#maybe Harrow can learn live for Gideon

[cutetanuki-chan]

ever since I had a thought of them also putting Gideon in the tomb at the end, I have known no peace

not the same one on the ninth, just in similar stasis as Alecto and willingly, don't know why maybe some shenanigans so the sun won't collapsed

and not for good, that would be too unfair for her, but Harrow is a lyctor, she can wait for a hundred of years

[absolutedestinyapocalypsse]

i love how as you read more into tlt, the ninth house seems more and more normal. Like if i'm at an immoral evil government competition, and i use human fat as soap and animate skeletons to do menial labor, i'm gonna LOSE if my competition is the third house, represented by ianthe "who HASN'T eaten human flesh and fucked a corpse" tridentarius. My weird skeleton thing seems normal, suddenly. Well-adjusted, even. It's recycling. They're using resources in a sustainable way. Normal and regular and productive for a post-climate change apocalypse universe.

People go on and on about how Muir drops you into gtn hearing from the person who knows the least about whats happening, and does not hand hold the reader through the crazy shit that occurs, and that's all true. It truly is a crazy writing decision to make your first pov character come from the universe's equivalent of amish fundamentalists. But the reader is actually done a huge favor being dropped into the ninth house first, because we already understand that space is cold and what catholic nuns are, and what goths look like, and what lesbians are. Very little time is wasted in the first chunk of gtn ripping hair out of your head wondering what the fuck is going on, because for all of its strangeness, the ninth house is already the most familiar thing we're gonna get.

Because THEN we learn that this whole universe's medieval chivalry system is designed to groom people from CHILDREN to not only be exploited and used as human batteries for necromancers, but to LIKE it. to wax poetic about it. to confuse it for love, to write fucking academic papers about it! Then we learn about planet flipping, an act so horrific and violent it turns the planet's soul into a massive vengeful monster capable of killing GOD. Like what do you MEAN the animals "change"? Is this why noodle has six legs? I would MUCH prefer to wear skeleton makeup and repent forever if the alternative was to witness my family dog grow TWO EXTRA LIMBS because the planet he lived on fucking died. Suddenly, living in the asscrack of a planet where no light gets in seems like a sweet deal when the whole solar system is lit by a sun that MAKES YOU GO CRAZY. The ninth house's WORST sin, killing 200 babies to make Harrow, a waste of resources and an act so terrible it haunts Harrow for the entire span of her life, is like a BLIP compared to the death count Jod's empire. God even hears about it and he's like, no big deal! The cohort probably kills that amount of people in a DAY.

And its ALSO tragic because you realize that all of this trauma and abuse that Gideon goes through is not really because of the ninth house at all. It's really just an individual skill issue that she wasn't treated with compassion. Nobody hated her because she's jesus or a bomb, nobody even KNOWS she's a bomb. It's just Priamhark and Pelleamena being deeply guilty and scared people that motivates her treatment, and absolutely nothing else.

They did something bad, and they know it, and Gideon survived it, and they can't kill her to cover it up, and that's IT. They killed themselves for pride, because they were afraid of the consequences of their actions (both the baby killing and Harrow opening the tomb) coming back to bite them. You can argue this is the catholicism of it all, and I wouldn't say you're wrong, but compared to the cavalier system, where exploitation is in the very lining of the house's institutions, the ninth house is really removed from the space empire's blood factory. This is compared to the fourth house where they have tons of children to be CANNON FODDER to join the cohort at fucking 14, compared to the eight house uncle nephew fuckery, even the fifth house which actually does seems nice to live on but also seems to have the fourth house in some sort of fucked up political bear hug??? (maybe the fourth house has so many kids in order to fight the fifth's battles? which is EXACTLY what jod's whole empire is about; politely stirring your tea and acting nice while you destroy everything) compared to ALL OF THAT, the cruelty that Gideon faces is really more a bug of the ninth's system than a feature.

There's nothing baked into the culture and everyday life of the ninth house that necessitated that cruelty; in fact, for such a pragmatic and resource-scarce place, it's WEIRD that a strong able-bodied young person was treated like a waste of space and resources. It could just have easily not happened, if Harrow's parents had been different people. Maybe they were products of their environment, but so was Harrow, and she values Gideon's life SO MUCH that she'd literally rather carve out parts of her own brain than exploit her. Gideon grows up knowing really NOTHING about cavaliers, so remote from the horrors of the empire that she develops an idea of what the cohort is from porn magazines. And in a lot of ways, that upbringing was desolate and terrible, and in a lot of other ways it literally DID NOT HAVE TO BE.

Gideon's MAIN THING is that she wants to be useful, to be needed, to be loved and it SUCKS that she couldn't even get it in the one place where she was actually an invaluable resource, where the death empire had the weakest reach. Gideon can't even blame her lack of love on the fucked up chivalry system like everyone else can because it JUST WASNT REALLY RELEVENT!?!?! This is like if i rolled up to the trauma competition and everyone else was raised in a nuclear warzone by wolves or something and i grew up in like, the suburbs and was raised by teachers and i somehow STILL WON. truly what the fuck guys.

[nerds-books-n-worms]

Ok, so maybe I'm just sleep deprived and a little crazy, but this has been rattling around in my mind for a while and I need to put it out there.

I had the song Hallelujah stuck in my head, y'know, like the one from Shrek, and I was surprised by how well it mapped onto TLT. I'm gonna try and explain lyric by lyric.

"I heard there was a secret chord that David played and it pleased the lord"- the secret to lyctorhood

"But you don't really care for music do ya?"- most of John's lyctors grew resentful of him for the fact that they had to kill their cavs

"It goes like this, the fourth, the fifth, the minor fall, and the major lift. The baffled king composed it, hallelujah."- the houses, how each lyctor set one up, how John is an idiot who still managed to amass this much power.

"Your faith was strong but you needed proof. You saw her bathing on the roof. Her beauty in the moonlight overthrew ya"- Harrow deciding she wants to die and opening the tomb only to fall in love with Alecto.

"Well she tied you to a kitchen chair, she broke your throne, and cut your hair, and from your lips she drew the Hallelujah"- Harrow was haunted by The Body, and lost everything because of the power the Earth aka Alecto gave John, yet she still loves her.

"Baby I've been here before. I've seen this room, and I've walked this floor."- Canaan House and all its secrets.

"I used to live alone before I knew you."- Harrow and Gideon were both very alone through the majority of their lives, until getting to Canaan House and letting each other in.

"I've seen your flag on the marble arch. Our love is not a victory march. It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah"- Gideon's devotion to Harrow as well as the tragedy and heartbreak the follows them. Neither of them know if the other is ok, and they are tormented by the remnants of the other.

"Maybe there's a God above, but all I've ever learned from love is how to shoot somebody who outdrew ya"- Harrow losing faith in Jod, and lobotomizing herself to protect both her and Gideon.

"It's not a cry you can hear at night. It's not someone who has seen the light. It's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah."- John is worshipped, but he has built his empire off the suffering of others. His lyctors resent him (and want him dead), Alecto wants him dead, BoE wants him dead, and in "saving" the world he has doomed so many to an eternity of misery, yet he reaps the benefits of his conquest.

I might be wrong or crazy or some combination of the two, idk. This song has a lot of different versions, so if you want I can share my thoughts on more.

[occasional-rambler]

i’m so late to this particular party but i just can’t get over the potential of jeannemary and Gideon’s dynamic.

Jeannemary and Isaac were the youngest people Gideon had ever met (except Harrow) and she was treated like an animal on the ninth. Gideon never had anyone look at her with anything but disgust and maybe pity, but Jeannemary legitimately respected and admired her, enough to say in front of a crowd that she wanted to fight like Gideon. I do martial arts and that’s about the highest praise you can receive from another martial artist.

I know jeannemary was never going to survive the book but,,, if she’d lived long enough for Gideon to get over her social awkwardness i think they would’ve formed a big sis-little sis mentor-mentee dynamic, with Gideon learning more traditional cav stuff from jeannemary and jeannemary learning Gideon’s unorthodox fighting style and philosophy.

Also it would’ve been entertaining as hell to see Gideon trying to navigate jeannemary’s little puppy crush on her. It’s always weird realising someone admires you/is attracted to you when you’re someone who’s battled self-hatred and low self-esteem your entire life. I guess the potential for how well they would’ve gotten along makes the guilt Gideon felt over failing to prevent jeannemary’s death sting all the more.

(if it wasn’t clear enough, I don’t ship them)

[harrowharks-iliac-crest]

Necromancy

Worldbuilding/Lore

<< Previous: The Resurrection | Masterpost

-

I'm finding it hard to put my finger on how necromancy works, and when it started; clearly, a lot of study is involved, and you can craft theorems from thanergy - necromancers need dead things in order to be able to work; those theorems can then be used for healing, for creating constructs, for damaging living things, for animating and puppeting corpses. It isn't true resurrection, ever, but it can somehow fashion life from life (necromantic healing powers), life from death (using thanergy blooms to heal or create constructs - or, in Harrow's case, a necromantic baby - but was that more a way of infusing an already existing embryo with necromantic ability?), death from life (using what Palamedes did to Cytherea as an example, which would have straight up killed any non-Lyctor), and death from death (using necromancy or constructs to kill/harm someone).

Necromancy doesn't work in space due to the absence of dead things. This seems to be at least partially by design, as the Cohort and Empire don't seem to be using any organic materials - but Blood of Eden seem to be able to get their hands on paper and such, showing that they are available, if not abundant outside the world fashioned and controlled by the Empire.

As far as we can tell, John - maybe Alecto - might have been the first necromancers. Alecto was said (by John) to be the first resurrection. I have a whole section on each of them when I get to character analysis so I won't go into it too deep here. In any case, I don't think necromancy was terribly abundant pre-resurrection. Maybe it was even a skill Alecto had first, and had to give to others somehow. Or maybe the nuclear blast/resurrection altered humans in a way to enable a fraction of the population to show necromantic ability. We do know it is innate in current times, you are either born with it or you're not. But there's not a lot of details on how it came about, and how exactly it works, and what is it that creates necromantic ability in humans.

It seems to come with either an innate or learned ability to "sense" life, and also death; I don't think Harrow had to wait to be a Lyctor to do this. When Harrow was fighting the construct in the labs in Canaan House with Gideon, Harrow had an additional sense for thanergy that Gideon could momentarily access through her. This is also confirmed by the Cohort files which warn BoE agents not to kill in the area of a necromancer, as necromancers will inevitably be able to sense this, and feed off the thanergetic bloom. Lyctorhood sure sharpened and enhanced this ability for Harrow, though.

>> Next: Lyctorhood

[theriverbeyond]

I have to believe in my heart that we will get a satisfactory Griddlehark ending but I still spend every single day in fear. Any wise ending predictions?

AHHHH i hope so too. i have faith the ending will be satisfying for each character. im holding onto hope!!! some selected griddlehark thoughts are:

(ideal) they escape from BOE and the 9 houses system, and go live out their lives free of everything that has hurt them. Harrow may or may not lose her necromancy and Gideon may or may not be fully revived, it doesn't matter. Gideon can grow a little herb garden and publish her own porny comic book and chop wood and teach Harrow how to do star jumps. Harrow can relax and never work another day in her life and learn how to do art or write poetry and find peace.

(bittersweet) they die together, permanently and finally, but only after they make up and make peace with each other. this doesn't necessarily mean they will do anything as pedestrian as Kiss, but they will reconcile their pain and hurt and both feel satisfied with what they have given the other and what they have received

(circular) Alecto and John die together, but not before transferring their powers to Gideon and Harrow, who take on their domains of power (i.e. Dominicus, Earth, the River, etc), and then the whole book series ends on an open ended cliffhanger. This then allows the audience to speculate what happens next and how they do it

for Gideon specifically, I have to believe that she will get a satisfying end. what form that ending takes is debatable, but like, her arc is NOT complete right now and i need to believe that she will get what she deserves (positive). some of my Gideon thoughts:

Harrow cashes in her favor with Alecto and brings Gideon back to life

Harrow gives part of herself to Gideon.... completing their two way exchange like what was implied way back in the winnowing/response trial. this may or may not revive Gideon but it WILL make her feel less sad because she won't be missing pieces anymore

Gideon does something very bad that will make her feel much worse for a period of time, before something happens - she snaps, she talks with harrow, she fucks something up so bad it shocks her back to her senses - and she realizes...... something, and then fixes things. idk. this is just vibes

my Harrow thoughts are a lot more nebulous. i don't really know what her arc will look like because so much of her character development is currently unknown - there's a LOT of stuff that appears to have happened behind the scenes in between the end of HtN, the dream with John, and her popping up in her body at the end of NtN. idk. maybe she finds God in Gideon. maybe she rejects the idea that she even needs a God-figure. maybe she becomes disillusioned with Alecto because of all the biting and the meat. idk!!!

anyway 🙏 prayer circle for AtN🙏

[paradoxcase]

Chapter 14 of Nona the Ninth

That's actually a more reasonable worry, I think

I guess Corona was aiming for that job back when Nona and Pyrrha appeared? Actually, if she was, I wonder why BOE agreed to let Nona live with Camilla and Pyrrha instead

My god, is the ship I like actually canon, at least from one direction? Like I read As Yet Unsent and was like yeah, I ship that but I probably read more than was intended into that, and then Corona mentioned having a crush on a boy who liked shuttles, but now that I think about it, that "boy" was actually Judith, wasn't it? In As Yet Unsent she talks about researching wars to impress Judith with, I bet that's how she learned about shuttles, isn't it? But obviously she doesn't want We Suffer to know that

Also lmao at Pyrrha making Corona feel confused. I'd wonder if it's like "how can I be attracted to this person who looks male" confusion, but like, no one seems to have any words or language or categories for sexual orientation in this universe, so it doesn't seem like anyone would have a reason to expect to be attracted to only one gender

Also fairly interested in the "you want Camilla to cuddle you but not in a sexy way" thing

Also sort of interesting to note that Nona assumes attraction is entirely appearance-based - she doesn't know what it says that Corona isn't attracted to We Suffer or Pash because she hasn't seen what they look like, despite the fact that she's had ample exposure to their personalities. And I don't think the story itself is assuming that attraction is purely physical either, because we have Pyrrha giving Nona the non-appearance-based qualities that attracted her to Wake. Maybe this is more evidence that Nona only experiences aesthetic attraction

I wonder who Nona reminded her of? I can't think of anyone who would have frightened Corona

Kind of funny that in spite of how devoted she is to Corona, Ianthe doesn't really know that much about what she's actually thinking

I wonder what this is about? We still don't know what's going on with the Angel

That's kind of weird to say to someone. I mean, the teachers thought Nona was younger because Harrow was short and skinny and a necromancer, which seems to make people look pretty anemic, but Corona is none of those things and she's like 22

Ah Corona, never change lmao

That time was definitely Gideon, I think

I wonder if she actually does, or if she just has a theory, like everyone else in the book. I don't think Corona has any advantages that would help her figure out who Nona is, and she's not an necromancer, unlike Palamedes.

[midnighttreasureseeking]

For the ask meme: What are your favourite books that you would recommend? Favourite episode/scene of IWTV? Any unpopular IWTV opinions? Any Claudia headcanons? (because I love her character haha)

Hi! Thank you for the ask! I’m sorry it took me about a day to answer, I had a lot to say… I’ve done my best to answer them!

What are your favourite books that you would recommend?

I'm glad you asked for books, because I could never choose just one. 

The first one I can think of is The Deep by River Solomon. I don’t spend a day not thinking about this book at least once. And after weathermood’s ‘Once upon a wine dark sea’ series i couldn’t help but think about it even more. Plus you like sea creatures, so it's excelent. It's safe to say it changed my brain chemistry and I was never the same once I finished it. 

Here is a synopsis:

“Yetu holds the memories for her people—water-dwelling descendants of pregnant African slave women thrown overboard by slave owners—who live idyllic lives in the deep. Their past, too traumatic to be remembered regularly, is forgotten by everyone, save one—the historian. This demanding role has been bestowed on Yetu.

Yetu remembers for everyone, and the memories, painful and wonderful, traumatic and terrible and miraculous, are destroying her. And so, she flees to the surface, escaping the memories, the expectations, and the responsibilities—and discovers a world her people left behind long ago.

Yetu will learn more than she ever expected to about her own past—and about the future of her people. If they are all to survive, they’ll need to reclaim the memories, reclaim their identity—and own who they really are.”

Its very intense, and not so much about the fantasy of mermaids as about pain and pressure Yetu experiences remembering and keeping all these stories plus what she experiences as she flees to the surface. It can be a bit slow at some places but it’s beautifully written in my opinion. It’s maybe not everybody’s cup of tea, but it's definitely worth a read.

Link to The Deep

The second one is Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir, I have never opened and read a book so fast. Its chaotic, its gory, its hilarious, its horrifying, I loved it.

Here is a synopsis. (Ive taken both synopsis from Goodreads):

“The Emperor needs necromancers.

The Ninth Necromancer needs a swordswoman.

Gideon has a sword, some dirty magazines, and no more time for undead bullshit.

Brought up by unfriendly, ossifying nuns, ancient retainers, and countless skeletons, Gideon is ready to abandon a life of servitude and an afterlife as a reanimated corpse. She packs up her sword, her shoes, and her dirty magazines, and prepares to launch her daring escape. But her childhood nemesis won't set her free without a service.

Harrowhark Nonagesimus, Reverend Daughter of the Ninth House and bone witch extraordinaire, has been summoned into action. The Emperor has invited the heirs to each of his loyal Houses to a deadly trial of wits and skill. If Harrowhark succeeds she will become an immortal, all-powerful servant of the Resurrection, but no necromancer can ascend without their cavalier. Without Gideon's sword, Harrow will fail, and the Ninth House will die.

Of course, some things are better left dead.”

Sounds fun? it is! 

link to Gideon the Ninth

There are more books i love, but as i’m typing this out on a word document i have just reached page two. So time for the next question!

Favorite episode/scene of IWTV?

This is really hard, because I love and could rewatch, to infinity and beyond, almost all scenes (Except the ones where Lestat yells, because it's triggering). I would say that my favorite is episode seven. Where Louis, Lestat and Claudia form this trio and finally work together to achieve something. It’s really nice to see! It shows that in a different world they might have been a nice family….which also makes it very bittersweet. I love the dance, and Lestat's tiny moments of vulnerability where he seems genuine and Louis falls for him all over again. I love Claudia forming her master plan and executing it. Her putting an end to Antionette (finally) and double crossing Lestat. I love that moment where the massacre has just started and all are walking together in slow motion…All the assholes that stayed alive this whole time, Tom Anderson and the police chief, finally being killed. And of course the satisfying humbling of lestat by poison and throat slitting! I love the Dubai part where everything seems to unravel and where Armand is finally revealed! I’m curious to see what the Dubai part is going to bring next season, almost more than the Paris part. 

Any unpopular IWTV opinions?

I do! At least unpopular with other people I like. I don't understand danlou in the modern day. I just don't. I can see and i respect that it happened. The way Louis looks at Daniel in episode one... You can’t tell me that back in the 70s they didn't do a lot more than just talk!

And I get why it happened back then too. The reason being that Daniel was just such a regular guy, the same reason Armand stalked him so long and fell for him. But I just don’t like Daniel. I feel like there is a world full of ‘just regular guys’ and it could have been any other. I might have preferred any other......But it's not my love life and these are fictional characters. I have nothing to say and I'm looking forward to whatever the show decides to do with them. Even if they make out for a solid 10 minutes on my laptop screen..it's not that serious and i wont be upset. It’s just that whenever I see them, and I see people gushing about them I go…ok but why tho? He is mean and annoying and I don't understand? But other than that it's whatever.

Ok best question for last!

Any Claudia Headcanons?

-Yes! I think, if she existed in the 21st century (either human or vampire) she would have really liked pop punk as a teenager. Would it have helped her? maybe not, but it wouldn't have made it worse! It could have been a good outlet? I have some songs! Specifically this artist actually. I recently discovered her and couldn’t stop thinking about Claudia.

RØRY - ALTERNATIVE [lyric video]

RØRY - hurt myself

-Ok this is kind of canon but Claudia loves horror movies. Especially with the fake looking blood and gore. I think she would, in general, be a very critical movie/show watcher but would defend the campiest stuff up and down ‘because it's hilarious and therefore its good’. Also anything from when she was little and she would escape into her tv she will also defend. 

-I think Claudia is a cat person. A dog would demand too much attention and the cat would just slowly but surely crawl into her heart. They would start cordially at opposite sides of the room, then the cat would take Claudia’s standoffishness as an invitation and suddenly he spends all his time on her lap while she tries to write or paint or play piano. And then she is petting him. oh how did that happen...

Thank you for asking these questions, i had a lot of fun answering them! <33

[a-big-apple]

oh shit for the ask meme!!! 4, 5, 12, 23!

omg i forgot about that already jdskjldfkjdfs <3

4. a story idea you haven’t written yet

hmmm, one i never started but i want to go back to eventually is an amethyst pov su fic about her and greg finally unearthing the deed to his uncle's mansion that greg mentioned in maximum capacity, and helping steven move into this mansion when he's done driving around finding himself. in my head it's not really a mansion, it just seemed that way to greg when he was a suburban kid, but it's big enough that connie could move in if she wanted, and gems could come and go for visits, and amethyst is sort of facilitating this next step in steven being on his own and having his own life while greg and the gems stay in beach city and have their lives.

5. first sentence of the fifth paragraph of an unpublished WIP

this is from a tlt wip i've been stuck on for quite a while, about how cam got harrow in handcuffs:

If Camilla had been in a locked room where a child was brutally—and invisibly—skewered to death less than twenty-four hours ago, the Warden would be scrutinizing that room within an inch of its life the instant he got the chance.

12. a trope you’re really into right now

omg i don't even know...i've been craving more takes on harrow and kiriona/gideon after whatever happens in atn, if that counts as a trope! somehow i can never read too many fics about these damaged girls trying to recover on a thalergy planet and learning how to farm or cook or just live a country life while pyrrha and paul and maybe ianthe poke their noses in. i guess this is what i'm into reading more than what i'm into writing, but i've been too busy to write so T^T

23. pick three keywords that describe your writing

this is HARD!! i think i want the three keywords to be musical, mundane, and interpersonal

[iviarellereads]

Harrow the Ninth, Prologue

(Curious what I'm doing here? Read this post! For detail on The Locked Tomb coverage and the index, read this one! Like what you see? Send me a Ko-Fi.)

(Insectoid Herald icon) In which we are shown a lot of things that make us ask questions, and asked to be patient in the getting of answers.

A Note Up Front:

The Dramatis Personae of Gideon the Ninth was sometimes useful in keeping track of who was from which House. The DP of Harrow the Ninth might seem beside the point at first, given that only a few of the Lyctors still live. But, I'd recommend having a nice close look at it. See if anything stands out to you. Like for example, the way ORTUS the Ninth is capitalized. And how Harrow's cavalier's name is blacked out with layers and layers of printed letters. It will also be useful as different names come up, as the book progresses and we learn more about the history of God's inner circle. Also review the House poem, as it's been expanded some from Gideon's edition. Take every hint you can, with this book.

I often pitch Gideon the Ninth as a locked-house murder mystery. Harrow is much more complex, though the pitch I've found the most success with and the most positive feedback to is more or less, "Harrow the Ninth is like a popup Michelin-starred restaurant experience, only the food is served under total cover of darkness, and nothing that's served is what was on the menu up front, but somehow it's also exactly what it promised to be and exactly what you needed."

Try not to feel ashamed or frustrated if you don't understand the mysteries at play. You're not supposed to. There are hints, yes, and some of the things I gesture at in the text will be parts of that breadcrumb trail, but the wide experience of Harrow the Ninth is not understanding any of what's going on until the very end. It's the expected experience. I've seen different people piece together different pieces of the tangled web, but I've never seen anybody accurately guess what's coming until the proper reveals.

With that said:

THE NIGHT BEFORE THE EMPEROR'S MURDER(1)

Told in a mysterious second-person(2) which I'm going to flatten to third for my purposes, but I really do ask that you read each chapter before you read my summaries to get the full effect.

The room has been dark for some time, the thump of the Heralds flinging themselves onto the hull clearly audible. It's very cold, and a thin layer of frost covers Harrow's face and hair. Sometimes she screams, and she isn't even embarrassed anymore. It's just her body's reaction to the proximity.(3)

God's voice emerges from the comm, telling them it's ten minutes to breach. They'll have half an hour of air conditioning, then they'll "be working in the oven." He tells Harrow he'll keep hers closed longer, and Harrow staggers through the concentric circles of bone matter(4) she's laid out as her weapons to be to the comm button and snaps that she can take care of herself. He says her necromancy won't work in the River. She says she is a Lyctor, his hand, and if he wants a hand who needs to hide, she's misjudged him.

She hears the exhale of his sigh, and he tells her not to be in such a hurry to die. She says not to underestimate her, she's survived everything so far.

Harrow moves back to the middle of the room. She sits cross-legged, with her rapier in her lap, fighting the urge to throw it across the room.

The door slides open, and Ianthe the First(5) enters, without setting off Harrow's traps. Her rapier looks black, and the bones of her right arm(6) gleam an oily gold. Harrow closes her eyes to her. Ianthe says she would protect Harrow, if Harrow would only ask. Harrow gives some vivid descriptions of ghastly things she'd rather have done to her than to be protected by Ianthe. Ianthe, however, says hopefully that she hears a "maybe", and asks Harrow to stop being coy. Harrow says not to pretend that Ianthe is "here for anything other than to look after an investment."

Ianthe says she came to warn Harrow.

"You came to warn me?" Your voice sounded flat and affectless, even to you. "You came to warn me now?"

Ianthe approaches, crunching the bone circles.(7) Harrow can sense her fear, even without trying.

"Nonagesimus, nobody is coming to save you. Not God. Not Augustine.(8) Nobody." There was no mockery in her voice now, but there was something else: excitement, perhaps, or unease.(9) "You'll be dead within the first half hour. You're a sitting duck. Unless there's something in one of those letters(10) I don't know about, you're out of tricks."

Harrow feels Ianthe cup her chin in her hands, the flesh fingers almost feverish compared to the gilded bone ones, and is shocked into opening her eyes, not quite sure it's not a hallucination. Ianthe is before Harrow, "in unmistakable supplication." Her gaze is both beseeching and full of "contemptuous despair", her "blue eyes with deep splotches of light brown, like agate." Ianthe tells Harrow she can undo what Harrow has done, if she just turns around.(11) Together, at full power, they could "rip apart this Resurrection Beast and come away unscathed." Save the whole galaxy, let them weep to talk of Ianthe and Harrowhark.

"The past is dead, and they're both dead, but you and I are alive. What are they? What are they, other than one more corpse we're dragging behind us?"(12)

Harrow judges that Ianthe's expression is excitement, not unease, and senses that this is an important moment.

She tells Ianthe to go fuck herself.

Ianthe's face freezes back into a mocking mask.

"I didn't think this was the time for dirty talk, but I can roll with it," she said. "Choke me, Daddy."

Harrow tells Ianthe to get out. Ianthe says Harrow always was stubborn, and maybe she should have died at Canaan House. Harrow says Ianthe should have killed her sister, because her eyes don't match her face.

God's voice interrupts before Ianthe can retort, reminding them of the time, four minutes left, and make sure they're in their places.

Ianthe turns away from Harrow, trailing her "human fingers" across the wall as she walks back to the exit, and says, "Well, I tried, and therefore no one should criticize me,"(13) then ducks out of the room. Harrow is left "profoundly alone" as it starts to warm up.

She thinks about opening the envelope, addressed to herself, that reads "To open in case of your imminent death."

She calms herself as some distant part of the station gives a crunch of plex and metal. She cocoons herself in perpetual bone, foolish since it will dissolve when she submerges in the River, but still she adds layer after layer.

Throughout the Mithraeum, five pairs of eyes closed in concert, one of them yours. Unlike theirs, yours would not open again. In half an hour, no matter what Teacher(14) might hope, you would be dead.

The Lyctors and the Emperor start to submerge themselves in the River to face off with the Resurrection Beast. Harrow wades with them, but leaves her vulnerable meat behind.

"I pray the tomb is shut forever," you heard yourself saying aloud, and you could not bring your voice above a choked whisper. "I pray the rock is never rolled away. I pray that which was buried remains buried, insensate, in perpetual rest with closed eye and stilled brain. I pray it lives ... O corse of the Locked Tomb," you extemporised wildly. "Beloved dead, hear your handmaiden. I loved you with my whole rotten, contemptible heart--I loved you to the exclusion of aught else--let me live long enough to die at your feet." Then you went under to make war on Hell. * * * Hell spat you back out. Fair enough.

Harrow doesn't wake up in the River, on the other side of the veil. She wakes in the corridor outside her room, sweating, and... bleeding, her own rapier sticking out of her stomach, stuck from behind. The wound is not a hallucination, and Harrow is too far gone to knit it together with her magic. Even if she wanted to, she couldn't read the imminent death letter.

You were only half a Lyctor, and half a Lyctor was worse than not a Lyctor at all.

Outside, the Heralds of the Resurrection Beast are so thick they block the stars, and they're heating the ship far too effectively. Harrow hears distant swordfighting and flinches from a sound she's hated since birth.

You prepared to die with the Locked Tomb on your lips. But your idiot dying mouth rounded out three totally different syllables, and they were syllables you did not even understand.(15)

=====

(1) I hope you didn't think this was going to be a particularly happy story. (2) Not everyone knows what the perspectives are! So, there are three and a half perspectives to tell a story from. The first person is oneself, so the story is told in "I" pronouns. The second person is talking to the self, and is told in "you" pronouns. The third person is an outside observer, and uses third-person pronouns (she, they, he). The third person can also be "omniscient" (able to read everyone's thoughts and tell absolute truths), or "close" (as if sitting on one character's shoulder, only able to hear their thoughts and see through their perspective to some degree) or switch between the two if the writer feels particularly ambitious. Gideon the Ninth was told in third person close perspective, but Harrow… is a bit of a goodie bag of treats. For now, this is second-person, a story being told to a person, for some reason. If it unsettles you, I implore you to bear with it, as I think Muir really earns it out. If you have a guess as to why it's being told from this perspective on your first read, bravo, you're paying more attention than I did my first time. (Just don't get me started on the temporal tense of the narrative and how changing it can play with the perspectives, or we'll be here all day.) (3) The proximity of what exactly? Oh yes. We'll get there. (4) Protective circles are a long-established trope and I don't want anyone to miss the way they're invoked here, given what's to come. (5) This is still the same Ianthe, "the First" is just the honorary given to the Lyctors, as their ascension means inclusion in the Emperor's house, as his guard, his saints, his hands. See: the House poem in the front of the book. (Told you it would come in handy.) (6) Ah yes, the arm she lost in the battle with Cytherea. Golden bone sounds fun and very Third. And now you can look at a lot of Ianthe fanart spoiler-free! (7) Ianthe, violating the protective circle Harrow has laid out. Is this a deeper gesture, or something meaningless? I don't feel qualified to tell you without spoiling something but I'll note that I picked this out on my first read, and I still think it's interesting to think about. (8) Here, again, the Dramatis Personae. One of the remaining living Lyctors. To avoid this being a redundant footnote: why would Ianthe assume that Harrow would assume God or Augustine, in that order, would rescue her? Why would she not assume the others would? (9) I know which way I lean, knowing what I do of the rest of the book, but what about first time readers? (10) Letters, you ask? I know this is a lot being thrown at you. I promise, we'll get there. For now, another thing to keep in mind. (11) What has Harrow done? Yes at this point I'm sort of offering a list of the mysteries in the book more than I'm offering commentary in footnotes. (12) Who is the "they" in this context? (13) The memes return! This one is from a Saturday Night Live sketch with Daniel Radcliffe, from 2012. The sketch itself is… bad, it's bad, it's feeding into the same myth of millennials being over-praised that keeps proving itself wronger every year but still keeps on a-ticking, but the moment of this line has nevertheless become an iconic meme, used to make fun of people with too much confidence in their abilities. (14) Teacher? The dead multisoul construct from Canaan House? He did once say that he hoped the candidates would go on to call God their Teacher someday… (15) What could matter to Harrow that constitutes just three syllables to say? Why wouldn't she understand them?

[fallingphosphenes]

wips introduction

if you're interested in a summation of my primary wips (just the fanfiction) as of right now (july 2024)

(disclaimer because i write a lot of kpop fanfiction: i do not think of my characters as the real actual people they're based off of, so i hope you will not engage with my fanfics like they're reality.)

elegy (temp name) (tomorrow by together)

-> in the modern year of our lord two thousand something or another, during a period of great political, social, and ecological upheaval, beasts from the heavens arrived, fragments of dying stars and planets from universes far away that became known as the astral undead. as humanity learned to harness their power, factions were organized, led by those who had defeated the most powerful astral undead, the planetary undead, whose bones granted its users the most powerful abilities. at hyperion academy, run by the three major factions, magicians (who have the inherent ability to harness the magic within star fragments) and cavaliers (who have the inherent ability to use weapons which have been imbued with star fragments) form bonds to fight together in the great war against the astral undead. choi beomgyu, prince of the golden chasm, better known as the dying realm, a faction which is outcasted for its specialty in deathly magic, despite having defeated a planetary beast, goes to this school and meets kang taehyun, a factionless, untrained cavalier, and a genius.

choi beomgyu/kang taehyun, choi yeonjun/choi soobin

fantasy, probably some angst, more abusive parents, school setting, tournament arcs, war! and what comes with that

inspired by when i read gideon/harrow the locked tomb

current word count: ~44000

time and life (haikyuu)

-> after suffering that greatly, after losing so much, after making it to a worthless, horrific end -- kei blinks his eyes open, and is greeted by the worst sight possible. that after all that struggle, after all that pain; nothing has changed. he is right back here at the beginning. he must live through it all again. 

and no one else remembers.

tsukishima kei/kuroo tetsurou, probably others

fantasy, time travel, superpowers, school setting, angst

inspired by the light novel "a returner's magic should be special"

current word count: ~34500

in every universe? (seventeen)

-> it's harder to be friends in every universe than they thought.

they try, anyway.

ships TBD i guess? multiple ships (probably?) none, maybe?

multiple universes (thirteen)

have you ever been writing fanfiction and not known who to write as your side cast? well now your main cast can be your side cast, with this cool new tool: thirteen different versions of every character!

wins the reward for most complicated fic idea i've ever had

current word count: ~13000

bonus: dream demigods, part 2 (nct dream)

-> (see my ao3 for the description of part one)

huang renjun/na jaemin/lee jeno, mark lee/lee donghyuck, zhong chenle/park jisung

i promise to finish it i swear i'm so sorry

current word count: n/a, because it's being rewritten

please feel free to send me questions about these wips, or ask about what other wips i have (there are so many) !!

[cephalon-sancti]

Ianthe as Gog-Agog cracks me up

Gideon as Cio and Harrow as Allison. The death of a loved one makes the other fall into despair and when their loved one comes back they come back different and hostile.

Augustine as Incubus maybe? He offers power, but the power is degrading to the self as he tries to reconstruct you to meet his image of what he wants you to be.

I want to posit Nona as White Chain because both break out of the shell and role made for them and learn to enjoy life and living and being alive alive alive in flesh and blood

Mercymorn as Solomon David because they both think they can solve all the Problems by themselves and refuse to take students.

Get niche with me friends. In a kill six billion demons au of TLT, I'd like to fill some roles. My initial thoughts are:

John as Zoss and Alecto as Jagganoth, OR Alecto as Zoss and John as Jagganoth. Both pairs of characters are in kind of a wibbly state until we see the finales.

G1deon as Mammon - kind of heart, but his grasp on reality is slipping, and the only meaning he can find is in dedication to a cause he no longer understands.

Anastasia as Jadis - the truth-teller, trapped and made to suffer the weight of her knowledge alone.

Pyrrha as Maya - she stands apart from the power structure she once belonged to and sees its folly. Her best friend tried to kill her to attain godlike power.

Ianthe as Gog-agog.

Cytherea as Mottom - she suffered greatly at the hands of the powerful, struggled viciously to get some of that power, and found it rotten on her tongue. Still, she uses her power to inflict great harm on others, because what else is she supposed to do?

Who else do we think?

[blackwinged-soul]

 For posterity and context: Far From Heaven gets me from both a Blue-losing-Pink AND a H|arrow-losing-Gid|eon angle.

In fact, it gets me with the latter so much, it is the one and only song that is GUARANTEED to instantly shift me into the same shift every time reliably, completely regardless of my prior shift or mood or distance from the source material. I listen to Far From Heaven and I will ALWAYS be submerged in a H|arrow|hark shift.

The first time I listened to it I thought of Pink (and had such a sharp emotional downturn that though I was singing along (learning how), I gasped and curled into myself and my voice warbled and collapsed and I swore a few times and had to take deep breaths to get my voice back.

Luckily my hyperfixation on the just-then-released Evanescence music pulled me through it without a Complete Breakdown... but GODS that hurt.

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is it gives me Some Pink Feelings, but I thought about Gideon too and it's the latter that STUCK. ''All my life: didn't wanna dream I could lose you. But you just smiled...''

At least with Blue, I have the buffer of HAPPY MEMORIES and DOING SOMETHING ABOUT IT and HER IMPACT to help me heal.

With Harrow|hark it's........ It's so complicated. I hardly have memories. I don't always trust the ones I have. But GODS do I remember that grief. I remember the shock. Was it tinged with betrayal even? I'm sure there was self-flagellation.

See, here's the thing: Believe it or not I was MORE STABLE as Blue Diamond. .....comparatively speaking. Definitely comparative. But I don't think... my life as Harrowhark came with a happy ending that wrapped everything in a neat little bow.

I can't quantify WHY, but I CAN tell you I think the process of healing was messy and I don't know that I ever REALLY healed. So much in that life was fucked up. But I don't even know how to begin assimilating those Feelings and Memories when I can't PROCESS it because I can't REMEMBER it, let alone ANALYZE it and UNDERSTAND it-- and thus I have no way to ACCEPT it!

Sure, I could try accepting just... the simple fact that I Don’t Know and It Hurt, and That’s Okay.

Except I HATE not knowing (especially in a H|arrow|hark shift!), and I’m very frustrated by all the gaps in my memory. I hardly have any memories as Ry/ou, too.

With Blue, I sort of “unlocked” my memories by doing a ritual. Magic and meditation and all that. I think I did three before they came to me as CLEARLY as they do now... But what kind of memory magic resonates with a necromancer? I know very little of psychometry, and that’s so much in objects anyways. The b|ue court had an affinity for memory.

But with H|arrow|hark, as with Ry/ou, I’m hesitant to call up memories without any idea what KIND will come to me. I know that as Ry/ou, I intentionally suppressed memories that came to me from the T|hief King life because they bothered me. I think that kind of had a holdover effect on my Other lives....

But now I worry what I might discover if I delve too deep or lift that lid without knowing what I’ll find.

I had very little moments that could qualify as a Happy Memory as H|arrow|hark. Proud, maybe. Formative and important, certainly.

But I don’t know if I’m prepared to find out More About Desolation. Especially not because I’m doing so much work in Other Areas of my life right now.

Maybe someday... but I’m not in a place where I can Do that right now.

[harrowharks-iliac-crest]

Fuck. Yeah, let's talk about grief.

Have you ever lost someone close enough in such a way that you would, if given half the chance, lobotomise yourself to dull the pain even a little bit?

I have. And I was twenty-six, nearly a full decade older than Harrow.

Really, when you take a little step back, this book is all about grief. About how grief can drive you to do horrible, awful things.

Not just what Harrow did - erasing Gideon from her existence entirely - or at least trying to; though this is probably the most obvious example.

(I kinda can't believe that when I first realised Harrow's memories were all skewed, my literal first theory was "Harrow couldn't deal with the grief and fucked herself up so she could go on not feeling it".)

But also God - in his grief for the whole world, resurrecting it - resurrecting his love, his friends - and then having to deal with the consequences.

But also Mercymorn and Augustine - ten thousand years later still driven to murder by their grief - justifiably, to be honest.

It comes though in Gideon's narration - her grief for her mother, her grief for Jeannemary, her grief for herself! -

It's an undercurrent in the entire book, more present than the River.

If you lost someone that close to you, wouldn't you also fuck yourself up so you wouldn't have to remember?

I remember when I first learned that my best friend had died, suddenly -

Just having to sit there, as the world came crashing down around me -

And just not knowing how to deal with it. at ALL.

I still don't know, to be honest. It's been years.

There's something about the unrelenting cruelty of, of having to get up, having to go on. Having to eat dinner (or at least unenthusiastically pick at it), having to go to bed, try to sleep, having to get up, and go to work in the morning.

Maybe not right away. But whether you like it or not, the world just fucking keeps on turning. It's unrelenting, uncaring almost. How can everything just keep going when your world has just been shattered?

I don't blame Harrow. I don't blame John, or the Lyctors - I don't blame any of them.

I don't blame any of them.

What do you do??? What do you even do?????

And it makes me angry -

It makes me so, so angry, that it's so, so difficult to talk about it.

Grief is one of the most universal human experiences. It is. None of us will go through life without losing someone close to us. If we do, it's only cus we die young enough to become that someone to the people around us.

And how do we deal with it??? In the culture that I grew up in and live in, it's just not really talked about. You talk about it maybe, when it happens, briefly, you maybe mention going to a funeral. You hear awkwardly, sorry for your loss, condolences, I don't know what to say.

I don't know what to say. No one does, ever. It's a problem. It's a problem.

You might bring it up on anniversaries or if something reminds you of them. You might swallow it because you don't wanna bring the mood down. You might not even know how to talk about it yourself.

I don't. Not really.

I really feel like grief is the big elephant in the room in western societies, largely ignored, yet always present. Aren't we all grieving in some way? It doesn't even have to be for a person - a relationship or the climate or a place you've had to move away from - a place you remember being different to how it is now - a time you can never go back to. A pet. Your health. There are so many things you can lose forever.

Aren't we all grieving in some way?

I guess finishing this book has brought a lot of mine up to the surface, quite suddenly. I didn't expect that. But like a kaleidoscope, grief reflects in many colours. I like it when books can play on my emotions like harp strings - and this book has definitely done that; it held up a mirror, and it said:

If you had the power to erase your pain, wouldn't you?

And if you're itching now, as an older, wiser version of yourself, to tell Harrow - tell her that grief isn't easily escapable like that - tell her that those memories are precious, don't you get it - tell her that it will hurt worse, in the long run -

How would you feel? How did you feel, back then, when the wound was still so fresh and raw? When you were younger, more desperate, with fewer options?

Wouldn't you also have chosen to live in a world where your pain was overwritten?

[sister-hawk]

mega spoilers for The Locked Tomb

ok here's what i just realized. we had no idea Harrow was seeing the body until the second book, because the first book is from Gideon's perspective and Harrow never told her about it. she told her about seeing the body in the tomb, but she neglected to mention that she's been seeing it walk around ever since. Gideon and Harrow have obviously had a very difficult relationship, which gets way way worse after Harrow opens the tomb. it gets so bad that Gideon seems to think her only course of action is to run away when no one is looking and join the Cohort. as far as Gideon is concerned, there's no salvaging that relationship, Harrow is just too horrible and evil and vile.

and then the events of Caanan House happen, and through the course of it all (especially after the pool scene) Gideon starts to see Harrow in a much more human light. she's not just the absolute monster Gideon has convinced herself that she must be, after years of trauma and abuse on the Ninth House (which she assumes was all Harrow's doing). Gideon sees her for who she really is, an equally traumatized teenager who has had an unimaginable weight placed upon her by her parents' actions (TWICE!). and i think she begins to hope. after all, these two were the only children growing up on shitty old castle/space station, carved into a dark and cold and desolate rock on the far reaches of the solar system, surrounded by a bunch of elderly cultists. they share a bond whether they like it or not. she sees that Harrow is more than she wrote her off as and she starts to think "maybe there's something between us after all." now i wouldn't go so far as to say she immediately wanted anything romantic, i don't know if either of them even understands romance. when have they ever had the opportunity to learn? but she clearly begins to think of Harrow as someone she can trust? kind of, that she must protect, maybe even love??? whatever the fuck that means for these two (though she tries so hard to convince herself that she isn't feeling this because she doesn't know how to deal with it).

then the fight with Cytherea happens, and after a desperate and hopeless attempt, Gideon makes the ultimate sacrifice. she chooses to stop fighting for her life, and instead to die, to ensure that Harrow would live. even though she wouldn't like to put it this way, this is Gideon's ultimate expression of love for Harrow. she chooses not only to die, but to be consumed. to be obliterated, to be erased from this life and the next, just so that Harrow can go on. she gave literally everything for this girl.

and then, when her spirit wakes up inside of Harrow, and she sees (unclearly) what Harrow sees, what is she looking at? what does she see waltzing around in Harrow's mind? the fucking body from the tomb. the body Harrow thought was so beautiful, that on the day Gideon nearly killed her and drove her to suicide, she saw and immediately decided to live for, on the extremely slim chance that it could ever wake up. she sees the body that saved Harrow from her previous cruelty (they were only children). and she knows, it's been with her this whole time. all this time and Harrow never said a word. even in the salt water bath, where all the truth was supposed to finally come out, this little detail never crossed Harrow's lips.

Gideon must have been utterly heart broken. This would be like if you suddenly found out that your girlfriend of the better part of a decade had secretly been seeing someone else this whole time. it must have crushed what was left of her soul. and to top it all off, Harrow pulls this insane plan to make herself forget Gideon. Gideon sees what she does, but of course she doesn't see why, because Harrow would never tell it aloud, especially not to someone like Ianthe. and all she can assume is, now that Harrow has what she needs (the Lyctorhood for which she was so desperate), she wants to throw Gideon away so that she'll never be beholden to another person. she'd never have to be grateful to Gideon, and she'll have the imagined girlfriend in her head, and Gideon will not even be left as a memory.

Holy shit the devastation this (apparent) betrayal causes cannot even be put into words. No wonder Kiriona is so fucking mean.

[chekhovs-tantrum]

OH! So this is tickling my lil nerdy brain!

There are some really interesting theories that I picked up at an EMDR training that talk about how Erikson's developmental stages dovetail with the "core negative beliefs" about ourselves that happen.

If you haven't taken Psych 101, Erikson's theory (which is a fairly standard psych teaching) is that each "stage" you're tasked with learning something about the world. So like, birth to 18 months, we're in the "trust vs mistrust" stage - aka "can the people around me be trusted to take care of me, not hurt me? Is the world ok or is it completely unsafe?" Contrast that with the major developmental task of 9-11-year olds, which is "industry vs inferiority" aka "how can I be good, how can I be competent?" (important to note that there's been research suggesting that the stages aren't perfectly linear, and that they don't always line up exactly with chronological age, and that sometimes development is two steps forward and one step back).

Different schools of psychotherapy have different takes on what happens if you don't "work through" each stage. EMDR comes in (and I want to emphasize this is one guy's conjecture and not like, an accepted Thing across therapeutic disciplines, or even widespread among EMDR practitioners) because their idea that maybe, the "stage" in which a trauma hits might correlate with (not necessarily cause) the kind of core negative belief you have.

We see this SO much with folks with infant abuse and neglect; they can't articulate why, but often there is this deep belief that people will let you down or hurt you eventually, that everyone will leave and abandon you, an anxiety about getting close to people. For a lot of folks, it doesn't mean they don't trust anyone - it might mean they're vulnerable to lovebombing (Cytherea's "let's see those muscles, what pretty eyes you have") because they feel like shit. Or they pull away from relationships when someone gets "too close" bc they're convinced they're going to get abandoned anyways (Harrow says "I must not be a stranger to you," and Gideon literally starts sweating and making anxious jokes). Everyone abandons Gideon suddenly when she's about 3 to 8 months old (if Harrow is born when she's around a year old), and her whole thing is: "I need you to be trustworthy."

Contrast this with Harrow, who yes, has had insanely high expectations and helicopter parents for absolute decades and that's its own kind of trauma, but frankly she's been Golden Child her whole life. Her major trauma kinda doesn't happen til 9, when her parents hang themselves smack in the middle of her working through "how can I be good, how can I be competent?" And what do we see from Harrow? The gnawing terror that she's not good enough to beat Palamedes. Staying up late and not eating and passing out because she's trying so hard to prove to herself she can save her House. Horrifying guilt that deep down she is Bad for having broken into the tomb, trying to earn her way out of that guilt by overcompensating in her studies and her work.

So again - this isn't a perfect correlation, and I don't want anyone feeling invalidated or unseen because the theory and the linked chart doesn't quite line up with your lived experience! Everybody's shit shows up differently. But I think it's another fun lens that applies to the TLT stuff.

can we just talk about Gideon's childhood real quick (or long, sorry) bc it's breaking my heart

We know that everyone in the Ninth treats her like garbage, but what about that first year? before the massacre?

Think of all the people of the Ninth, caring for their children. think of how much they needed this last-gasp generation and how an additional baby (A free baby! God has sent us a miracle!) might have been celebrated. it's a little weird, sure, but what are you gonna do? throw out a perfectly good baby?

So for one glorious formative year, little Gideon is treated like everyone else, mostly. they give her knucklebones to teeth on and leek gruel and gentle touches. she's such a happy baby, so healthy and strong, and isn't it nice to see her playing with all the black-eyed weedy Ninth youngsters? doesn't she make you laugh?

And then, suddenly: all your children are dead. all the Ninth children, that is. your reverend mother and father look like they've seen a ghost - or a few hundred ghosts - and they never recover, even with the single blessing of a heir. The house mourns, forever. the lost promise. all those empty beds.

...except for one.

The miracle baby - the happy sunshine baby - the chubby laughing baby - sits alone, unharmed, in a poisoned room of choked corpses and reaches out to be touched... and everyone flinches away.

Did this cuckoo bring an end to our house? Thinks the congregation. Why are the reverend mother and father horrified at her presence? why isn't she a miracle? if she's not a miracle, is she...a curse?

Better not to love her, then. you can take a hint.

But from Gideon's perspective - she's only a baby, wanting love and touch and attention. and in a single night, it all goes away. she's filthy, dangerous, a wolf in sheep's clothing. a curse and an omen.

The creature, the omen, the cuckoo and the curse grows up knowing she's hated, but never able to recall what was lost in a single night: a gentle touch, a kiss goodnight. a kind word for a job well done. it slipped away in the dark like 200 souls.

So for the rest of her life, all she wants is to get that back. just a crumb, even. desperate for love. stupefied by kindness. made dumb by the knowledge that she doesn't even know what to do when it's offered. the fact that someone would extend their hand to (willingly!!) touch hers is so mind-boggling she can't even reciprocate. garbage from neck to navel. you know: a turd that has sprouted legs.

I guess I just think about this sometimes.