I promise!! That one was 100% fiction, even more than Wanderer, I had no idea it was going to go that way…

It was pretty creepy, very well written in my opinion.

[Edema Rue she/her]

8 minutes ago, Lightweaver2 said:

It was pretty creepy, very well written in my opinion.

Thank you so much!! I…think I like writing creepy things

[The Wandering Wizard he/him]

7 minutes ago, Edema Rue said:

Thank you so much!! I…think I like writing creepy things

That's okay! I'll read them and ask how you're doing afterwards and hug you anyways sis

[Just-A-Stick she/her]

2 hours ago, Edema Rue said:

Well...7000th post! Stars, that's a big number. I didn't want it to get lost in RP (like all my other milestones lol) but all I had was a short scene I was in the middle of writing...and that got significantly darker than I thought it was going to. I'm still putting it here, but uh...yeah. It's kind of long and kind of dark. Sorry.

TW: Suicide, death, lots of gore, cannibalism, being possessed, more gore...yeah.

Control:

  Reveal hidden contents

I know what it is to be powerless. I know what it is to have no control. To be watched without ever being seen…to touch without being felt…I know these feelings well. It has been so many years…so long…but I’ve adapted. I’ve learned…

When the girl awoke, she couldn’t move. She tried to stand, but couldn’t, so she tried to cry out, but her voice wouldn’t make a sound…

That initial spike of terror is one of the greatest pleasures I still have. The panic that comes with not controlling your own body…oh, yes. When the one thing that has always been yours and yours alone is ripped from your control…and oh, how humans love their control. Taking it from them produces such a strong fear…but after that spike, every human reacts just a little differently. That’s where the hunt gets…interesting.

The girl felt her heart pounding. Her breathing would have sped up, but…but she couldn’t control her own breath. A tear dripped from her eye, soaking into her pillow. Then another, until her pillow was soaked. Still, she could not move. Her breath was steady…she felt a smile curl across her lips. 

I never have been able to figure out how to keep them from crying. Isn’t that strange? Every other part of her body is mine, and yet she still weeps…a pity, I suppose, but perhaps I should be glad for it. It keeps them from retreating into their minds, keeps them tethered to the bodies I now control…

The girl struggled for control. To take even a deeper breath, twitch her finger, anything…

They fight, sometimes. It used to give me trouble, when I was weaker. But I am not who I was, and I’ve learned a few tricks…

The girl felt herself stop breathing. Her eyes bulged as she tried frantically to draw breath with limbs that wouldn’t listen, into lungs that wouldn’t expand…

I let her stop breathing for longer than was necessary. How could I not? Her desperate struggle was utterly fruitless, her terror so sweet, and once I let air rush into her…

She stopped struggling. This was not a power she should fight. This was not a battle she would survive.

There is danger in controlling a body that isn’t your own. You have to be careful, if you want them alive. 

And I like them alive.

After all, I subsist entirely on their fear, do I not? 

And the dead do not fear…

She stood up. No, no, it wasn’t her. Just her body. She’d never thought there was a difference, but now it was stark and clear…her body was walking. She was not. Her body was moving and she was stuck inside it and there was no escape from the nightmare she was living.

Terror tastes the sweetest. Not to all of my kind, I am sure, but…humans are allowed their favorite foods. We are the same way. I like terror. It’s difficult to get it just right…like seasoning a particularly thick steak. It comes easily in small bursts, but prolonging it? There are many kinds of fear. I must be careful, lest I let terror wilt to simply fear, or evolve into anxiety, which fades to stress…so many variations of the same flavor.

There was a person in front of her. The girl knew the person. It was…it was her brother. She had no way of telling him she was not herself, no way of-

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey,” her mouth repeated, in her voice. She was still walking, walking closer to him, to the hunting knife at his belt…

The girl wanted to scream. Wanted to yell for him to run. Wanted to stop, stop, stop! But she was still walking…and then she took two quick steps, almost like a dance, and her hands were around the long hunting knife at his belt. He frowned as she held it in front of her, still smiling, still crying, still trapped in a body she no longer controlled.

Despair, though, makes for a much better food source. It isn’t as fun, because it doesn’t take as much of a hunt, doesn’t take as much effort…the hearts of mortals are such fragile things, and their broken edges are so wonderfully…routine, almost. Isn’t that funny? They build their lives around the assumption that everything they have will come to an end. And then, when it does, they weep salty tears to quench my thirst.

She raised her arm and brought the knife down, into his neck. He stumbled back, hands reaching for his throat, and her smile turned cruel. “Sleep well, brother,” her voice said.

The body collapsed. The girl ran over to it, barely noticing that she controlled her own body once more. Her tears were falling faster now, her face turning red and blotchy. “No, no, no,” she whispered.

You can’t take the body completely. If you do, they'll grow numb. Numb…is like hunger. It’s a void. If you push a human too far, break them until they can’t feel any longer, you’ll lose your meal. You’ve failed  your hunt. I rarely break mine. Not anymore. Practice makes perfect, I suppose…and I’ve certainly had practice. I do not like being hungry…but shock is unavoidable, sometimes. 

The girl stared at her hands, and the blood still flowing from…from…from the…the corpse. She stumbled back, horrified. She’d…she’d killed a person. Not just a person. Her family. Her breath started coming quicker. 

Breathing is a strange feeling. I don’t miss it. Humans always seem to, though…

The fear was returning. Growing, too. The girl found herself thinking about how she’d explain this to the people that were sure to be here any moment…any…she was standing up. Was that her? She couldn’t…couldn’t tell. Her breathing was speeding up, and she didn’t know if it was this…this thing controlling her, or if it was the fear, the terror, the panic, the…the…

Bliss. Utter bliss, distilled from the terror of the weak. 

A soft groan escaped the girl’s lips. It wasn’t hers.

It was mine. My pleasure, bubbling out of her.

The girl’s mouth twisted into a wide grin. It hurt. It was too big. It didn’t fit with the tears that dripped silently from her chin. Her hand tossed her brother’s knife into the air, and it flipped, and she caught it. 

The funny thing about fighting is that so much of it is simply practice. Muscle memory. I don’t have muscles. But I know how humans work. And all it takes is learning with one person…they’re all the same. And all utterly meaningless…but they feed me, and that is a worthy purpose. But that is beside the point. I can make them do things they never learned to do. I can make them dance…

The girl was walking again. The wood floor creaked under her bare foot. With a sinking sort of dread, she saw stain seeping from under the door…

She wanted to turn back. Wanted to leave. But her hand reached for the doorknob.

I spent a long while setting everything up. I couldn’t just let it go to waste now, could I?

The door swung open. The girl cried harder.

I’ve always wondered what I could do if I could control more than one person at a time. How delightful, to have two puppets dancing to my strings…what fun, neither of them in control, both of them producing terror enough that I could finally be filled…

The dead were everywhere. They must have been her parents. The must have been. No one else was in the room…but the remains were impossible to identify. A finger here. A blood-soaked cloak there. Splinters of bone arranged in a perfect, white heart that floated in a puddle that was surely too red to be blood…

It’s incredible, how much blood there is in a human body. 

The girl saw only fragments. Limbs, cracked and broken. A stomach, torn open and spilling organs onto the floor.

Human screams don’t satisfy me. But they certainly are a pleasure. So full of life, and emotion…everyone is allowed to enjoy their own music, right?

A face, peeled off of a skull and stuck to a looking glass…

I do love my performances. Some might think it a pity that they can only happen once…but those are the most beautiful sort of things. The most fragile.

A mismatched pair of legs, impaled on the same sword…

Only two bodies. But so much potential…their terror as I flitted between their minds, as they tore each other apart…

The girl wanted to vomit. There was some of that, too, splattered across the bed.

I do not need to be seen to be known. 

She sat down on the bed, between faceless heads with bloodied teeth. Her leg stretched out from below her dress. She whimpered, her pulse rising.

I can allow her such simple movements…such noises…After all, I must keep her connected to her pain…

Knife still firmly in her hand, it started toward her calf…and she began to carve, hand steady even as her eyes blurred with tears and her voice cracked from screaming…

With only one, I don’t get to dance. But the human body makes such a wonderful canvas…

Tiny swirls, at first, growing larger as she wrapped the design around her calf, her shin, climbed up to her thigh…

I don’t need to be tangible to be felt.

It continued for hours. The girl dropped into unconsciousness more than once.

I can control her while she sleeps, but there’s no fun in that…her pain is nothing to me if she doesn’t feel it.

Often, she thought she heard a voice in her head. “Do you like that, little girl?” “Would you like to see how they died?” “Are you ready to die yet?” She wept and wailed and pulled at the shackles that kept her imprisoned in her mind.

I do like talking to them. But not at first. First, they must be alone.

Eventually, I bored of the knife…

The girl clawed at her own face. Her eyes, her mouth, her hair. Jagged cuts ran across her cheeks. Blood dripped from an eyelid that was shut over an empty socket.

Face wounds are peculiar. They rarely do much damage, but they hurt…oh, they hurt…and they tend to crush whatever remains of a person’s hope. Once they can’t see, it’s as if they finally realize that they are stuck with me until I let them die.

The girl raised the dagger, one last time.

The end is near, now.

A slit for the left wrist,

But first, a final climax.

A slit for the right.

Her panic is at its peak, now.

Set the knife next to the mangled legs.

I take her other eye, too.

Put each finger into the mouth,

One at a time,

Now,

Bite,

Chew,

Swallow.

She flung her arms out,

Like a Queen on an altar,

And her terror peaked,

As tears dripped with blood from eyes that were no longer there.

And the girl died.

And I rose from the body.

Filled,

But never satisfied.

Um...

Yeah. 

So that happened. And on that note...happy 7000 posts?

Umm...

*Genuinely scared* 

Where is my therapist??? 

[Edema Rue she/her]

1 hour ago, Just-A-Stick said:

Umm...

*Genuinely scared* 

Where is my therapist??? 

Fear not! Therapeddie is here!! I shall save you from myself!!!

[Just-A-Stick she/her]

Just now, Edema Rue said:

Fear not! Therapeddie is here!! I shall save you from myself!!!

YAY!  

[Edema Rue she/her]

10 minutes ago, Just-A-Stick said:

YAY!  

…

…

But I might also write more creepy things tonight.

2 hours ago, The Wandering Wizard said:

That's okay! I'll read them and ask how you're doing afterwards and hug you anyways sis

[Just-A-Stick she/her]

Just now, Edema Rue said:

…

…

But I might also write more creepy things tonight.

*hugs* 

Okie  

I'm AI arting rn .... treezzz makes me happy   

[RoyalBeeMage he/him]

On 1/6/2024 at 6:56 AM, Edema Rue said:

Well...7000th post! Stars, that's a big number. I didn't want it to get lost in RP (like all my other milestones lol) but all I had was a short scene I was in the middle of writing...and that got significantly darker than I thought it was going to. I'm still putting it here, but uh...yeah. It's kind of long and kind of dark. Sorry.

TW: Suicide, death, lots of gore, cannibalism, being possessed, more gore...yeah.

Control:

  Reveal hidden contents

I know what it is to be powerless. I know what it is to have no control. To be watched without ever being seen…to touch without being felt…I know these feelings well. It has been so many years…so long…but I’ve adapted. I’ve learned…

When the girl awoke, she couldn’t move. She tried to stand, but couldn’t, so she tried to cry out, but her voice wouldn’t make a sound…

That initial spike of terror is one of the greatest pleasures I still have. The panic that comes with not controlling your own body…oh, yes. When the one thing that has always been yours and yours alone is ripped from your control…and oh, how humans love their control. Taking it from them produces such a strong fear…but after that spike, every human reacts just a little differently. That’s where the hunt gets…interesting.

The girl felt her heart pounding. Her breathing would have sped up, but…but she couldn’t control her own breath. A tear dripped from her eye, soaking into her pillow. Then another, until her pillow was soaked. Still, she could not move. Her breath was steady…she felt a smile curl across her lips. 

I never have been able to figure out how to keep them from crying. Isn’t that strange? Every other part of her body is mine, and yet she still weeps…a pity, I suppose, but perhaps I should be glad for it. It keeps them from retreating into their minds, keeps them tethered to the bodies I now control…

The girl struggled for control. To take even a deeper breath, twitch her finger, anything…

They fight, sometimes. It used to give me trouble, when I was weaker. But I am not who I was, and I’ve learned a few tricks…

The girl felt herself stop breathing. Her eyes bulged as she tried frantically to draw breath with limbs that wouldn’t listen, into lungs that wouldn’t expand…

I let her stop breathing for longer than was necessary. How could I not? Her desperate struggle was utterly fruitless, her terror so sweet, and once I let air rush into her…

She stopped struggling. This was not a power she should fight. This was not a battle she would survive.

There is danger in controlling a body that isn’t your own. You have to be careful, if you want them alive. 

And I like them alive.

After all, I subsist entirely on their fear, do I not? 

And the dead do not fear…

She stood up. No, no, it wasn’t her. Just her body. She’d never thought there was a difference, but now it was stark and clear…her body was walking. She was not. Her body was moving and she was stuck inside it and there was no escape from the nightmare she was living.

Terror tastes the sweetest. Not to all of my kind, I am sure, but…humans are allowed their favorite foods. We are the same way. I like terror. It’s difficult to get it just right…like seasoning a particularly thick steak. It comes easily in small bursts, but prolonging it? There are many kinds of fear. I must be careful, lest I let terror wilt to simply fear, or evolve into anxiety, which fades to stress…so many variations of the same flavor.

There was a person in front of her. The girl knew the person. It was…it was her brother. She had no way of telling him she was not herself, no way of-

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey,” her mouth repeated, in her voice. She was still walking, walking closer to him, to the hunting knife at his belt…

The girl wanted to scream. Wanted to yell for him to run. Wanted to stop, stop, stop! But she was still walking…and then she took two quick steps, almost like a dance, and her hands were around the long hunting knife at his belt. He frowned as she held it in front of her, still smiling, still crying, still trapped in a body she no longer controlled.

Despair, though, makes for a much better food source. It isn’t as fun, because it doesn’t take as much of a hunt, doesn’t take as much effort…the hearts of mortals are such fragile things, and their broken edges are so wonderfully…routine, almost. Isn’t that funny? They build their lives around the assumption that everything they have will come to an end. And then, when it does, they weep salty tears to quench my thirst.

She raised her arm and brought the knife down, into his neck. He stumbled back, hands reaching for his throat, and her smile turned cruel. “Sleep well, brother,” her voice said.

The body collapsed. The girl ran over to it, barely noticing that she controlled her own body once more. Her tears were falling faster now, her face turning red and blotchy. “No, no, no,” she whispered.

You can’t take the body completely. If you do, they'll grow numb. Numb…is like hunger. It’s a void. If you push a human too far, break them until they can’t feel any longer, you’ll lose your meal. You’ve failed  your hunt. I rarely break mine. Not anymore. Practice makes perfect, I suppose…and I’ve certainly had practice. I do not like being hungry…but shock is unavoidable, sometimes. 

The girl stared at her hands, and the blood still flowing from…from…from the…the corpse. She stumbled back, horrified. She’d…she’d killed a person. Not just a person. Her family. Her breath started coming quicker. 

Breathing is a strange feeling. I don’t miss it. Humans always seem to, though…

The fear was returning. Growing, too. The girl found herself thinking about how she’d explain this to the people that were sure to be here any moment…any…she was standing up. Was that her? She couldn’t…couldn’t tell. Her breathing was speeding up, and she didn’t know if it was this…this thing controlling her, or if it was the fear, the terror, the panic, the…the…

Bliss. Utter bliss, distilled from the terror of the weak. 

A soft groan escaped the girl’s lips. It wasn’t hers.

It was mine. My pleasure, bubbling out of her.

The girl’s mouth twisted into a wide grin. It hurt. It was too big. It didn’t fit with the tears that dripped silently from her chin. Her hand tossed her brother’s knife into the air, and it flipped, and she caught it. 

The funny thing about fighting is that so much of it is simply practice. Muscle memory. I don’t have muscles. But I know how humans work. And all it takes is learning with one person…they’re all the same. And all utterly meaningless…but they feed me, and that is a worthy purpose. But that is beside the point. I can make them do things they never learned to do. I can make them dance…

The girl was walking again. The wood floor creaked under her bare foot. With a sinking sort of dread, she saw stain seeping from under the door…

She wanted to turn back. Wanted to leave. But her hand reached for the doorknob.

I spent a long while setting everything up. I couldn’t just let it go to waste now, could I?

The door swung open. The girl cried harder.

I’ve always wondered what I could do if I could control more than one person at a time. How delightful, to have two puppets dancing to my strings…what fun, neither of them in control, both of them producing terror enough that I could finally be filled…

The dead were everywhere. They must have been her parents. The must have been. No one else was in the room…but the remains were impossible to identify. A finger here. A blood-soaked cloak there. Splinters of bone arranged in a perfect, white heart that floated in a puddle that was surely too red to be blood…

It’s incredible, how much blood there is in a human body. 

The girl saw only fragments. Limbs, cracked and broken. A stomach, torn open and spilling organs onto the floor.

Human screams don’t satisfy me. But they certainly are a pleasure. So full of life, and emotion…everyone is allowed to enjoy their own music, right?

A face, peeled off of a skull and stuck to a looking glass…

I do love my performances. Some might think it a pity that they can only happen once…but those are the most beautiful sort of things. The most fragile.

A mismatched pair of legs, impaled on the same sword…

Only two bodies. But so much potential…their terror as I flitted between their minds, as they tore each other apart…

The girl wanted to vomit. There was some of that, too, splattered across the bed.

I do not need to be seen to be known. 

She sat down on the bed, between faceless heads with bloodied teeth. Her leg stretched out from below her dress. She whimpered, her pulse rising.

I can allow her such simple movements…such noises…After all, I must keep her connected to her pain…

Knife still firmly in her hand, it started toward her calf…and she began to carve, hand steady even as her eyes blurred with tears and her voice cracked from screaming…

With only one, I don’t get to dance. But the human body makes such a wonderful canvas…

Tiny swirls, at first, growing larger as she wrapped the design around her calf, her shin, climbed up to her thigh…

I don’t need to be tangible to be felt.

It continued for hours. The girl dropped into unconsciousness more than once.

I can control her while she sleeps, but there’s no fun in that…her pain is nothing to me if she doesn’t feel it.

Often, she thought she heard a voice in her head. “Do you like that, little girl?” “Would you like to see how they died?” “Are you ready to die yet?” She wept and wailed and pulled at the shackles that kept her imprisoned in her mind.

I do like talking to them. But not at first. First, they must be alone.

Eventually, I bored of the knife…

The girl clawed at her own face. Her eyes, her mouth, her hair. Jagged cuts ran across her cheeks. Blood dripped from an eyelid that was shut over an empty socket.

Face wounds are peculiar. They rarely do much damage, but they hurt…oh, they hurt…and they tend to crush whatever remains of a person’s hope. Once they can’t see, it’s as if they finally realize that they are stuck with me until I let them die.

The girl raised the dagger, one last time.

The end is near, now.

A slit for the left wrist,

But first, a final climax.

A slit for the right.

Her panic is at its peak, now.

Set the knife next to the mangled legs.

I take her other eye, too.

Put each finger into the mouth,

One at a time,

Now,

Bite,

Chew,

Swallow.

She flung her arms out,

Like a Queen on an altar,

And her terror peaked,

As tears dripped with blood from eyes that were no longer there.

And the girl died.

And I rose from the body.

Filled,

But never satisfied.

Um...

Yeah. 

So that happened. And on that note...happy 7000 posts?

umm very well crafted. you might want Therapeddie to look at yourself. that was dark. but good at the same time. would work interestingly in a horror book. a very dark horror book. 

Edited January 7 by RoyalBeeMage