#it take a certain kind of delusion to write a whole ass story about obscure mentions headcanons and a character that has no real plot lol

[katiekatdragon27]

I'm so normal about the teensies.

I'm so normal about the teensies that I made a pre-Rayman origin story for the teensies. The teensies built the world lol, idc how inaccurate it is to the lore lol.

It's my interpretation, I get to decide the lore!

(THING TO NOTE: All of their designs are based on already existing teensies, whether it be canon or concept doesn't matter. If you can accurately figure out which teensies inspired who, I will give you a gold star🌟)

General plot synopsis: Polokus made the world. The fairies were also made; however, they were not "sentient" beings yet. All their births were from teeny terraforming of the land but that'll be explained in a later post. Anyways, the teensies were created not only to make sick beats with their noses, but to give the world guides and watchful keepers of order. Once every creature was created, Polokus took his leave, leaving all his "kids" to figure everything out. As one could imagine, that caused a lot of fighting over who's in charge. One teensy in particular knew in his heart he was built to lead. However, due to his short stature and insistence for violence, many did not even lend a passing glance.

When Polokus had a bad dream and a certain first nightmare invades the Glade, death in introduced into the world and no one knows how to deal with it. In a test of leadership and strength. This one teensy beat the odds, uniting every clan of teeny around, recruiting their most powerful fighters, and taking down the nightmare, restoring peace to the Glade.

Despite the win, there were still many rabid creatures running around, so in an attempt to establish order permanently, they "built" the Snoring Tree, the most middle part of the world where every teensy leader (and other creatures if needed) could come to discuss diplomacy and general plans of action (a knights of the round table kind of thing). It is where the Hall of Doors is located along with a direct link to the Livid Dead, which was established just a few years earlier. (After the Snoring Tree was made, that's when the fairies were "born" with Betilla being the first.)

However, his establishment of peace fell on it's face almost immediately due to teensy nature being lowkey selfish lol. The first "generation" of teensies was very good at this "guide and order keeper" job, but as each generation passed, more and more of the teensies' diplomatic mindset was pushed to the wayside in favor of a superiority complex. And when Betilla made Rayman as a protector of the Glade, many teensies lost interest in fighting themselves, leaving them very susceptible to attacks. That's why every creature ever is adamant in sticking these guys in cages. Cuz they're lowkey assholes who can't fight lol.

There are gonna be 10 important people to the plot, but I only got five finished right now. Their bios are below the cut:

_________

Aurthr the Grand Minimus (Fighter):

Aurthr is actually the First King in his prime. He was the first teensy made by Polokus, although he is not the "oldest" (like imagine a creator making ocs of different age ranges but they were all made at the same time). By default, he feels an entitlement to the first throne position in his kingdom, but before he is deemed "king", he has to go though a trial. That trial is ... defeating Jano! Yes, these are gonna be the group of teensies that defeat Jano and create the Livid Dead lol. But in order to do that, he needs to learn to be a leader. Along the way, he also learns that to be a grand leader, he needs to value solutions through diplomacy over violence (something that is lost in later generations *cough cough*).

Orion the Adventurous Ranger:

Orion is Aurthr's childhood best friend who comes from outside the castle walls. Being a Murkin (a clan of teensies that has since disappeared), he is very good at going undetected and just navigating the world outside of civilization in general. Despite his soft-spoken nature and cowardness, he really wants to make a difference for the better in teensy society, and it may just come around by teaching Aurthr to listen first before attacking (along with how to be an amazing Kungfoot player).

And yeah, he has ears. Ears are a recessive gene, but the Murkin were the clan that had that trait the most. (They usually get cropped if they're too big to hide in their hats.)

Sapphie the Beautiful Bard:

Sapphie is a teensy who's primary magic use is of the darker arts (hence her ability to go natural hair). Before being Aurthr's first recruit, she spent most of her days traveling about and doing small thieving jobs. She was a well-know musician, and she performed for money a lot. However, what she loves more than money is adventure. She immediately jumps onboard to Aurthr's crew, leading as healer until a different teensy joins the group later on and giving her the chance to fight. She teaches Aurthr about strength in presentation (and how to play his nose like a musical interment).

Umber the Undead Warlock:

Umber is one of the two mages that Aurthr sought out to help fight Jano. They are the Griskin Chief and trying their best to keep their people safe. This dedication to their people's safety led to a deal with a slumbering spirit, giving up their voice in exchange for power and sanctuary near his den. While constantly struggling to keep their clan quiet, they have been trying to manage the sudden influx in stressed out and scared ghosts showing up and causing a ruckus. Stressed and overwhelmed, it takes more than just some talking to convince them to go with Aurthr. But after helping with some big tasks and beating them in a game of Kungfoot, they decide to assist, and put a stop to whatever is killing everyone from above the bog.

Soria the Stunning Sorceress:

Soria is one of the two mages that Aurthr sought out to help fight Jano. Being part of the Sylkin sorcerers, she was the main protecter of Polokus's resting place high in the mountains. She is incredibly strong for a teensy in terms of magic, making her quite the formidable fighter. However, she would much rather sing and dance, and overall just have fun being alive than perform combat. She decides to help defeat Jano after being bested in music fight with Aurthr and having her eyes open to the destruction occurring down below.

She also has ears. They are long, but since her hat is also long there was no need to crop them.

__________

There are five more characters that will be posted later, but these are the important ones at the beginning of the story. I have a lot of this world thought out with a very solid plotline, so if y'all got any questions, I would be more than happy to answer them. Thank you for your reading all this and have a lovely day ^^

[sorunuah]

Pivot

Warnings:  vomit, death, unreality/delusions

Word Count:  2,764

I was always...different.

Some of my earliest memories are of my maman comforting me from yet another nightmare. I remember always asking her why I had so many of the dreams in which I'd die in various, grotesque ways. The mes in my dreams didn't always look like me; sometimes they were girls, sometimes boys, sometimes neither, or both; sometimes older, sometimes younger, sometimes taller, or shorter; some had different hair, or eyes, or lacked the freckles that my maman said make me unique...but they were always still distinctly me. Some died in car wrecks, some drowned, some starved to death, some were killed by thieves, and some died in wars. Some bled out slowly in an alleyway as the heavens mourned their loss, while yet others went quickly in their sleep.

My maman has always insisted I had the nightmares because I am special. Yeah, right, I always thought. I'm just me. I'm not especially tall, or handsome, or smart, or strong. I've never had any real friends, either. In fact, I was never exactly well received by my peers.

I remember, when I began school, some of the other children with older siblings telling stories that only made me have more nightmares. It was then that I began to have a hint of just how 'special' I am. Or, was?

I learned that those nightmares of mine? Everyone has them. Our reality, or dimension, or world, or whatever you want to call it, is a bridge between all other realities. It's not uncommon knowledge; there's a day once a year when we can see other versions of ourselves for six hours starting at sunset. I like the versions of myself where I'm taller, and have longer hair, although I'd never wear my own hair long. They walk around through our world like ghosts, interacting with ghost objects only present in their own worlds. It's useless to try to talk to them. Well, most of them anyway. They can't see or hear us, other than the rare few.

...I'm...rambling. The nightmares, those are visions of our other selves dying. They say whenever you narrowly avoid death in this world, one of your doppelgängers die. Then, you dream about it. They say it's a gift from God to our world to make us appreciate our lives more...but it's only really ever made me hate mine. If there is a God, I bet it was an experiment, not a gift.

I was 'cool,' in elementary school. The girls liked my copper red hair and freckles, and the boys thought I was 'edgy' because of how many nightmares I had. They thought it was cool, and I wore the bags under my eyes as medals of honor. Each sleepless night a testament to how difficult it was for me to die.

In middle school, no one cared. Everyone was into something different, and I faded into obscurity.

After my first year of high school, my maman and I moved far away. Far enough that everyone doted on my accent, and I had to speak English instead of French. I didn't question why we had to move. My life had grown boring - monotonous. I began to have nightmares more frequently after I turned sixteen, and, as it was 'cool' again to have them, I ran my mouth. At first, I was 'cool,' and I had a lot of 'friends.' Then people stopped believing me. "There's no way!" "Not every night!" "How important do you think you are?" "There's no reason for you to come so close to death all the time!" "No one's going to try that hard to kill a loser ginger like you!" So I stopped talking about it, and I lost my friends. My maman worried, but I kept my grades up, so she never worried too much.

When I was seventeen, on the Night of Viewing, I wandered outside to walk through the streets and pretend I was a ghost like the other versions of me. I noticed how few of me were left. I wasn't as surprised as I should have been, I think. That night, I saw some kind of creature. Thinking back, maybe I should have told someone. Maybe someone could have done something, maybe I could have done something differently, spent more time with my maman.

...No. No, no one could have done anything about it but me. I'm certain of that now. A lesson learned is a lesson learned, even if it is learned too late.

The creature came to me, spoke to me. It said it was going to kill me. It said it was going to kill every me out there, until it killed the right one. It apologized. It said it would rather not have to go through all the trouble, or cause all that trouble for me, but that it had to. It said that it had to, that it was for everyone's sake, that it needed to kill the right me in time, whatever the cost. That it would all be over by the time I turned 18, one way or another.

I took no heed of the creature's warning, although I think it was less of a warning and more of a...declaration of intent. Still, I didn't care. I just went on about my life, not thinking anything of it.

Throughout the next several months or so, I had more and more nightmares, up of five a night. I stopped having dreams entirely in which I'd have a lover on my arm and we'd be sitting close together on a porch swing with the sun setting behind us.

I started to go mad. I started skipping school. I started writing poetry, then. I started shouting a lot and getting into various forms of 'trouble,' mostly fights. I started listening to punk music way too loud. I stopped sleeping. I found that, if I went for a few days without sleep first, I would be too tired to remember the nightmares when they came. I started going back to school.

My grades weren't the best they'd been, since I never slept and had difficulty paying attention in class. I doodled on all my assignments and wrote short little poems in the margins.

One of my teachers noticed. She asked me to write a poem for an upcoming young writers contest. I submitted to her a poem entitled Running.

About a week later I got a notice saying I'd placed. Tortured souls really do write the best poetry, I suppose. It was only second place...but still. I don't think my maman had ever been so proud of me. I don't think it was that good, but hey. Who am I?

People are fickle things, and as soon as things starting seemingly going my way again, everyone 'forgot' entirely to hate me, and started swarming me again. I had 'friends' again. People helped me along in the classes I slept through, although no one ever questioned me as to why I slept through all my classes and seemed so tired all the time. No one ever actually cared is all, but that was never really important to me. I didn't want friends, I wanted the nightmares to stop.

Weeks passed. Nothing changed. Nothing ever changes! It came time to read the poem in front of the school and accept my prize. My maman dressed me in a nice black suit with a black tie with green and white stripes. I walked in for the ceremony and feel asleep immediately after arriving and sitting down. I placed second in my class. They called my name twice before the person sitting next to me managed to nudge me awake. I dreamt of black.

I walked up onto the stage, stumbling and stepping all over myself the whole way. I was handing the nice, two page long print out of the poem I had originally scribbled on a scrap of paper that was supposed to be for calculus notes.

The man from the contest read aloud one final time my name and submission title.

"Kylian K. Quick, with his entry, Running."

I coughed once, then stood and looked out over the crowd, my tired eyes not really taking anything in. I started reading from the sheet without any further ado.

"Running away from your troubles is like matches and wood, 'cause it burns like the sun when it sets in your eyes.

"And it falls through the cracks like water through a sieve, like tears through the lines in your skin.

"And it hurts like needles in all the wrong places, like cuts under salt burn in the light.

"And you just want to run more, like when you're out of breath, but it hurts just right. Like when you're addicted, you can't stop now.

"And it sounds like bones in a fire crackling away, like birds singing songs in the dead of the night.

"'Cause it's wrong like a right that just wants to be heard.

"'Cause running never saved anyone, but it makes the pain duller, like nasty medicine; yet...pain begeh...huh?"

I dropped the mic and let the paper flutter to the ground. I had lost the ground from under my feet and the next thing I knew I had managed to get onto my ass and was leaned over forward hurling all over the stage. The next thing I remember – it happened right before that, but it was as though I didn't finish processing what I had seen until my stomach was half empty – was another nightmare. Not of me dying, but of the creature. It had been in broad daylight, and I hadn't been asleep. It had seemed so unimportant, and foggy, like out of a dream, when it apologized and said it was going to kill me. But this time it had seemed so...vivid, so...unsettling. I had seen it while I was reciting the poem. It had been watching me momentarily before slipping out the back door of the auditorium.

It was huge, and moved in slow, long steps with its shoulders hunched forward in a way that made it look like it was trying to appear gentle despite its size. It looked like it was made of tar, black ooze sliding off its body and splatting onto ground with a sick sound that was the only thing I could hear.

Lumbering was the only word I could think of to describe it as the vivid image of it burned into my mind while my stomach emptied itself of water and bile.

After that incident, things changed.

Yet again, no one would associate with me, and I only ever heard cruel remarks and quiet laughter. I didn't care. I had gotten what I wanted. The nightmares stopped. I was finally free to sleep again. In fact, I felt freer than I ever had. I no longer dreamt of anything, just empty blackness.

It was heaven. At least, that was what I thought at the time. It was at that point that I stopped having the nightmares, yes, but I had not yet escaped them. It was at that point that I began to live the nightmares.

It was not long at all before I began wandering through my life in a daze. I started seeing the ghosts – the other versions of people – at all times. There were none of me. Sometimes I thought I was talking to the right person, and sometimes they talked back, acting like they were the ones seeing a ghost. Which, I guess, they were.

People probably started to think I was going crazy. I never heard my maman mention it.

They stopped laughing. The closer it got to graduation, the less they laughed. At first, I thought it was because they were maturing, or perhaps the humor was wearing off. It never had before. I had no right to think it was then, either.

Teachers started forgetting to call my name during roll. I would gently remind them I was there, and upon a second, confused glance at the sheet, they would say, "Ah, yes. Mr. Quick. You're so quiet I nearly forgot about you!" and they would laugh, nervously, before scribbling furiously on the attendance sheet.

Even people who had previously been civil with me began acting like I wasn't there. The only one who showed no sign of this was my maman. I'm not sure if that made it better, or worse.

Eventually, I started forgetting myself. I would catch myself thinking things like, "wait, is purple my favorite color? Or was it yellow?" and realizing I had no answer. Even now, I can't remember what the truth is. I think it's maybe green.

It came to a head during graduation. I don't think anyone had spoken to me (save my maman) in days, and I hadn't been able to get them to hear me, either. The teachers insisted someone was pulling a prank and had added my name to the roster.

My memories become sparse around here.... But I remember walking on stage, clad in a dark purple, or maybe blue, silk dress shirt, and a black robe. I came across the stage to receive my diploma. They didn't say my name, but I walked on stage anyway. I can't remember why....

I was handed a blank sheet of paper. The words, "You aren't a student here, and you never were, I checked the records," were whispered into my ear as I walked past.

I went home. I remember going home.

I walked.

My maman was acting out of character when I got home.... She got pale when she saw me, as if she, too, were seeing a ghost. She made some small conversation, I think, and the next thing I remember after that is waking up the next morning. Was it the next morning? ...It had to have been. It was my birthday. I think that must have been a million years ago, but it was just this morning.

I woke up. I woke up, and I got out of bed. I woke up, and I got out of bed, and my maman couldn't see me, and the fringes of my sight were gone. It seemed as though the only thing that existed for me was what I was looking directly at.

I ran.

I ran, and ran, and kept running. The entire time, more and more of my world going black.

Now, there's nothing left. It's just black, and there's only me. I can see myself – I haven't gone blind – but I can't move! There's no ground for me to walk on. Only this black emptiness.

"What could have caused this...?" I voice to the darkness. It feels like I've never spoken before. I suddenly have a half-formed memory of dying as a baby – but at the same time, a half-formed memory of waking up in a tub.

There's a voice all around me, as though I'm inside it. I vaguely remember the voice of the creature as being the same.

"T H A T   I S   C O R R E C T.   T H A T   W A S   T H E   P I V O T.   I N   T H E H U B   W O R L D,   T H A T   I S,   T H E   W O R L D   T H A T   Y O U   H A V E   M E M O R I E S   I N,   Y O U   W E R E   M E A N T   T O   B E   G R E A T.    T H E   F A T E S   H A D   A   G R E A T   D E S T I N Y   P L A N N E D   F O R   Y O U.   Y O U   W E R E   T O   B E   K I N G   O F   M E N.   C E R T A I N   T H I N G S   A R E   F I X E D   B Y   T H E   F A T E S,   W H I L E   Y E T   O T H E R S   A R E   P I V O T S;   P O I N T S   W H E R E   T H I N G S   C A N   G O   O N E   W A Y,   O R   A N O T H E R.   I N   T H E   H U B   W O R L D,   Y O U R   M O T H E R,   H A V I N G   P R O P H E S I E D   Y O U R   K I N G D O M,   D R O W N   Y O U   A S   A   B A B E,   T O   P R E V E N T   T H E   T E R R I B L E   O U T C O M E   -   Y O U R   I N E V I T A B L E   A S S A S S I N A T I O N.   F O R   S O M E   R E A S O N   I   C A N N O T   F A T H O M,   Y O U,   T H I S   Y O U,   W A S   P U L L E D   F R O M   I T S   W O R L D   I N T O   T H E   H U B   W O R L D.   T H I S   C R E A T E D   A   R I F T   B E T W E E N   T H E   W O R L D S.   F R O M   T H I S,   I   C A M E   I N T O   B E I N G   -   T O   R E P A I R   T H E   R I F T."

I remember this creature saying that it had to kill me before. This must have been what it meant. ...It said by the time I turned 18. ...It was too late. Is this the end of the world, then?

The voice echoes around me again.

"D O   N O T   W O R R Y   C H I L D.   D O W N   T O   T H E   S E C O N D,   Y O U   A R E   N O T   Y E T   E I G H T E E N.   D O   N O T   W O R R Y   C H I L D.   W E   W I L L   B O T H   D I S A P P E A R   S O O N.   T H I S   H E L L   I S   N O T   F O R E V E R.   Y O U R   S U F F E R I N G   W I L L   S O O N   B E   O V E R,   A N D   T H E   R I F T   W I L L   B E   G O N E.   Y O U   W I L L   N O T   L E A V E   S A D N E S S   B E H I N D.   N O   O N E   W I L L   R E M E M B E R."

Its right, I think. I can't remember anymore, either.... Is this what becomes of us in death? Is this