#the rhino came from a fucked up cow that I started to think looked like something else

[ulmus-spellook]

Me cranking out tiny votive offerings for my prayers to the gods for a trump loss this week

It’s air dry clay, they are inspired by prehistoric art

[sunshine-zenith]

So....I just had a slightly weird dream

I was on a field trip of sorts to this zoo like place that had a pretty diverse selection of animals— lions, cows, rhinos, dogs, cats, etc. they weren’t really kept behind high fences that really separated them.

It was a chill day, overall

But then the ground began to shake, and the animals began acting weird — they got stiff, like they had heard something, I think

Then the animals charged at us. And the ground wasn’t shaking— it was rippling kinda, creating little pockets of air that kept getting bigger and bigger until they popped. More animals came out of the smaller pops. I knew I didn’t want to see what happened to the bigger ground bubbles when they popped.

It was chaos. We weren’t a small crowd by any means. I remember at one point my group was being chased by a bunch of rhinos when we passed another group just standing around a bubble, just waiting. My group was momentarily distracted by them, wondering what they were doing and we they weren’t running, and when we looked back up, we saw a pack of lions about to charge at us

Then the entire middle of the field became convex, forming the biggest bubble yet. My friend wanted to see what happened when it popped, but I grabbed her arm and pulled her away. Suddenly this group of people in military scrubs appeared and began herding us into a long line, leading us somewhere

I remember the woman in front of me in the line kept stumbling, and since we were hurrying I got worried she’d be trampled or hold things up. So the next time she stumbled I caught her and I just. Carried her the rest of the way

We walked through at least two grounded helicopters, not boarding either, and after a while we reached a bunch of hastily set out chairs and benches. In front of them was a projection screen just in front of a thin wire fence. Overlapping the wire was a table with little bags that had chapsticks and chocolates and pamphlets. The people behind the table, on the other side of the wire, were dressed in jeans and hoodies, so I wasn’t sure if they were there with the military.

When we reached the chairs, I put the woman down and she just. Turned around and started walking back to where we were. I kept expecting the military to stop her or something but they just watched her, silently but slightly apprehensively. I was confused and worried about her, but I shrugged it off and went to find a chair

We sat there for a while, talking and fiddling around with our goody bags that felt slightly inappropriate for the situation. More groups were herded in and my father, who hadn’t been with us earlier, ran up to me. He looked winded, like he’d been running for a while, when he started saying he got a call saying they (the military) wasn’t sure where I was and that’s he’s been kinda freaking out. He collapsed in the chair by me and a moment later the projector started playing

It started by telling us we aren’t necessarily fucked, but our lives aren’t gonna be chill for a while.

It told us about this series of quite frankly unethical science experiments that resulted in these sentient fogs. There was cross breeding with the fogs, experiments on whether it was all just one fog split into several smaller clouds, what would happen if you tried to split up or evaporate a fog, etc. the scientists worked through several fog generations until the fogs changed. Grew resentful and inherited trauma. The fog evolved slowly until it was poisonous and warped the scientists back until they killed the scientists, escaping into the world. The fogs wanted to be left alone but were also lonely

So they found specific humans that might be immune and clung to them, chasing them down, either to befriend them or eventually kill them (I’m guessing someone in the crowd might’ve been immune and that drew the fogs to us?) It went on to show an interview of a man that was picked by the fog and how he spent the next two years on the run with his family, sometimes not even being able to stop long enough to change out of their clothes for weeks. The man goes on to say we shouldn’t be afraid though, that the fogs are pretty nice in the end, killer or not

It then ends with a recorded message from the fogs — it was this creepy as hell whispering, all of them whispering at once, while the screen translated their message. The message read that they had been hurt, that they were angry, and that it wasn’t personal. They were even sorry. They’d give us a running start

They just wanted something to hold on to.

The projector turned off. The people in hoodies and jeans behind the table stood up, turned around, and faded away into nothing.

We all started talking at once, trying to figure out what to do now

Then I woke up