#and the uncomfortable possibility (lets be real. likelihood) that some of those rats were not exactly treated humanely on set

[dragonsateyourtoast]

Special thanks to @skylarklanding for a donation to the Emergency Release Fund!

By the way, head on over to that blog to get a taste of some of Skylark’s art; similar to what I’m doing, you can show a donation and receive a custom art as thank-you!

Original post of mine

Prompt, courtesy of @writing-prompt-s: “It is impossible to erase a curse, but it is possible to trade it with someone else. You’ve been wandering for years, searching for someone willing to trade curses with you, but never suspected it would happen like this.” 

-

Not many people are unlucky enough to get hit with a real curse. A true curse, a curse that writes itself into your bones and blood, not some surface-level scuff on your soul. Those happen all the time; little things like a higher likelihood to stub your toe, or a few extra minutes of searching when you’ve lost your keys.

To be cursed with a true curse is different. It’s something that you feel in your lungs when it hits you, which screams like static in your mind when it activates. It lies dormant like a disease, letting you forget it exists occasionally, until the time comes for it to rear its ugly head and it spits venom into your life once again.

You can’t get rid of a real curse. The little ones? You can polish them away, or pay a witch to get rid of them, or whatever. But the real ones... those are powered by something greater than just a little bit of malice. Those ones aren’t just throwaway statements of “I hope you always forget about your tea” or little sigils drawn on paper and burned to ash. These ones are borne of blood.

I used to sing at a church. I’ve long since abandoned the church, after they told me I was evil for a good number of things, including my curse. I didn’t even think it was that bad, at first.

When I speak, things come to me. Animals, mostly. Sometimes it’s plants. Insects and spiders and stuff are the biggest problem. Birds are the next worst. No matter what I do, if I utter a single syllable, I am swarmed in an instant with everything alive around me except other people. I laughed on a lakeshore once - the fish died when we were trying to shove them back into the water. I sighed too loudly once, on a wet night; I’d never seen so many worms.

There are online boards for people who want to swap curses. I know you can do it - curses don’t like to be destroyed, but they love to hop around. They’re kind of sentient; they like to see new things. Sometimes, if you don’t give them what they want, they’ll evolve, force you to carry them harder. Mine is pretty dormant; I never speak, but it doesn’t cause problems. It can feel my misery.

I’m not going to get into what got me cursed in the first place. It was an accident, and it wasn’t even my fault, and I’m marked forever in more ways than one.

July, 2014. I sat in my room, reading a book. I don’t remember what it was. One of my friends messaged me, asking about a movie that was coming out, and while I was checking movie times I saw someone had pinged me in the curse boards.

Curious, I visited. I’ve had this curse for twelve years, mind you, and never been able to find anyone willing to switch me. It’s just too inconvenient.

But, there in the board, was a message in a five year old thread I’d made. It read:

“Hi! I saw your notice. I’m a wildlife biologist in Arkansas. I’m cursed too, and I think that you would be the perfect person to switch curses with, if you’re willing. It seems like you’re an active member of the forums, but it’s been a while; do you still have the same curse you did before? I’d really like to swap you for it, if that’s still possible.”

What? I stared at it, uncomprehending, until I finally messaged her directly through the site. “Thanks for your interest,” I told her. “What curse do you have, so I can know what I might be getting into?”

“Nothing too terrible,” she wrote back. “When I speak, whatever I say comes out in a different language. I never know which language it’s going to be, either, and if I stop speaking or take a breath, well, it switches. It’s really a nuisance if I’m trying to communicate with people! Yours seems to be that you can’t make any sound at all; being able to laugh or speak without consequences would be an improvement for you, right?”

“It would,” I wrote back. “And it would mean you have a lot less freedom in what you can say. Why do you want my curse?”

“I can’t explain it,” she said, “I guess I’ll have to tell you if it works.”

We agreed to meet up about six hours from where I lived, at the halfway point between our houses. I wasn’t working at the time - it’s difficult to hold a job when you can’t speak or your building suddenly reveals how many rats are in it - so I gathered what I needed and left the next morning.

Six hours. I had six hours while driving to wonder why she would choose to make her life worse, by preventing herself from even laughing. I couldn’t fathom why. Did she want every living thing to swarm her at all times? I say swarm - I mean it. Just because the curse brought the animals to me didn’t make them friendly. I’d been bitten, stung, pecked, and scratched more times than I could count.

Whatever. It probably wasn’t my place to ask. I hadn’t asked her how she had gotten cursed, she hadn’t asked me, and I wasn’t going to ask her what she wanted it for if she wasn’t willing to tell me.

I pulled into the designated place - a restaurant on a tiny little highway exit in the middle of nowhere. I stood next to my car and waited.

About fifteen minutes after I’d arrived, a car pulled into the parking lot a few spaces away from mine and shut off. A woman got out - probably about thirty, with dark brown hair and brown skin, warm green eyes shining out from her face. She glanced over, saw me, and her face lit up. “Zdravo!” she called, and I knew it was her - that wasn’t a language I recognized. I nodded in response.

She pulled out her phone as she came over, and opened up a notes app. I opened mine too, watching, and she wrote down. “Songbird, right?”

“That’s me,” I wrote back, showing my screen to her. “Got everything we need?”

“Yeah, I visited a witch before I left home; that’s what I did with the rest of yesterday.” She set down a bag that had been slung over her shoulder and pulled out a shiny green box. She opened it, pulling out a length of white silk, and held out a hand. I held out mine, and she grasped my forearm; I took hold of hers.

Together, we wound the white silk around our hands and arms, binding us together, and tied it on the bottom, which is a lot harder than you’d expect. Then she looked me in the eye, still brimming with excitement. “Bist du so weit?” she asked, and then sighed and rolled her eyes. “Är du färdig?”

That still didn’t make sense, but I got the sense she was asking me if I was ready. I nodded sharply.

She began to speak. I didn’t understand it, of course. The language must’ve changed at least four times as she was trying to talk, and I couldn’t get a word of it, though I kind of understood some of what sounded like maybe French. I did catch her name, though: Maria Coombs. She finished, and looked up to me, expectantly.

My turn. This was going to be rough. I opened my mouth, swallowing; I really, really didn’t talk often. “My name’s Sage Lawson. I willingly take on to myself the burden this stranger bears, so that they might carry mine in turn.”

Above, I saw a flock of starlings divert swiftly in its path; a fly bounced off my face. “I give to this person the magic that has plagued me. I take upon myself the magic that has plagued her. Together, we give to each other.”

Nothing seemed to happen, but the starlings fluttered into a nearby tree and began to squawk at each other, ignoring me. I looked warily up at them.

“Is that it, then?” Maria said, and gasped, her eyes going wide. She clamped a hand over her mouth. The birds overhead hopped downwards into the branches surrounding us, eyes black and wary.

I hastily unbound our hands. I was still too nervous to talk. Maria picked up her phone. “Say something!” she tapped out, and showed it to me, grinning.

I rubbed my hands together. “Antoka,” I said, still feeling my voice rasp in my throat, and paused. I’d meant to say “sure,” but my mouth had just... said something else. The feeling was uncomfortable, to say the least. “... أعتقد أنه نجح.”

Maria clapped her hands together. She was beaming, brighter than I’d ever seen anybody smile. I ran my hand over my mouth, shaking my head. I could speak... though I wouldn’t make any sense. Whatever. I could work with this. I could work with this!

“Thank you,” Maria typed back, still beaming. “Thank you so much. You have no idea how much this means to me.”

I didn’t, really, but she was so happy, I couldn’t help but smile and even give a little breath of a laugh. That was more than I could’ve done before.

I handed Maria the silk back. She took it, replacing it in the box, and put it back in her bag. Already, she was humming.

You could hum, I remembered. You just couldn’t open your mouth and speak, or laugh, or sigh too loudly. Humming was the only thing that had saved me from despair after I’d been cursed.

“Maria,” I called, as she walked back over to her car with a bounce in her step, and she turned, eyebrows raised.

“Hmm?” she said, without opening her mouth.

“Ευχαριστούμε,” I said, with a smile.

Maria may not have known the language, but she understood a thank you when she heard one. She beamed at me, waved, and got back into her car.

Three months later, I got a message from Maria, the wildlife biologist living in Arkansas. It was an email that she’d sent after getting my email address from my account on the curse forums, where I’d been busy figuring out how to work with my new curse.

“Thanks,” it read, “for all the help. You have no idea what this means to me.”

Attached were two pictures. One was of her on a canoe, floating through some kind of forested swampy area, and the other was a photograph - in full color and perfect clarity - of an ivory-billed woodpecker.