#looks like my entire hand slipped and I drew my blorbo instead

[riraro489]

"It's too soon for farewells!"

"You two... are coming with me!"

@heropartnerweek Day 2: Home | Flowers | Favorite Scene

This scene is burned into my brain because 7 year old me was so frightened by Dusknoir and getting dragged to the future that I just completely gave up on my first Explorers of Time save :(

[thehipovercor]

I lied, i drew Marty and Carpal again lol I'm sorry

I worked a lil with @shadowwing13 (owner of Carpal/Renard) and I decided I'd try writing some fiction for the first time in I have no idea when. Thanks, college, for obliterating my will to be fun :') Anyway it made me sappy and I drew the above of my blorbos

It's under the cut, yo

hi sorry to make you look at this lol

    I woke up and the world was dark. I felt something surrounding me and the suffocation of a tight space; I panicked and lashed out. I don't know why. The barriers of the world tore by my hand and stars poured in all at once. They were cold.

    Night in the pit of a valley. I didn't recognize the jutting stones until I had finished bursting forth and landing on my face. I don't know why my hands were wet. Ten digits, the one I had lost returned to me, stuck onto long palms; my left was marred by the same brilliant light that had blinded me for a time. Saint Paul didn't have claws but I did now. I checked over myself and couldn't muster any comment at the foreign skin I found myself in. Some kind of man-turned-animal. Whatever I was, I believe I deserved to be.

    "Juliana?" ...but the question didn't come out. The shell I was in spoke for me, shrieking once. I let it cry out as I attempted to stand up, sick of the soil clinging to me. I stood not like the finely bred lapdogs I spoke with her about but as one of the strays that'd beg from me during lunch. I looked up and searched and in the moment I regretted not being kinder to the dogs. Behind me was a horrible something. It was black and purple and familiar and alien and it had held me for… I didn't know what day it was. I had spoken hideous things in the springtime and went for a walk to collect myself for her, but the air was crisp and the grass looked as though it were dying. It didn't feel like the end of the world. I trembled from both the chill and enormous weight of burden. An animal. Turned into an animal to better carry the weight of my sin. Ashamed as I was, I did feel stronger-- built for a task. I don't know how long I shivered there before finding the trail back home. I limped the entire path. No one else walked in that valley at night.

    "Juliana?" I didn't let the body make any sound that time, although I wasn't sure if I actually spoke. I had navigated around the other houses and no one was awake at that time to catch me. My front door was locked. The broken window, however, was not. I climbed inside and landed unceremoniously. "Are you there? Hello? Hello!" I shouted but the body whined. No reply. Maybe that was preferable. The room I landed in was a bedroom no longer, instead being used for storage of some kind. None of the items were familiar, nothing we would have had in our possession. I cracked the door open and was met with someone else's home. I felt my skin prickle and my ears pin back. Pin back? Animal. Whomever lived here brought a mirror, I could see it, and the choice was obvious. Carefully, so quietly, I crept over and was met with the horned face of the devil staring back. Frills, horns, bulbous eyes of a similar fantastical orange the master painters used. Scars crackled across my right cheek. I was not an animal after all! I was lesser. I strained to not scream, I couldn't risk startling anyone awake to catch me. I slipped back outside until I could bolt to the wilderness to hide in the underbrush. Time didn't matter anymore, I ran and I ran until I slipped and fell back to the dirt. Less than a beast! I was the burden to bear! I cried and I howled until daylight reached through the canopy. I'm not sure if I was thankful no one came to check.

    I frightened a few hunters over the next week as I darted out of their sights. I had learned the hard way that I was still vulnerable after a father instructed his son to aim for a sturdy tree, the boy missing and firing into the underbrush where I laid. I growled, low, and did not allow myself to be envious as the pair discussed how impressive the shot was despite missing. How I missed, already, the casual conversation between family. I waited until they left and had to pull the arrowhead out of my shoulder. There were worse places to be shot by a child. I bled the familiar purple of that soft thing I had fought out of days ago in the dark. The wound seemed to seal itself before I could tend to it. No animal did such a thing when hunted. I sat and thought, another thing no animal could do. I could think, I still felt emotion, yet I felt no urge to harm or kill. Everything settled into shame and guilt, a great vast guilt. Was I greater or less than an animal? On a bright and sunny day, birds over my head singing as though I did not scare them, I sat and wept again. I had to check if I was still worthy of being saved. I wouldn't find it if I hid again.

    I took up a tree branch and walked part of the way. North. I didn't merely remember, I knew the way north. I may have been restricted to moving through the nights but I walked like a man. As the journey became subconscious I took more time to think and more time to practice speaking. The body I was in could not talk but, somehow, I willed myself to speak. I heard my voice echo once. "I LIVED." How disheartening it was to not feel my breath! Even stale air would have been a relief. Yet I heard it echo: "I LIVED." A voice with no air behind it. Perhaps I was thinking wishfully as the reality attempted to creep in yet again. I kept walking and relearning how to be myself but I felt the burden in my chest with every step. Physically I did not tire, barely dozing in the daytime between trips. I was a stumbling thing in the dark, leaning on a tree limb for security. I felt invincible. I felt vulnerable. I could bleed but not breathe. I did not yearn for a meal yet when thirst encroached I felt the ache in every pore of my skin. I drank from wells when I could and muttered thanks and apologies for stealing. I could wash my face. I almost felt better afterward. My heart remained heavy until I acknowledged it: I could feel it beat, slow yet with an unfamiliar intensity. A drum? Perhaps like a great drum -- when I allowed the grief to settle in I could hear my pulse and the more I tried to deny the noise I worried more and more and more and... It was a great number of times I had to stop and stand, hand clutching at my breast. I thought I would die. "I LIVED." And yet even if I had lived, something felt so deeply wrong.

    I quickly learned that keeping all of my previous dignity was slower. I prayed for forgiveness as I stole some rope from a small settlement. If there were a way to repay them I would with interest. The branch would join me if I needed it: I tied it to my back and allowed myself to run like a dog. If I didn't tire, then perhaps it was a blessing for speed. The travel time reduced and I practiced talking during the dawn. I benefited from being both man and beast, yet wondered what he would think. I called upon the branch as I walked the old, sleepy roads of his village. Familiar. His studio was locked but I could more than easily reach his hidden key. I caught myself smiling wondering how he could possibly reach it himself. Surely if I boldly entered with my best manners, he would realize who I was more quickly.

    No one was home; I do not believe anyone had been home recently. All around me, candles burnt to dripping stumps, the odor of rotting foodstuff, scattering mice, and-- It caught my eye. There was a piece of paper laying delicately, untouched apparently. Some type of letter, in French. "To the Journeyman Painter Renard, we..." it began. I wasn't aware I could still feel ill. A letter informing him of my death. I knew him, how sensitive he had always been. The correct summer sunset would bring him to his knees. I had seen him during the news of his nephew passing away, how he seemed to crumple for a child he had never met. How would he mourn for me? Did I matter to him in the same way he mattered to me? Surely he was alive, here, asleep in his bed. I'd appear and show how my practice of talking has progressed and tell him I'm alright. He would clean up and I would help him make a bowl of soup and... And I discovered he wasn't in his room. A painter would be in his workplace, of course. I didn't hesitate and the sound of the bottom of the branch hitting the floor was loud enough to warn anyone of a presence. "Renard?" This time I heard my voice reverberate off the wall. I was about to reach to swing the entry curtain away when my foot kicked something that I felt pierce skin. I paused and watched the small blade spin against the ground until it stopped at a wall. Dirty. Something dusted off the metal from the impact. My scratch no longer registered.

    Moonlight streamed into the studio, the flecks of dust being the only movement. The same black thing I had emerged from sat in the center of the room, the violet glow interrupted in my view by lonely easels. All of the energy I had to make my speech dissipated. I don't know what I felt. Maybe I felt everything. I approached. I saw the canvases. I clutched the branch and fell and I wept. I let my shell weep too. Each canvas was a place we had been. I saw the river we had sat by as I taught my own son how to fish. I saw the birch he kept returning to so he could vent his troubles to me. I saw the bakery where he had watched me spill flour across the floor, laughing as he jumped to help me sweep before the bakers got to me. Landscapes, damaged by exposure. How long had he been gone? Scenes that had been lived in yet offered no figures. There I sat, in a scene as the only figure. I gripped the branch until my hands ached. It felt like my last hope was waiting for me to do something. How my hands ached.

    The sound of movement snapped me out of a trance. It was daylight again. My legs were numb and the branch had divots from my fingers pressing firmly against it. Surely I would have noticed the mice. I blinked a few times and heard the sound again. Before me, I watched familiar panicking hands puncture out of the blackness. I mustered a dry voice. "Renard...?" The hands paused, the claws curling. I braced myself and stood up again by myself, leaning against the soft part. I helped them dig. I reached into the filth and pulled somebody out, dripping. Somebody reached out and pulled at my arms. I saw no horns, no frills, no orange eyes. No scarring on the face I recognized. Inhuman but so human.

    "Renard?"

    He blinked.

    "My grief, Renard! It's me! It's me. Friend, look, it's me. I'm here. I promise it's me."

    I placed him on his feet and took his head in my hands. I would have begun crying if I had any tears left. My heart was pounding. Perhaps he could hear the drum. "Renard, please! It's me! You're you! I lived! It's me, I lived! You're alive!"

    He blinked again and made a sound like one of the birds from the wilderness. I kept repeating "it's me, I promise" as I allowed him to move his hands from my arms to wrap around my back. I picked the branch up from where I dropped it and wrapped my arms in turn.

    "You're alive, I promise. I'm here."