#another awful green-pink ship goes brrr

[your-favourite-plague]

Partially because I like cult-ish themes, partially out of spite, I started playing The Coffin of Andy and Leyley and so far I'm enjoying it quite much. (who would've guessed I like fictional toxic relationships, soo surprising)

[archetypal-archivist]

Sleepy Boys inc. - All the Ghosts That I Once Knew

A story in which Wilbur is... lost. Drifting. He had a home, once, and a family and loved ones, and and and... He can’t remember it, now. He’s not sure he wants to.

(Amnesia is a bitch).

Home is a cardboard box. Not that he lives in one, of course, but rather that his whole life can be packaged up in one. Six photographs. A box of cigarettes and an empty lighter. A page of sheet music for a song he has yet to learn. An apple core, dried up but given to him by someone precious. A scorched feather. New things. Old things, scattered in amidst the debris of whatever new life the Matron has given him. He supposes he’s a bit like that cardboard box too- he falls apart when he gets too soggy. The tears he hides in his pillow are testament to that. 

He wonders if the other boys in the orphanage have homes like his. Are they constructed of cardboard too, or are their foundations any sturdier than his? He thinks so. There’s a blond boy, three years younger than him, who seems an awful lot like that black garbage bag he hauls about. Usually it’s pretty billowy and the boy will wear it like a cape around his neck while he plays, even though the Matron yells at him for it. Not that the boy listens, of course, he just goes right back to jumping out of trees with that black bag swept around him like a parachute. Wilbur has to hide a grin, whenever he sees that. Flight suits the boy, he thinks. He’s too bright to stay grounded for long. 

And other days, the days when that kid gets shipped out to whatever family has decided they wanted that bright-hearted boy, he seems stretched out. Thin. The black bag filled to bursting with the detritus of his life, thrown in without care until it bulges at odd corners, threatening to rip at the seams. He seems fragile, as he looks up at the windows from where Wilbur is watching, kicking and screaming and protesting all the while. Is it really so bad, being sent to a place other than the orphanage? He supposes he wouldn’t know, but given that the blond boy is dumped right back on their door step within the week pretty consistently, he supposes it is. 

Wilbur could always ask, of course. But he won’t. He’s two years older and the only time he sees kids other than those in his age bracket is at meals, and even then they try to keep them all separated by year. Something about keeping bullying to a minimum. 

There’s another kid that’s caught his interest too, although this one is more of a puzzle. A year older with pink hair like a “delinquent” or whatever that means, at first he struck Wilbur as something like a locked safe. Too big and bulky for the room, and twice as hard to crack. The matron seems scared of him for some reason, although she never seems to back down whenever he starts shouting. It’s impressive, too, given that whenever the pink-haired boy looks over at him during the daily shouting match at lunch, his jade green eyes seem to pierce him right down to his soul. Brrr... Scary. 

Wilbur had shuddered at first, whenever the older boy had glanced at him in the halls, frozen by the ice in his eyes. It had seemed like he had locked all of his warmth deep, deep down. That opinion had changed, of course. The pink-haired boy is no safe- and even if he was, he wouldn’t be a good one because somehow, someway, Wilbur already has the key.

The boys from different age blocks aren’t supposed to interact. This isn’t always quite the case. A dropped match while trying to light a candle, a cabinet full of cleaning supplies, and a fireball too large for comfort and he found himself on punishment detail with the pink-haired boy himself. Peeling potatoes of all things.

The pink-haired boy’s name is Technoblade. He had two brothers and a dad with a secret and he loved them all very much. The secret was very big and very dangerous, and life was hard because their dad couldn’t work but Techno was the best farmer and could grow all sorts of food in the garden, so they never went hungry. They all got sick of potatoes pretty quick though.

Wilbur had just smiled and nodded. It was a nice story, and he told the pink-haired boy as much. What happened next? How did the dad die? He must’ve, if he had ended up in the orphanage with him. The pink-haired boy had looked at him, then, and the jade of his eyes had shattered. 

He’s no good with crying people, and he’s tried to stay out of trouble since. He doesn’t want to make anyone cry ever again, even if he isn’t quite sure what he did just yet. 

But yeah. Definitely not a safe. Maybe a refrigerator or something? All cold and stuff until it gets unplugged and then everything in it just melts. Although, having a refrigerator as your home is a bit mental. At least, he thinks so. Is he losing track of his metaphors again? Some days, Wilbur isn’t really all there and it shows.

But yeah. Cardboard, trash bag, and dead refrigerator. All the makings of a perfect garbage heap. Maybe they should start a group or something.

A little trash family all his own. 

Ha. Wilbur turns back to the sheet music in his lap and tries to make sense of the notes, of the tune that floats through his mind, faint as a dream.

Ha. As if.