#presence book

[tmblrofshame]

dipcifica is so funny to me because dipper was literally nice to every other girl in that show but pacifica. like it was on fucking sight

[catilinas]

The wind blows their ghosts to the ground

line (loosely a translation of iliad 6.146-9) from memorial by alice oswald, embroidered onto a ginkgo leaf i found on the ground

[ckret2]

The second dimension has burned up, almost(?) everyone is dead, the ones that aren't dead wish they were, and this funny little yellow triangle the Axolotl met one time is some kind of god ghost party host tyrant.

Wanna make it even worse?? I know you do. Let's make it so much worse.

Here, have a fic. Last week's Part 1 is about Bill doing some kind of cosmic horror shit to the Axolotl; part 2 here is about the Axolotl trying to process the most horrifying thing he's ever seen while a bunch of the most annoying gods you've ever seen argue about building inspections and vandalism.

####

When the Axolotl tumbled out of the bloated pocket of reality where Dimension Zero's singularity was supposed to be, for a moment he thought he'd gotten turned around and flown straight back in, because here again was the yellow triangle's nightmarish party: the geometric rainbow of corpses and undead puppeted into dancing for their "magister," the flashing strobe lights, the hissing whispery white noise like the echoes of a Big Bang had gained sentience and started passing secrets to each other, the cacophonous music that seemed to be every song playing at once.

He had to shake his head to clear it and make sense of what he was seeing. No corpses, no dancing: all he was seeing was all the gods who'd gathered together outside the incinerated two dimensional wall to help deal with the criss, at least triple what there had been before he'd entered what-wasn't-Dimension-Zero. The flashing lights were the cameras and broadcasting equipment of reporters, cordoned off from the Apocalyptic Threat Task Force's main center of operations but still crowding as close as possible to see what the firefighters and ATTF were doing. The whispers were the buzz of activity among the emergency response workers.

And the music was only playing in his own head.

A few gods glanced at him as he emerged from the immense roiling miasma that had replaced Dimension Zero, but they had their own business to deal with and he wasn't part of it, so he was quickly ignored. He wouldn't know what to say if anyone had spoken to him. It was hard to think of anything but the dancing.

He should tell someone what he'd seen. Numbly, he looked around for the storm cloud with the ATTF he'd spoken to earlier, but couldn't pick it out from the crowd.

There was one "face" in the crowd he distantly recognized: a harried-looking vending machine filled with planets and moons—VENDOR, the Axolotl was pretty sure. Some politician. THEY were irritably shifting THEIR worlds back and forth on THEIR spiral racks as THEY spoke to one of the ATTF's many apocalypse cops; THEY'd already vended five planets that the apoc cop had cradled in their tentacles. As the Axolotl swam past the duo in search of the cloud, he heard VENDOR snapping, "—I'll have you know elections are coming up again. The last thing I need is Municipalitron suggesting this lackluster response to a gaping hole into Dimension Zero is MY fault! By the time those rubbernecking reporters make it around your flimsy barrier, I want to be able to report you've cleaned up this mess—" Was the incinerated Dimension 2 Delta even in THEIR district?

He saw THEM on the news from time to time at cosmic crises like this, providing temporary planets for refugees until they could be moved to other worlds (or, in dire enough circumstances—other dimensions); that must be what THEY were here for now. It tended to get THEM a lot of good press. The Axolotl didn't know how much of it was deserved.

To the Axolotl's further distaste, there were also cops here now—not the apoc cops, they were fine, but cop-cops: he saw one crablike being with red and blue mushrooms growing out from where his eyes used to be, and two interlocked fiery rings with a hundred distrustful eyes. They were talking to the hapless furred serpent the Axolotl had seen before he'd gone in to investigate Dimension Zero, the one who'd called in the emergency. She didn't look at all comfortable with whatever they were asking. Why the hell did a spontaneously combusting universe call for the police? Who did they think they were going to arrest? Who did they think they could blame for the fire? The fire itself?

Unless they thought it was arson?

There was the storm cloud: it was talking to another apoc cop, a floating flock of sheep with an ATTF badge pinned in their rain-soaked wool. The Axolotl headed their direction—but paused at the sight of the triangle's sun.

Before Dimension 2 Delta had burned, the little triangle's two-dimensional home planet had been illuminated by a sun shining down on it from the third dimension—a sun no one but the triangle could see. With 2Δ gone, the third dimension was slowly falling into Dimension Zero's nauseating threshold; and in the time the Axolotl had been talking to the triangle, his sun had fallen halfway toward the threshold.

He carefully picked it up and nudged it a safe distance back, then shook the sting of heat out of his paws. 

Someone said, "Hold on, you're the one who defaced the Department of Multiversal Vehicles' office!"

The Axolotl turned to look. VENDOR had apparently ganged up with the cops against the serpent. He groaned under his breath.

Looking between the trio with panic in her eyes and clutching her spray paint can anxiously to her underbelly, the serpent was saying, "Okay, okay, maybe I was out here to do a little graffiti—"

The Axolotl winced and muttered, "Oh, don't voluntarily confess anything." The cloud could wait. He hurried in their direction.

"—but I hadn't actually started anything when the dimension caught on fire! I mean—all right maybe I'd done a couple of tags, but only in vacuum, nowhere near any stars! And the fire started way off from where I was—"

"That sounds likely," VENDOR said.

"You've already got a rap sheet for vandalism," the crablike cop said. "Decided to try out arson—?"

The tentacled apoc cop who'd been speaking to VENDOR earlier cut into the conversation. "Lay off, we've already checked her out. The combustible material in a can of spray paint would only take out a solar system at most. Do you have any idea, any idea, just how much power it takes to burn a whole dimension?"

The dual fiery rings wheeled aggressively in front of the apoc cop. "You let us do our job, calamari. Just focus on doing your own."

"Don't mind if I do," the Axolotl said. He put himself between the accused criminal and the gods of punishment, gills flared and curled forward. "I believe this serpent was a witness to the fire. Is she under arrest?" (He could feel some of the mental numbness wearing off, the horror loosen its grip on his heart as he focused on doing his job.)

VENDOR took one look at him and scoffed. "Oh, you. I know who you are," THEY said. "I suppose this is one of your pro bono clients." All one hundred and two of the cops' eyes immediately snapped to the Axolotl.

Why did everyone think that today? "No," the Axolotl said exasperatedly, "she's not. But I do know her rights. Including her right not to answer any of your questions." (The serpent's jaw snapped shut.) "Do you?"

The cops both bristled. VENDOR drew THEMSELF up to THEIR full height (which was the same height THEY'd already been, a metal brick being rather inflexible like that) and prepared to retort—but THEIR internal camera caught on something just to the Axolotl's side. "Oh, no. Not her."

The Axolotl turned. Hovering in the void behind them, so small and translucent she'd be unnoticeable if not for the faint pinkish glow she gave off, was an astrally-projected mortal soul: a four-armed salamander-like woman with a robe and a string of beads wrapped around one wrist. She opened her eyes, blinking up at the Axolotl.

"Oracle," the Axolotl said, half greeting, half a surprised query. The Oracle bowed her head to him.

To the mortals she served, the Oracle was a priestess who received messages from a god: prophecies to help her people understand the divine and navigate the future. To the beings powerful enough to get called gods, the Oracle was essentially one in a long line of intern news bloggers that the Axolotl occasionally had coffee with to discuss local politics and court cases. His Oracles were almost always low-level mortal criminals who had gotten themselves involved in enough trouble to attract gods' attention, but whom he'd taken under his fin to help get out of that life before they graduated to crimes against reality. The Axolotl thought it was important to offer mortals help before they crossed a line they could never uncross, and important to keep an open conduit of information between higher and lower planes. He thought the people who had the power to shape reality owed transparency to the people living in the realities they shaped.

Not everyone agreed. 

"You smuggled your reporter past the barricade," VENDOR said accusatorially. (The cops visibly flinched at the word "reporter," the crablike one nervously clacking his claws and the ringed one's many eyes widening.)

"No, I had no idea she was coming." Which was unusual. Usually, the Axolotl visited the Oracle in her sleep to catch her up on his day's work and how it might affect mortal affairs; it wasn't often the Oracle sought him out first.

"Well, I'm not making a statement." VENDOR abruptly turned THEIR back to the Axolotl and his Oracle. "If anyone asks, no comment. I'm not commenting on the current incident." The cops also took the opportunity to quietly slink off. The Axolotl watched them go, making sure they didn't find someone new to bully as they left.

The Oracle shot VENDOR and the cops a puzzled look. The Axolotl said, "Don't worry about THEM. Why are you here?"

"Our seers have had premonitions. Could you enlighten us on their meaning?" the Oracle asked.

"Of course. What did they see?"

"They've received visions of an explosion in the... sky..." She trailed off, staring in wonder at the gap into Dimension Zero behind the incinerated wall. "Is... that the explosion?"

Before the Axolotl could answer, the storm cloud he'd been looking for swept past to loom over her. She flinched as her view of her god was suddenly blocked by a torrential thunderstorm, and flinched again as a sunbeam pierced the clouds to shine directly upon her and a serious voice boomed down from the tempestuous heavens: "Your people witnessed it?"

"There you are," the Axolotl said. "I was looking for you—"

The cloud pointed at him with a finger of lightning. "I'll get your statement second. Mortal's first. They don't last as long." (The Axolotl didn't think the Oracle was going to die of old age in the time it would take him to explain what he'd seen in Dimension Zero, but he didn't argue.) It said to the tentacled god, "Get those planets out to the flat worlders. The flock's already out there."

"On it." They tightened their tentacles around the worlds VENDOR had already passed over, and quickly scuttled off toward the line of blue light on the interdimensional horizon.

The storm asked the Oracle, "Can you describe what happened?"

"Uh..." She looked around nervously, trying to find the source of the voice, not realizing it came from the storm itself. "That's... what I came here to find out."

The Axolotl slipped his tail over her as an umbrella. (He needed the water, anyway; he'd been too close to too many fires today.) "Just tell it what your seers saw, like you were telling me. You may be able to help us."

"Help how?"

"None of us directly witnessed the 'explosion' your seers did."

Her eyes widened in alarm. "How do the gods not witness something?"

The Axolotl hesitated. "Even gods' eyes aren't all-seeing." He decided he didn't want the first thing he told his Oracle about the situation to be that all the gods that could have directly witnessed the "explosion" had been killed by it.

As the Oracle spoke, the storm cloud took notes in a damp notepad it kept steady with a current of air, burning the information onto the pages with a thread of lightning that meandered across the page like a Tesla coil. VENDOR, who'd backed out of "interviewing" range but not out of hearing range, partially turned to listen to her statement. (And while the other gods were distracted, the furred serpent quietly slunk off, trying to hide her spray paint as she did; the Axolotl didn't call attention to her. If the storm needed anything else from her, no doubt it had already gotten her contact info. Better that she go before the cops circled back to harass her some more.)

The Oracle said that her people's seers had seen a whole patch of the sky burning bright blue and collapsing together, the edges going black and the center growing impossibly bright, until everything sank into the center—and then went dark. Only once it was dark could they see what the light had been concealing: behind the collapsed patch of sky, there was a sea of seething colors. (The assembled group tried not to stare too obviously at the multicolored miasma that used to be Dimension Zero.) One seer had gone blind staring straight into the light, trying to discover anything about its nature.

The cloud asked, "And did she see anything important?"

The Oracle said hesitantly, as though not sure whether this detail mattered: "She said the light was... triangular."

A chill settled over the Axolotl. 

The cloud stopped, perplexed. "Huh." And then it dutifully burned that information down as well.

(Maybe it was nothing; triangles were very common symbols, lots of phenomena naturally formed triangles. Or maybe what she'd seen was whatever the triangle had done to try to save his people. Or maybe, maybe....)

While the cloud was focused on taking down its notes, the Oracle dragged her eyes from the tumbling colors of Dimension Zero and turned to the Axolotl. "We're worried about what these visions mean." She switched from interviewee to interviewer, all journalistic professionalism. "What did they see? What was this explosion?"

The Axolotl focused on the question to push the triangle from his mind. His eyes began to glow, as he recited:

"The multiverse is layered planes,

Stacked to bear existence's strains.

1D pillars, 2D walls,

3D rooms in 4D halls;

On a 0D foundation:

That's reality's construction. 

One wall falls into the basement,

It can shake the whole apartment.

But other walls can still load-bear

Until the gods can make repairs."

"Okay... Thank you. And—our plane is 3D?"

"That's right."

The Oracle took notes of her own: one of her four hands spun in loose loops, like an absent-minded conductor. In her physical body, she'd be holding a marker in a trance, copying down the prophecy the Axolotl had given her. No doubt it would be in the mortal papers on her world by tomorrow. The Axolotl thought it was better that the mortals know there was something wrong but that the people who had the power to do something about it were on the job, rather than just worry without answers. (Again, he was sometimes in the minority opinion. VENDOR was managing to give him the stink eye without a face.) "Is the multiverse actually structured like an apartment complex?"

"No," the Axolotl said. "It's a helpful visual metaphor." And it had rhymed with basement.

"But... this is something you can fix?"

"It is. There are gods of space and doomsday already here working to stabilize the foundation and repair the fallen wall." (VENDOR's lights flickered a bit brighter at the positive acknowledgment to the press.)

"Gods of doomsday?" She gave him an alarmed look.

"It's a misleading title. The ones here work to prevent accidental apocalypses."

"You're underselling the severity of the issue," the storm cloud muttered, not looking up from its notes. "This isn't your run-of-the-mill cosmic repair job. A second dimension's fully collapsed into the zeroth dimension. That's a plane packed into a point. That shouldn't be possible. It's destabilized everything built on top of the zeroth dimension—which means the entire multiverse." (VENDOR tried to shush it. It didn't acknowledge THEM.) "Plus, this fire is kicking our collective butts. One- and two-dimensional gods are getting incinerated, not even afterlives and underworlds are escaping the fire, reality itself is at risk of collapsing, we still don't know what's doing it—"

VENDOR let out a beep that was as loud as a car alarm. "Is there any reason the mortals need to know that!"

"Ehh... not that I can think of." The cloud glanced up from its notes. "They're powerless to do anything about it. It'd just make them worry about something that's out of their h..." Its roving sunbeams caught on the Oracle, still diligently taking notes on this out-of-control fire. "Oh."

Quietly, the Oracle asked, "You're sure the multiverse will be fine? If this fire even kills gods..."

The Axolotl paused. "I was more sure a second ago."

"It'll stand," the storm cloud said grimly, "but if we can't stop the fires, not for long. We've called out every god we can to help, but..."

"It should stand," VENDOR said quickly. "I'm sure the other walls are fine—I've personally seen to it that we're rigorous about maintaining our dimensions' structural integrity."

The cloud's sunbeam aimed ruefully at the missing wall. "Good work," it muttered.

VENDOR rounded angrily on it, "Well all the preventative cosmic inspections in the multiverse are useless if the inspectors didn't do their job right! Which they clearly didn't!"

The cloud raised a wall of fog defensively.

VENDOR paced in an angry figure 8 as THEY fumed, "It's incompetence all around! I'll bet anything it was electricians who miswired the laws of electromagnetism and shorted them out, or—or something! A properly constructed load-bearing wall imploding, much less dumping into the center of reality, just doesn't happen! And nobody noticed the danger?"

"We can't rule out the possibility of terrorism yet," the cloud said. 

 VENDOR rounded on the cloud to demand, "What terrorist would risk destroying the multiverse?!"

Angry lightning danced around its tornado. "How should I freaking know! A stupid one?!"

"Hah! That's all you've got?! The dimensions might have been burned by a stupid terrorist?" THEY turned on the Oracle. "Do not print that!"

Her hand froze mid-loop.

Thunder rumbled in the storm cloud. "Look, apocalypse Origin & Cause is still investigating, and the cosmic engineering inspector isn't here yet. If you'd give us five nanoseconds to do our jobs—!"

"What do you mean, isn't here yet! What's taking them so long?"

"I just put in the call—"

"That's no excuse, they ought to have been here before you called! Do engineers have time tapes or not!" VENDOR let out several irritated beeps as THEIR internal motors ground in irritation. "Probably dragging their heels because they didn't do their job properly before the dimension fell! Oh, I'm going to give them a piece of my mind." THEY charged off, still muttering, "I'll have the heads of the last inspector and the lazy subcontractors who didn't build this dimension up to code! If this does anything to jeopardize my reelection— You there, police!" (The crab cop, who'd attempted to make himself useful by eyeing the reporters still outside the cordon menacingly, started at being directly addressed again.) "I need your assistance! I need someone to hold up a phone for me."

The Axolotl gave THEM a wide berth as THEY passed. Even as a god who almost exclusively dealt with the dead, this level of devastation left the Axolotl stunned with horror. But VENDOR's biggest concern wasn't the loss of life? Nor the threat to public safety posed by the exposed and mutated Dimension Zero? It was a stupid election?

He made a mental note to look into Municipalitron's policies before the next election.

Quietly, the Oracle asked, "Are you safe here? If there's a fire that can even kill gods..."

When the storm had told the Axolotl about 2Δ's fire, it had said not even gods and ghosts made it out— The Axolotl's frills perked up. "Right, I came back here to tell it— Er, yes, I think I'm safe—but I need to tell—" He turned to the storm cloud, "I haven't told you what I saw yet!"

"Oh, right—I meant to congratulate you on coming back alive." It flipped to a new page in its notepad. "Congrats."

"You said that everyone in 2Δ died," the Axolotl said.

"They did. I can guarantee it." It grew its tornado to pantomime an expanding ring: "The readings Origin & Cause have gotten so far indicate that an enormous gravitational wave from the spontaneous combustion event's epicenter tore the universe apart. Imagine gluing a bunch of corn chips to a tablecloth, pulling the tablecloth tight from both sides, and dragging the tablecloth straight down off one end of the table. It'd shatter all the chips as they passed over the table's edge. Destroyed everyone and everything in that universe, on every plane. Landscape, mindscape, dreamscape..."

"Well," the Axolotl said, with the edge of triumph he got whenever he figured out how to rip a prosecutor's witness in half, "I found survivors. So how's that possible?"

He expected surprise. Instead, the cloud bobbed up and down in recognition, as though the Axolotl were confirming something it already knew. 

On the other hand, from half a solar system away, VENDOR shouted indignantly, "I beg your pardon?!" THEY leaned away from the phone the cop was holding for THEM. "How many?" THEY began rotating through THEIR internal selection of planets.

"Two or three million," the Axolotl called back.

VENDOR huffed irritably and switched to looking through their collection of much smaller, rockier astronomical bodies. "Hardly worth a moon, much less a planet," THEY muttered. "From Dimension 2 Delta, I assume."

"No," the storm cloud said. "Everyone in 2Δ is dead. He must've found the poor suckers getting dragged down from the other dimensions."

The Axolotl stared at it. "Dragged down from what?"

Before the cloud could answer, the flock of sheep it had been speaking to earlier called, "Boss?" They had clearly just come from the direction of the bright blue line on the horizon—and their fleeces was now stained with soot. "We're losing refugees even faster in Dimension 2 Epsilon, what's the new plan?" Dimension 2 Epsilon?

The Axolotl felt a chill wind blow off the storm cloud; but its voice was just as hard as ever as it said, "I'll check it out myself." Its sunbeam pointed toward the Axolotl. "Maybe you oughta come along, I can explain it on the way." it said. "Just you." And the beam drifted down to highlight the Oracle.

"Yes, I understand."

Its bright gaze turned toward the apoc flock. "Hold down the fort until we get back."

"Got it, boss."

The Axolotl turned to the Oracle and said quietly, "You should wake up. I'll contact you with more when I can."

As strongly as he believed the mortals ought to be privy to whatever knowledge the gods had about the crisis, he didn't think traumatizing his Oracle wold benefit anyone.

####

Apparently, the Axolotl had only been told about half the situation. As they traveled along where Dimension 2 Delta used to be, the storm cloud caught him up on the rest. It had been telling the truth about everything in 2Δ being destroyed. It had simply burned too fast and too thoroughly, and it wasn't until the flames reached the edges of the universe and looped back to eat themselves that the inferno began to slow down.

Slow down... but not stop.

Why hadn't the Axolotl realized sooner? Why would there be so many firefighters on the scene, if the fire had gone out before the first ever arrived? What was the distant blue line of light he'd followed until he found the ATTF's center of operations, if not the light of still-burning stars? Why would VENDOR have come to provide new worlds for refugees, if everyone had been so sure 2Δ didn't have any refugees?

When the flames had reached the edge of 2Δ, they'd effortlessly incinerated the first dimensions bordering its edges, like a flame consuming a flash string in a magic trick, and moved straight across to the next second dimensions.

"Dimensions 2 Delta, 1 Gamma-Delta, and 1 Delta-Epsilon were completely incinerated before anyone arrived on the scene," the cloud said. "We lost 1 Alpha-Delta and 1 Delta-Zeta after we got here—it's a miracle the fire didn't cross from 2 Delta over 1 Alpha-Delta into 2 Alpha. 2 Gamma's over ninety percent gone; at this point we're trying to detach it from the closest first dimensions and hoping the flames will stop at its borders. And we're just trying to rescue who we can from 2 Epsilon and 2 Zeta, because every time we start to get the fire under control, it restarts itself."

The Axolotl felt sick. Five dimensions had been destroyed? Three more dimensions were still burning—one on the verge of being lost?

"Some of your survivors must've been dragged down into Dimension Zero," it went on. "Or into the miasma around it. I guess you must not have run into Zero itself in there, or else you wouldn't be here to tell us about it."

"I don't think Dimension Zero is in that miasma; I think the miasma is Dimension Zero. It had some properties of a spaciotemporal singularity... except it's... big. Big but—all in one place. And there's time happening, but all in one moment." He was in no fit state to try to explain this. He wasn't sure he even understood himself.

"Huh," the storm said. "Never seen anything like that before. I guess that explains where the rubble from 2Δ went, but—I have no idea how the physics in there must be working."

"I didn't see any rubble. Would there be any? If everything was destroyed—gods, souls, afterlives, dreams..."

"Subatomic ashes. The dimension's matter still oughta be somewhere."

He tried to remember if he'd seen anything that might be subatomic ashes. All he could remember was the three dimensional stars and stardust that had fallen in—and the party, and the bleeding. "If it was there, I wouldn't know how to sense it."

By the time they reached the edge of Dimension 2 Epsilon, and a 2D plane once more safely covered up the shifting border of Dimension Zero, the distant line of light had grown into a sea of pallid blue flame: the hydrogen of countless two dimensional stars burning as their universe crumbled and crunched up. In the distance, beyond the fire's perimeter, the Axolotl could see the still-unburned flat constellations and nebulas—and the divine firefighters chopping and hacking the universe in twain ahead of the fire edge. He realized that fire crews he'd seen nervously milling about earlier were just a skeleton crew: the real firefighting force was out here.

The flames seemed reluctant to lick up into the third dimension; they clung hard to the second dimensions, barely even radiating heat into the neighboring universe. There was an eerie focused calm to the gods trying to stop the fires below—all the devastation beneath them, close enough to touch, and yet not touching them. Yet. 

Even as many firefighters as were out here trying to get the fire under control, they couldn't cover the entire perimeter; and so the storm cloud lead the Axolotl right up to the fire edge along a span that the stretched-thin firefighting force didn't currently have covered. They were close enough that a few of the storm's raindrops fell on the fire, making it sizzle out in some small spots, only for the inferno to roar back to life a moment later.

The storm spoke for the first time in several minutes: "I can't begin to tell you how, but it's like the fire's fighting back against us. Every time the fire crews get even a little bit under control, it erupts again. We've had to start breaking off the burning portions of reality to keep the fires from spreading to the rest of the dimension," it gestured at the gods at work cracking off an enormous slab of existence from the rest of the dimension to create a chasm half a galaxy wide between the fire and the as yet still safe portion of the universe. The separated portion buckled and bubbled in the fire like a melting piece of plastic. "And... even that's not enough. Cosmic fires aren't my speciality—but I'm told breaking a dimension is guaranteed to stop a fire. But this one just keeps finding a way to... jump across."

"What do you mean, 'jump across'?"

On the safe side of the chasm, at least a lightyear away, a perfectly well-behaved solar system randomly burst into a geyser of flames.

"Oh."

Firefighters rushed to the newly burning star. Several planets had already blackened, curled up, and crumbled to ashes. The ashes rained down into Dimension Zero.

The storm cloud turned their path toward the new fire, the Axolotl following close behind. "They don't even always pop up near the fire edge like this." (As though a flame jumping an entire lightyear away could be called "near.") "Half a dozen popped up at random throughout Dimension 2 Gamma before we even realized how this fire moved. And as if that isn't bad enough, if the fire isn't targeting mortals, I'll eat my fedora."

This time, the Axolotl decided not to tempt fate by asking how a fire could target anything.

The firefighters struggled to contain the new fire with a line of 3D flame-retardant foam. They weren't even trying to put the fire out, he realized; they'd given up the solar system for lost. They were only trying to keep the fire back from one planet: a disc-shaped world, already cracked from the way the heat had warped and bent this dimension's surface, surrounded by billions of glittery flecks. People. His frills flicked forward in alarm.

Rescuers were using planet-sized planes to scoop the bewildered two-dimensional people off their endangered dimension, like spatulas trying to rescue a pancake from a skillet in the fires of hell, and handing them off to other rescuers to relocate to one of the refugee planets VENDOR had supplied. But as the storm and Axolotl caught up the fire somehow found a way past the solid wall of 3D foam to ignite the moon orbiting the hapless planet.

And as if that wasn't enough, it sprung up on the people, too. The screaming populations of entire towns spontaneously caught fire. To his horror, the Axolotl understood now what the storm had meant by the fires targeting mortals. Reality warped and bent beneath them, twisting, melting; burning people were crushed together by the distortions in reality and fused together into dozen-mouthed wailing bodies. The overburdened plane of reality ripped and disintegrated like threadbare fabric over a candle, and people fell screaming into Dimension Zero before they could be caught.

The storm cloud flinched back with a flash of lightning. "Shoot—it is getting faster."

The Axolotl automatically lunged forward to help them. A split-second wall of shrieking lightning blocked his path and a gust of wind pushed him back. "Don't," the storm snapped. "Leave it to the professionals."

"Sorry." The Axolotl backed up a safe distance with the storm cloud, stomach twisting. "Is there any way I can help—?"

"No," the storm cloud said quickly. "This fire can pop up anywhere—it's already caught four firefighters, and they're trained to deal with this stuff. We can't risk it spreading to the third dimension."

He hated not helping—but unfortunately, he understood. "How did you put out the fires on the firefighters?"

"We didn't. We threw them into Dimension Zero."

The storm was right; there was nothing natural about a fire that could kill gods.

"I've gotta go find out the latest," it said. "Can you stay out of trouble for a few minutes?"

"Yes. I promise." Although it might be the hardest thing he'd ever done.

The storm cloud left the Axolotl; and the Axolotl watched the fire.

####

It went against every instinct in his body not to reach out to scoop up the falling dead.

He'd worked for eons as a psychopomp before switching to a career that gave him more of a voice in what happened to the souls he escorted. He'd met billions of species with billions of different ways of dying; he wasn't squeamish around corpses, injuries, rot, disease. He was comfortable around death. Heck, he and death had each other's phone numbers for emergencies—they regularly crossed paths at professional networking events. 

But there were some deaths worse than others, and there were fates worse than death. As he watched, an oval with thin little arms plummeted into a direction it couldn't even see, its body burning up; and then its ghost burned up, too. It would never join the eternal dance party, and the Axolotl wasn't sure whether it was the lucky one.

As he watched, the Axolotl noticed something strange. Like any populated world, there were probably millions to trillions of different species around this one, although at a glance the Axolotl could only spy a handful. But although all of them were eventually caught by the flames, there was only one species that seemed to be victim of spontaneous combustion—and that seemed to be falling into Dimension Zero: the people that looked like living geometric shapes.

When the storm returned, it was quieter; even its tornado spun more slowly. The Axolotl got the sense it hadn't received good news.

But it didn't share what it had received. It said, "I've seen my fair share of apocalypses, but I've never seen anything like this before. Whatever this fire is, it's not natural." The eye of the storm watched one of the melting people falling like cinders into the center of the multiverse, until even its sunbeam couldn't pierce the miasma. "Ten to one, I'd bet you something intelligent is doing that."

"Your stupid terrorist?"

The cloud laughed ruefully. "Yeah." It watched a moment longer; then sighed out a long gust of wind and tried to rally some of its earlier stoicism. "So. Those people you saw in Dimension Zero must be the mortals from the dimensions around 2Δ getting dragged in by the fire. You can see how they've been peeling off their planes when the flames get 'em. I'm amazed they survived the fall into Dimension Zero."

"Survived" maybe wasn't the word the Axolotl would choose; but he didn't know how to begin to explain the horrors he'd seen down there.

He tore his eyes from the terrible rain of corpses. "Not all of them," he said. "I know for a fact at least one of the survivors is from 2Δ. I know him. I've met him before."

"You have." The storm managed to look dubious at this. "You're sure it wasn't an alternate of the same guy from a neighboring dimension?"

"I talked to him in Dimension 2 Delta. He remembered meeting me. It's him."

"Huh." The storm processed that silently. "Nope. I've got no explanation for that."

####

(Thanks for reading!! If the art lured you in and this is the first chapter you read, this is part 2 of a 5-or-6 part fic about the Axolotl in the immediate aftermath of the Euclidean Massacre. Here's part one if you missed it. I'm posting one chapter a week, Fridays 5pm CST, so stick around if you wanna watch the Axolotl slowly discover just how much of a monster that silly triangle he likes really is.

It's ALSO chapter 61 PART TWO of an ongoing post-canon post-TBOB very-reluctantly-human Bill fic. I'm gonna fix the chapter numbering once I know how many chapters this plot is. If you're not sold on the idea of a human Bill fic, I've also got a oneshot about normal triangle Bill escaping the Theraprism if you wanna read that.

If this is NOT your first time here and you already knew all of the above: nobody commented on the fact that I was calling Bill's dimension "Dimension 2 Delta" rather than just "the second dimension"—but I hope that, somewhere in your hearts, some of you were wondering what I had to differentiate his dimension from that necessitated labeling it Delta. :)

I think this is probably the least horrifying out of all the chapters. Because of that, I'm worried it's kinda boring, but that might just be because I'm comparing it to the undead corpse party. And also Bill isn't here.

It's also the least edited chapter because I may or may not have spent the last three days drawing the second dimension burning instead of writing and ran 30 minutes past posting time doing last minute rewrites lmao. So uh, lemme know if there are any typos, sentences that don't make sense because I changed how I wanted to phrase them halfway through and didn't notice, weird internal contradictions, whatever.

But more importantly let me know what y'all think!!)

[wedarkacademia]

“I used to invent love when necessary. When I walked alone on the riverbank. Or whenever the level of salt would rise in my body, I would invent the river.”

― Mahmoud Darwish, In the Presence of Absence

[julijbee]

girlbossing too close to the sun.

[clonerightsagenda]

I've started noticing content warnings start popping up more frequently in the front of published books, and I'm curious as to people's thoughts on that. So, poll time!

[naggascradle]

Covers for A Game of Thrones, I (Jon Snow) II (Daenerys Targaryen) III (Tyrion Lannister) IV (Catelyn Stark) V (Ned Stark) & A Clash of Kings, I (Arya Stark) II (Theon Greyjoy) III (Sansa Stark) IV (Davos Seaworth) V (Bran Stark), drawn by Ken Sugiwara for the Japanese paperback release of A Song of Ice and Fire.

[ofswordsandpens]

Okay compiling my most critical opinions on the pjo show so far (episodes 1 & 2)

The Gods' Conflict, Foreshadowing, & Big Three Kids

The show has seemingly dropped a lot of the foreshadowing and threat regarding the gods impending war over the theft of the lightning bolt. In the book, Percy remarks about how the weather's been inexplicably weird and extreme. When he gets to camp everyone is on pins and needles about something and they don't want to talk about it but its still very present. By the time he's claimed as a son of Poseidon and everyone's like "oh fuck" and then Chiron finally explains to Percy that the gods think he's the lightning thief, everything clicks into place for the reader. It all makes sense why everything seems so wrong... because things are wrong. Meanwhile in the show, that doesn't carry through as much, so the reveal of the conflict between the gods and why that's a big deal falls flat in comparison imo.

They dropped/stalled the foreshadowing of the fates and the cutting of the string. They could very well include this in future episodes, and probably will, but I think the timing of it - Percy seeing this before he even knew he was a demigod - again carries some hefty significance and helped set the foreboding tone of things being wrong even from the beginning.

They did drop Zeus's attack on Percy in the minotaur battle completely, which does disappoint me. In the book, its lightning that blasts the car off the road. In the show, Sally seemingly loses control of the car. That change is pretty significant, because it's again losing the power of RR's foreshadowing in the book. The attack on Percy outside the camp borders was a duel attack from Zeus and Hades.

Finally, I don't like the changes they made to Percy's claiming scene, namely, the reaction from the rest of CHB. Percy being a son of Poseidon is a huge deal. When Percy's claimed, the attitude is very much begrudging reverence paired with genuine fear of what it means and what he represents. In the book, Percy is claimed. People gasp. Everyone kneels. Annabeth says, "This is really not good." In the show, Percy is claimed. People... stand there? Annabeth smiles - she's going to get her quest. The only person who has the most outright negative reaction is Luke. I won't go so far to say this is out of character for Annabeth, but it is focusing on an entirely different aspect of her character in the moment, and what the audience gets from Percy's claiming scene here, the tone, is now different from the book. Basically, the reverence and fear don't really carry across to the show, which I think is important.

The phrase "forbidden child" slaps tho.

2. Gabe's Characterization, Sally's Characterization, & Why the Changes do Make a Difference

I'm going to say this with great care: The show has absolutely depicted an abusive relationship between Sally and Gabe. The show has shown Sally to be a strong woman who would do anything for her child. The show has shown Gabe to be a controlling, toxic man.

What they have depicted in the show does not read like the characters and dynamic in the books.

Book Gabe is a violent, menacing drunk. He is so disgusting and vile that monsters avoid him. This is overwhelmingly apparent from the second Percy gets home in the book, even before he is aware of the physical abuse Sally has been facing. Percy has already been dealing with physical abuse from him, amongst other things (edit to be more specific: this is including verbal, emotional, & financial abuse). I've already spoke to it here, in-depth, so I'll try to keep it short but all of this has not been translated accurately to the screen. (Is this to say that a person must be overtly abusive to be abusive? No. But does this character on-screen feel like Smelly Gabe? No.) These things have shaped Percy (and Sally) in very specific ways. As others have mentioned: Percy cannot stand alcohol. He meets Dionysus and is reminded of his step-father. He gets to Tartarus and the air reminds him of Gabe.... The character on screen, while abusive, does not share this presence at all, and that makes a difference.

Edit: To emphasize once more, I am not saying that the show has not depicted a realistic portrayal of abuse. It has (verbal, emotional, & financial so far). It has also distinctly changed the tone and Gabe's presence from the book, to the extent that it no longer feels like the same character and that does have a rippling effect on the dynamics he shares with both Sally and Percy.

3. The Lack of Annabeth

Annabeth in the show is just like... really not as present as she is in the book so far, and I'm just kinda like, why lol?

Annabeth in the books is already way more involved in Percy's life. She was in the infirmary feeding Percy ambrosia after the attack (ulterior quest motives lol), she's the one who lead Percy around camp and re-explained godly parentage to him - and its a moment where she's very sincere with him, and even trying to help him! Instead these moments are given to Chiron and Luke, which I do get the merit of, but still, these were her moments!

Annabeth in the books had already surmised that the gods were fighting, something was stolen, and the something bad was going to happen, all before Percy had even been claimed. And she shared that with him! Again, the loss of foreshadowing and little bonding moments has me :(

I'm a little worried how they're going to deal with her crush on Luke because its pretty central to her character in the books! It helps Luke to manipulate her and also keeps her from admitting he's done something wrong. Also, it was very sweet and funny reading her get flustered - It drove home the point that she was just a kid with a crush that she didn't know how to handle. But in the show Luke spoke to her and I was expecting there to be some sort of reaction to it and there just... wasn't? (This is not something I'm laying at Leah's feet btw! Only the writers/directors!) We're only two episodes in tho so maybe we'll see it some more moving forward.

4. The Minotaur Battle

Again, I've already spoken about this in depth here but !!

The lack of Zeus's lightning strike, them all coming to a standstill and just chatting instead of running for their lives, Grover being awake and just sort of off to the side watching the fight, Sally being like "Promise Me Grover Swear it"... it all just doesn't ring right to me

I wanted more panic, more terror, more urgency. Higher stakes. I wanted Grover unconscious, I wanted to see Percy drag him into camp, and I wanted to see more of Percy's grief alongside his rage. Like the book did.

The pacing in the show here, and just overall, is weird

5. Other Stuff

Mrs. Dodds fight kind of fell flat too. It was honestly too sudden and Percy killing her in the show seemed even more accidental than in the book lol. Like, accidental impalement vs intentional swing of the sword.

They really had show Grover throw Percy to the wolves and not just gaslight him, but low-key have a part in getting him expelled? Not sure how I feel about it tbh.

More New York. I wish we had gotten the part of Percy taking the bus home with Grover included cause like? Him ditching Grover was funny, but it would have been the perfect opportunity to show Percy traveling through New York and establish it has his home. Shots of him looking at the city, walking the streets, interacting with people near his building.. yeah.

More Montauk too tbh. Like more shots of him and Sally on the beach rather than just the cabin.

Nectar and Ambrosia! Unless I missed it, which I might have, why have we still not gotten an onscreen depiction of it yet lmao.

[mblue-art]

BAD SANSUARY // [26] pjs for owl-bones's event !

woken up by night terrors; who else to go to but the boss himself,, didn't want to disturb the others' sleep... fortunately, nightmare is still up. a soothing, comforting, and safe presence in the quiet, cold dark of the castle.

inspired by bonesofvaldis's nightmare art because i really like how he looks there 🥺 makes me want to lay my head down on his lap, curl up like a shrimp, and just... eep

[pizzazz-party]

team “i don’t properly visualize anything when i read, but let me take a crack at it”

[blaiddfailcam]

Moon Presence

"Human or no, the oozing blood is a medium of the highest grade, and the essence of the formless Great One, Oedon. Both Oedon, and his inadvertent worshippers, surreptitiously seek the precious blood."

[jakeperalta]

(this isn't a question about the best p&p adaptation ever, it is simply which you prefer OUT OF THESE TWO OPTIONS since they are the two most commonly talked about and compared!!)

[twentyfivemiceinatrenchcoat]

THE GREEN IN YOUR EYES MAKES ME FEEL WARM INSIDE ; MEGUMI FUSHIGURO

synopsis; in the comfort of a familiar bookstore, you find a boy. a pretty boy, who’s always reading, who doesn’t speak unless he has to. you’d like to get to know him — and maybe you will.

word count; 4.6k

contents; megumi fushiguro/reader, gn!reader, fluffy!!, lots of pining from afar, bookstore au, no curses au, reader is an overworked student bc uni is beating my ass, gumi is kind of awkward but hes cute <3, gojo mentioned twice (stay safe), can u tell im excited for christmas … :'3

a/n; bookstore employee gumi who hates every single customer except for you is so real to me

(@riaki its here …🙇‍♂️)

he’s there again. 

with a decisive step forward, you drag the door open, and the flutter of a bell resounds throughout the bookstore. a precious little jingle, alerting him of your presence. 

the boy at the counter gives you a glance. his navy eyes settle on your bundled up figure, and a flicker of familiarity blooms in the scope of his iris, a kind of recognition. something that makes your heart feel like a clumped up little ball of snow. 

(oh. it’s you.

you can almost hear the silent words fall past his lips.)

it only lasts for a second, barely even that, your gazes overlapping — then he’s back to reading. 

today, you recognize the book in his hands. the hardcover looks just a tiny bit worn, but still well taken care of. well-loved. and it’s a pretty rendition; a butterfly just above the title, snakes crawling on either side, vines stretching out across the scope of the image. there’s a kind of mystique to it. pretty.

wuthering heights, you read off the cover.

a little odd, in hindsight. you’ve only ever seen him read nonfiction. maybe he decided to broaden his horizons?

after a brief moment’s contemplation, your feet begin to move. taking another small step forward, inching closer, while the door falls shut behind you. blocking out the snowfall and colourful lights illuminating the street. 

mitten-clad hands go to brush stray snowflakes off your shoulders, as you shift from foot to foot, halfheartedly attempting to warm up your numbed toes. wallowing in the atmosphere of the cozy little bookstore; breathing in the smell of peppermint, the hint of freshly brewed coffee. from the boy, you assume — he’s got his usual mug on standby, a cute little black dog etched into the ceramic. steam rises from it, floating up into the air, and a fragrance of espresso wafts throughout the store.

low christmas music plays from the speakers, barely audible. pleasing to your sensitive ears and tired mind. it’s the usual mix of well-loved songs, for the most part, but then some you haven’t heard before. you can only assume he picked them out himself; pretty instrumentals, or low, gravelly voices, adding to that particular atmosphere simmering around you. nostalgic, a little melancholic.

the boy behind the counter looks angelic. 

he always does, when he’s reading — and he usually is. gentle, in the way he turns the pages, awfully delicate, keeping them still between his thumb and forefinger. lips pursed, brows just a tiny bit furrowed. concentrated, immersed. dark eyes trailing over the tiny letters, scanning the ink of the paper, twisting the syllables inside his mind. almost tasting them on his tongue, with the way he wets his lips. they look a little chapped.

for some reason, the sight seems to render you sort of speechless. frozen. like he’s a pretty bluebird seated on your windowsill, chirping softly in the wake of morning, and you’re afraid of scaring him away.

— his eyes meet yours, and you visibly stiffen.

it’s smooth, the motion of his hands. how swiftly he flicks the book shut, placing it face down on the counter with a twitch of his lithe fingers. not before slipping a pretty bookmark in between the pages, lilac-coloured, with flowers embroidered into the silky texture. you wonder if he made it himself. 

his voice spills out into the air, a little raspy. deep, but velvety, sending shivers down your spine. he clears his throat, and you watch his adam’s apple bob. ”do you need anything?”

a second passes. 

it catches you off guard, the mellow sound of his voice. when you’re so unaccustomed to hearing it. excluding the brief words you’ve exchanged paying for your novels, you’ve only heard it a select few times — mostly from afar, not-so-sneakily listening in on his conversations with the pink haired boy and pretty girl who sometimes come in and never look at any of the books. 

(there’s the tall guy with the not-so-seasonal sunglasses, too. but when he enters the store, all you pick up on are usually grumbles and threatening hand gestures.)

but now, that low, low voice is directed at you. 

it can’t be good for your physical health. or mental, for that matter. you’re not sure you remember to properly breathe, and you’re almost certain hearts aren’t supposed to flail the way yours is right now. 

when the boy behind the counter tilts his head, just by a hair, you’re finally snapped out of your little trance. stumbling for something to say, stuttering out a response, your hands grip at the insides of your pockets.

”well, um — i’m looking for a book.”

a moment passes. the song coming from the speakers changes into an instrumental, kind of jazzy. it’s nice.

”… a specific book,” you elaborate, under your breath. gnawing at your bottom lip, feeling a bit of heat on your ears. clearing your throat, as you step forward, tearing your mittens off with your teeth.

searching for a certain image, your numbed fingertips begin to tap at the cold screen of your phone. the warm air of the bookstore envelops your chilled knuckles, and a shiver runs through them.

the boy watches, silently, as you get closer. 

you don’t notice him glancing at your reddened hands, and when you look up to see a glimmer of something displeased in his eyes, you only assume it’s because you’re taking too long. speeding up slightly, you hear a low click of his tongue. his back straightens.

when he gets up from his chair, you notice that he's tall. you don’t think you’ve ever seen him do anything but sit behind the counter with a book in hand, either reading his own or scanning a customer’s. 

and, upon closer inspection — he’s maybe just a little bit too pretty for words. smooth, pale skin, a sharp jaw and defined cheekbones, dark eyes that hide a subtle kind of softness. pierced ears, a glimmer of silver on his earlobes, same as the rings on his bony fingers. his nails are painted black, a little chipped. and he’s wearing a big, bright green christmas sweater; one you really can’t imagine him picking out on his own, if his previous all-black turtlenecks and gray sweaters are anything to go by. 

while you fumble with the phone in your grasp, the pads of his fingers go to silently tap at the edge of the counter. a rhythmic motion; forefinger, middle finger, ring finger, over and over again.

it’s a little bit distracting. when he moves his hand a certain way, his big sweater sleeve rides up just a tiny bit, showing off the blue veins of his inner wrist. you think you catch a glimpse of a mole or two on his pale skin, and you swallow down a gulp, feeling a little like a victorian man seeing a girl’s ankle.

and then finally, you locate the image in question. swiftly showing him the cover of the book you were assigned to read. he squints a little, blinking drowsily, a flutter of his pretty eyelashes that has your heart skipping a beat. 

you clear your throat.

”i’m supposed to read it before christmas break, but i couldn’t find it at our library…” you tilt your head, a little sheepish. ”do you have it here?”

he stares at the screen for just a second more. then he’s angling his head to the left, finger pointing towards a corner of the store. ”it should be over there,” he hums. monotone.

a tentative smile forms on your lips. you thank him, and his eyes find yours.

all he does is shake his head, softly, brushing you off — a silent don’t worry about it. maybe a tad gruff, but you sense an acute gentleness to it. something tender, kind of. or maybe you’d just like to believe the kindness you sense in his eyes is real, more than just a delusion. 

but you don’t have time to dwell on it. the boy behind the counter goes back to reading, cradling the spine with his pretty hands. when he tries to grab the handle of his mug, one of the rings on his fingers knock against the ceramic, and he clicks his tongue in annoyance. 

you go to hunt down your own book, still thinking about his voice, how it trickled like honey from out his lips. 

the bookstore is entirely empty, tonight. no loud noises drilling into your groggy brain, no people to chatter amongst themselves and disrupt the illusion of peace you gain when you spend time here. a tiny respite, from your studies, from the stress and fatigue that you’ve come to associate with winter. hunting for christmas gifts, finishing late assignments, trudging through the snow. pretending that you have it all together.

but here, none of that matters. 

a sense of calm washes over you, as your eyes trail over the books by the science fiction section, and a soft sigh tumbles from your throat. gradually, your hands begin to warm up, and you look out the window.

outside, the world is blanketed by a veil of snow and frost, pure whites and murky grays as far as the eye can see. falling down to earth, smothering everything in a bitter chill. a cold, cold embrace. but when looking at it like this, from inside a cozy bookstore, with a pretty boy by the counter…

it's a breathtaking sight. 

little snowflakes descending, dancing in the wind. desaturating your world. if you close your eyes and focus, you think you can almost feel the wind nip at your fingertips, almost taste the fragrance of dried tea leaves and caramel fudge from the tiny shop across the street. almost bask in the green and red of the decorative lights in the skeletal trees, illuminating the city, buzzing with artificial warmth.

(your heart feels light.)

it doesn’t take long for you to find the book you need. keeping it safe and warm between your arm and torso, you walk back to the counter, gaze still lingering on the windowpane. the little snowflakes fluttering about, the glimpses you catch of passerby and their knit scarves in the darkness of the winter evening.

the boy behind the counter is as efficient as ever. he takes the book, fingertips resting exactly where yours just were, and scans it in a matter of seconds. you pay, and he puts it in a plastic bag, handing it to you — all while his copy of wuthering heights sits on the counter, pointedly, as if beckoning you to mention it.

before you can think to stop yourself, you’ve parted your lips. 

”is it good?” you ask. finger pointing at his book.

the boy blinks. eyelashes fluttering. once, then twice. he seems a little caught off guard, but still speaks within a split second. almost like he doesn’t even think about the answer. ”yeah.”

a hum buzzes in your throat. you shift a little, from foot to foot, plastic bag in hand. ”i’ve been meaning to read it,” you say, desperate to prolong the conversation, ”but i haven't had much time lately.”

a chuckle slips from your lips. it comes out sounding just a little exhausted. 

(he glances at the dark bags beneath your eyes, but you don’t notice.)

”i think i might buy it in time for christmas break, though…” you lift your gaze to meet his own. showing the briefest glimpse of a smile, polite. 

he doesn’t return it. lips pursed, silent, gazing at you with slightly lidded eyes. a navy blue, little splotches of a murky green blooming in the corners of his iris. they only appear when you’re this close. soothing, somehow. they’re pretty.

he isn’t saying anything, not a single word, and some part of your heart clogs up like a clump of wet snow. subconsciously, you trap your bottom lip between your teeth, digging into the soft flesh before letting go. cowering a little under his intense gaze.

did you annoy him? 

(he probably doesn’t want to talk to you. maybe he thinks you’re hitting on him, or something. are you hitting on him? that doesn’t matter. he must be stressed — it’s holiday season, after all. the last thing he needs is some annoying customer taking up his precious reading time. 

gosh, what were you even thinking?)

you’re just about to excuse yourself, mentally berating yourself for forcibly striking up a conversation with an obvious introvert — 

when the sound of something sliding against wooden material catches your attention.

you blink.

the boy behind the counter does a little cough. under his breath, clearing his throat. he wets his lips, in what you immediately recognize as nervosity — absentmindedly fidgeting with the rings on his fingers. 

”here.”

when you look down, a certain book is placed on the edge of the counter, right in front of you. wuthering heights.

another blink. you look down at the hardcover, and then back up at him, but he’s not meeting your gaze. if you look closely, you think you see a slight flush to his neck, red like a candy cane. 

”you can borrow it,” he says. a pause. then he continues, clearing his throat again, a hint of hesitance in his raspy voice. ”… if you want to, i mean.”

”… ah.” is all you can answer. barely a word, more of a weak little hum. an absent tremble of your voice.

outside the comfort and warmth of the bookstore, the wind whistles, digging its claws into the city. tiny whirlwinds of snowflakes dance from street to street, fluttering about joyously. you vaguely pick up on the song from the speakers changing, into a poppy christmas-themed kpop song.

a moment passes.

your muddled mind finally reacts. on instinct, sending little instructions to your frozen limbs. to your heart, face down on the floor, completely useless.

”oh — no, there’s no need!” you blurt out, putting your hands up hastily. waving him off. ”it’s fine, i can just buy my own copy!” 

but the boy only clicks his tongue, with that signature furrow of his brows. ”you’re a student,” he states, just a little gruff. but then there’s that kindness. ”you shouldn’t waste your money.”

you’re just about to protest, when he continues. ”besides,” he sighs. ”i’ve already read it. you can just bring it back whenever you’re done.”

and again, your instinctual desire is to protest. unsure of what to say, somehow exasperated by his trust. that’s what it is, isn’t it? trust. trusting a stranger, a customer he’s barely even spoken to, not to just take his book and then never return. trusting you to be a decent person. a good person.

isn’t that naive?

something sprouts like a snowdrop in a ridge between your ribs, though, and you know that it’s happiness of some kind. you’re glad, that he has something even vaguely similar to trust in you. 

glad that he’s acknowledging you, in a way. your presence, the sneaky glances shared between you. the comfortable feeling that sleeps inside your veins when it's just you and him, silently passing each other by, in a quiet bookstore that feels a little like heaven on earth. a safe haven, of sorts, with no incompetent professors, tight deadlines or numb fingers.

it’s just him, and cozy christmas music, and a pitter patter rhythm of your heartbeat that sounds a little like jingle bells to your muddled mind.

a lump forms in the back of your throat. you gulp it back down, and part your lips. an unsure question spills into the open air. 

”are… you really sure?”

”yeah.” he doesn’t even skip a beat. fingers tapping at the edge of the counter, over and over again. another slow moment passes. ”we can… talk. about it.” he coughs into his closed fist. ”once you've read it.” 

with a soft furrow of his brows, he averts his gaze. his voice comes out sounding soft, albeit a little rough around the edges. ”if you want,” he adds.

you’re so distracted by the flutter of his long eyelashes that you barely even feel your lips stretch into a smile. your hearts skips around happily within the confines of your ribcage, and you’re worried that you might look a little too excited — but how could you ever hide your joy, when he’s acting so dangerously, uncharacteristically cute?

”yeah!” you blurt, teeth peeking out when you flash him a bright smile. and finally, he meets your gaze. pretty eyes fixed entirely on you.

at your evident enthusiasm, his shoulders seem to relax. the rapid tapping of his fingers ceases, and he opts to simply bite down on his lip — attempting to obscure his own smile. but you see it, anyway; a tiny, tiny smile. the softest little curl of his lips. you’re entirely mesmerized, all the same. 

a hand goes to rub at the back of his neck, and he does that cute little cough again, and you wonder if the warmth sprouting in your chest will be enough to protect you from the snowfall on your way back home.

angelic; that’s the impression he always seems to leave you with. you wonder if he has any idea just how pretty he is. if he has the slightest clue. you wonder if you’ll ever be able to tell him, yourself.

you wonder if you’ll get to know him, someday. if you’ll ever get to know the pretty, quiet boy behind the counter of your go-to bookstore, who radiates a softness so palpable you wish you could stay there until spring blooms beyond the windows and melts the frosted glass. 

with tentative hands, a little shaky — not from the cold, but the anxious and excited tingle of your bloodstream — you reach for the book on the counter. taking it into your arms, cradling it gently, like it’s so fragile the pages could scatter away if you aren’t careful. with a steady hand on its spine, you begin to flip through the pages, until three little words on the first blank page catch your attention. 

without thinking, you repeat the little scribbled down sentence under your breath. hoping for something. more lulls of his voice, maybe, mumbling to yourself but hoping he’ll hear.

”happy birthday, tsumiki…”

the boy stiffens. 

a silent beat. then he clears his throat. ”my sister,” he explains, and you hum.

so he has a sister. a tiny fragment of his existence, now known to you, a little piece of trivia. you want to collect them, want to put them all in your pockets and carry them around, like little precious bells. 

”megumi,” he blurts out, sudden, and you look up from the book to meet his gaze. ”my name,” he elaborates. and then a pause. ”i work here.”

…

in a matter of seconds, his face reddens. ears and neck slathered over with that sweet cherry hue, blooming across his pale skin. a soft giggle slips from your lips, before you can think to bite it back, and that red hue exacerbates. 

”mm,” you hum, an amused smile on your face. eyes crinkling as you look at him, book safe and secure in your arms. ”i've seen you.”

megumi looks a bit like he wants the ground to swallow him whole. squirming slightly, shifting from foot to foot, tugging a little at the sleeve of his sweater. looking into your eyes, and then back at the counter.

it’s sweet. it makes you feel closer to him, somehow. like you aren’t the only nervous one here. like you aren’t the only person in this city who’s a little bit of a mess. 

(it makes the sludge piling up inside your brain feel just a little more bearable.)

”… thank you.” you smile. ”i’ll take good care of it. and i’ll bring it right back when i finish it.”

a low hum. megumi brings a hand up to fix his bangs, nimble fingers running through dark locks. absentminded — a nervous habit, maybe? ”don’t worry about it,” is all he says. 

again, that sweet dichotomy; a hint of something gruff, hiding an unmistakable softness. a little like snow. cold to the touch, enough to make you want to stay away, but then it melts on the skin of your palm. turns soft and warm beneath your touch.

unable to fully hide the smile still lingering on your lips, you allow yourself one final inhale — letting that scent of peppermint and espresso invade your mind, soothing every frazzled nerve inside your brain. then you put wuthering heights in your bag, protected and snug, and get ready to leave. 

it’s still snowing. if anything, it seems to have gotten worse, enough that all you see when you glance towards the frosted windows are little clumps of snowflakes. obscuring everything else.

just when you’re about to speak, say a little goodbye, a voice spills out into the air.

”… the snow’s supposed to get worse. apparently.”

his navy eyes carry a gentle hue, as they look into yours. maybe a little worried, like a protective mother wolf towards her cub. you blink, and megumi sees it as his cue to continue.

”you can stay until it gets better.” 

a brief pause. his signature cough reaches your ears, and it’s enough to have you smiling, even before he adds a tiny if you feel like it. nonchalant, or at least you think that’s what he’s going for. he mostly just sounds like an awfully caring person trying awfully hard to appear uncaring.

and again, a little smile slips itself into the curl of your lips. all giddy and nervous, a little flustered. but happy. now you won’t have to walk through the relentless snowfall outside, feel the wind chew at your reddened cheekbones. now you can spend just a bit more time with him, bask in those quiet, drawn out moments of pure peace, browsing through books while he sits and reads behind the counter.

”thanks,” you breathe. adjusting your knitted scarf. ”i think i'll look at the books a little more, then.”

megumi’s eyes soften. relieved, you think. hope. it’s a subtle shift, but still enough to notice, enough to see. little splotches of a mossy green sinking into that sea of ink blue.

you think he must feel a little embarrassed, though. like he’s gotten too close to broaching the line he’s set up between the two of you. because he quickly fixes his gaze entirely on a book in his hands, a new one — was it just waiting beneath the counter? 

you don't think much of it, but you note that he's back to his usual nonfiction. something on astronomy, you think.

and with one final glance at his tousled hair, you begin to stroll through the store. languidly, walking to whatever spine captures your attention. savouring the tiny words on the back of the books, wallowing in the peppermint and espresso that wafts through the air, only growing heavier while you’re busy admiring the white opaque frosting of the windows’ glass. 

at some point, the low whirring of a coffee machine buzzes from afar, and when you turn to the counter megumi isn’t there. 

a little later, when he comes back, he’ll be carrying two mugs — matching dogs etched into the ceramic, one black and one white. he’ll put one of them on the edge of the counter, closest to you, and then meet your eyes. give a vague nod towards it, but nothing else. you’ll notice the red tint to his ears, though.

and when you do, a warmth will blossom in your chest, enough to chase away the phantom ache of the winter chill soon to envelop you.

when the little bell of the bookstore jingles its jolly tune, and the door shuts itself as you cross the threshold to leave, megumi lets out a barely audible sigh.

he thinks his heart may be beating just a smidge faster than usual, a little out of rhythm. palms against the counter, he allows his eyes to flutter shut — trying not to acknowledge the heat he feels on his face when he finally begins to process your interaction. 

he smooths a hand over his face, skin just a little sweaty. chewing at his bottom lip with two sharp teeth.

god.

really, it was no more than a stupid twist of luck. that you happened to come in just when he started reading it, that you noticed and didn’t question him on any of the contents. that you believed him when he said he’d already finished it.

and, sure, maybe he was secretly really hoping you’d come in. really hoping you’d notice it, that it’d be enough to make you strike up a conversation with him, something, anything. 

he happened to see you eyeing it once, that’s all. twice, and then thrice, each on different occasions. tsumiki’s old collection came in handy, rotting on the dusty shelves of her room — although he has no memory of her ever reading it.

(he remembers some, though. remembers her reading a few of them to him, on nights he couldn’t sleep. remembers the soft lull of her voice, how the whole world seemed blanketed by a wool of safety.

he wonders if he’ll ever get to hear it again.)

megumi’s heart feels warm. despite everything. 

even though he didn’t even get past the first half of wuthering heights, and has no idea what the hell he’s going to be able to talk to you about. even though he thinks heathcliff is a dick and catherine is a brat, and wishes they could save everyone else the trouble and just talk to a psychiatrist.

even with the cold baring its fangs outside, and the cup of espresso sitting right in front of him, still untouched, made with the store’s shitty coffee machine. even in the ugly sweater gojo forced him into. even though he doesn’t even really know you, not even at all, and still somehow feels certain that you’ll come back with tsumiki’s book in tow.

trust. 

megumi thinks it’s a little weird, how just that single overlapping of your gazes when you first stepped in seemed to solidify such an abstract notion. he’s always had a sense of it, though — a sense of goodness. an ability to seek them out, those good people, bubbly and cheerful and so tragically hard not to love. 

no matter where he goes, he ends up finding them. like tiny sunflower seeds persisting beneath the winter snow. blooming when spring comes around, in a burst of golden vermillion.

resting his jaw on the heel of his palm, megumi allows himself to wallow in the solitude of the bookstore. tired eyes soaking up the words on the pages he flips through, slowly, utterly at ease. drinking his shitty coffee, trying to ignore the itchy feeling of the sweater on his skin, unable to forget the memory of your stupidly pretty smile. 

so pretty he thinks it might just keep him warm, all throughout winter, until you return once more. bringing with you the glimmer of snowflakes on soft skin, and a pleasant fragrance of tea leaves from the cozy shop across the street.

a single sunflower, persisting even through the cold. 

megumi smiles. a tiny curl of his chapped lips, while he flips the pages of his book. content in the knowledge that this won’t be the last time he speaks to you.

(now he just needs to read up on some good papers on wuthering heights.)

[shinynewmemories]

All the final lines of each part of every Hunger Games book

THG: 

Part I:

“Because . . . because . . . she came here with me.”

Part II:

Before I can stop myself, I call out Peeta’s name.

Part III:

I take his hand, holding on tightly, preparing for the cameras, and dreading the moment when I will finally have to let go.

CF:

Part I:

It’s my mockingjay.

Part II:

This is no place for a girl on fire.

Part III:

“Katniss, there is no District Twelve.”

MJ:

Part I:

And his blood as it splatters the tiles.

Part II:

That I’m of more use to her dead than alive.

Part III:

I tell him, “Real.”

[neverbreakheart]

Hanif Abdurraqib, A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance

[ink-the-artist]

“Social media has made this generation so narcissistic and self centered everyone’s always posting selfies and posting about everything they do during the day” shut up. The human desire to show you exist and you were here is innate and we’ve been doing it since the days we were leaving hand prints on cave walls