#E tag | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

zillyeh · 1 year ago

Text

Sundowning

CW: violence, mentions of self harm, very brief bit of gore

“Can you just go over it one more time? Like I’m stupid?”

“I don’t know Zee, there’s only so much stupider I can go before I start making animal noises.”

The smaller troll threw a handful of water from the swamp shoreline at her purpleblooded friend. The taller of the two giggled, splashing her back. She pulled her twin braids over her shoulder, picking up a stick from the ground. As she spoke, she drew in the mushy mud between them.

“Okay, so. It’s basically astral projection-”

“Stupider than that, En.”

Endara let out a huff, drawing two circles with lines coming out of the top on top of two triangles.

“The stuff that keeps you awake,” she said slowly. “It’s like if that got up and left… it’s the same thing as when I teleport, except it’s not as hard. Y’know, cause my body doesn’t need to come with me.”

“So it doesn’t make you cough up blood?”

“Anyway-”

“En-”

“Anyway,” Endara insisted, “Other people can do it too. Subconsciously. Not on purpose. People with powers because of the brain stuff.”

You miss her. You don't know if it can fully register to you how much you miss her. Your mind is used and broken, and hardly your own anymore. It's these lucid hours in the daylight when all you do is miss her and hurt yourself and everything around you. The walls. The floor. Everything. You don't know who she is- you hardly know who you are- but you know you need her.

“Brain stuff,” the anon repeated with a scoff. It was a rare moment where her friend could see her face fully, uncovered by its wraps. It was hot in the swamps that night, both from sulfuric vents below and the season beating down on them from above. Her teardrop pupils were barely visible in her eyes, too dark for her age. It was a game to find where the line of her pupils started and the dark gray ended. She also eyed the hardness of her jaw, too skinny to hold too much of the roundness that was quickly leaving Endara’s face. Then the rest… She couldn’t keep her eyes there for too long, or she’d cover her mouth with her hands.

There was something tugging at Endara’s heart as she scratched more lines into the ground.

“Yes, brain stuff. I haven’t met her yet, but my ancestor up in the mountains uses her powers to get the big dragons used to her.”

The long horned anon bit her tongue to the disparaging remark she always made when En talked about her ancestor. She was too invested in her lesson.

"Is it hard to get into people's heads?" the anon asked earnestly. "Do they have to let you?"

"Sopor leaves people more unguarded than you'd think," she said with a sage nod. "Animals are harder, people who just like, deal with the nightmares are just as hard."

"Fucked up," the anon said, furrowing her brow. "You're the only one who can do that though?"

"Nah, plenty of people can mess with dreams if they try to. There's only one way to tell if someone's actually in there or not." Endara made a crude drawing of her friend's face, including the wraps she usually wore. "Most people's brains can't fully reconstruct a face no matter how much they look at it. There's always something off.”

“I dunno, En,” the anon said with a tch, “That thing in the dirt is shitty looking enough to match the real thing…”

Endara threw mud at her. She wondered if she could tell. Those occasional fleeting touches that gave her access to Endara’s nerves firing off. Nevermind her pulse. She wondered if she thought about her half as much.

“Shut up, Zee,” Endara scoffed. “You’re so annoying. Basically if you're awake enough, you can tell when someone's in your dreams if you see them. Their face is too real.”

“If I show up in someone's dreams do you think I'd have my mask on? Or if someone came in mine?” It sounded like a genuine question. Genuine worry. Endara bit her lip.

“Hard to say. You wear that nasty thing enough that it's basically part of your face now…”

A mass of ugly gray wraps, eyes that look so tired for her age. The scarring she’d given herself after you two did something, you two did something terrible. You did so many terrible things. The worst thing you did was convince her to die. The worst thing she did was want you to live. How long ago? The sun streaming through the cave mouth wants you to remember. The comforting darkness wants you to forget. You know you should, you know you want to, but something coherent rings through your head like the clear gonging of a bell.

If you survived, what if she had?

“Have you ever been in my dreams before?” she asks, her dark eyes searching her’s for something. A purple flush warms the other troll’s cheeks. She would notice her if she did again, wouldn’t she? Now that she knows?

“A couple times. Just to see.”

I could probably do it half dead.

It’s daytime. If she’s alive then she should be asleep. Trolls sleep during the day. Your memories return enough in the daytime for you to know that. Your memories return enough to know that if she’s alive, you’re this thing for nothing. The part of your soul that is still a troll makes you sit. Makes you close your eyes. You can still see the sun through your eyelids, but it doesn’t hurt. Or maybe it does. You can’t remember if you feel pain or not.

A look like Endara hadn’t seen from her flashed across her friend’s face. The color she so desperately tried to hide dusted her own cheeks before she looked back down into the dirt.

“I always wondered why you looked like that in my dreams,” she grumbled, “Nobody else ever looked like that.”

Zippie’s insomnia always gave way to the worst nightmares she could possibly have. One of these nights she was worried she’d hurt Bess in her sleep, even despite the precautions she’d taken in her bedroom. Bed was more comfortable than cupe by a long shot. It was a rare night where she practically couldn’t keep her eyes open.

Were you that strong? That you could find her? Force her to sleep from this far away?

Of course you could. You have part of her. Stability that It thought you needed but she didn’t. Why would she? Treating her like a person and not a battery would have been more energy than either of those two monsters would expend to her.

A the crack of a branch sounds off like a gunshot not too far from the pair at the edge of the swamp. There wasn’t supposed to be anyone out there. Not at the edge of Zee’s property. She can’t help it. She looks up. Hoodless. Maskless. Her face on full display for the adult violet that had wandered too close. Her slow eyes kept her safe, but her lower face?

There was a reason she never took the wraps off.

Endara had always wondered what would happen when she got found out. How much of her fear was justified. How badly an adult troll would hurt what they understood to be a child at first glance.

The answer was very, very badly.

She didn’t even hesitate before barrelling towards the two. Like a predator that knew this was it’s only chance to strike. Before Endara could move, she’d been shoved roughly aside and Zvejia hauled off the ground by the shoulders. She’d guarded her throat, but the adult was struggling for it. Zvejia bit anywhere she could find purchase, down her arms and on her face. The violet winced and swore whenever her bare skin made contact with her hands. Zee must have been using her powers on top of tearing as much skin as she could.

As much as this troll’s face was burned into Zippie’s memory, she’d never see it properly in her dreams again.

Endara coughed up blood even before she’d teleported behind the troll mere feet away. She hadn’t perfected the art of rematerializing while partially in an object, but this would do.

She wasn’t strong. She was weak. Sickly. Worsening by the day. But she didn’t need strength to do what she’d intended to do if this night ever came. The reason she’d stolen so many of Zvejia’s medical books. The reason she’d practiced to the point of bleeding eyes at all was for this.

The muscle and tissue being displaced made a more horrific noise than either of them had ever heard. It took the violet seconds too long to realize where the lanky purple’s hand was, too long for her to try to formulate a shriek, long enough for her heart to crush all too easily in the hand that had been delivered through her back.

“Endara!” the anon cried as the violet released her, not dead but certainly not alive for long. When the soon to be body tumbled to the ground, she slid right off of Endara’s arm. Like a glove. Leaving her the gory prize she’d won, and a purple haze around her vision.

“Why is it always this?” rasped a voice where Zvejia would have fallen under the violet. Where she did fall under the violet, when the two of you actually lived through this. The part of you that is the troll holding that adult’s heart understands immediately. She’s on her feet already. Hornless. Maskless. Lacking the black that once hid her from danger, and the fins she’d nearly killed herself cutting out of her face. The scars were just as ugly, covered in the other ones she’d given herself as well that handn’t healed. Her wounds never healed right. You two always thought it was part of the mutation.

The rivets in her wrists match your own. Tattoos cover every inch of skin you could see exposed. On her upper arm you see a band of purple that makes you choke out a sob.

She glances towards you. Then she double takes. You can sense her fear here, standing on either side of the first body you two ever made.

Her breathing is shallow. All she says is:

“No.”

“Zvejia…” Your voice is not the voice of the young woman that just killed for the only friend she ever had, but of a monster. Guttural and too big to ever have come out of that girl before she was made into what you are now.

Her next “no” comes as a plead as she drops to her knees. She’s so much bigger and so much smaller than you remember her being. You approach and she stumbles back. That hurts the part of you that forgets what you look like now. The black claws of your toes dig into the soft swamp dirt to keep you from doing it again.

“You can’t,” she said, her razor soft voice begging as if this were a nightmare she could beg her way out of. “You c-c- that’s not- I’m so sorry, En. This has to not be real, this has to not be real.”

You tilt your head like the animal you are. She grips her head. She refuses to look at you. Not like you look at her.

“The… sun… is… going… down…” you murmur, the part of you connected to your body still feeling the cold of the night start to settle in. A shiver runs through the incorporeal dream, making it feel cold within. She looks at you again. She grew up so handsome. So tired. She got to live. It’s what you wanted.

It’s what the part of you that lives in the daylight wanted.

The part of you that lives in the darkness hunches you back over onto all fours, chitinous claws digging into the hardening dirt underneath you.

“What did he do to you…” is the last thing the troll in you hears. Whatever thing you’ve invaded the dreams of this time you are going to tear to shreds like all the rest of those who dare trespass your territory. Except this time something is different.

This thing smells like you.

Enough to stop you long enough for it to rip itself awake, leaving you too unstable to stay dreamwalking like this.

You wake with a wet face, howling in what could have been pain or could have been agony, if you were the sort of thing that could understand emotions that weren’t territorial or hungry. The new black of the sky outside helps you reorient yourself.

With any luck, you won’t remember what you’ve seen come sunrise.

Neither of you will.

#Zilly drabbles #Dreamwalker #Zippie tag #Zipper Anthem #E tag #rubs more zippie secrests onto the dashboard #Sundowning #<-am under the impression this tag won't catch in any sort of search bc it's the 6th one in

12 notes · View notes

zillyeh · 1 year ago

Text

Broken Boxpin

Ink fingers gripped the rim of the slate gray tub, the ones opposite them clutching at the matching shower wall plastic. Being submerged at all was not the troll in this bathtub’s ideal scenario, but she knew better than to go for sopor when she was like this. The water was certainly also subtly hallucinogenic- who knows what chemicals were in the Old North's supply- but its warm embrace was preferable to the mild hallucinogens of that slime. It made her worse. It made the hers and hims at the edge of her vision and hearing more tangible. Whatever calm it brought the average troll, if it did at all, it did exactly the opposite for her.

Water, warm and familiar, wasn’t that good of a replacement. Her aching joints rejoiced for it, and so did the electricity lurking dangerous just under her skin. If she wasn’t careful in this soothing little bath, she could level half a city block. Maybe more than that. Her last leveling had been when she was starved and sickly. She wasn’t un-sickly now, under her skin disguising tattoos, but she’d put pounds of muscle on underneath them. Stronger places for those sparks to latch onto.

He blew bubbles in the water. It was still slimy, at Bessba’s insistence. With some fizzy, citrusy little ball she’d thrown at her head before she left. It was orange and pink like everything else Bess had brought to their now shared apartment. The swirling foam’s pleasant smell made a good anchor. A dock in the waters of her growing wet panic attack.

She gripped the side of the tub harder, eyes darting around the room. Seeing too much and too little all at the same time. The chitinous plastic of the tub rim would have broken if not for the fact that the projections of her brain made her weak. All that strength of his wiry muscle seemed to leave his body the further back she went.

The cool drone concrete of the underground compound underneath her bare legs. The stark but sparse fluorescent lights. Her. Him. Tendrils of His hair at the edges of her vision, the heave of her breathing in her ears. Never the her she wished would haunt her. If she wanted that at all.

Her old warden's fingers curled on the side of her bed. The tub. Her black painted fingernails and wrist rivets were solid. Touchable. Tangible. The troll in the tub- the medical bed?'s eyes fixated on her knuckles. Rough with use, but soft enough for the scalpel. He knew that all too well. The rest of her could hardly fit in the room. Funny how they'd found this place, but couldn't accommodate the hulking monster that called herself a surgeon.

She smelled like citrus. No. Someone he loved smelled like citrus. The one that was alive- not the one that was buried in the crater she'd made with the bomb in the bed. With Cerayn. With…

His eye swirled above her abdomen, bright red and orange with wisps of hot yellow and near white. His blackened claws grabbed her legs. Black hair dancing around his swirling eye- no, pink, pink pink. The swirl was pink and the dark of the water was her own tattooed skin. Skin that was not sick and cast with the vile color in her veins, if it ever had been anyway.

With a gasp she pulled her head above the water. Her long black hair clung to her shoulders like a second- or in her case third- skin. The warden's hands still clung to the tub, still tangible, but almost silly looking without anything higher than her forearm to connect to. His eye disappeared with a swat of the water, but his arms remained. Multiplied. Crawled in and out of the water like spiders, then as spiders hissing at the edge of the tub. All of them had his terrible eyes, but all of them were also trying far too hard. Like a dream that isn’t quite right when you try to close your eyes and get back to it.

“Fuck off,” she grumbled, grabbing the hosed shower head above her and turning on the water. Spraying the bare wall made them disappear. Disappear enough, anyway.

“Babe, you okay in there?” called En- called Bess. Gods he couldn’t start drawing that line. Then she really would blow the Old North to nothing.

“Fine,” Zippie croaked hoarsely. Citrus. She’d always found the scent unpalatable. Those were hard fruits to come by in the swamp. Now it was the only thing that drew her out of her head- or at least helped. She glared at the warden’s hands. She flipped them off. They did so in return. Their tangibility faded as Bessba spoke more through the door.

“I made that tea that doesn’t bother your stomach if you’re up for it…” The warm of the bath had faded, sending a shiver through him. How long had he been in there for? Too long if Bess was knocking.

“Okay, I’ll be out in a minute.”

He sat up with a cough. Then hacked a more significant amount until he felt new wetness on his pruned fingers. The purple glob in his hand gave him one last spike in adrenaline, making him splash the water as he scrambled out of the tub. Seeing her shadow with such clarity should have snapped her out of it immediately. The logic of her glasses on the edge of the sink didn’t make her heart slow, however.

Tall. Overstretched. Some shape of her dual braids curling behind her like snakes. Her eyes were that same color, glowing like that false smear of blood on the tub. She was entirely shadow otherwise, but Zippie didn’t need her mind to reconstruct her. She could never forget every agonized angle that the warden and that demon took from her.

One of the shadow’s hands extended, warped into claws to punish her once she got close enough. Her voice rattled- falsely high and far too scratchy to belong to the young woman in question as she attempted to speak.

“Zvejia…”

All of that electricity seemed so alive now. Just under the surface. So close to the pool of water under her.

“Zippie!” Knuckles rapped on the door three times in quick succession. “I need you to not be in there like, right now.”

It was easier said than done, but she pulled herself shakily to her feet, not taking her eyes off the shadow. Was this the first time? In how many sweeps? She almost didn’t want her to fade. She knew she deserved her ire, but more than anything she wanted to be able to manipulate this one. To have the half-real thing say she forgives her and that she did was for the better. Or have her slap her as hard as her own hands could.

It’s eyes only narrowed. Disappearing as quick as it came. She coughed again- no blood this time- and grabbed a towel. One of the fluffier robes Bess brought with her as well for good measure. He’d almost forgotten he was in his apartment when he opened the door to Bess.

“I feel bad,” she managed to say through chattering teeth. Bess pulled her close.

“I know,” she said, planting a kiss on her temple. “Amy’s gonna be here in a little bit… Are you gonna be okay?”

Zippie gave her an exhausted, wry smile.

“Have I been since you met me, sugar?”

#Zilly drabbles #shortie but sigh. zippie.#Zippie tag #Bessba tag #E tag #Zipper Anthem #Bessba Vionyi #Broken Boxpin #no editing we die like men #zippie menchal illness reveal i guess lmfao #i feel like ive at least hinted at this one other time but it is a part of her very important to me #uuuh anyway good night.

13 notes · View notes