meowcats734

[meowcats734]

was mindlessly clicking the random comic button on xkcd and my 2am brain started assembling them into some semblance of a story (loosely based on this webserial i'm writing)

[meowcats734]

She would’ve snapped at me if I said it, deservedly so, but the transformation that had wracked Ana’s body made her violently and asymmetrically beautiful. Deadly blossoms jutted out from her hardened skin, threaded with iridescent veins that flared in the sunlight. Each individual petal popped and shifted as Ana’s muscles moved, creating rippling waves of motion that reminded me of bees shimmying on a hive. I wanted to run a hand along her side, smooth those blooms like a hedgehog’s quills.

I didn’t think she’d appreciate me so much as asking to touch her, though. As soon as we dropped off our last client at the Swifthealers hospital, she immediately turned around and asked to be admitted. 

The woman behind the desk gave both of us a cheery smile. “Reason for admission?”

“Unwanted metamorphism,” Ana said.

The receptionist ticked a box on a form. “How long has it been since the metamorphism set in?”

Ana looked at me questioningly, and I added, “Less than an hour.”

Scritch, scritch, went the pen. “Any signs of further change over that time?”

“No,” Ana said.

“Name?”

“Anachel Death-to-Medical-Bills,” she supplied.

“Fill out this form, wait here. You’ll need to provide proof of family membership.” She handed us a sheet of paper and a pencil. 

Ana hesitantly tried to pick the pencil up, but the acidic sap seeping from her fingers sizzled upon touching the wood. She closed her eyes for a moment, then asked, “Tsu, could you…”

I picked up the pencil and paper, gently setting one finger on her shoulder between the spines. She leaned into me, just a little, then stiffened and jerked back as she felt the tips of her mutations brush my skin. “Do you want me to fill it out for you?”

She nodded wordlessly. I sat on her left, so I could write and hold her hand at the same time. She jerked back as I tried interlacing my fingers with hers, and I stopped, looking up at her.

“Do you—I’m sorry. Should I not be touching you right now?”

“The flowers hurt you,” she said, eyes roving the sterile waiting room.  The tripartite lights cast the folds of her face in flickering orange and blue.

“We’re in a hospital, and I’m careful,” I promised. “If the flowers weren’t there, would you want me to hold your hand?”

“I—yes, Tsu, but you don’t have to stick your hand in acid just to hold mine.” She clenched her fist.

Bah. I would swim across an acid lake just to hold Ana’s hand. She, uh, probably didn’t want to hear that right now, though, so I looked around for a solution. “Here, I’ll be right back.”

I took the clipboard with me to the counter, idly noting what details and paperwork I’d need. We had our Death-to-Medical-Bills card somewhere in my wallet… 

“Do you have any tripartite gloves?” I asked the receptionist.

She gave me a sympathetic look. I wondered how much she’d overheard. “Best I can do is nitrile. Tripartite’s for the staff only.”

“Thanks.” I took a pair of gloves, stuffed some nearby paper towels inside for padding, and went back to Ana. “Here.”

It was awkward and lumpy and barely counted as physical touch, but Ana held out her hand to interlace her fingers with mine anyway. Most of the form was stuff I could fill out for her—living situation, circumstances of mutation, primary healthcare family—but I needed her signature at the end of every page. Thankfully, the nitrile gloves held together against the plants that sprung from her skin. 

I returned the form to the receptionist, who gave me a tired smile, and we waited to be called up. The hospital’s oracles must’ve determined we were non-critical, because nearly an hour passed before we were able to see anyone. A couple times, one of the vaguely humanoid mannequins waiting on the walls opened their eyes and ushered a patient in, but none of the golems came for us.

After fifteen minutes of waiting, my brain ran out of anxiety and I tried to find something for Ana to do. Something to distract her from the foreign bodies that poked out from every inch of her skin. I held the phone at an arm’s length so that there’d be no context clash between her body and the phone’s internals, and we passed the time catching up on the local strategy tournaments. Ana kept picking at the blossoms, and I didn’t want to ask her to stop but I couldn’t tell if the fluid that came out was sap or blood, so I kept cracking jokes and trying to draw her attention back to Gensalla’s latest blunder when—

“Anachel?” The receptionist called out.

“Present,” Ana said, back straightening. One arm went to her chest in a reflexive salute before she remembered herself. To my relief, that meant Ana stopped trying to dislodge the budding growths from her arm. Her biology was alien now—maybe poking holes in her body was completely harmless. But if nothing else, I could tell from the set of her jaw that it hurt when she dug her fingers into her folded flesh.

“Patient for Dr. Enocari,” the receptionist said. A moment later, the cloth-wrapped form of a haz golem awoke, its eyes swiveling to meet ours. The golem gave us a polite bow.

“Come right this way, Anachel.” Dr. Enocari said, holding open a door. I shot Ana a questioning glance. She gave my hand a reassuring squeeze and stood.

“Do you want me to come with you?” I asked. Before Ana could answer, Dr. Enocari interrupted:

“I need to speak with the patient alone first,” he said. “Multiple minds in the same vicinity could strain the local worldskein.”

I guess that explained why he was operating through a golem, then. I sat back down, peeling off the glove—the acid had apparently torn through the covering in places, leaving it ruined. 

It didn’t take long for Dr. Enocari to return, to my surprise. I was busying myself by cleaning off some droplets of plant fluid from the seat when Dr. Enocari returned. “The patient would like to see you,” he said. “Since you’ve spent an extended time in each other’s vicinity already, odds are it’s safe.”

Ana had changed into a tripartite hospital gown. I wasn’t quite sure what the three interwoven materials were, but there were no holes in her clothing so I called it a win. “The doc said I was wanted?”

Ana nodded stiffly. “Yeah. I—can I ask you to stay with me? In here? I want you to hear what this guy is saying.”

“You could always tell me after, if you want privacy,” I offered. She pressed her lips together and ducked her head, and through the growths on her face I saw her expression dissolve into that wary, neutral stance she so often slipped into without noticing. “Or I can stay,” I hurriedly said. “Doesn’t bother me, I just wanted to make sure you’re okay with it.” She drew my hand closer to her, and that was all the answer I needed.

Dr. Enocari’s golem stepped back into the room, the painted face almost sympathetic when it turned to look at us. Hell, maybe it was sympathetic—my expertise was in rogue spectives, not the mainstream stuff. For all I knew, the dang thing was sentient. “I understand that you’re the patient’s significant other?”

“Yes, I’m her girlfriend,” I said. “Is that… relevant?”

“You tell me,” he said. “The patient wanted me to repeat what I told her, which is that sudden bodily metamorphosis is a perfectly natural process, and there shouldn’t be anything to fear, healthwise.”

Oh.

So that was why Ana wanted me here.

I looked towards her, saw her digging her fingers beneath one of the hard, irregular growths jutting out from her flesh, and she gave me a small, trusting nod. She needed me to be her advocate again—someone to stand between her and Dr. Enocari just like how she stood between me and the tides of living, hungry wax. And part of me wished she had just told me that was what she wanted, but… well, being unable to express what she needed was exactly why we’d set up this little system of communication.

“What about her mental health?” I asked. “Haven’t there been patients who wanted to return to their human form?”

Dr. Enocari sighed. “Yes, but trying to undo a transformation like this is… difficult and risky. For something like this, we’d need invasive surgeries, drug regimens, all kinds of procedures that haven’t been studied well—”

Ana laughed, bitter and dark and utterly trans, and I didn’t have to look to her to know what she thought of that. I did anyways, and her eyes were narrow and furious now as she gestured for me to keep going, to be the kind of person who could talk to strangers without getting the words tangled up in her throat.

“What if someone wanted that anyway?”

Dr. Enocari looked between her and I. “Is there a reason why you’re the one speaking for her?”

“Yeah, the reason’s called crippling social anxiety instilled by a lifetime of being taught that to be noticed is to be targeted.” I turned back to Ana, just to check, and she had ducked her head a little and made the hand sign for slow, so I pulled back from the topic of Ana herself. “She asked for me to be here, did she not?”

Dr. Enocari nodded slowly. “...She did. Regardless, however, I would still refuse to recommend such an operation unless the patient’s physical health was in danger. There are less risky tools for healing the mind. Psychotherapy, for instance.”

“And if, hypothetically speaking, a client had already gone through therapy and determined that there are no words that can be said that can change how fucking awful it feels to live with vines going through your skin? Or acid leaking from your body?”

“I am not going to be a part of enacting what is fundamentally a risky cosmetic surgery for the sole sake of her peace of mind,” Dr. Enocari said. “Spectives are, with very few exceptions, not intrinsically dangerous to themselves. The acid does not harm her. Trying to operate on her unprecedented biology would. You’re not going to find a doctor who’ll help you mutilate yourself.”

And I was about to question his definition of harm when Ana spoke.

“Tsu,” she said, and from the labored way her lips moved before she spoke I knew this was something important, something she’d drawn together and rehearsed in her mind while we were arguing, so I shut up and listened. “He’s not going to help.”

I opened my mouth, but Ana wasn’t done—just gathering her thoughts. I held up a hand when Dr. Enocari started talking, and thankfully he fell silent too. 

“I invoke conviction,” Ana said.

Dr. Enocari recoiled. “You’re joking.”

“Ana—” I started to say, but one look at how her eyes darted away from mine and I knew she’d stop if I told her to. Even if it wasn’t what she wanted.

And what was conviction if not a way to find out what Ana truly wanted, anyway?

So I held my peace, and Ana straightened her back.

“I invoke conviction,” she repeated. “My will against yours. Make me human again.”

Dr. Enocari’s golem just stared at Ana, stunned, in which time she prompted, “Do you fold?”

That snapped him out of his shock. “Absolutely not. I’m not even a surgeon, you… you,” he finished, lamely. 

Ana blushed, clenching her fists, and I intervened before Dr. Enocari could say anything else. “Sure, but nothing stops us from invoking conviction on the Swifthealers hospital as a whole.”

“Why do you want this so badly?” he asked, and there was something pleading in his voice. If I was a touch more cynical, I would have just said that he didn’t want to have to deal with the fallout from making a patient invoke conviction. But maybe, just maybe, he genuinely believed that refusing to help Ana was what was best for her. “You’re perfectly healthy, for a spective.”

“Tsu tried to explain,” Ana muttered, nodding towards me. “You didn’t believe her. So I’ll fucking make you.”

Dr. Enocari’s golem closed its eyes. “Fine. Go talk to the secretary, if you’re going to make demands of the hospital. I,” he said, “am dismissing you with a clean bill of health.”

Making a disgusted sound, Ana stood up and turned to leave.

A.N.

This is part of a longer story, check out the rest below if you liked this one!

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Fun fact: there’s a virus that makes bugs iridescent

disease that makes you beautiful then kills you

[meowcats734]

I'm colorblind and that blue is still beautiful so here's my take on the disease that makes you beautiful then kills you

Fun fact: there’s a virus that makes bugs iridescent

disease that makes you beautiful then kills you

[meowcats734]

a fictional wikipedia page from the world of the orchard

(I'm writing a story based on this here!)

[meowcats734]

I got a bad grade on the pop quiz because I'm not one of the kids who can see the future so I'm gonna tell you what I got wrong and you're gonna quiz me on it, okay?

Teach says... uh, "a state is a monopoly on evil; a state that does not control all evil within its borders is by definition a failed state." And that's why we have the Department of General Evil, and if you really like hurting people you can go work there when you grow up so that you don't hurt anyone the guys in charge tell you not to.

Ok, ready? Ask me.

States are, whatchamacallit... they gotta have all the evil, all in a nice lil box. 'cept Songserra didn't care when Edera picked on you for painting your nails. And when they turned into claws nobody helped turn them back. We had to do it all on our own.

I guess that means Songserra failed.

(this is microfic set in the world of Orchard, rest of the story's here)

[meowcats734]

Imagination has been captured by the adventures of Normal Archeologist who has been meticulously dusting off pottery sherds for the past 48 hours straight because the Pain-Eating Brain Worm has rendered them incapable of feeling any kind of negative sensation like "hunger" out of a misguided desire to take away their pain. Time to write!

The archaeologist was holed up in a clearing in the woods, scraping dust from a twisted, organic-looking pottery sherd. He was buck naked and filthy, not that he seemed to mind. A hulking spective that looked vaguely like a human-sized sea slug slurped noisily on the back of his skull, drinking little silver lights. Neither looked up or acknowledged us as Ana and I stepped down into the clearing.

“Erishen?” I cautiously asked. “I’m with the orchard; your family’s worried about you.”

No response. I walked forwards, Ana matching me step for step. The hunched-over young man had a beatific smile on his face, squatting in the dirt and using a fine brush on the sherd. Every now and then he paused to take notes on a clipboard. He showed no sign of being aware of our approach.

I hesitantly tapped him on the shoulder—perhaps he was Deaf? The Orchard intel didn’t mention it, but the Orchard intel was just written by other workers like Ana and me. They could mess up and be incorrect.

So could I, apparently. If he was Deaf, it wasn’t the reason why he couldn’t hear me: my hand phased through his shoulder harmlessly, my skin prickling a little at the contact. Ana gave me a sharp look, and I jerked my hand back just in case, but there was no visible damage aside from a slight redness.

“Think he can see shadows?” Ana asked. “Non-invisible phasers are usually vulnerable to light.”

“Nice,” I said, and I think Ana blushed slightly beneath her matted coat of roses. How was she still so adorable despite her mutations? No, had to keep focused. I stood between Erishen and this world’s sun, and he did frown slightly… but the spective on his back contracted, swallowing a silver fleck, and his blissful expression returned as he pulled out a small torch.

So mundane electronics worked in this universe, huh? Good to know. Less good to know was that he wouldn’t pay us any attention unless we demanded it. He pulled out his clipboard again, documenting something in illegible shorthand. Had he seriously warped reality specifically so that the only things he could interact with were pottery sherds and paperwork? I mean, if it was what he wanted, cool, live and let live, but I’d never seen any spective so… narrow in focus.

“Touchstick?” I asked, holding out a hand. Ana set a small ivory baton in my hand, and I experimentally nudged him. It, too, clipped through his body, although it brushed against the slug riding his shoulders by accident.

I knelt down beside him, mentally summing up what I knew about his magic. Aside from the spective, he could interact with light, and judging by the way his hair wasn’t floating, gravity still had a hold on him. So he could interact with the floor as well. I scribbled into the dirt:

HELLO

He did notice this time, and his expression lit up. His lips started moving, and though at first it was difficult to hear, after a few heartbeats his voice faded in.

“...realize you could understand me. Are you the representative from earlier, or…” He frowned at the shadow on the floor, then looked up at me, and disappointment flickered across his face. “Oh. You’re just another human.”

The spective on the back of his neck took another deep swig, and his irritation drained away. “Well, I can’t say I expected to see one of my own species again. I’m Erishen! Who’re you?”

“Tsutarrah Orchard,” I said. 

“Ah. An Orchard.” He shook his head. “I’m quite happy with this universe, thank you very much. Whoever hired you to bring me back, please tell them I’m not interested.”

“It was your father,” I said.

“My…” Erishen paused in his work, something like consternation flickering over his lips, and then the spective gulped down a particularly large mote of light and his expression faded back to focused neutrality. “No, thank you. As I said, I’m quite happy where I am.”

Ana gave me a questioning look, holding her spear in one thorn-pocked hand, but I shook my head. “Mind if I ask what you’re working on?”

“Oh, of course! I’d love it if someone showed an interest in my work…” The spective kept chugging—blood of the pruners, was that his brain showing through the back of his skull? Poor kid. “There’s a whole timeline of history in this forest, and I have all the time in the world to explore it.”

He really didn’t. He really, really didn’t. Now that he was in phase with us, the sheer stench of his body became an almost physical effort to fight against. I… had been wondering where he’d been using the restroom, hoping that since it had been only half a day he simply hadn’t needed to. Clearly, he had, and clearly, he didn’t care.

“What’ve you found so far?” I asked, holding back the urge to gag. Ana wasn’t quite so lucky, and discreetly began breathing through her nose. That was fine; the kid seemed harmless. I had to feel him out, see what would pry him away from his work.

“Oh, I’m just documenting my first find You know, I’m not even sure if it’s intelligently crafted or if it’s natural?” He held it between his hands, and his voice immediately faded again. After a moment, the clipboard slipped straight through his arm, landing on the floor with a faint thud; a few moments later, the sherd followed suit, though he was careful to only let it fall a couple millimeters. Thankfully, he phased back in before long. “...so it’s older than the clipboard but younger than the ground surrounding it, or I’d fall through to the planet’s core.”

“You…” I tried to parse his statement. “You can selectively choose what you interact with, based on how old it is?”

He nodded absently, the translucent entity on the back of his brain squelching obscenely. “Great help with avoiding the wildlife. Speaking of which, since there’s nothing you can do for me, I’m just going to—”

“I wouldn’t say there’s nothing I can do for you,” I interrupted, thinking frantically. Keeping him talking and trying to convince him to leave wasn’t going to work, and there was no way to use force on someone who could simply decide that he had no interest in interacting with your physical reality. That left one option. “You said you couldn’t identify whether that artifact was natural—why?” 

“Because these things are everywhere,” he explained, eyes lighting up. His irritation melted away as he explained, one trembling hand pointing at another spot he’d excavated. “The dirt gets older as you go down, so I could stick my head down to take a peek, and guess what? There’s little indentations that’re the right shape and size for more of these fragments littered along the forest floor. Judging by the curvature, these were most likely parts of something roughly spherical, about the size of a head… but there’s clear etchings on two of the six I’ve uncovered, ones that’ve been made a few years more recently than the material was first formed.”

I only followed a little of that, but it was enough to form a plan. “Have you looked to see how far down they go in total?”

Erishen laughed. “Oh, they go deep. Deeper than I can stand up in, honestly. If I attuned myself to that far back in time I’d phase through the ground and be unable to jump back out.” The spective noisily slurped, and his expression became pensive. “But maybe it would be worth it to see…”

“You can have it both ways,” I said. “Ana and I will dig out a patch of the oldest dirt for you to stand on, yeah?”

He rubbed his chin, considering. “Really? You’d do that for me?”

The slug on the back of his skull tugged, and a bit of blood came loose in its translucent mouth as it freed its latest prize. I had my suspicions about what it was taking from him, but there was nothing I could do about it from here. “Really,” I promised, and I felt a touch nauseated at the guileless smile on his emaciated, callow face.

Ana raised an eyebrow at me, and I nodded; wordlessly, she drove her bone spear into the earth and began to dig. Evidently, her mutation hadn’t ruined her musculature, because even with a suboptimal tool she ripped through the earth with ease.

“Get first aid ready,” I murmured, when Erishen inevitably became distracted and slipped out of phase with reality. 

“You’ve got a plan?” she asked.

“I’m hoping I can separate that spective from his brain,” I replied, pointing at the silver-flecked slug.

She shuddered. “Fuck me.”

“Later,” I said distractedly. The sound of digging stopped for a moment as I went back to the mouth of the portal, sticking a hand out and dialling the Swifthealers. By the time I got back, Ana had finished the pit, glistening faintly with sweat in the sunlight.

I caught Erishen’s attention with more words scratched into the earth, and he phased back into tangibility. Now that I knew what to expect, I could feel a faint puff of air—much less than I’d expect to be displaced by a human body, even one as emaciated as Erishen. Hopefully that observation would get us a few extra bucks on the intel writeup. “Ready?” I asked.

Ugh, I felt ill deceiving the man. There wasn’t a suspicious line on his face as he grinned. “Thanks for doing this for me, really. I couldn’t dig that far down myself, what with…” He looked down at his shaking limbs, and the spective on the back of his skull feasted as he wobbled uneasily. “Ah. Could you give me a hand, then?”

To be honest, I was about as physically strong as a taxidermied squirrel, but I couldn’t ask Ana to hold him for me. So I shouldered half his weight as he stumbled down the little pit and sat down with a light thud. I tried not to brush the filth off from where he’d leaned on me. His upper body wasn’t that dirty. 

There was no visible change at first, just a slight woosh of air. Abruptly, his eyes lit up and he pointed at something, exclaiming silently—or maybe just very quietly? I thought I could almost hear something, as if from a great distance away. From his point of view, the upper layers of dirt should be rippling out of visibility as he peeled back the layers of time one by one…

Until abruptly, he pushed too far and phased out of contact with the spective on the back of his skull.

It plopped to the ground immediately, flopping like a wet fish, and Ana hurriedly scooped them up in a net. Handing the squirming spective to me, Ana unfolded the first-aid kit she’d brought. I wouldn’t have thought any of it would be applicable to Erishen, unconscious, out of phase, and with the back of his skull open to the world, but she surprised me. With precise efficiency, she dug out a platform of the bottommost layer of dirt, covered a stretcher with it, and scooped up the unconscious archeologist.

“Client acquired,” Ana said, and there was a note of relief in her voice. “Let’s get out of this dimension.”

A.N.

This is part of a longer story, check out the rest below if you liked this one!

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there's a fascinating type of post on this site which boils down to "what if, instead of being cliché, such-and-such work of fiction instead dodged all genre tropes in a way that instead made it really boring"

[meowcats734]

astigmatism at night - stardroppoetry

[meowcats734]

I've been trying to draw lately, which I know I am utterly and completely terrible at. I am colorblind and have never practiced drawing as a result. So I'm gonna be posting these godawful shitty drawings of things I can't draw (hands, eyes, legs, humans, flowers... basically everything I wanted to draw in this image) until one day, after lots and lots of utterly disgusting "art," I will finally make something I can be proud of.

I have no idea what color flowers are supposed to be. I'm colorblind. If flowers aren't normally whatever that color on Ana's wrist is, that's on me.

All I want to do is write this scene where one character treats another character gently and the other one is just totally undone by it in a “this gentleness upsets me far more than all the traumatizing things that have happened to me in this entire story because the suffering was pretty much expected whereas this is just…outside of my comfort zone” and somehow this is difficult. 

[meowcats734]

“I hurt Thom,” Ana said, and her tone was clipped and resolute and braced for impact.

And I won’t lie, it rocked me back a step. But the response was ready, natural as a flower unfolding its petals. “Thank you,” I simply said.

Her expression froze in place for a heartbeat, as if she’d bitten into ice cream when expecting mashed potatoes. “You’re thanking me,” she said slowly, “for putting a kid in the hospital.”

“I’m thanking you for telling me,” I said, “and for saving my life from Thom when they tried to drag us into the Neverfound.”

“No.” It wasn’t clear at first what Ana was rejecting, but a cold chill stuttered through me when I saw that she was angry. “No, you’re better than this. You hate violence, you hate death. You’re supposed to hate me.”

I reached up to put my hand on Ana’s cheek. “Ana,” I swore, “I do not hate you.”

“Someone has to.” She stepped back, my fingers sliding off her chin. “Because I don’t.”

“Why does someone have to hate you?” I asked, and to my surprise I was starting to get frustrated. Not even because Ana had killed a client—I truly believed she wasn’t at fault. Why couldn’t she just see that I loved her and forgave her?

“Thom is a person. They have friends. A family. We were supposed to save him, and I crippled him, and I don’t regret it.”

“Then—Ana, I promise I’m not being contrary for the sake of it, but if you don’t regret it and I don’t hate you what’s the problem?” A gentle wind kicked up across the forest floor, leaves trickling around us in circles.

“That is the problem!” Ana clutched at her forehead. “I don’t regret shooting a kid, and what the hell kind of monster does that make me?” 

“It doesn’t make you—“

“And you’re supposed to be better.” I almost missed it, when the magic began to bloom. Her voice was tight, frustrated, but to my horror the first sign that she was becoming a spective was the way her skin bubbled as something began to blossom from beneath.“I know that I’m violent, Tsu. I know that I hurt everyone around me.”

“No, Ana, that’s wrong. You don’t hurt everyone around you.” I reached out to touch her shoulder, but she jerked away.

“Don’t tell me I’m wrong, Tsu.” Thorns slid out from under her skin, quiet and glistening with dew that made my eyes water with just the vapors it gave off. Her face, her beautiful face that she’d spent so long to attain, prickled and warped as flowers jutted out from her chin and upper lip, weeping purple pollen. “I’m hurting you now, aren’t I?”

I don’t think I got angry, not exactly. But something inside me grew hot and bright, and I said, “So what if you are? I say that you are worth it to me. And who are you to deny me that?”

She forced her eyes open, despite how much it must have hurt—her eyelids had began to swell and spike. “But I hurt them,” she repeated, as if I was slow for not understanding that this made her unlovable and hateful and worthy of abandonment. “You hate that.”

“I can’t stop you from saying what you believe about yourself,” I replied, “but you have no right to tell me how I feel, either. Yes, I hate violence. Guess what? I love you more.”

“No,” Ana said, and her dreamlike readiness began to wisp away. She thrashed backwards, getting to her feet, and vines snaked from the surreal soil to drag her down. “No, you don’t know what you’re saying.”

“I damn well do, Anachel. And I will keep. Fucking. Saying. It.” I shucked off my jacket, wrapped it around my hand, and grabbed her, even as she bloomed and wept sap that itched and burned at my skin. “Drag yourself into the earth and I’m coming with you, because I love you.”

“I can’t stop it!” Ana started to panic, thrashing in my grip, and the roots pulled her down to her knees. It was all I could do to hold on—if she’d leveraged her training I would have been flung aside like a leaf. “Tsutarrah, let go!”

“Do you think it means nothing, when I say it?” When she looked at me in puzzlement, her frantic flailing halting for a moment, I set my feet against the ground and hauled. “I love you.”

“It’s… I…” She was still sinking, up to her hips now, but as her hand reached the floor she braced herself, and those arms held so much more strength than I could ever know. Her descent halted. 

“Do one thing for me, and if you still want me to, I’ll let you go.” I wrapped my hand in a jacket and grabbed her hand. Ana swallowed anxiously. “Look me in the eyes and say that you are loved by me.”

She looked me in the eyes. Her fingers flexed against mine, but through the fabric of my jacket the caustic sap could not touch me.

“You… love me,” she whispered.

And I knew she didn’t quite believe it, not yet.

But her muscles rippled, and with a tremendous crack, she pulled her legs free from the earth.

I stumbled backwards, just a little, as she clambered to her feet, and reflexively she reached out to catch me before stopping herself, looking anxiously at her hands. But the moment was over. Any minute now, I’d see the thorns sliding from her skin and melting into nonexistence, as the mantle of spectivity lifted from her shoulders…

Any… minute… now?

“Tsu?” Ana said, her voice rising in panic as the deadly growths refused to fade. “Tsu, what’s happening? Why aren’t I returning to normal?”

Oh.

Oh, fuck.

“Okay. Okay. We’ll figure this out. Let’s get you back to our world first, see if that helps,” I said.

Ana staggered to her feet, and through my cloth-swaddled hand I steadied her. She smiled, just enough that it didn’t tear at her lips, and we stumbled back through the portal together. 

The unobtrusive office we’d entered through hadn’t changed a whit, although the portal dimmed noticeably as we passed through. But as Ana waited for the transformation to revert, hopeful, anxious, then resigned, I closed my eyes and thought.

“We have to go back,” I concluded.

Ana was already halfway to the portal when I grabbed her arm. Her skin was cool, even through the layers of protective cloth. “Wait. Let me explain.”

“We need this job anyway, yeah?” 

“I know, but with you—like this—I would’ve said to take a day off in any other circumstances.”

She shook her head. “I need to keep moving anyway, or I might just hit myself.”

“Hey.” I adjusted the padding, placed it on her shoulder, and gave her a light nuzzle. She inhaled in surprise, and when she turned to look at me there was a faint shine to her eyes. “We’ll get through this. No matter what. Because—repeat after me—I love you.”

“You… love me,” she repeated, almost awed, and perhaps it was just wishful thinking but maybe, just maybe, she really believed it this time.

“Which is why we have to go back,” I concluded. “We’ll never see this universe again if we don’t, and if we want to figure out what’s happened to you… well, there’s no better answers than the people who ripped a hole into this world in the first place.” 

Ana nodded. “Then I’m in.”

Scarred with roses and bleeding poison, my girlfriend stepped back into the forest that had ruined her. Resolutely, I followed.

A.N.

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All I want to do is write this scene where one character treats another character gently and the other one is just totally undone by it in a “this gentleness upsets me far more than all the traumatizing things that have happened to me in this entire story because the suffering was pretty much expected whereas this is just…outside of my comfort zone” and somehow this is difficult. 

[meowcats734]

I think there was a push about fifty years ago, when the manifold egg hatched and modern computation was kickstarted, to categorize all the neighboring dimensions that wizards could reach unassisted. The last remnants of that eternal endeavor had died down when we collected all the data and realized that there were no reliable accounts of ever opening a portal to the same dimension twice. And it really sucked that nobody from our world would ever get to return here, for two reasons. The first was that we wouldn’t get any subsidies from the Orchards for a record of our experience.

The second was that this forest was beautiful, and I wished I could return.

The tree trunks were several meters thick and ten times that distance apart, giving Ana and I a lovely view of the ceiling of undulating leaves. They formed fractal borders that reminded me of countries, or cracks in glass, each greatwood declaring its own patch of sun to be harvested.

Ana glanced up, following my gaze, then resumed scanning her surroundings. Her only weapon was a long bone spear, which would leave us hopelessly outmatched against any inhabitants of this dimension who had built technology based on this world’s physics.

Thankfully, none of the formicine creatures who’d come to meet us seemed hostile. They’d made a path straight to where the last person to come from our dimension was staying, and walled off every other direction with a thin, translucent film. The message was clear: the natives of this world were happy to let us retrieve members of our home reality, but anything beyond that was off-limits.

Which I was fine with. Coaxing rogue spectives back into society was how I stayed fed and housed. It just saddened me that I couldn’t sightsee even a little.

Ana swiveled as a titanic, feathered form rustled in a nearby tree, spear ready, and for a heartbeat I thought we’d come across some gigantic sparrow giving birth. A moment’s observation, however, showed that the second, smaller creature was burrowing into the still-living bird, ignoring its thrashing. 

The dog-sized squirrel finished melding with the bird, wearing it on its back like a hermit crab did its shell. Silver hairs snaked upwards from the squirrel’s form, digging into the poor bird’s eyes, and it ceased its thrashing before mechanically extending its wings. Its takeover complete, the composite being flapped off into the air, swooping up past the trees.

I watched the entire process with wide, fascinated eyes—if phones weren’t likely to either violently explode or simply cease functioning upon being brought outside our universe, I would have snapped a photo. “That was sick,” I whispered to Ana.

“Ngh.” She set her spear back into a ready position. “Let’s get out of this dimension as soon as possible.”

My enthusiasm melted away a little. “Hey, Ana? Did I do something—“

“Not the time,” she said brusquely. I hurried to catch up with her, chewing on my lip. We passed by a bloom of pale, wriggling grasses whose mouths opened and closed aimlessly; Ana warily navigated us around them, some of the tension leaving her body when we were past. We’d hardly gotten by the grasses when Ana held out a hand for me to stop, and I obeyed. Ignoring your girlfriend and ignoring your bodyguard separately were two imbecilic things; doing both simultaneously was not to be so much as considered.

The ground looked perfectly normal to me, but Ana poked it with a wooden touchstick and scowled. I was about to ask what was wrong when she jabbed the earth with the tip of her spear, and with a yip of pain the ground imploded. Some kind of fox had apparently turned itself inside-out and laid in wait for an unwary meal, because what I’d thought was more dirt and soil turned out to be the guts of a fox who scurried away, slurping its bleeding insides back into its unhinged, rubbery jaw.

“You didn’t have to stab it,” I weakly said.

“Would you rather it ate you?” Ana snapped—and since when did Ana snap at me?

I hesitantly set a hand on her arm, and she flinched, giving me an ashamed look. “Did I… did I mess up somehow?” I asked.

“No! No, you’re perfect, you didn’t do anything wrong, I’m the one who’s yelling at you and—agh!” She grabbed her hair. “Can you get mad at me? Just a little?”

“What?” I drew her into a hug, at which she stiffened. “No! Why would I be mad at you?”

She pulled away and I let her; she scanned the forest for threats once more, almost automatically. There was a squawk as the inverted fox devoured what appeared to be a rabbit, but was actually just a lure for an oversized underground owl. All I saw was a flash of beak and the fox disappeared.

“Because I’m—this! The only thing I can think about is what’s going to kill us, and—ugh, I’m doing it again. I—let’s just keep going, okay?”

“Okay, but… can we talk about this after the job?” I asked, stepping to her side.

But instead of agreeing or refusing, she inhaled, sharp and pained as if she’d stepped on a caltrop, and said, “You’re right.”

“Huh?”

“If I put this off again I’ll never tell you. Now’s as good a time as any, and that’s the problem.”

I almost wanted to ask if she wanted to double back and call off the job, but she felt brittle and I didn’t want to push her. “What do you mean?”

“I never stop being—this.” She gestured at the bone spear. “Even when you just wanted to show me a good time, something in the back of my mind kept looking for threats, something that would hurt us, something to hurt. And I—I’m not good for anything else.”

“Hey, hey, hey. Anachel.” I stepped up to her chest; her downcast gaze met mine. “You’re good for me.”

“Am I?” She clutched her head. “I could say something right now that would hurt you. Hurt you so badly you’d hate me.”

“You won’t,” I promised. “Ana, I will never hate you.” 

And something twisted behind her eyes, the violent instinct of the first punch thrown, the heady call of a bridge’s ledge, and Ana spoke three words and I flinched as if slapped—

A.N.

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imagine if the oceans were replaced by forests and if you went into the forest the trees would get taller the deeper you went and there’d be thousands of undiscovered species and you could effectively walk across the ocean but the deeper you went, the darker it would be and the animals would get progressively scarier and more dangerous and instead of whales there’d be giant deer and just wow

[meowcats734]

Been getting into drawing lately, so here's my attempt at drawing the hazard sign of the Neverfound. Yes, it's amateurish; so will my next hundred drawings. Eventually, I'll get better.

While taking a nap today I dreamt there was a hazard sign called "never found" which was used to indicate a location where people disappeared never to be seen again

[meowcats734]

If you'd like, I could send you a story I recently wrote that has some visuals I would be honored to see in a drawing! No worries if not though.

Super art blocked :( feel free to send doodle requests I crave inspo

[meowcats734]

There was something ethereal about Songserra at night, a quavering essence to the streets that whispered “what you encounter today will never be seen again.” In front of us on the sidewalk, a hovering sphere of glossy obsidian argued loudly with a wizard over which operating system was best. They were either both drunk, high, or sparked, because they shouted with such fervor that the nearby troupe of high school students nudged the spective in their midst, who held out their paws and willed a shimmering, soundproof bubble into existence around the kids.

Ana and I squeezed between the two groups, the riotous clamor of the old to our right and the embarrassed silence of the young to our left, then met each other’s eyes and burst out laughing. 

We were off after that, jogging hand-in-hand down the street for no reason other than that the sun would rise and our time would end and it seemed a crime to let any of these sweet, syrupy moments slip from our skin.

The restaurant we hit up served potatoes hot and cheap, with no regard for the time of day. It was perhaps still more than a couple who had just lost their latest job should have spent, but I needed one moment free from fear for the future, and Phin’s Potatoes provided.

They served one thing, and they served it good. There was no toppings bar or menu, just baked potatoes with butter and sour cream, and they were heavy and warm as soft sun-baked stones. Any of my rations cards could have bought twenty of them in a month; I swiped my Metran-Cuisine-Lovers card and tossed a boxed potato to Ana.

I think that’s when the magic set in, when the mantle of spectivity swirled soft around my shoulders. I caught a glimpse of the cook in the backroom, how they wove a net of light with their fingers and transmuted some kind of dark sludge into sour cream, and I nudged Ana and she gagged a little and then we both devoured the potatoes anyway because we hadn’t eaten since noon.

The magic of the moment gripped me, and I flexed my will against the world’s. The colors of the potato stand melted into each other like sidewalk chalk in summer rain, and from the rivulets and swirls I guided us to the cookie shop we’d gone on a date to last month. 

We startled the cashier, as teleportation tends to do, and he tucked away his phone, the movie still faintly playing from his pocket. “Ah—what can I get you two?”

“Rodleri, right?” I asked. When he nodded hesitantly, I said, “Walnut flour medium for me, please.”

“Cranberry,” Ana said, and a heartbeat later we crumpled two empty cookie wrappers into the cheap paper boxes we’d gotten our dinner in.

I called the magic once more, the bakery becoming liquid blurs as we took the shortened path, and all at once we were face-to-face by the duck pond that had closed for maintenance last spring.

It was empty, the reflecting pond drained, but the moon found a home in Ana’s eyes instead. The singing velocity with which the night had passed seemed to slow a moment, perhaps caught and dammed up in the nearby pond. “You’re pretty,” I said, poking her lightly in the shoulder.

Ana blushed. “You’re beautiful,” she replied. “Honestly, I don’t deserve you.”

I poked her again, harder, though I could have hit her as hard as I could and not made a dent in those arms of hers. “Doesn’t matter what you deserve. I want you. You, Anachel. You’re mine.”

Her breath hitched slightly, and she tilted her chin up, perhaps meant for agreement but swiftly repurposed to let me kiss her neck. “Yours,” she managed to agree breathily.

I slid one hand under her shirt, but with a disappointed sigh Ana said, “Wait.”

Immediately, the pleasant flush to my thoughts withdrew, and I took my hands off her, reassessing. She had a grim, frustrated expression, though given our chat in the tram I suspected it wasn’t at me. “Hey. You okay?”

She nodded. “Yeah, I was really enjoying your… it’s not you,” she said. “I’m sorry, it’s just… not the time.”

The mantle of power that had swirled around me balked at the concept of not the time. For mine was the power that made “next block over” measure time instead of space, the power of streets blurred from laughter and nevermorrow sunrise. It was the magic of the moment, and letting that moment end would take the magic with it.

But if Ana wasn’t in the mood, she wasn’t in the mood, and that was that. The power didn’t understand—it simply wasn’t its nature. It was ephemeral and delicate as a strand of hair in the breeze, and it was never meant to be forever.

So carefully, I packed it away. I opened the greasy paper box lined with sugar cookie crumbs, holding it to the sky, and let it fill with moonlight. The power coursed from my heart and soul, and I knew I would never be able to teleport on my own, ever again.

But some shard of that was infused in the box, as I folded and sealed it for a rainy day.

The moment packed away, I sat on the stone bench overlooking an empty pond, nodding to Ana. “We can just be with each other, if you’d like.”

She nodded slowly, sitting next to me. “Yeah. Can we do that?”

Oh, sweet, silly Anachel. “Of course.”

She sat next to me, and after a moment, I lightly rested my head on her shoulder. She didn’t stiffen or shift, just resting her head on mine. After a moment, she draped her jacket over my shoulders, holding in our warmth. And we stayed like that until our shoulders ached and the sun began to rise and a couple grumpy cops with rotten persimmons on their belts told us to clear out of what was, to them, just an empty pond.

A.N.

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astigmatism at night - stardroppoetry

[meowcats734]

lucet and cienne??

This is awesome!! Mind if I feature this in the fanart section of my Discord?

Seriously, you might have singlehandedly motivated me to continue this serial.

[meowcats734]

Don't usually post about politics but hey. This video is good. It's an IV of pure hope. Watch it.

[meowcats734]

FORMER WIZARD JOINED RAPTORS

GUARDIANS BEAT TWINS

WOLVES TOO STRONG FOR CRYSTAL PALACE

“These job postings are terrible,” I grumbled, leaning on Ana’s shoulder. We got a few looks from the other tram passengers, although I liked to believe it was due to the bulky suitcases covered in worldskein hazard warnings. Then again, there were two other passengers who were visibly toting magic, and neither the five-winged spective nor the teenager with a hemomancy implant got more than a cursory glance. “Why does every magical problem involve violence?”

Ana jerked her head up from her phone, nearly bonking my forehead with her chin. “What was that?”

“I asked, ‘why does every magical problem involve violence?’” 

“Oh.” She exhaled, and I glanced up at her. Her expression was carefully controlled. “I hate it too, Tsu.”

“I know.” I nuzzled her cheek with my forehead. “Hey. You’re not feeling guilty for shooting that spective, are you?”

“What? No. Had to be done. Hey, why don’t you write up our intel dossier so that we at least get a little recomp from that disaster?”

Blergh. I didn’t want to make a public post about how we’d failed to reason with a lonely kid who had too much power and no developed sense of morality, but it was the objectively right thing to do for everyone. Nobody would be consigned to the Neverfound, and the next Orchard workers would be that much more well informed.

At the very least, though, I should unreserve the job. I navigated to my profile, rated it as UNCOMPLETED, and flicked back to the main menu. 

WARRIORS LOST TO MAGIC

PREDICTIONS FOR ANGELS THIS SEASON

WALLABIES HAVE LIONS WORRIED

Oh, the algorithm had picked up on the fact that I wanted something more relaxing for our next job. Creepy and convenient. “Here, how about this one?”

Ana studied my phone, where the advertisement asked for help getting a spective back from the other side of a transfer portal. Her eyebrows creased as she shifted into business mode. “What’s the intel?”

“Client’s name is Erishen, male, twenty-three-year-old archeologist. He works with some kind of spective or magic user to help him focus on his work.” I frowned slightly at that, but hey, if he needed to warp reality in order to withstand the 9-5 grind I could understand. Heck, maybe the magic was all ancillary and what mattered was the company. I sure as hell wasn’t in love with Ana because of her wide array of enchanted weapons.

Ana picked up where I trailed off, scrolling down to the pictures of a jagged, irregular interdimensional portal. “Looks like this Erishen guy became a spective by accident, and his magic mixing with his work assistant’s caused the local worldskein to collapse.”

Yeah, that rip in reality looked like it had been spawned from some kind of context clash. The portal itself was organic-looking in shape, all branching tendrils and forks, while the space on the other side showed brightly lit treetops. 

“So this is a no-magic mission,” Ana concluded. “That dimension looks lousy with loose spectivity; if I bring out my kit I’m as likely to blow myself up as whatever I’m pointing at.”

I waved her concerns away. “It shouldn’t come to a fight. This is a job someone else unreserved—search and rescue found Eri already, and him and his spective friend are alive and well. They just, uh, refuse to leave. But that’s right up my alley.”

Ana nodded slowly. “I’m still coming along,” she said, almost challengingly.

“Huh? Of course you are, Ana.” I punched her lightly in the shoulder, although I didn’t need to bother holding back. She had more muscle mass in her biceps than I did in my whole arm. “I’m not going to traipse off in some foreign universe without my stalwart protector.”

Ana’s hand sought my own, and I gave it a squeeze, pressing myself against her side. “Hey. Everything okay?” I asked.

“Yeah. ‘Course.” Her eyes swept the team with the same detached calm that she’d displayed when she’d faced down a child made of molten wax and calculated every threat and counter in the room before the seeds of violence had ever been planted.

I somehow felt that everything wasn’t okay, but somehow it just felt… wrong to call her out on it. Who was I to tell her how she felt? So I just asked, “You want to go on a date after dark?”

She blinked. “What, really? You still want to…”

“Of course!”

Something uncoiled inside her, a tension that I hadn’t even noticed she’d been holding. “I want to too,” she replied, resting her head on mine.

We rode the rest of the way home in comfortable silence, gentle and warm and always in motion.

A.N.

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Reading sports headlines while pretending sports doesn't exist suggests a fascinating world of magic and whimsy.

[meowcats734]

Reading sports headlines while pretending sports doesn't exist suggests a fascinating world of magic and whimsy.