#lmao though imagining all the engineers lined up and then there's him towering over them

[classic-toxic-medicine]

"Oooh. Coldfront." He shivered at the mention, having heard just how cold it could get. "I grew up in a subtropical region...so the cold really gets to me. The fur does help a hell of a lot, but I don't have it all the time...But yeah I'm okay. You know....It'd be easier if I went and got dressed and came back here. Hold on." He held up his index finger before turning around and running off on all fours, and he was fast, going at least a good 40 mph due to having long strides and a flexible spine.

It took probably 15 minutes before a tall and rather wiry man in a t-shirt and shorts came sprinting back, long legs covering quite a bit of ground in a short time. He slowed down and then stopped in front of Alexei. Even when he looked fully human, he was still three inches shy of being 7 feet tall. He ran his fingers through fluffy white hair.

"Anyway. Thanks for waitin'."

If you see a large, long 9 foot white-furred hare-like humanoid-ish creature running around. Um...Good luck.

Alan had gone off base, stripped down, folded up his clothes, and then shifted into his werehare form so he could run around. Doing this sort of thing made it less painful when the full moon forced him to shift forms. It kept him lucid.

[preemshots]

johnny + the nomads lore

alright, i know this is a screenshots blog but i'm going to go ahead and start dropping some juicy lore tidbits as i dig them up. part of what i'm doing outside of just photo diarying is shard hunting, and BOY is there a lot the game likes to hide in those little shards for idiots like me who like to read so we can write unnecessarily accurate fanfiction! 

full disclosure, i know jack shit about the TTRPG/cyberpunk 2020 rulebook except what i read in the wikis. 

so here’s my lore roundup so far of everything i know about johnny joining the nomads

we know johnny likes to narrate v’s quest objectives. here’s the first mention where he says it himself: 

during the voodoo boys quest "transmission" there's a shard in the maglev tunnels beside the ice bath, presumably from brigitte's research into johnny in the first place:

okay, so the timeline is this: johnny joins the nomads after trying and failing to rescue alt. johnny hides out in the badlands for some years. then he and rogue come back to night city and nuke arasaka tower help alt escape the arasaka subnet by uploading liberator to their network once and for all.

this ultimately makes sense. in alt’s flashback, we meet santiago, who is a nomad/connected to nomads, joins rogue and johnny when they're trying to get alt back, and eventually becomes the leader of the aldecaldos. 

part of santiago’s TTRPG lore is that he, johnny, and rogue have to lay low in the badlands with nomads after they storm arasaka headquarters (i am aware the game takes many liberties with the original lore so who knows the full accuracy of anything from the original rulebooks)

ENDING spoilers: in the rogue+johnny storming AHQ ending, it's revealed that rogue has a son while they're prepping for the job. if you eavesdrop on her calling him while you're at the afterlife, you hear her tell her son to (paraphrasing here) "pull over and look at the stars", which immediately made my brain go to: nomad, badlands, santiago = dad? maybe. (santiago also canonically has a son according to the TTRPG lore)

this immediately reminded me of another interesting shard that i believe you can find in multiple locations around night city: “"what REALLY happened in arasaka tower?“

i love this dang shard. at first i thought it was just a cute conspiracy with some juicy gossip (and i love how 99% of the shards that mention johnny in this game are reminding us that he's not a real rebel, he's a poser) but it brings some interesting shit together

one: it tells us where johnny got his hands on the nukes! he and the nomads jumped a militech convoy and jacked some bombs! 

which is never directly explained, even as saburo arasaka is interrogating him shortly before using soulkiller. very nice of johnny to protect his homies like that. 

...or maybe he didn’t. saburo emphasizes that the dead don’t lie like the living do, and we don’t know what exactly arasaka did to johnny’s construct in mikoshi. 

it also explains why the obvious media narrative is that militech nuked arasaka, a nice neat political bow to the end of the fourth corpo wars, which is an entire section of the TTRPG lore that makes my eyes cross when i read it. 

it also makes the star/nomads ending extremely interesting, because i originally believed it was the ending where V’s journey deviates the most from rewalking johnny’s path... which also has weird implications if the johnny’s nomad era is being kept from v. 

(this also leads into my belief that the star ending/the devil ending are narratively two sides of the same coin, but that’s a WHOLE ANOTHER POST for another day.)

TWO, just straight up the fact that they turned the raid where they actually obtained the nukes into an action flick BD that pretty much ANYONE could watch. who the hell was doing that?? 

well, who else other than the guy who johnny (optionally) punched the shit out of for filming alt's death: thompson, media guy, and according to rogue, “bad luck”. because you know, recording your crimes is straight up evidence that can be used against you.

during the alt flashback we meet thompson, and just after that in cyberspace before meeting alt, johnny tells v that he has no idea what happened to him and that they never worked together again. 

oh, johnny, you lying bastard man

this is blatantly untrue, and if V even had two braincells and better memory than a goldfish they'd know this--in the first flashback sequence where johnny and rogue nuke arasaka tower, thompson is on the comms as they ride the AV towards AHQ, questioning their plans and use of violence. 

which leaves me with some questions, like where the fuck is thompson, why does johnny keep lying about this, why doesn't johnny say almost anything about how you interact with the aldecaldo clan nonstop throughout the game when he himself may have been a member of the family for some time?? is he continuing to protect the nomad clan that saved his ass? we know that a lot of his flashbacks are unreliable at best, that johnny changes shit up as desired when presenting V with his memories.

in 2077, you can also find that there’s a remake of “badlands raid” in the shard “new release braindances” that is pretty much everywhere. that shard doesn’t add much, but does mention something along the lines of “many people don’t know the ending of the original” which probably means johnny punched thompson out for filming again, or something. 

my running theories: rogue ditched santiago and the aldecaldos with johnny and thompson to nuke arasaka tower, and when johnny died she was stuck looking for (heavily implied by johnny here:) corpo sellout ways to survive.

adam smasher obviously has something to do with this since johnny/rogue's vendetta against the guy isn't entirely clear beyond the smokescreen of "he killed johnny and he sucks". i have done 0 research into this though i'm tired of typing okay

i obviously cannot be certain i have found everything related to this in the game as i’m not even done with this playthrough where i’m trying to pay attention, but i hope this is fun for someone else to dig into. 

enjoy, fellow silverhand freaks

EDIT: additional findings

ALRIGHT I HAVE DONE MORE DIGGING AND I AM BACK WITH MORE NOMAD/JOHNNY FINDINGS. these ones are kind of a bummer but VERY interesting.

there’s a shard called “excerpts from a history of the nomads by bb pires” that goes into detail about how nomads came to be

there’s an interesting quote in it: It's hard to imagine a group less inclined to wandering than farmers, but in fact they were the ones who sparked the age of nomads. Natural catastrophes, crops ravaged by bioplagues, armed conflicts and martial law allowing corporations to speculate and privatize land - all this forced them into a life on the road.

when you ask johnny why he wants to take down arasaka, he begins by referencing this himself!!

it’s a little awkward to imagine a nomad V doesn’t also know what he’s referencing, but hey, V is the fool because we are as players and that’s only one life path... so sure.

johnny also has unique dialogue during this scene about a nomad origin V, telling them that he’s been trying to understand how V thinks, and came to the conclusion that “their family was a crutch” and essentially made them stupid because they always had a safety net (lmao johnny calling v privileged basically)

BUT this also may reference why johnny would find it confusing as hell that V doesn’t immediately share the views he does when nomads, in terms of values, seem to be more aligned with johnny than V is. but once again V is the fool for a reason and this is all my own speculation so YOU KNOW.

MORE IMPORTANTLY, at the end of chippin’ in, when you ask johnny what he meant by letting down his friends... santiago is named directly

i thought this was interesting since the only glimpse of their relationship that we get is seeing johnny meeting santiago via the alt flashback for the first time.

so now it’s obvious that while johnny and rogue were with the nomads their friendship developed, and johnny went on to disappoint santiago in some way by being his normal dickhead self

but HOW? how did he disappoint santiago? is santiago even still alive?? did smasher kill santiago and is this why rogue mentions during chippin’ in that she wants smasher to “settle a score” moreso than avenge johnny??

the only additional hints i have are from this shard, which you can find at the aldecaldos camp: “nomads at ground zero”

i’m just gonna transcribe here and bold for emphasis:

It was no secret that Night Corp offered generous pay and, in some cases, free cyberware and biomonitor upgrades to anyone willing to help clean up the crater of radioactive rubble at AHQ ground zero. Some firsthand accounts recall the incessant ticking of Geiger counters, like the loud buzz of cicadas in summer. In retrospect, we can only guess how many "crater cleaners" lost their lives to radiation sickness shortly thereafter. Both the city government and Night Corp have claimed casualties were kept to a minimum, while providing no official statistics to substantiate the claim. That being said, they have never been under pressure to release such figures. After all, most rescue, engineering, and rubble cleanup teams were not local Night Citizens, but nomads. Surprised you didn't know? Don't be. It is a fact many history courses tend to overlook. The city employed hundreds of nomad mercenaries, primarily from clans in Aldecaldo nation. These nomads were hungry for gainful work and the city needed experts who were not only experienced but brave enough to knowingly put their lives on the line - all so Arasaka could one day erect another tower in its place. But history is not without its sense of irony. These nomads, who so deliberately live outside our so-called "system," came to its very rescue. Not for the first time. And not for the last.

a main theme we find in this game is the idea that the system of corps and exploitation cannot be stopped by grandiose rebellious gestures--no amount of samurai songs, assassinating mayors, or even planting nukes in towers will change things. yet johnny, his friends and mercs at atlantis in the 2020s, including rogue, chose to rebel any way they could, thinking it better than not. johnny criticizes her lack of rebellious spirit CONSTANTLY in 2077.

but ultimately, johnny, trapped in mikoshi, didn’t get to see the outcome of what detonating the AHQ nukes did to night city’s fragile ecosystem. rogue, however, did--and likely watched their former allies, the aldecaldos, be forced to take dangerous work at AHQ’s ground zero (from lack of other opportunities as detailed in this shard), then die from radiation sickness throughout the following decades, all as a result of what she and johnny did to try and fight the system. and she also watched all the former mercenaries of atlantis be hunted down by arasaka.

so rogue sees firsthand what the cost of rebellion is and johnny doesn’t. and nomads, considered the most free of any of the factions we encounter in the game, are the cost.

[mangleschmidt]

DRV3 Boys playing TF2 Headcanons

(First made long before the F2P mute and bot crisis but I added the bot crisis)

Me and my bro made up many scenarios AND cosmetics for the class (my brother mostly help me with the idea)

I originally have the terminologies explained like market gardening, friendly and such but cut it because it’s getting too long. If you want the terminologies, you can tell me. Btw, I’m not an imagines blog, just doing this one for fun.

Kaito Momota

Main: Soldier

Thrilled to play this game, saying that's very manly and it's one of the coolest games yet

He, along with Kaede (and to an extend, Chiaki), are the ones who introduced the game to the class

Was a scout main at first and likes the scout unironically

A terrible tryhard warpig soldier

Saw a rocket jumping soldier at a High-tower map and wanted to imitate that, almost like he's blasting to space

Watch this guy try to market garden someone and then get fucking rekt by a Medic of all classes

He just dies, a lot, which is frustrating and his team gets mad at him

Kaito gets better at it fortunately, but it's a painfully slow process

You'll be lucky if he decides to go back to Scout in a round lmao

Rages in chat or voice but is the best cheerleader you can have in your team, he never actually shits on you for being shit on the game

There's that one time where Kaito got the Rocket Jumper from a drop, fired it at an enemy, got angry how it didn't worked, realized it doesn't do damage and embarrassed himself

Gets a bit pissy when no one is doing the objective so he avoids the maps Hightower and 2fort most of the time

Capture the flag and payload races mostly pisses him off for the same reason (tho he would go to Hightower for the sick rocket jumps)

So he doesn't like friendlies (but he may or may not, you know, do the conga, rock paper scissors, mannrobics, kazotsky kick-)

Anything that looks cool and manly cosmetics, but mostly you'll see him decked with space cosmetics

Bonus: Avoids Full Moon and Scream Fortress, is obviously afraid but he gives Alien Invasion a shot when it comes up, loves it. Also like Doomsday

Rantaro Amami

Main: Engineer

Everyone seems to be like it so why not give it a shot?

He got invested and also found the trading system

Rantaro usually plays engineer but is willing to change classes if the team needs a class

Is at least good at every other class

Rarely does turtling or battle engie but enjoys doing it with the other engies for laughs, and is very good at battle engie

Some people confused him with Uncle Dane

Hc that Rantaro looks up to Uncle Dane

Imagine Rantaro and Uncle Dane having a collab, that would be sick as fuck

Casual and competitive but more casual, often plays in community servers

That type of person who voice chats

Rantaro is one of the ones who would help his classmates play, along with Kaito. Imagine him like in a server with Kaito and Gonta, helping Gonta how to play and Avocado and Space boy act as a translator while Bug boy plays cutely

Doesn't mind friendlies, he chills with them a lot and he is easily well liked by the community

Some even suggested him to make a tf2 youtube channel

Has an unusual hat, making him look like a pro, has a lot of medic girlfriends because of this

One of the two reasons why the whole class have a wide array of cosmetics

Gonta Gokuhara

Main: Medic

At first he doesn't like how violent the game is

But since this violence is just for fun and in game and no one is actually getting hurt and dead so he's at least convinced

Still wants to play passively so Gonta goes with Medic, healing and helping his team seems to be a fitting choice!

The game is not too complex so he learns easily... i-in a way

Best boy learns fast, he should be fine

He's definitely that type of Medic who would go to someone when they press the E key and whoever is near him

Doesn't know where to look most of the time, gets lost easily to big maps like the control points

Gonta still has a firm grasp on what to do, like if he noticed that someone is in low health, he'll heal them immediately without needing the 'e', build up uber, spy check the patient, and never heal spies when they're disguised

Can't aim for shit, though he supposedly gets better at it with the crusader's crossbow

He sometimes would accidentally forget to pop when it's necessary and then die

"Danke!" Says that a lot

He doesn't play a lot despite having fun, he's an outdoor type of guy

Absolutely LOVES friendlies and just loves it when someone just stops, does the conga taunt and everyone follows, creating a conga line (until someone kills them all but it's all in good fun!) He loves silly servers

Is honestly surprised that there’s even such thing as silly servers and friendlies, thought it’s all blood and gore (he sometimes switch to pyro vision googles to avoid gore)

Sometimes plays as Heavy for the protecting part and the friendly Hoovy part for this reason

Anything fancy for the cosmetics, especially for hats the Gentleman's Gabsy or the Vintage Tyrolean (a good cosmetic for a good gentleman!)

Has a lot of cosmetics like Rantaro and trades them with the class

Bonus: Isn't fond of Banana Bay and the Second Banana... because banana

Kokichi Ouma

Main: None (most played: Scout)

Bold of you to assumed he never played this game before

... or is it a lie?

Needless to say he likes it for the cartoony and chaotic vibe of the game

Switches between the 9 classes, even if there's 5 spies he'll be the 6th one

He'd be that Medic who would leave the others to die, Scout that steals sandwiches from Heavy that's meant for the dying Medic and so forth

He might as well pretend to be a sniper bot

Chaos incarnate

This is the fucker who spams E and X+5 (Place the dispenser)

Also taunts in every kill

When he's on a losing team, he would try to bind kill right before the time is up or taunt kill in humiliation, sometimes works

Actually really good at the game, he's one of the very few people who picked up very quickly

Though he fooled Gonta once as a disguised enemy spy. He got rekt when they both noticed the achievement

Also dominated someone so badly that they immediately rage quit, another achievement

Another "you'll be lucky if he plays seriously" which is rare

Is definitely on a 30+ killstreak

People would sometimes thought he’s a squeaker (a kid who rages in voice chat) so he just fucks around with them and then just pulls a no u card

Neutral opinion on friendlies though he gets bored when no one is doing the objective or any action happening so he burns them all and watches them get mad in the chat

Obnoxious combos of cosmetics that you can easily recognize that purple neon Scunt from afar even if he's under an alias

Korekiyo Shinguuji

Main: Spy/Sniper

Not interested at first but is interested when others play and hovers over their shoulders to watch

While watching Gonta and Kiibo playing with the friendlies, he got interested

You don't see that in a lot of fps games

Korekiyo looks like an edgy sniper/spy main who just watches the chaos enveloping from the distance and getting headshots/backstabs out of nowhere

He's very calm and collective despite the crazy amount of chaos and all the deafening sounds of the vc

It's amusing to him, he even find the Administrator interesting and would sometimes go into many modes to hear her voice tone changes and a lot of behaviors of many players too

He even noticed the voice lines of the mercs and got invested in the lore of Team Fortress 2

Korekiyo still does his job in the game but can sometimes be interpreted as him in afk, almost got him kicked

Though he does get kicked for the being good at sniper, people getting butt hurt and called him a hacker

Also an amazing spy checker

Is interested about friendlies, he would come up to them close and observe them and he plays along with the taunts

He got really interested to see this "culture", like how most of the players collectively decides to play silly, serious or both, resulting him trying out almost every game mode and map there is

Unironically loves 2fort, Hightower, Suijin and Degroot Keep

Often joins community servers and silly servers but will do casual/pub servers whenever he feels like it

Something that resembles him irl, he looks edgy with the mask tbh

Other than that, his cosmetics changes depending on what mood or observation he wants to do

Ryoma Hoshi

Main: None (most played: Demoman)

Convinced by Kaito into playing

Not that much actually

Mediocre at best, he’s just doing his own thing

Definitely would stick around even if there’s one person in the server

Imagine getting killed by a Medic as a Demoknight in a melee fight with a shit weapon Do No Harm, couldn’t be me... or Ryoma

Likely plays Passtime

He will never admit it but he finds the ragdolls in the game funny

Also unironically likes the Scout

Demoknight tf2

God, imagine Ryoma has demonknight speed, combine it with his own speed and Solarlight skills, he’d be infinitely flying across all maps and go beyond the skybox

Ryoma too strong pls nerf

Doesn't play it often, not really his thing

Doesn’t mind friendlies, honestly surprised that there’s even such thing as one

Doesn't customize himself, though he likes the animal cosmetics

I apologize to the Ryoma fans out there for this being short

Shuichi Saihara

Main: None (most played: Spy)

Also doesn't see the appeal, but convinced by Kaito into playing

When he played the game for the first time, every time he dies, he switch to a class just to test them out

It’s too much for him, please hold him

Probably fell off a cliff several times-

Imagine the sheer amount of panic he feels when playing any class, especially Medic since Medic is a death magnet

Rockets, explosives, bullets, fire, blood and ragdolls everywhere! ... oh hey why is that guy just crouching with a melee?

He gets the hang of it over time

One of the best spy checker there is as well, not only as Pyro, though he feels sorry for the new spies (or newbies in general) so he tries to teach them the best way he can

The server kicked him for using hacks to find spies but for him, it’s obvious???

He usually plays the class whatever the team needs at the moment

Hard reads are strong in this one

Sushi likes the friendlies, chills with them a lot :>

Doesn’t customized himself, Kaito’s the one who helped him with it

K1-B0

Main: None (most played: Heavy)

Tries it out

It's ok I guess

He also doesn't have a main because he'll try to accommodate in which class is needed

If the whole team is like a full house of cards (in a 4 snipers, 5 engies type of way, you get the idea), he'll mostly go for the Medic since he knows it's vital for a team to have a Medic

There's rarely any Medics or Heavies in the start of the round, are they an endangered species??

He might start an event or something dedicating to the two classes

It never goes well despite Keebo's efforts in those, let's be honest

Though sometimes the team has like three Medics, the poor boy is confused

He's actually doing alright with all the class

The bot problem, oh god the bot problem

So there's that one time where the Myg0t bot joined, the enemy team said in the chat about kicking the bot

Well... obviously this made Keebo upset, as he thought they were referring to him

The server thought Keebo was trolling when he said something about him being a robot and saying that they're being robophobic... and sending them to court-

By some kind of miracle, the server liked Keebo because of this so he wasn't kicked out but he's incredibly salty throughout the match

"The server is robophobic" "Keebo, they were referring to the aimbots, they weren't robophobic" "... What Aimbots?"

His classmates were able to explain with videos and experiences, and also told him about several other types of bots that ruins the fun, which made Keebo embarrassed for having the wrong assumption

Though he still gets offended whenever it happens-

Like Kaito, he also doesn't like friendlies, insisting that that it's not how really play the game, though is guilty in pre-game conga lines, mannrobics and kazotski taunts, he likes the mannrobics

Bonus: Does NOT like the bot deco and is conflicted with the Mann vs Machine game mode

[witchfall]

thread

summary: They say she invented the harpsichord. The melody of birds.

(He won't remember this when he is born again.)

(And he is born again.)

---

Also on AO3

SPOILERS FOR SHADOWBRINGERS WITHIN.

{inspired by Tales from the Shadows, the new Keane album, and my general instinct to go absolutely ape shit over past lives/memories. beyond that i have no fuckin idea where this came from lmao. except some wild conjecture @vaniccio and I have about What It Could All Mean re: the future of the FFXIV MSQ.

WoL x Exarch and the strange friendship of Emet-Selch and an unnamed member of the Convocation...}

---

You are eight years old when you first realize the world is not the way it is supposed to be.

You don't understand the shattering incongruence of your thoughts as you watch the water run down the shower wall, but you suddenly know the world is different now. You see its crushing dullness. What is the point? Why do the people in this world even try to live? It is beautiful, but it is wrong. Like when a baby chocobo spooks and your friend falls and skids their elbows horribly bloody. You can't stop looking.

You stumble out of the shower and grab your towel, for you are big enough to do this on your own, and you run to the living room. Your wet feet slap the metal floors of the airship; in the distance you can hear Ma singing. Your hands feel hot. You squeeze them in and out of fists. Maybe this is what Ma means, when she sings about heartbreak. You feel shattered.

Ma is speaking animatedly about something. "But don't you think the chord progression is off?" she says. Da, sitting in a nearby chair with a tome in his lap, lifts his hands in assent, or perhaps the act of giving in.

"I've only ever been a scholar to your ear, my darling," he says, in the tone you know means he loves her even when she can be frustrating. You know that because he's used that tone on you many times.

"Oh, you're no -- " Ma starts, but then she sees you. She stops talking at once. She is by your side in three steps and tightens your towel cape at your collarbone. She kneels by you. She smells like Gramma's cookie spices. "You forgot your clothes, silly boy," she says softly, smiling warmly upon you, and it makes your eyes well up.

When you tell Ma about the thoughts and the weirdness -- Does it all matter? Is the world actually bad? -- she pulls you into her arms. She is warm and her skin squishes under your fingers and you sink your tears into her shoulder.

"Some things feel very big in our hearts," Ma says. Her voice reminds you of birds, sometimes, which makes you laugh and want to cry more. You don't know why. "Some things are hard for our souls to let go."

"My soul," you say, working through the bigness of that.

She smiles. She pushes your hair from your eyes and teases you about a haircut and tickles your ears and smothers your face in embarrassing kisses until you laugh and the thing around your heart relaxes just enough.

Ma rises to her feet. "I’m gonna go get your clothes, okay?" You nod.

Da has been standing there the whole time, watching. But then Da levels with you. Da's eyes are red like the pretty earrings Ma wears sometimes. Very red. Like you could fall into them forever.

"Souls are very strange," he says. He lays his hands on your shoulders. "I believe some of them even have memories."

You find this interesting. Your ears flick. "Was I thinking about a soul memory?"

Da makes the face you and Ma call the Old Man Sad Face. His eyes go out of focus and his mouth tilts into a smile with no mirth. He leans in, whispering a secret: "Maybe. What do you think?"

You aren't sure what Da wants you to say. You just shrug.

---

You love nothing in the world more than listening to Ma sing. You like it best when you are playing in the airship’s many halls and you hear it echoing from a lower floor, bubbling through the metal like steam. When no one is around to look, you’ll lay your head against the floor and feel transported very far away. You imagine the strangest things: lights that climb the sky. Buildings that shadow everything. A million, thousand stars. People cheering in auditoriums you have never seen...

“When did you first know you’d get married?” you like to ask Da. This time you ask while looking out over Aunt Lyna’s garden. The wind tosses your hair about and the air smells of roses.

“The first time she sang,” Da says.

Ma laughs every time at this. I was just 19. We were children. But Da always smiles. It’s alright. It’s always taken you a little bit to catch up to me. And then she whacks him with a spoon or something.

But you like to ask because it feels right, when he says that. Ma always tells the story of how Da reached through time and space to save her, and it is the best story of all time because it not only has travel through time and space but also Ma being awesome and killing monsters and bringing the night sky back. Then, then! She somehow reaches back through time and space to free Da from a tower, like a prince in a story. And then they get married and you’re born. It’s amazing.

“Your Da saved me so many times,” she says, when she tells you this story. You are sitting together, watching Da tell a frustrated Aunt Lyna how to plant a cabbage. “He’ll never admit it. But I think he is the more interesting character in that story.”

She says that, of course, and you nod. But you can’t help but think: If Ma’d been silent -- if Ma had never sang to Da, just the once -- there would be no world. You never would have been born.

---

You don't know much, but you know that Ma and Da are complicated.

One time when you were supposed to be sleeping you heard Ma talking about Da like he was once made of crystal. Sometimes I wonder if I'll wake and I'll still lose you to it, she said. Like it knows somehow that its supposed to take you back. The tower. I'll wake up and you'll be all crystalline and silent.

Oh no, Da said. We’re over. I left it at the first chance to find you again, love. I don't think it wants me like that anymore.

...you make it sound jealous.

Maybe it is.

They muttered together quietly until they started kissing, you're pretty sure, so you ran away immediately.

But this was very strange. Da is squishy and warm and has two blood red eyes and a tattoo on his arm and his neck and is not at all a man of crystal. You ask about this tattoo. He says it was from his time at school. You squint at this. You hope school does not make you get a tattoo, too. Everyone says you look like Da, except Da, who says you look like Ma, but they both have reddish hair and pale skin so it doesn't make a lot of difference to you. You even have one each of their eyes: one red and one seaglass green.

Ma has more wrinkles around her eyes and deep scratches on her face. She has a ragged, old gash on her shoulder. A few old burn marks here and there. Strange gold lines on her wrists where her veins should be. It makes you feel weird. Whenever you see them, you feel outside your own body with fascination and fury at whoever did this to Ma.

Not long after you overhear that, you get a terrible scratch by meddling with something in the engine room. So you decide to ask after her scars. Usually, she just laughs and tells you a big story about fighting a monster.

This time, Ma frowns. She touches your cheek and meets your gaze. Maybe it’s because she was talking about Da being a crystal man. Maybe she is just feeling sad. You don’t know.

"I fought in a lot of wars," she says. "I had to protect a lot of people. Because I was strong. And that's what strong people do."

You nod seriously. That's right. That's what all the heroes in all the tales do.

"I had to kill many people, too," she says.

You frown. "They were bad, though." Who would fight Ma, except people who were bad? Anyone that tried to hurt Ma deserved to die. You feel only a little guilt, thinking that.

Ma places her hand between your ears. Her eyes are dark and serious. "Not all of them, baby. Most of them were just...on the wrong side. Most of them thought that they were good."

Your heart speeds up. Your throat feels dry. "But they had to be bad," you say. "You're not bad, Ma."

She smiles down at you, but there's something broken about it. She rubs your ear. She says nothing for a long time, and guilt weighs on you in a thousand ways you do not understand. You think to run or squeeze her in a hug until she can't breathe but you are pinned by her gaze and so you do nothing. She says: "All we can do is try, my sweet pie."

And then she leans in very close, smiling as if she hadn't said anything at all. "Want to find the cookies I think your Da is hiding from us?"

You smile back, heart flying, and then she squeezes you in a hug instead. You feel forgiven and forgiveness in turn. Maybe you'll never know why.

---

They say she invented the harpsichord.

(He won't remember this when he is born again.)

The melody of birds.

(Maybe he doesn't deserve to be born again. Maybe that is his punishment.)

He still listens for it.

(But perhaps the weight of freedom would be most damning. The proof he had been wrong all along.)

---

You wake up and run to Da. As usual, he is already awake as if waiting for you to come to him, sitting on the observation deck of the airship and staring at the stars through great, rounded glass. The ship does not fly at night.

He turns toward the sound of your footsteps and beckons you to join him. You scramble onto his lap, suddenly feeling too cold to sit by him with dignity.

Da reminds you of the tales about mages in ancient cities that were swallowed up by water. Mages that knew everything there was to know. The gods smote them for knowing too many things. You hope very much that they do not turn their eyes upon Da.

"Trouble sleeping, my dear one?"

You nod into his chest. He wraps his warm arms around you and hums softly for a few moments, stroking your hair.

"Da," you say. "Where do people go when they die?"

Da takes a big breath and you move as his chest rises. His humming stops but he continues to stroke your hair. "Thinking deep thoughts tonight?" he asks, voice warm.

You 'hmph' against his chest.

"They go to the Lifestream. Though there is still much we do not know and may never know..."

"Do people know each other there?"

Da's hand falls still on your back. If this were Ma, she would begin asking why you want to know this so bad, but Da never does that. He answers your questions plainly. "We don't know. You live in a...much changed world, from when I was small."

You are unsure what to make of that.

"But that means there’s so many more worlds for you to know,” he says. “For you to explore. You know how we sometimes have to be very careful and sit still in our chairs? How the world around our airship goes Purple Wavy?"

You nod. "When we go between the worlds."

"Yes. We couldn't always do that, you know. Before you were born...it was all very complicated but the worlds were all closed. Now we can do Purple Wavy and get there. And maybe one day that will include the Lifestream."

"And then I will find you and Ma and Gramma and then it'll be fine," you say, explaining this anxiety before you can even name it.

Da holds you tightly to him. "I have no doubts," he says, deep and warm. You don't look to see, but Da is looking up at the ceiling, trying not to cry. You are feeling sleepy again so you don't notice.

"When are we getting to Uncle Alphinaud? And Alisaie?" you ask.

"After you sleep tonight, love. One more sleep left."

"One more sleep until more books," you say, and that's all you remember before you drift off. When you wake up, you're tucked back in your bed. You think of the birds singing just outside your little window.

---

They say she invented the heart of music.

She wrote the tragedy about painters and light; it ends with a father giving in to the river of time. She wrote the comedy where three people marry in an explosion of color so beautiful that people in the audience sobbed. ("It is still, technically, a comedy," she would say when pressed.) She wrote music like velvet against the skin, heavy and sumptuous. She would pick your gaze apart in silence, distill you into notes that sung so high you'd see violet. The Convocation respected beauty, once -- respected creation that reached inside you and tore your heart from your ribs so you could examine it better.

This girl is not her.

This girl sings dirges and arias and poorly-paced limericks, yes, but her soul doesn't pull apart with each new composition. The world shifts around her, certainly, but the air no longer shimmers when she works. This girl doesn't sob over coffee because a boor called her latest draft "uninspired." This girl isn't her.

(Perhaps that is one subtle gift of the sundering. The world ends each day in little ways but they still believe in the promise of tomorrow.)

"Fond of her, are you?"

The Exarch had deigned him with silence, then, but Hades knows the truth. Even in this life, the souls around her are pulled toward her suffering brightness. In these last moments of his life, aether seeping from the gash in his body, he realizes they would have perished before her original glory.

He wishes for that. To be scalded, even a little bit, by her grace.

He fades into the light, and can only hope.

---

Your world is many places crossing the great sky. Your world is here in the airship with Ma and Da and maybe a sister soon, or so Ma keeps saying. You press your hands against the glass and hope you'll remember this always -- the way the world looks, perfect and green, as you fly over it like birds.

"What are you thinkin’ about so hard, cutie?"

Ma tousles your hair. Your love for her feels like it will eat the whole world.

"Nothin," you say. You look up at her and grin. "Just stories."