#nothing else is getting maintagged LMAO

[varteeny1234]

POSTING THIS ON TUMBLR DOT COM :D

Summary:

Marma1ade flipped through the pages of yet another spellbook. She knew already that there would be nothing about the void or its magic, especially not about how it affected people. But still, she needed a distraction from the weird feeling it was giving her. If the void needed to be fed, then it would scream. Marm knew this much. It would scream at her, and only her, until she let herself fall down into its grasp and be consumed, a willing sacrifice. A tradition, at this point- they almost had a whole system. But the void had been silent for days, now, not so much as a faint ring or a misplaced block anywhere. ~ Marm is hungry.

Words: 5671

Chapter: 1/2

Warnings (PLEASE READ): Temporary character death, graphic depictions of violence, described nausea but no vomiting, intense blood and gore, cannibalism and all the emotions that come with that, extreme guilt

No romantic ships, but centers Avid & Marm's friendship :D

Marma1ade flipped through the pages of yet another spellbook. She knew already that there would be nothing about the void or its magic, especially not about how it affected people. But still, she needed a distraction from the weird feeling it was giving her.

The writing in her book blurred in her vision, the words not sticking. She must have re-read this section about six or seven times, now. That twinge in her gut wouldn't go away, the light ache in her teeth just enough to be a bother. The void hadn't actually done anything, really, but somehow she just knew that it was the reason she was feeling ill. If only she knew how to cure it, or how to get the void to tell her how to cure it.

If the void needed to be fed, then it would scream. Marm knew this much. It would scream at her, and only her, until she let herself fall down into its grasp and be consumed, a willing sacrifice. A tradition, at this point- they almost had a whole system. But the void had been silent for days, now, not so much as a faint ring or a misplaced block anywhere.

If this illness kept up for another few days, she'd go and talk to someone else about it. It had only started that very morning, so it couldn't be any immediate effects of void contact. More likely, there was just something weird stuck in her code from when she fell last time. Repeatedly falling into the void like that likely wasn't good for her.

At first, it had actually felt like when she was hungry. Unfortunately, eating a full meal hadn't done anything for either the twinge or the ache, and so she'd crossed hunger off of the list of potential maladies this could be. And now, virtually every cure she could think of- respawn included- had been tested and proved fruitless, so all that was left was to busy herself with random tasks to just give herself something to do.

Marm sighed, flipping the page.

She still didn't really remember what that section had said.

~~~~

Evening fell over the Mangrove swamp, the last rays of sunlight sparkling on the many pools of water and the amethyst crystals in the ground, a faint breeze making the vines rustle and the branches of the trees sway ever-so-slightly. Marm was still feeling the weird feeling, and if anything, it had only gotten worse as time passed. She didn't know what to do. She gripped her fishing rod tighter. After spending most of the day poring over her books, and gaining nothing from them, she figured that fishing for lily pads was a better use of her time.

What she hadn't anticipated was that being outside, closer to the void, would make her hands and feet spark with magic.

And not even her natural swamp magic- her gifted void magic. Shining silver sparkles, resembling stars, danced at the tips of her blackened fingers and toes. They fell to the ground below her and fizzled out, but Marm wondered why her void magic was manifesting even more physically.

"Oh, what do you want from me? What is happening? Do you even know?" Marm asked aloud. If anyone was listening, they might have assumed she was talking to herself. For all Marm herself knew, the void wasn't listening to her at all and she was just talking to herself.

As she expected, the only response she received was silence. The void was usually silent when it didn't want something.

No matter how much she racked her brain, she couldn't figure out why the void made her ill if it didn't want something.

A short time later, a tug on her fishing line brought her out of her own head. It was a fish, a salmon. Marm slumped over, and added it to the others. She recast her line, and continued to wait. When she did, though, she realized that the sky had darkened significantly since she last looked at it. She should probably go to sleep, soon- maybe rest was what she needed?

The fishing line came back up with a small scrap of leather attached to it.

Marm got up and retired to bed for the night. As she closed her eyes, she realized with a frown that she wasn't nearly relaxed enough to sleep. Her illness was still bothering her, enough so that she was too uncomfortable to sleep.

Oh, well. She could just lie here and hope for the best...

~~~~

The next morning, Marm awoke with a barely choked-back scream. 

Her jaw felt like it had been broken and then put back together again, and she only realized she'd bitten her lip when she tasted blood. Opening her mouth made the stabbing feeling oh so much worse. 

The little sleep she'd gotten last night was interrupted by fits of discomfort, and the constant clenching and unclenching of her jaw had added soreness on top of the full-blown agony that she was currently experiencing. The feeling in her gut was almost worse than that; she could barely stand up with the help of the windowsill. Her hands and feet were itching where the void had infected them, and she didn't need a mirror to know that her eyes had darkened like they always did when she used her void magic. 

Her feet didn't want to be stood on, clearly, since her legs gave out underneath her and she was left with her elbow keeping her upright, hanging on the windowsill and leaning up against the wall. Gently, gently, she let herself slide back down onto the floor. 

For a period of time whose exactness was unknown to Marm, she lay there on the floor of her small hut, curled up and clenching her fists around handfuls of the fabric of her dress. Eventually, the pain subsided enough for her to think clearly-ish. 

Oh, she felt so hungry. 

She dragged herself over the floor to the chest in the corner, where she was able to find a few pieces of cooked fish. Normally, they would have been quite appetizing, but for whatever reason, the thought of eating cooked meat was nauseating to Marm. But none of the raw meat that she had looked good either. 

Maybe she could force herself to eat a piece of fish, to tide herself over until she could find whatever it was she needed to eat. Or she could call someone else to help. That might work, actually- Marm put the fish away, but before she could reach her comm unit to send an emergency help message to everyone else, a loud voice called from above the island. The itching sensations grew worse, and Marm absentmindedly licked her lips. 

"Marma1ade!" The cheerful voice belonged to none other than Avid, founder of OSSHA. The reason why the void was hungry. The reason why she was hungry...

"Marm? Where are you? Are you in your hut- oh my gosh, are you okay?" 

The door to the hut swung open, Avid not having bothered to knock, but Marm didn't really care. Someone had come to find her, and he would help her. His bright magenta eyes were full of worry, but she didn't pay that much mind. 

HE was here. AVID WAS HERE. SHE NEEDED HIM-

Marm lurched forwards, unable to stop herself, another pained gasp ripping from her throat. She knocked into Avid, and the two fell down into the swamp. 

They landed with a splat, and Avid grimaced. "Agh, Marm, what the heck? You got my fur all muddy! What's going on with you?" 

If she could think straight, she might have responded, but she was completely overwhelmed by the fact that she knew what she needed now, and she could get it. Her fingers dug into the slimy mud and muck of the swamp. 

"Marm? Should I call someone for help? Uh... your eyes are all funny." Avid was standing, now, above her. His leg was within her grasp, she saw. She reached forwards, gripping onto it, as tight as she could. But before she could latch her teeth into his flesh, he slipped out of her grasp. Damned mud. "Let go of me!" Avid stumbled backwards.

Quickly! She needed to act quickly, now. Before he flew away again, leaving her here alone, to starve-

"Something's wrong, I know, but you're acting really weird, and I don't like it. I don't like anything to do with the void or your new weird magic, you know this! So please, enlighten me, what's going on-" 

The second time Marm tackled him, she made sure that he wasn't able to get away. She landed on top of him, seeing his eyes widen in pure terror as she bit down into his left shoulder. She pinned down his free arm with one hand, stopping him from fighting her off.

Blood filled her mouth, and monkey fur, and it tasted good. She needed this, she needed to feed, she needed more! 

The first chunk Marm had taken out of him was mostly skin and fur, so she took another bite, relishing the metallic taste. The stuff underneath his skin was way better.

The last dregs of guilt she felt for hunting her friend like this, like he was simply prey, evaporated into nothing as the ache in her jaw began to fade. She swallowed what she'd bitten off. Her stomach still hurt a little bit- she hadn't eaten her fill yet. But she would... oh, she would. Even if Avid's fur felt weird in her mouth. His screaming (the sound not unlike her own, just before he arrived) was background noise as Marm tore another piece out of his shoulder. Her teeth were a lot sharper than she remembered. 

That was a good thing!

Her void magic was sparking all over the place, the tiny stars now shooting in all directions like fireworks. The itching wasn't really an itch anymore. Instead, she could just feel raw power flowing around her limbs. She was hardly in any pain or discomfort at all anymore. In her short distraction, Avid tried weakly to push her away with his injured arm, so she promptly grabbed it and bit off half of his hand. The small bones crunched nicely, splintering between her teeth. The other half went soon after. 

She'd made a complete mess of both herself and Avid. Both of them were covered in blood now, along with the swamp muck. Avid's left arm was completely mangled, and he wasn't really screaming anymore, but he was paler than Marm had ever seen him before, and was breathing heavily. Marm wondered how his ribs would taste. 

She tore open his jacket and shirt with her nails, which were also considerably sharper than she recalled. His chest was rapidly moving up and down, so she didn't get the best first bite out of his ribcage, but the crunch of bone cracking was satisfying to both hear and feel. 

Peeling back his skin, she could see his ribs even better. A voice in her head, one that she figured was the last of her sanity, reminded her that Avid would in fact die almost immediately if she ate any of his vital organs. Well, then, she'd save those for last. 

The meat on his ribs, though, she would eat. First, though, she bit off Avid's right arm above the elbow to incapacitate it, then used her now-free hand to grab a rib and pull. 

Past-her had thought the sound of a rib cracking a little bit was nice, the pop that the complete break made when it snapped off was enough for her to devour the rib completely with hardly a second thought. This bone was a lot harder to chew than Avid's hand bones, but no matter- her void magic shattered the thing inside her mouth like it was glass. 

Marm decided that she liked the taste of his ribs better than his arms, so carefully, one by one, she began to break off pieces of them. She left about a third of them, so he'd be alive just a little longer- he could respawn when she was finished. 

His severed arm went down decently fast, and since it was, well, severed, Avid at least didn't feel it when she tore off sections of his muscles into strips. 

Marm would never eat regular food again, now, this was too good for her to ever go back... why would she ever need to eat things like carrots and fish when Avid was here? He would come back after this, perfectly fine, like this had never happened, like Marm had never tackled him to the ground and eaten him alive piece by piece until she was satisfied and her hunger had completely gone away. 

She let her bloodied hands fall onto his chest. A weak thumping sound came from just below them. 

Avid's heart. 

How did a person's heart taste? Even before she'd gotten her void magic, she'd wondered once or twice what it would be like to bite someone's heart. Well... now, she had the perfect opportunity, provided she did it quickly. Avid wasn't going to stay alive much longer. 

With more care than she'd taken at all so far, she pried open the front of his ribcage, and reached inside, letting her hand hover for just a moment over his warm beating heart, feeling it, and then as fast as she could, wrapping her hand around it and pulling it out of his chest and forcing the entire thing into her mouth and down her throat. 

It tasted of the iron in his blood, and was wonderfully savory, with just a hint of sweetness to it. In her hand, it had been deliciously warm, and soft while blood leaked from the severed arteries.

What remained of Avid disintegrated into dust underneath her, but the pool of blood stayed, and so did the delicious feeling of being full. Marm closed her eyes, basking in it. 

She could feel the blood and gore underneath her nails, and streaked down her face, and all over her dress and in her hair. 

But the satisfaction of a good meal was worth it. Her void magic wasn't acting up anymore, her body was back to the same way it had been before- save for her unnaturally sharp teeth, at least. 

She ran her tongue over the sharp points. She could taste the last remnants of her meal, proof of what she'd done-

Oh...

The magical high or whatever had fueled her while she fed (fed!) drained out of her. With it gone, the full weight of what she'd just done to Avid hit her like a hammer. Suddenly, the feeling of blood underneath her nails made her want to throw up. 

That wasn't an ideal situation, since she would probably just get hungry again and this would happen all over-

She all but threw herself into one of the water pools, scrubbing her skin clean of Avid's blood, all the while repeating to herself in her mind over and over again it wasn't your fault. You weren't in control of yourself. It wasn't your fault! 

A sob choked its way out of her throat. Then another, and another. 

Would it have been better if she just stayed hungry and in pain? If Avid had never had to be eaten alive? He had to have respawned by now- where was he? Was he back at the Jungle kingdom, still mentally recovering? Had he gone off to find someone else, with the goal of trapping her somewhere she couldn't hurt anyone again? Marm realized she minded the latter option less than she probably should. 

She just couldn't let herself be near any other of her friends, not when she could lose control of her own mind and body and attack them like this! 

Looking in the water below her, she caught sight of her reflection. Even in the blurriness, she knew she looked just as much of a mess as she felt... and, she noticed, her eyes were back to their regular, ordinary purple. They appeared completely untouched by void magic.

Marm didn't want to go back into her hut yet. Instead, she crawled underneath the roots of one of her trees. The sprawling limbs and thick, leafy vines shielded her from view- not that anyone would be coming over to see her, if Avid told everyone else what had happened, that he'd been ambushed and then eaten alive by Marm, and that for their own safety the Mangrove swamp should be avoided at all costs, and Marm herself was dangerous-

She hadn't even noticed her breathing had picked up. She was getting dizzy, too. Her thoughts continued to spiral, all she could see was Avid's terrified expression when she attacked him and all she could hear was the sound of him screaming and she couldn't remember if he'd said anything or if he was in too much pain to form words at all. Her hands found their way to her hair and were tugging at the long, messy curls, the lily pad she wore as a hat and the orchid flowers behind her ears had fallen out at some point, the last things that might have made her look less scary. 

The taste of blood was sickening. She forced her mouth to open, spitting out a glob of her own saliva mixed with the blood dripping from where she'd cut her tongue on her own too-sharp teeth. The sight of it as it hit the water and dissolved sent another wave of guilt flooding through her systems. She slammed her body into a clump of roots. Tears were flowing freely down her cheeks. Her hands were shaking, her teeth were chattering, her scalp tingled where she'd pulled her hair, she was still hyperventilating.

What had she done? What had she become?

~~~~

An unknown amount of time had passed when the sound of something other than Marm's own crying or the wind rustling in the leaves reached her ears. Unlike earlier, when it was Avid's screeching that found her, it was the faint whistling of an elytra and the whoosh of a rocket. 

Still crying, wiping snot on her sleeve, she quieted down. Footsteps softly padded around the area- only one pair, though. Marm would bet good money that whoever it was was staring at the puddle of blood next to the staircase of her hut. Hopefully, this person would assume it was just another accident and there was no need to investigate further. 

Sadly, luck was not on Marm's side. The footsteps grew louder, coming closer and closer towards the tree she was hiding under. They stopped just outside of the cover. 

Then, they spoke, and the sound of their soft, gentle voice made Marm feel like her stomach had dropped down into her lower gut and her heart skipped a beat. Her head snapped up, staring in the direction their voice had come from.

"Marm? Are you in there?"

She half-gasped, half-sobbed. 

Why would Avid be here? Why would he be even want to see her, let alone be actively looking for her? He should have been somewhere far away, where she couldn't hurt him! She didn't answer his question- she was almost scared to breathe. 

Avid didn't pull back the curtain of vines that shielded her from his view. "Marm? I... I really need to talk to you. You scared me real bad!" He chuckled. She couldn't see his face, but she imagined him awkwardly trying to laugh off the tense situation, and a hint of a smile tugged at the corner of her lip. "Uh... you're, like, yourself again, right? You're not planning on attacking me out of nowhere?"

"'M sorry," she murmured. Her voice was just as shaky as she'd expected it to be. Marm didn't trust herself to say anything, and especially didn't trust herself enough to pull back the vines, to properly see Avid. Being probably okay meant that for all either of them knew, seeing him would just trigger whatever weird void magic that had been active before... but then again, she thought, last time it had been triggered by just Avid's voice. Maybe it'd really, actually be okay for her to see him?

But because Avid was Avid, and he was kind of dumb, he took that as a go-ahead to crawl into the pool and sit right down in front of her. To his credit, he still looked a little shaky, but his eyes looked more worried than anything else. She was still covered in his blood. That at the very least was certainly unsettling.

Marm didn't know what had happened, and she didn't want Avid to ask, she didn't even want to talk. Her head hurt and she just wanted to curl up and hide away for... until she felt safe letting herself be around other people. Which would be a long time. Avid was out of luck, if he wanted answers. The void still hadn't told her anything. 

The two sat together in silence. Avid was fidgeting. Marm still had her chin tucked into her knees, eyes cast downwards, occasionally glancing upwards to see if Avid did anything. He didn't, except look confused, but what he could be thinking about was a mystery. 

Suddenly, he sucked in a breath. Marm looked up properly, tired eyes drooping, but she was looking. Avid opened his mouth, then closed it, then opened it again and spoke. 

"So... I'm going to assume it was something involving void stuff. Something you probably didn't know about before, like, today. Is that right?"  At least he had the courtesy to ask a yes-or-no question. She nodded plainly, and did her best to give him a deadpan stare. He hummed. 

"Yes-or-no questions only, for now?" Marm nodded. "Alright... yeah, that's fair. So the void or its magic inside you or something relating to those things made you go all weird, and you didn't know. Did it start this morning, when I came to see you?" She shook her head. "Huh. Within the past couple of days? I'd have noticed if you were acting weird before then." Yes.

While Avid thought over that, Marm began to trace small patterns into the mud. Under the water, though it was foggy enough she couldn't see it, the mud was soft beneath her fingertips. It helped to ground her. 

Avid started to talk, again. "I'll be honest, I still have no idea what the void could have done to you, but I don't think it meant to hurt you, because it really, really seemed to want me to come back here." 

Now that wasn't something Marm expected to hear- she kept running her fingers through the mud, but the confusion had to have been obvious on her face. 

"Oh, yeah. As soon as I respawned, I was, well, a little bit out of it, you know? But the void didn't like something I was doing, because it started to make an infernal screeching noise after about fifteen minutes. I remembered you saying that that meant the void was probably hungry, but I wasn't about to throw myself into the void to feed it or anything, so I didn't. I was worried about you, of course, but also wasn't sure whether I wanted to come back here just yet, in case I'd get, well, attacked." 

Marm silently thanked him for using the word attacked instead of eaten. 

Avid sighed. "It didn't freaking shut up. I couldn't do much around my base with the noise, and I don't even remember what I was doing when it happened, but I tried to jump down into the Underswamp. And, well, I missed. I could've sworn I put a landing pad there. But I fell into the void, and nothing happened other than I respawned again." He threw his hands in the air, frustrated. "So I knew then at least that the void wasn't trying to kill me. I decided, why the heck not, I'll come and see you. If you're feeling better, then you might be able to help me, and if not, then I'd probably figure something out." 

He looked up and grabbed a leaf off of one of the vines growing around them. He held it for a moment, then started rubbing at it. "As soon as I saw the sign that declared I was officially in the Mangrove kingdom, the void stopped its racket. I looked around, but I didn't see you anywhere, but I did see the... mess. There were some smears on the ground that led over here, and I guess you know the rest."

Once again, neither of them said anything. 

That was certainly a strange story that Avid had told. She'd been the only one the void ever tried to scream at, but it went to Avid? And it wanted him to come see her? 

Almost as if it felt bad for doing whatever it was that it had done to her. 

With some of Avid's side of the story, Marm could make a little bit more sense out of this situation, even if it still wasn't much. If the void felt bad about Marm's illness, then it wasn't likely it had done anything on purpose. 

What did she know about the void? All of it was from her own experience- none of the information on it could be saved in any books, and she'd looked. 

The void was sentient. It lived below the lowest building height. It could transmit corrupted messages from other people, and it screamed at them when it needed something, which was usually a sacrifice, because it needed to consume people to keep the balance. 

Wait a fucking second. 

It needed... to consume people. It got hungry. Only a person's sacrifice could satisfy it. 

Marm's eyebrow twitched, and her stomach turned over. The nausea had come back full-force. She swallowed back the vomit, but she couldn't stop the new wave of tears that poured down her cheeks. Her hand that was under the water in the mud clenched a fistful of the stuff, and she felt it seep out from between her fingers. Suddenly, the feeling was too close to that of Avid's blood, and she shook out her hand, rinsing the mud off. Her other hand came up to her mouth, and she let out a single sob. 

Somehow, the connection between her and the void had wound up with her gaining its need to eat. Its need to eat people. 

But Marm wasn't some eldritch being under the world, she was just a player that got caught up in the world of ancient magic. She wasn't made to do that sort of thing- 

Only she was, now, she thought. Her teeth and nails were so much sharper, and stronger, too. She'd been changed. 

What would she do? When the void was hungry, she simply fed it, and everything went back to normal. It got hungry regularly... would she feel that way as well? Every once in a while, have to consume the body of one of her friends so that she didn't suffer from whatever horrible things would happen if she starved? 

"Marm?" 

Avid was leaning towards her, his arm outstretched.

He- he still wanted to comfort her, to make sure she was okay. She was, physically. She didn't think she was going to end up attacking him again. If her theory was correct, it would be a while before she needed to eat again. Her arm shook as she took Avid's hand. 

Still unable to get any proper words out, she opted to pull herself through the mud and water and sit next to him. 

"Do you just want to sit here for a while?"

Yes. 

~~~~

Marm sifted through all the thoughts in her head, trying and failing to come up with the best way to phrase hey, Avid, sorry about spontaneously jumping on you and literally eating you! It might have to become a semi-regular thing, if I'm right! 

Because saying it like that, while it might have been accurate, wasn't happening. 

"Hm." She sighed. Avid was fiddling with his leaf again. At her quiet hum, he glanced over. 

"You feeling better? Do you think you can talk again?" He murmured. 

Taking a deep breath, she managed to croak out, "Yeah... thank you, Avid." 

He gave her a smile. "Of course, that's what friends are for. Um... I'm ready to talk about... you know. The thing that happened," he stuttered. 

"What, my void magic having the unfortunate side effect of making me lose control of myself and eating my friend alive? That thing?" Marm raised her eyebrows, deadpanning. Avid rolled his eyes. 

"Uh-huh. That. So, even if we know it was your void magic that did it, I'm drawing a complete blank on why it did that, do you have any ideas?" 

Another deep breath. "...Actually, I think I do." 

"Wait, really?" His eyes widened. 

"I think- at least, I'm pretty sure- that the void's need to eat somehow transferred over to me through the magic. I don't know why, or how, just that my teeth are sharper and my hands are stronger, and seeing you this morning when I had been feeling the hunger for a day literally made me lose my mind." 

He whistled. "Wow. That's... wow! It makes a little, teeny-tiny bit of sense, though? Wait... the void has to- ugh, I hate this- eat somewhat often, according to you anyways, or else it'll start going after bridges and things. 'The balance will be disrupted' and all that. Right?" 

Marm had a suspicion she knew what his question was. "Yeah. Unfortunately, I do think that I'll have to eat every once in a while. I don't think I could handle it if not, nothing I tried could get rid of the feeling- and it only ever got worse." 

"That must have been- that sounds awful, I'm really sorry you had to go through that," Avid gently rubbed the back of Marm's hand. "If it helps, I don't hold it against you for any of it. I'm never going to be a fan of the void, but you're still my friend, and that won't change because you were corrupted by some ancient, powerful entity!" 

Strangely, he looked guilty for a second. It was gone so fast she assumed she imagined it. She cared more about Avid's real, verbal assurance that he was still her friend. He wouldn't have come over here to see her if he didn't want to be, again, but hearing him say it out loud still solidified it for her. 

"I'm glad. I was a little worried you'd be mad at me, or at the very least be uncomfortable around me."

Even so, just because he didn't hold any hard feelings for an accident didn't mean he'd be okay with any... future incidents. Marm would still need to eat. If Avid wasn't okay with it, she could probably find someone else to help her, but explaining the situation to anyone else didn't sound fun.

Oh, well... better to ask now and get it over with. 

"...I have a question. It's okay if the answer is no," she began. Marm carefully considered how she phrased her next sentence. "I told you already that I'm probably going to get hungry again. Would you... ugh. Hang on." She tugged on a strand of her hair. "If, or when I start feeling weird again, could you... help me?" 

Avid bit his lip. "Well, I guess it does make sense to ask me. It's alright with me, I think, as long as I get a quick heads-up beforehand and all that. I don't really want to be surprised. That part wasn't very fun- who am I kidding, none of it was fun. It hurt a lot. But if it's something you need, I'm not opposed to an arrangement of sorts." 

Marm teared up again. She didn't deserve a friend like Avid. "Oh, thank you! I don't know what I'd do without you- of course I'll let you know. It was a full day at least before it got bad enough to hurt, I'll definitely be coherent enough to know what's happening before I lose control." She squeezed his hand once and rested her head on his shoulder, hiding her face, relieved. 

"Wait, it was hurting you? You never mentioned that part!" Avid's voice was incredulous. 

"...Oops?" 

"Marm!" He dropped his head on top of hers. "You were dealing with pain on top of weird void corruption? How bad was it?"

"When you get hungry enough to really, really feel it, only ten times worse. I was running on pure adrenaline when you found me." 

His silence must have been that of horror, because he tightened his grip on her hand just enough for her to notice. 

"I'll come see you before I let it get anywhere close to that bad, don't worry, Avid. It just feels a little weird in the beginning, mild discomfort at the most. I'm fine," she tried. He grumbled a bit in response. 

"Stupid void, why does it have to do this..." 

She snorted. Avid really did hold a burning hatred for all things relating to the void, and it seemed that every new thing he learnt about it only fueled that. Marm herself only really disliked this one specific side effect of her void magic!

It would all be okay in the end, though. Avid was there for her, he was her friend, and he would let her eat him when she needed. 

She smiled into his shoulder. "Thank you, again. I'm glad we're friends." 

"Always, Marm." He shifted, moving so he could hold Marm's hand with both of his. "I've got you."

They stayed there for a while longer, in the mud, under the mangrove tree, hidden by the vines. 

[welcometogrouchland]

I'm not one to dwell on the past but sometimes I think back to like. The fandom's reaction to/the discussion around huntlow pre-ftf (which I often forget about now that they're widely accepted as canon) and I'm like. What was that. How did that happen

[fiovske]

we are united in getting called vitriolic for staying on our own blogs 😑😑 the brainrot has been. something else

truly..... 🤝 not maintagging anything and saying that we don't wanna talk about it... and YET the anons keep coming like they're so desperate to twist words and pick a fight...lmao got nothing better to do w their time or their life... it almost makes me pity them.