meowcats734

[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]

This inspired me, so I wrote about it.

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.

[meowcats734]

Her first shot blew the spective’s torso apart in a torrent of glinting red. The subsequent blast of subzero breath halted the tentacles on the wall mid-swing, the freezing impossibly thorough and quick.

An unearthly warbling roared out as the spective screeched in pain, their body reforming from the wetness on the floor.

“STOP IT!” they screamed. “You’re hurting me!”

And I would have stopped if I could. But the time to reach out a hand had ended the moment we’d discovered that those people were still conscious under the wax. So I stuck to Ana’s back as she took another bite from the enchanted ice cream cone and exhaled frost in the spective’s direction. After Ana’s first devastating shot, the air had turned crystalline and strangely floral; I estimated she could use maybe one or two more artifacts before the context clash killed us. 

For now, though, it was manageable. Although the ambient magic caused bits of the atmosphere to congeal and shatter like glass, as long as I kept my airway clear it was harmless to us, and the reality disruption was worth it. The tentacles on the walls and floor were utterly immobilized by the surreal frost Ana belched.

The spective switched tactics, the liquid at our feet climbing our suits and trying to entomb us, but Ana must have considered the possibility from the moment we stepped into this house, because her counter was instantaneous and effective. She’d used an enchanted handheld fan to blow the spective’s body apart earlier, and she aimed it downwards with a mechanical whirr. Though it was nowhere near enough thrust to achieve liftoff, the gale blasted the spective’s fluids clear of us in a two-meter circle. 

“I just wanted a little longer,” the spective said, voice cracking in panic as they realized they were outmatched. “I’ll let them go when I’m finished. I’m not hurting anyone! I promise!”

My heart ached for the damn kid who never got a chance to grow up before their powers consumed them, and if I was the one with the aeroblasters and ice-spitters I would have set them down for a second chance. 

But Anachel was the reason I was still alive, and I trusted her in this as she trusted me in peace. She fired the fan in a recoilless violation of kinematics, hurling another round of what was supposed to be compressed air at the door. Unfortunately, physics was breaking down from the presence of so many separate magics, and what came out of the blades of that magic fan was more like a spray of high-velocity glass. It ripped a half-dozen holes through the locked door and penetrated into the walls beyond, but didn’t blow the door bodily off its hinges like Ana had been hoping.

“STOP.” The spective drew inwards, a torrent of wax swirling around the child’s body like a cloak, but Ana scarfed down the last of the ice cream cone and unleashed frost of a kind that the world would never see again. Whatever sorcery the spective was about to unleash was abruptly aborted as their body became a statue of snow-coated red.

Ana’s fan finally sputtered to a halt, but no more attacks streaked after us. Maybe the spective was having a hard time with the chaotic aftereffects of too many magics intermingling, or maybe they were simply exhausted after being blasted and frozen time and time again.

Or maybe they were scared of Ana. They were just a kid, after all.

Whatever the reason, even though Ana kept her guard up and a mundane pistol in her hands, we fled the final stretch of wax with no issues. The worldskein was intact enough that the air no longer tinkled like shattered glass, so I tapped Ana on the shoulder and indicated my helmet.

Diligent as she was, she lugged us two blocks away from the red, smoking house before finally helping me out of the tightly-strapped helmet. Wordlessly, I rested my bare forehead against her faceplate. After a gentle, cool moment she unbuckled her own helmet, shaking out her short, dark hair and kissing my forehead.

It was over. We were out.

I let out a long, shuddery sigh. “We’re going to have to take a different job, aren’t we?”

She nodded. “We should get paid for the intel, at least. But depending on how permanent the damage is, we may have taken an outright loss when we factor in repairs, unless we want to seek proof of conviction.”

Ugh, we’d be in even deeper trouble if things came to conviction. “No, I’m done with this neighborhood.“

As always, Ana took charge where I was weak. “Then let’s hit the trams, yeah? You can find something nice for us to do tomorrow. Calming.”

“Yeah. Yeah.” I nuzzled her plastic-sheathed shoulder, and Ana scratched the top of my head affectionately. “Tomorrow will be better, I’m sure.”

Ana chuckled. “Hey, Tsu? When you pick a job posting, make sure to steer clear of a spective that specializes in dramatic irony.”

And on that cheerful note, Ana and I began our long, defeated walk back to Songserra.

A.N.

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What do you think of the "revenge bad" tropes frequently found

it actually pisses me off sooooo much when characters are like “ohhh but if i hurt or kill the bastard who made my life and others’ a living hell i’m just as bad as they are!” like grow up and shoot him what are you catholic

[meowcats734]

There were no doors in the spective’s house, just sheets of falling liquid that parted for us like curtains. Despite how hard it made conversation, I was thankful for our helmets. I had no desire to join the people who’d been fully encased.

Ana insisted on going first every time we went through a door, and maintained physical contact with me at all times. I don’t think the crimson child took it personally; they seemed halfway convinced they were an irredeemable monster already. So while Ana took care of physical security, I tried to get through to our guide. 

“So this is a question for all of you,” I said, and when the molten red in the shape of a kid tilted their head in confusion, I elaborated: “the person who’s talking to me and the voices in your head. Do you have names?”

The spective stumbled, though there were no obstacles in the mirror-smooth pool of a floor. “I… my name is Thom. The voices, they don’t have a name. They just shout at me…”

“Is it alright if I keep addressing them as ‘the voices’, then?” I asked.

Thom paused as Ana peeked through the next curtain of liquid. “They like that. I don’t like how much they like that.”

What the poor kid needed was a dedicated therapist, not a social worker and a soldier. But my job was to make sure Thom was safe enough to even be in the same room as a therapist, and I wasn’t qualified to figure out what was going on in their head.

So I stepped past the matter and moved on to the matters I knew how to help with. “The people who were frozen upstairs—do you mind if I ask who they are?”

Thom hunched over. “I don’t know. They were just… there, when I held the moment. I think they were his parents. Or maybe his siblings.” He hesitated, then—somewhat forcefully—added, “They were going to take him away.”

“Him?” I asked.

“Tsu.” Anachel interrupted, backing out from the doorway. “This one’s closed.”

I turned her way, and she tapped the curtain of fluid with a touchstick, parting it. The other side was sealed shut, the shiny fresh wax showing the outline of a door.

I didn’t like the look of that, but this house wasn’t made for me. Thom placed one morphic hand against the doorknob, and I heard it click as the child swung it open.

It must have been a playroom, before the spective’s power had preserved it under a coating of wax. A TV still glimmered, frozen between frames, its light blurred to illegible crimson beneath its semi-transparent shell. Foam bullets and toy guns were littered across the floor, their shapes nothing more than barely visible lumps.

And in the heart of the room a figure—a child’s outline, couldn’t be older than twelve—was half-standing, turning to leave.

“He was going to go,” Thom said, his voice quavering. “Forever. Do you see? I just need—I just want a little longer with him. Can you give me that? Please?”

Thom’s form rippled, losing coherence, like the last splash in a summer pool, the droop of a flag running out of wind, and in that instant I saw into the shard of magic that a child named Thom had inadvertently made his own. His was the power of endings defied, hands held at sunset and farewells forestalled.

Ana nudged my heel with hers, and I followed her gaze. Through the uneven coating of wax that had held Thom’s friend—or more?—in this instant, I saw the fluttering of eyelids.

The people Thom had entombed were still conscious.

“I’m so sorry,” I whispered, to Thom, to the voices in their head, to the people who had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time where a spective had been born.

“Just let me have this,” Thom begged. “You can go back and tell them I’m not hurting anyone, okay? I’m just… keeping them here. For a little. They’re still alive, see? And I’ll let them go and it’ll be like nothing happened, I just… not yet. Please. Please, don’t make me do this.”

“Tsu,” Ana said, as the walls sludged towards the sealed door and it twisted with a click. “Assay.”

I closed my eyes, not wanting to see what came next. “I can’t help them,” I whispered. “Get us out of here. We’ll come back with someone who can help you, Thom, I promise.”

“I don’t need help!” Thom shouted. “I’ll lock you up here forever if you ruin this!”

“Kid, you can’t win this with violence. They’ll send you to the Neverfound if we don’t return,” Ana said, and there was an exhaustion bone-deep in her voice as she looked at one more child with too much power who was in too deep to back down. 

“I know,” Thom said, and in that moment I knew we’d made a mistake. “And in the Neverfound nobody will take this moment from me.”

Blood-red wax surged inwards as Ana drew two artifacts from her belt, and I whispered one last apology to Thom.

A.N.

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I had a dream I was touring a house, and in the basement there was a little staircase that led to a door sealed with red wax. I told the lady showing the house “I don’t like that.” and she said “Then this house just isn’t for you. :)”

[meowcats734]

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[meowcats734]

You have to be empathetic when condemning neighborhoods to the Neverfound. By the time an Orchard’s sent to evaluate how far gone the location in question is, all the heart and humanity has already been sieved out by the layers of bureaucracy. It’s so easy to send a request to the Orchards with an address and a radius and forger what it means: that the spective in this area is too powerful and too dangerous to be allowed to interact with humanity as a whole, and both them and everyone too close will be ripped from our universe, never to be found again.

But I try to remember. I have to, when it’s my job to look the spective in however many eyes they have and talk to them, to see if we can help them instead of shunting them out of our reality. In some cases, that meant reminding them of the human they’d once been; in others, it meant accepting them as they were. 

Today, it meant walking up to a house encrusted in wax.

It was hard to tell under the faintly translucent red coating, but I thought the house beneath looked quite old. There was a chimney too large to be decorative poking out from the sludge, and the bricks were laid without mortar in the old Nartem style. 

Ana’s footsteps slowed beside me, and I stopped a few meters away from the beginning of the wax. She held up a thin glass phial that looked far too delicate for her well-toned arms (although I knew all too well how dexterous those fingers of hers could be). “Casting inconclusive,” she said, stowing the device away. “Worldskein’s nominal. How’d you want to do this, Tsu?”

I scanned the perfectly smooth red floor, as pristine as if it had been set mere seconds ago. Addressing the wax—you never knew what form a spective might take, for all I knew I was looking at them—I asked, “Can you hear me? Is it alright if we talk?”

When I got no response (save for a faintly amused glance from Ana) I said, “The wax has to be regenerative, or it’d be far more weathered. I say we just walk on in and hope we can find our client before doing too much damage.”

As it turned out, we didn’t have to worry about harming the environment. What I’d thought was wax acted more like mercury, flowing together instantly around our feet without leaving so much as an indent where we’d walked. Thankfully our rain boots’ waterproofing seemed to work on whatever substance this was, although you never knew with spectives. 

The door was sealed over, but I’d looked up the blueprints for the house that had been here, and assuming the spective hadn’t warped geometry the entrance should have been right in front of us. “Touchstick, please,” I said, holding out my hand.

Ana wordlessly placed the six-inch ivory baton into my palm, and I probed the wall of wax. To my surprise the stick went straight through; a little more exploration outlined the shape of a door half-ajar, frozen in ever-liquid wax.

“Want me to blow that out of the way?” Anachel asked, eyeing the curtain of featureless crimson. “Or are we pushing through?”

“I’m here to help the spective, not hunt it down,” I said. “Let’s push.”

“I’m here to help you, not the spective. I’m going first.”

Neither of us argued with the other’s decision. Walking through the coating over the door felt a little like going through a drive-thru car wash, if that car wash used a particularly offputting shade of red soap. Liquid sheeted over my helmet for a heartbeat, then let me go without so much as a stain. Ana was already on the other side, her body loose and ready to burst into motion as she scanned the room for threats.

I was more focused on what this room told me about our client. Bizarrely, the wax seemed to have covered everything in the room nigh-instantaneously. The refrigerator door was still open, despite the fact that it should have been spring-loaded, and after staring at it for a little, the strange shape on the counter resolved into a milk carton frozen mid-pour… which meant that the lump on the chair behind it was…

“Tsu, I’ve found three of the missing persons,” Ana said, somewhat unnecessarily. 

The spective had entombed a family of three here. One at the stove—even the fire was outlined in wax, that’d be worth a few bucks in our intel report—and two more at the dinner table, stopped mid-gesture.

I wasn’t sure whether to hope they were still alive.

Ana held up a hand to stop me from approaching, but though I stayed in place my mind chewed furiously on the evidence we’d been given. I was willing to bet that we were looking at a singular outpouring of power, rather than a consistent and steady application of magic, meaning that the spective was defined by a moment and not a mindset. Conveniently, the remnants of that moment were preserved for us, which meant I could start to get a grip on what the limits and heart of our spective were. 

Ana nudged one of the frozen bodies with a touchstick, and immediately, the entombed figure retched and doubled over. Ana dropped the touchstick in a flash, reaching out to catch them, but the moment she lost contact, the figure stiffened once more.

“Preservation,” I said. “Odds are that’s the core concept we’re dealing with here.”

Ana nodded slowly. “Best course?”

I sighed. “Focus on the client, we’ll come back for the encrusted bodies later. I’m not calling in a med team before evaluating the spective, and we’re not equipped for rescue.”

Ana opened her mouth to reply, but something caught her attention because she leapt forwards in a blur, standing between me and the table. A heartbeat later, a ripple in the wax shot upwards, pouring into the coated shape of a child too young to gender.

“Hello,” I slowly said. “I’m Tsutarrah, we’re Orchards, and we’re here to help.”

“Get out of here,” they whispered, strained.

Though she stayed between me and the spective, Ana let me take the lead. I held up my hands, showing them to be empty, and said, “I’m not going to hurt you.”

“I know,” the spective hissed. “But if you don’t leave I’ll hurt you. I’m sorry.”

I brushed against Ana, and she widened her stance. “You’re not going to hurt us, either,” she said, and even if I hadn’t seen her kill the people who were too far gone I would have known bone-deep that she was telling the truth.

The child of wax just clenched their fists. “The voices say you have to go,” they snapped. “You’re ruining everything!”

“You hear voices?” I asked, gently. 

They nodded frantically, droplets of their liquid body splashing and melding into the whole. “They’re going to stop you,” they said. “It’s too late.”

Ana drew an artifact from her belt, aiming it at the walls as they began to writhe red, but the only fear I felt was for the child spective. I remembered when she’d enchanted that rubber hose, the scorched destruction it had left behind. Even going in blind, Ana and I were not the ones in danger here. And if by some miracle this child did manage to stop us from returning, they’d be screwed anyway. By default the Orchards would decide that a spective that could take out a worker on Ana’s level was too dangerous to be left in our universe and consign it to the Neverfound. No path that started with violence ended well for the child in red.

So I did the only thing I could and empathized.

“Can I ask the voices a question?” I said.

The tendrils of liquid wax curling in from the walls quivered, and though Ana’s eyes flicked from side to side she let me speak. The molten body in the shape of a child rocked back as if struck.

“They… you can’t hear them. Can you?” the child asked, voice quavering.

Not without magic and experimentation that I had neither the time nor the resources to request, no. “I can’t,” I confirmed. “But could you ask them a question for me?”

The child shivered, little droplets of wax dripping from the ceiling and sliding stainlessly off our suits. “Nobody’s ever… I haven’t tried before. I don’t know.” They looked up, and though they had no face I saw the outline of their mouth between waves of disturbed fluid. “Can I try?”

I nodded, the motion awkward under my biker’s helmet. “Can you ask them why they want to hurt us?”

The walls thrashed, and Ana grabbed me with one arm, but the child visibly strained and the room fell calm once more. 

“They can’t tell you,” the child whispered. “But… if you wanted… I think I could show you.”

Ana squeezed my arm gently, the motion a question in a language only the two of us knew. Will you risk yourself for them?

In response, I peeled myself away from her protective grasp. This time.

“Then show me,” I said.

A.N.

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

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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]

The Orchard of Once and Onlies

Welcome to the Orchard. No, don't sit on that bench—she's not into that, and she bites. The gravity's lower beneath these trees, it should be easier on your back.

As you may have gathered, our family's role is to collect enchanted artifacts, retrieve supernatural citizens, and treat all sapient life, mundane and spective, with the universal rights and respects they are due. Be careful over your stay, for magic follows but one rule: it never does the same thing twice.

The Orchard of Once and Onlies is a webserial based off posts that I think would make a good fictional story. A new chapter comes out each Sunday. You can read one chapter ahead or send me a prompt at my Patreon, or discuss the story and chat with me in my Discord.

Chapter 1.

Chapter 2.

Chapter 3.

Chapter 4.

Chapter 5.

Chapter 6.

I also write Soulmage, another webserial with four books published so far. It's on hiatus for now, but you can still read it here!

[meowcats734]

Have you ever made a list of all the affinities and magics?

It's a somewhat cryptic list, but the chapter titles are, in fact, a list of emotions and the magics they connect to.

[meowcats734]

What different flame colors mean:

Red: Wood or wax fire. Good for warding off the mountain chill, or for writing by late at night.

Blue: Starlight and cave fires. The former should be ignored; seek shelter with the latter if you are lost on the slopes.

Black, strewn with stars: The color of hope at dawn. Consider training as an oracle, but be warned that down this road lies insanity.

Iridescent, like a beetle's shell: The fires of nage. If found locally, contact the nearest witch to seal the resulting rift. Do not walk through unless you wish to be lost in a parallel plane.

Incandescent, cancerous: A fanatic's soul. Tread carefully around them on the battlefield; they can sacrifice the present for the future they dream of.

(more words here.)

[meowcats734]

i was taught that there's magic in everything, and it's true. just not for me. there is power in the stretch of a cat waking up. i've seen witches calm bonfires with nothing but their familiar on their shoulder. but all i see is a sleepy ball of fur.

there is weight in the collapse of a worker at night. i should be able to take the janitor's hand and crush a tree to smithereens. but she just pats my shoulder and tells me i'm a late bloomer.

i only ever cast one spell. there is pressure in the expectations placed upon a rescued student. and just this once, i wrapped it around me like a cloak. and it made me feel small.

there is magic in everything.

just not for me.

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[meowcats734]

hey, i found your recipe in the attic! you can keep it, if you'd like.

ingredients:

a foggy, quiet afternoon

a cat warmed by a sunbeam, or a sunbeam warmed by a cat

a hammer used to grind walls into dust

attunement to calm, joy, and exhaustion

pet the cat, or touch the sunbeam if you are allergic. fill the memory of this moment with the sleepy weight of this lounging afternoon. take the soul of the hammer and chisel the memory away from yourself and the cat. (don't worry about her, she'll make more memories soon enough.)

comb a lock of fur from the cat, or wait for a whisker to fall off, and embed these memories within. connect the simple joy you feel from the warmth and the softness to the recollection of that frozen instant.

do not be alarmed when your familiar forms. she should be made of gentle light and, faintly, have a weight to her. you can pick her up and pet her, if you'd like.

condense the mist from your quiet afternoon into a pitcher, and infuse it with calm. sprinkle the lock of fur or whisker with this mixture when you need to dismiss your familiar.

she won't catch mice and she's not very smart. but i hope you like her anyway.

(psst, I write more stories about witches and their strange and wonderful magics here!)