#hitherby dragons

[jennamoran]

Tonight's Hitherby: "No Innards, No Problem"

Jane is sick.

“Darn it,” Jane says, when she hears the doctor’s report. “Tuberculosis!”

There’s a little picture of tuberculosis on the wall. It shows the various systems that the TB bacteria infests. It says, in bold, “There’s no magic answer to tuberculosis!”

“You shouldn’t be playing in infested pits of tuberculosis bacteria,” explains the doctor. “That’s not good hygiene!”

Jane makes a woeful face. Her lip trembles.

“But it’s the only good place to play in,” she says.

“There’s a half-finished slide at the park!” the doctor says. “You could use that!”

“I could have,” says Jane. Her eyes widen. “But now I’ll be quarantined!”

The doctor shakes her head.

Jane slowly relaxes.

The doctor says, “In nihilistic 19th century Russia we would have idolized you. In barbaric 20th century America we would have quarantined you. But today—”

The doctor taps the “treatment” section of the tuberculosis picture.

“—today, we can treat this malaise with advanced medical techniques. Do you have good health insurance?”

“I have moderate health insurance,” Jane stresses. “It’s okay for ordinary treatment, but don’t try any of your funny medical tricks!”

The doctor nods. She prints out a series of instructions. Jane watches nervously as the doctor measures out doses of several different medications into the plastic mold of a wand. The doctor then hands the wand to Jane.

“Wave the wand and recite,” says the doctor.

“Okay!” says Jane, giving a thumbs-up. Then she coughs, racking consumptive coughs. Then she blinks it off and beams at the doctor.

“Star sparkle power,” says the doctor. “Production!”

Jane waves the wand, reciting, “Star sparkle power—production!”

Jane leaps into the air. She can’t help it. It’s the magic of the words. She spins around. Her clothes attenuate into great sky-pythons of fabric that swirl in the air around her.

“Ack!” says Jane. “My dignity!”

Jane’s skin turns translucent. She doesn’t have organs! Instead, inside her, she has the sparkling grandeur of a starlit sky.

“You can tie the sky-pythons together in back,” says the doctor, “so that they’re more concealing.”

“Oh!” says Jane.

But the transformation sequence does not last long enough for Jane to apply this advice. She lands on the ground in a heap, now wearing the marvelous rainbow outfit of a Star Sparkle Girl.

“Huh,” says Jane, dizzily. Her skin is still shimmering, and little stars whirl around her head.

“Say ‘ah’,” says the doctor.

The doctor puts a tongue depressor in Jane’s mouth.

“Ah!” says Jane.

“Good,” says the doctor. “I don’t see any tuberculosis bacteria in your throat.”

Jane’s stomach twitches a bit. It’s from the minor gag reflex triggered by having the tongue depressor on her tongue.

Then, even though the doctor takes the tongue depressor out, Jane’s stomach heaves! She hiccups stardust all over the doctor’s floor. Now it’s very sparkly.

Jane gulps a little bit.

“Um,” says Jane.

“It’ll happen for a bit,” says the doctor. “I mean, the stars-in-the-stomach.”

“But all the kids will tease me!” says Jane. Her eyes are wide. “I can’t be ‘throws up stars girl!'”

The doctor looks in Jane’s left eye, then her right eye. Then the doctor takes down a few notes, shrugs, and tucks her medical clipboard under her arm.

“There’s no magic answer to tuberculosis,” the doctor points out. “It says so on the sign.”

Jane hiccups. There’s the bitter taste of a white dwarf in the back of her throat, its cold electrons mashed one against another to fill up all the available energy levels.

“But everyone will tease me,” Jane says, miserably.

Playing in the tuberculosis pits doesn’t seem that good an idea now.

[retroactivebakeries]

[xavidotron]

After a moment, Sid opens one box. He looks inside. “Wow,” he says again. “These are the cutest armor-piercing bullets I’ve ever seen.”

[zafyrus-owo]

5 signs you are one of Montechristien Gargamel's 100 golden men

[jennamoran]

The World Became as Glass

I don't know what the noise at the very beginning is. I don't even know if it was me and not the computer being weird. I kept having recordings start with clicks and then break into actual voice midword so this time, this take, I waited around and made random noises to get the microphone live before starting this time.

(original script that I was recording from follows)

Let’s tell stories.

Last night, I was doing pretty well, to be honest. I knew things could be bad, but I thought they could be good. Sometime after dinner, I made the mistake of checking the news. It wasn’t even settled then.

And it was like the world was made of glass.

Like the world was made of glass, and behind it was a wind of malignancy and rot, a thing like the sludge you find if you leave vegetables alone too long.

I don’t know if that’s how it was for you.

And like, if a story starts with the world becoming as glass, that has to be the answer, too. I think. The story begins with the state of things, and ends with how it wants you to feel.

You don’t have to think about last night if you don’t want to. You can think about some other time. Some other story. Do tell me that story, though.

For me, the world became as glass; and so it ends, because the world is glass.

But I like to believe in hope, right?

What’s hope in your story?

In mine, it’s ... fire. It’s a fire that can burn the gunk away. And its secret comes from the way the world becomes as glass.

And like my first thought as to that secret—what’s yours, by the way?

My first thought as to that secret is that, like, we’re looking for the last glassbreaker in the world. That you can break the glass and … the malignancy behind it somehow fades.

I’m too angry for that tonight, though.

It’s a beautiful little story, to imagine that if you break the glass, the horror goes away; and if you have anxiety, if you have fear, then that’s a story that should speak to you, you know? But this wasn’t anxiety or fear from daily life. This was anxiety or fear from a horror that only comes once or twice a decade.

I don’t want to exaggerate it. To be clear. I don’t want to tell you that we’re all doomed. We’re not. But it’s also genuinely bad.

So let’s find a different story. Do you need to?

Here’s another way to tell the story of the horror, and have the answer be as glass.

That somewhere in the world is the last fire of goodness. Break the glass and set it free.

My brain, because it’s my brain, immediately says: it’s a tourist attraction. People come and look at the fire. They ooh and ahh. Because you want something ridiculous in your story, right? Something ridiculous and true.

Something that hurts but makes you laugh.

I draw on pop culture for that a lot. I think about Coney Island. I don’t even really know what that is, the name just stuck in my brain for the kind of thing I want.

There’s the last flame of goodness in the world, and it’s a tourist attraction. People walk by, eating cotton candy. They laugh at clowns. Sometimes the cotton candy gets away, it drops to the floor, and they wistfully stare after it thinking about the fading of the goodness of the world.

I like a light touch. I like the kind of melancholy you can laugh at. It’s the same as the melancholy that makes you weep, but it doesn’t hurt until you’re ready to unbox it.

Maybe there’s some seagulls?

I don’t know. You have to come back to this part after you write the end.

The end, of course, is that the fire gets set free. Everyone tried to stop this. They warned and warned the protagonist. Which I guess metaphorically means, don’t hope, but also, like, people get upset if you try to break the glass in—-

Ooh, break the glass in case of fire. Break the glass if you need fire. Yeah.

The fire gets free.

And the malignancy, I think, is like oil, right? It’s like an oil slick, spreading on the sea that is our lives. That’s part of the real evil that’s been unleashed today, although only the smallest and most already-present part. But it’s there.

And so the fire catches on that, and it burns. It’s still burning now.

I’m still looking for your story, to be clear. I’m still looking for how you processed the night, or some other night. I’m still looking for how you take that and turn it around and find the answer.

I want to hear your little bits of melancholy humor. I want to see that in the replies.

But that’s the story, right?

The rest is a bunch of editing. I like to write really short stories and really long stories. So for me, it can be just a few paragraphs, you know?

Say it with me: once upon a time …

Once upon a time, for Jane, the world became as glass. And behind that glass, pressed up against it like a starving kid against the windows of the world, a sea of rot.

…

So I do think there’s rot in the world, but I also think you have to be really careful with it in fiction. Everybody puts themselves on the side of the angels, you know? The more words for evil we have, the more people turn it into weapons for themselves. Usually against the best and most vulnerable of us.

So let’s try this again.

Once upon a time, Jane saw the world become as glass, and behind it was ...

Hm, step back a bit. Once upon a time, goodness rained down upon the world like candy. It fell in drifts and piles, like the snow, and it was sweet.

But we did not pick it up.

It was on the other side of the glass from us, a glass we let be hidden from us, and so it moldered on the hills and dales of the world, feast-grounds for the harvest-men alone.

They kept it for themselves, but they could not process it, and it began to rot.

One day, for Jane, the world became as glass; she saw through that veil of the world, but there was not goodness there but rather rot, a sea of rot, pressed up aginst the glass that was the world like a hungry child at the window. A sea of rot that had been goodness but was still desperate to get in.

“Wow,” she said. “That’s not up to code!”

I figure, the way it happened, after all, was that some regulations or other got slashed. You know. The ones that say you have to share the goodness. The ones that say you have to have drainage set up for a sea of goodness turned to rot. You’re not supposed to just pile glass haphazardly this way and that and leave candy out to rot behind.

I’m pretty sure.

I haven’t actually read most of the rules that have been cut.

There was still one bit of goodness, though, that didn’t end. One bit of goodness that burned on and on. A kind of love, a kind of hope, that was not candy but rather fire.

It burned, behind the veil of the world, and people came to look at it. They pointed at it and laughed, or showed their kids.

“This is what we could have been.”

They built a great park around it, and candy—processed, preserved, and resold by the harvest-men—well, they carried it around, and chatted, and did not think for a time about the great sea of rot behind the glass.

They warmed themselves by the light of the fire, and told themselves, this is something small.

This is something trivial and laughable and covered in the lime of passing birds.

(Birds don’t like the fire of goodness. Only a fire of world-ending wickedness burns within their hearts. But love them for it, do love them for it, for it’s still a flame.)

Jane let the long years pass before she went to see it. It was just a carnival attraction after all. And living in a world of glass and rot is tiring. She kept cutting herself on the edges of the glass wheresoever she would walk.

And when she saw it, she stopped, and stared; and her heart was in her throat, and she said, “Oh.”

Oh, she said, and knew that we were beautiful.

The sign beneath it read, “In case of fire, DO NOT BREAK GLASS.”

This is incidentally reasonable, because if there is a fire, you don’t want broken glass there too. Remember only to break the special glass that is there to break in fires rather than like any glass you want.

But Jane didn’t remember that.

She saw the sign, and scoffed, because everyone knows that’s not what it’s meant to say.

So she reached out, and took the hammer. (There was a hammer, even though nobody was supposed to break the glass. IT’s like I said, a bunch of regulations had been slashed.)

“No,” yelled the guy who owned the park. “No! My passive income!”

“No!” yelled the children passing by. “It says DO NOT BREAK GLASS!”

The birds screeched, too, but in their hearts I think that they were glad.

And she took the hammer, and struggled through the field of arms that tried to hold her back—

There was a field of arms. It was one of the other attractions. Some kind of lingering bodily autonomy sort of thing, I guess?

And struck; and raged the fire free.

And in that moment she understood that she had always seen herself on the wrong side of the glass. In that moment she understood that the fields of rot were not sealed away, but rather ever-present, a reflection, and it walked beside her.

She grasped this in that moment, as the fields of rot took flame.

She grasped this, as that pyre of goodness rose to seize the world; and was exalted in the flame;

And if it has stopped, that fire burns right to this day.

... I could do better, do more editing, smooth it into shape; but not today.

[retroactivebakeries]

[xavidotron]

[xavidotron]

It is January 15.

I do not write real life person slash about the Pope. Every year when January 15th comes around I think about it. I laugh, because it is such a silly thing. I think about it. But I do not do it.

I would be ashamed.

Fernando told me the story of "write real life person slash about the Pope day" once, on a summer weekend, when we were sitting outside and admiring the bouganvillea that grew in his white lattice.

"It is because the Pope is afraid that people will look at him sexually," Fernando said. "That is why he is so angry at gay men."

"Is that why?" I asked.

"Why else?" said Fernando, with a little shrug. "So there is January 15th. The day that is every year when people write real life person slash about the Pope. So that he understands that he does not control how people look at him, but only how he shows himself. Then he will be less angry at gay men and more angry at the Internet."

Keep Reading 

[eccentric-nucleus]

in retrospect probably reading a lot of hitherby dragons at a formative age has something to do with my rejection of all ontologies & taxonomies. what do you mean you can sort the world into categories. seems really arrogant to me tbh

[queenlua]

i expected this story to be a total meme and it kind of is but it’s also kinda  sweet???

[xavidotron]

The girl gets to her feet. “My name’s Ink,” she says. “But everyone calls me the imago. It’s ’cause I’m covered in intangible bugs.”

kind of obsessed with this actually. like yes imago means image or likeness but it's also a ghost. it's the image of your ancestors that you display in your house and at your funerals. it's a depiction of all that came before you and it's also your own final state. i think biologists and classicists should make out about this

[theconceptofkidney]

We've started reading Kill 6 Billion Demons. Very interenting so far. Art style reminds us of The Submachine (our beloved). The stories/psalms/proverbs/prayers remind us of Hitherby Dragons ^_^

[jennamoran]

Tonight's Hitherby: "In a World Rapidly Turning to Cards"

I was too busy thinking about Nobilis to do another voiced thing today. So instead I'll repost a story I wrote back in 2004, and link you to a voiced version by Xavid, who's done readings of a bunch of these.

Dame Mathilda rides.

She is a bold knight, Dame Mathilda, born into a time of legends. She wears shining steel mail. She wields a bright sword. It’s long and it’s sharp. The hilt bears a lady’s favor. Its balance is fine, and the Pope blest its blade.

Dame Mathilda rides to rescue a princess. That princess has been kidnapped by a manticore. Dame Mathilda considers this typical, which should explain a great deal about her life and her situation.

Mathilda dismounts by the manticore’s lair. It’s a cave adjoining a grassy field. She brushes back her horse’s mane. “Stay well, Morningshine,” she says. “If things go poorly, I’ll need your swift feet.”

The horse whickers. “I plan to stay well,” he informs her. “I do not want a manticore to eat me.”

“That’s good,” she says. “Also …”

“I will not get stuck in a tree again,” Morningshine drones. “Or wander off a cliff. And that wardrobe experience — I shall not repeat it.”

“Good,” Mathilda says. She pats his nose. “Then I go.”

She enters the manticore’s lair. From within, the sounds of battle rage. Then comes a shout: “Flawless victory!”

Mathilda emerges. Her sword drips with blood. She carries a previously-stolen princess slung over her shoulder. She looks for Morningshine. Morningshine is not there.

Carefully, Mathilda reviews the situation. She looks up. Morningshine is not stuck in a tree. She looks down. Morningshine has not fallen into a pit. She looks around. She sees a squirrel. The squirrel looks innocent. Mathilda concludes that the squirrel did not steal her horse.

“Can I put you down for a moment?” Mathilda asks the princess.

“Of course,” the princess says, haughtily.

Mathilda does so. “Don’t wander off,” she says.

“I wouldn’t wander off,” the princess sniffs.

“You wandered off and a manticore kidnapped you,” Mathilda points out.

“That was not wandering,” the princess insists. “It was peregrination.”

“Before that, a chimera; and before that, an evil duke; and the time before that, I believe it was some jelly.”

“The jelly did not kidnap me,” the princess argues. “It was more that its tart, crisp flavor kept me enchanted.”

“Nevertheless,” Mathilda says. “Please stay put.”

Mathilda ranges through the field. She looks under every stone. She studies the clouds. She walks beyond the field and into the woods. She scours the earth. In frustration, she summons forth the dryad of the trees.

“Hello!” the dryad says.

“Hi,” Mathilda agrees.

“I’m a dryad!” the dryad explains.

“Have you seen a horse?”

“Horses go da-da-dun da-da-dun da-da-dun when they run,” the dryad says.

“Yes,” Mathilda agrees. “They do.”

“Da-da-dun, da-da-dun, da-da-dun, da-da-flutter.”

“It’s a canter,” Mathilda says.

“They can’t?”

Mathilda catches a glimpse of white out of the corner of the eye. It is high in a tree. She hands her sword to the dryad. “Please hold this,” she says.

“Okay!”

“And stay here.”

“I’ll stay here!”

Mathilda climbs the tree. She takes the white thing down from its branches. It’s a card. The card is white. The card is crisp. The card is clean. Its black letters say MORNINGSHINE.

“I cannot but think,” says Dame Mathilda, dropping lithely to the ground, “that Morningshine has transformed into a card; and this somewhat tops his normal straying tendencies.”

The card nickers apologetically.

“Well,” Mathilda says, philosophically, “at least you are portable.” She tucks her horse away in her pocket and goes to collect the princess.

A dragon flutters down into the meadow. Its neck is long. Its eyes are bright. Its wings are powerful.

“I am having a complicated day,” Mathilda explains.

“You are a knight,” the dragon says. “I am a dragon. This is not complicated.”

“This much is true,” Mathilda says. “But I just rescued the princess from a manticore, and it is traditional to return her to the castle before she is captured again.”

“I don’t see a princess,” the dragon says, puzzledly. “I had thought this was an essentially coincidental encounter.”

Mathilda frowns. She looks around the field. The dragon, curious, follows suit. Finally, the dragon spots a card.

“PRINCESS,” the dragon reads, holding the card up. It cocks its head sideways. It stares at Mathilda. “This is very low-budget, Dame.”

“It’s not my fault,” Mathilda protests. “She was a real princess when I left.”

The dragon thinks. “Well, are you willing to fight to win her back?”

“I suppose,” Mathilda sulks. “Let me go collect my sword.”

“Of course,” the dragon agrees.

A few minutes pass.

“Don’t get lost!” the dragon cries into the trees.

A few more minutes pass.

Mathilda stalks back. She holds the SWORD card in her hand. It is short and flat. It has the word “Sword” on it. It is blest by the Pope.

“Ha!” the dragon laughs. The dragon exhales the FLAME card. The card falls out of its mouth and sizzles on the ground. The dragon frowns.

“I am unsure,” Mathilda says, “which of us has the advantage under the current circumstances.”

They move towards one another; and begin the dance of knight and dragon; and finally retreat, one from the other, to sit panting on the ground. Mathilda clutches her ARMOR card close to her slip. The dragon looks with grave disapproval at the CLAW, FANG, and SCALES cards scattered across the grass.

Mathilda finally says what both of them are thinking.

“I don’t want to fight any more.”

“Hm,” the dragon agrees.

“It’s too bad that we pretty much have to finish the fight,” Mathilda notes. “For honor, I mean.”

“Ack!” the dragon cries, and rolls over. “I am slain! I am slain!” It flops, limp.

“Flawless victory!” Mathilda shouts.

Mathilda stalks off. After a bit, the dragon gets up and slinks after her. When she hears its footfall, deep in the woods, Mathilda turns.

“Why are you following me?”

“Humans are clever,” the dragon says. “I figure you’ll find a way to turn the cards back. Then I’ll have tooth and claw and flame again.”

“Go away,” she says. “We’re deadly enemies.”

“I’ve never really done anything to you,” the dragon points out.

Mathilda scratches her forehead. “It’s still how things are done.”

“No,” the dragon says. “‘How things are done’ has you killing me, or me killing you. Then you raise your sword in triumph, or I lick myself clean, gleam magnificently in the sun, and crack open your armor to eat your tasty corpse.”

“I can still kill you,” Mathilda says.

“No,” the dragon says, practically. “You can’t. You don’t know how.”

“I …”

Mathilda frowns.

“You don’t, do you?”

“I have a SWORD card!” Mathilda shouts. Then she sits down and sulks, holding a small deck of cards close to her heart. After a while, she leans back against a tree. After another while, she falls over on top of the TREE card.

“I don’t really want to kill you,” Dame Mathilda admits.

The dragon examines the DRAMATIC CONVENTIONS card. “Oh,” it says. “I’m glad. You seem pretty cool, for a knight.”

Mathilda raises an eyebrow. “You haven’t seen my best side.”

“I know,” the dragon admits. “I had to take that into account.”

“Okay,” Mathilda says. “As long as you understand.”

“It’s getting faster,” the dragon says.

“How can you tell?”

The dragon hops. “Less gravity.”

“Ah.” Mathilda thinks. She reviews the rules by which her life has functioned. “Is there any obvious way to overcome this situation through the power of friendship, understanding, and facing our inner demons?”

The dragon squinches up its face and clenches its sinuous body, trying to face its inner demons. This fails.

“I don’t think so,” the dragon says. “However, I will happily be your friend.”

“Good,” Mathilda says.

There’s a silence.

Mathilda sits up. She looks over. She stands up. She walks over. She picks up the DRAGON card. It is warm in her hand. She walks into the silence, and two years pass.

“Hi!”

Mathilda looks up sharply. It’s the first voice she’s heard in years.

“Who are you?” she says.

It’s a young woman. She’s fair and tall. Her eyes are deepest blue. “I’m Willow,” she says. “I’m the unmaker.”

“Hey.” Mathilda hesitates, and then permits herself to utter a small complaint. “Everything’s turned into cards.”

“Yes,” Willow says. “Everything everywhere but you. That’s why I had to come find you.”

“Why?” Mathilda asks.

“I looked at the world,” Willow says, “and decided that it would be better that way. But you won’t turn into a card.”

Willow reaches out. She touches Mathilda’s nose. Mathilda does not turn into a card. “See?”

“I see,” Mathilda says gravely.

“It’s efficacious enough,” Willow says. “I mean, everywhere else.”

Mathilda tilts her head to one side. Then she says, with gentle sympathy, “You need help, don’t you.”

Willow’s eyes mist over with confusion. “Why would you say that?”

Mathilda shrugs.

“Don’t,” Willow says, sharply. “I’m your enemy. I’ve killed everything. See?”

Willow holds up the EVERYTHING BUT YOU AND ME card.

“Yes,” Mathilda agrees. “But you’re a damsel in distress.”

Willow’s eyes burn. Then she turns away. “You can’t care,” she says. “You’re a paper tiger. You’re a pattern knight. You don’t know how to rescue anybody. If you did, people wouldn’t be CARDS.”

“I used to rely on my sword,” Mathilda says. “I used to rely on my sword, and my armor, and the presence of dragons.”

“Right,” Willow snaps.

“But that’s not what it’s about,” Mathilda says. “Striving for the right. It’s not about the forms.”

Willow sits down on the nothingness. She shrugs angrily.

“It’s not about the forms,” Mathilda says. “It’s about helping people who are hurt.”

“But I’m your enemy,” Willow protests, again.

“You’re also the second-to-last damsel in distress in all the world,” Mathilda says. “So I’ll have to let that pass.”

Willow looks down. There’s nothing beneath her feet. Just the endless hungry void.

[xavidotron]

“Remember the Doom Team code!” says Tom. “You don’t have to die just because some people think your existence is evil!”

Inadvisable tabletop RPG premise #137: fantasy adventure game where each player character is the Chosen One of a different world-ending prophecy; while the game is cooperative at the PC level, it's competitive at the player level, with each player employing various meta bullshit devices to ensure that their apocalypse is the one that comes to pass and their Special Little Guy gets to be the protagonist of history.

[retroactivebakeries]

Enticements:

[xavidotron]

People used to come here, says the tree. They climbed me to the heavens. They went up into the sky.