Corvid Stone Age

Amature writer and firearms safety enthusiast. 20's, any pronouns.

[hagiomoto]

Okay, if you are tired then you won't be able to read. There I say it. No one else want to say it. It is strange. If you are tired, if you cannot finish a book that's a given. That's why you need to read...at work. You need to steal your reading time from your employers.

[inbabylontheywept]

All that remains: Part I

In the land just past the Decapolis, by the tombs of the city's most ancient forebears, there lived a man called Legion. Some days, he howled like a beast, laughing as he savaged his own flesh with the jagged edges of stones. Other days he wept like a child, teeth chattering even as the sun blazed overhead. But more days still, he lingered in the quiet spaces, haunted but lucid: A stranger to the land and a stranger to himself.

He called himself Legion because he was made of many parts. Memories without attachments, stories without endings. Fragments. Worse, he felt like he could only hold a few of the pieces at a time. Trying to assemble himself felt like an endless effort of cupping his hands together tight, filling them with details, reaching up to his mouth, and realizing they had already slipped through his fingers. An endless thirst for which he had no cure. 

The town called him Legion, because they remembered what he often forgot: That he was a Roman, as well as a former soldier. If he’d been anything less, they’d have driven him away. Instead, they fussed over him endlessly, all too aware that to harm a single hair upon his head was to invoke the wrath of the largest army the world had ever seen.

(Which was a problem, because he was all too willing to harm himself.)

On Legion’s good days they simply gave him space. He’d tried describing once, all the things that could bring his demons out: The clash of metal, the twang of a bowstring. A scream of pain. Those were easy enough to remember and avoid, but others were not. Certain phrases in Latin, ones related to marching, used for giving directions. Certain smells - the roasting of pork, the burning of sulfur. The way some men from distant lands braided their hair. 

So many little things. 

They were a lot to keep track of, and the cost of failure was high. It seemed easier for the people of the town to simply avoid him altogether. That it let them ignore his suffering was simply a pleasant side effect. 

On his bad days, they had to intervene more directly. He was strong when he was well, but his sickness could make him almost invincible. Whole teams of men would be sent into the tombs while he screamed and roared, and it could take them hours to tie him down and pry the rocks from his trembling fingers. To put a rolled up rag into his mouth and silence the phrase he shouted over and over, summoning more demons into himself with each incantation: TORNA MIRA, TALIS EST COMODUM MILES BARBATI. 

Sometimes, it took more than a day of being restrained that way for him to find himself again. They’d send children out to the edge of the town to listen, and when he finally went silent they’d travel back to free him from his chains. It was a beastly, shameful task every time, and Legion made it worse by never being angry. Without fail, the first thing he said every time the rag was removed was:

Συγγνώμη, δεν ήθελα να σε τρομάξω.

Forgive me, I did not mean to scare you. 

Everyone knew that the way things were being handled wasn’t enough. Everyone, even Legion, knew how things would end. They just weren’t sure when. 

It turned out that it was longer than six years.

[inbabylontheywept]

All that remains: Part II

Six years after the arrival of Legion, there came a man to the Decapolis by the name of Silas. He spoke of a man he had served with once - a fellow legionnaire from the Clades of Lolliana. A man whose name he got forgotten, even as he owed him a life debt.

Unfortunately, the Decapolis was a sprawling hub, and the number of former legionnaires who lived inside was in the hundreds, so he was asked to describe this man in more detail. 

He is impossibly strong, Silas said, and prone to shouting. 

And the townspeople said: Hm. 

And he’s a little bit sensitive to noise, Silas added.

And the townspeople said: Hmmm.

And… he has several freckles on his nose? continued Silas, which earned him the longest ‘hmmm’ of all. It was at this that he finally relented and told the truth. 

And… Well. I hate to mention it, he said. But I’ve been trying to find him for some years, and there’s a rumor, from some of the towns had stayed at in the past, that he might not be, you know, entirely well. 

And at that the townspeople said: Ah. Yes. We know someone who might fit that bill. But you must promise not to be mad. 

And as soon as Silas promised, he was led out to the tombs. 

It was a promise he could not keep. 

[inbabylontheywept]

All that remains: Part III

Alright, Silas said. So I lied. I’m mad. But I know it would have been easy to just cast him out again, and however little you did, you did at least let him stay. 

The crowd he’d traveled with did have the grace to at least look slightly ashamed of themselves. He looked around the tombs and wrinkled his nose before adding. 

In your finest graveyard, even. Only smells faintly of rot and corpses. 

He asked the crowd if anyone was willing to come forward, and list what good deeds they had done for Legion. And while most were ashamed at how little they’d done, a few came forward with their small acts. 

I gave him my clothes, once, replied a beggar. 

I chased off some dogs that had chased him up a tree once, replied a boy. 

I bandaged his cuts, said one herbalist. But I wish I had simply stayed around long enough to prevent them.

And Silas gave them five denarius each for their troubles. 

I will never need your help as much as this man did, he replied. There is no favor you could do for me that would mean as much as what you did for him. Remember that.

And then he left with Legion in tow. 

[inbabylontheywept]

All that remains: Part IV

Several hours later, tired and bruised, Silas returned to the town. 

Remember how I said I would never need your help as Legion did? he said. Well, perhaps I was too confident. 

It turned out that there were a lot of things he could not do around his friend. 

For starters, speaking Latin? Not ideal. Speaking bad Greek with a heavy Latin accent? Marginally better. Marginally. Trying to lead his friend into town on the fifth day, when the blacksmith was out sharpening scythes? Fucking terrible idea. 

And then they ran into a man with braids. Germanic braids. 

Silas pinched his nose just remembering how that went before continuing onwards. 

It took me two hours of wrestling just to get him into one of the tombs, he said. Two hours! And another three to take all his sharp rocks away. How many fucking sharp rocks can there be in one tomb anyway? Do you guys all demand to be buried with just mountains of sharp rocks? Does your afterlife say that you can pay for all your sins by giving Death a sufficient quantity of sharp rocks? Do you think you’re getting drafted into some kind of skeleton war against Roman ghosts whose only weakness is sharp rocks? Is there a new Olympic event where you have contests to see who can put the most sharp rocks in a single tomb? What the hell was that all about?  

And the citizens listened to the tirade patiently, but when it was done, one woman raised a hand. 

Was it, perchance, the tomb that has a statue of a woman with enormous breasts atop it? she asked.

It was the nearest tomb, Silas replied, defensively.  

Right, right, she said, hands up for peace. Now, that’s fair and all, but we kind of agreed to use that tomb as the tomb for putting all the sharp rocks in. From the other tombs. We figured putting them outside wasn’t the best idea, and he seemed kind of averse to going into that tomb from our past experience. I think the whole tits out thing just makes him uncomfortable, and you know how it is, a short fence still works better than none.

Silas mulled the response over carefully before giving his reply. 

Well, he said. Fuck. 

The word extended thoughtfully into the air for several seconds before he cut it short. 

Anyway, he said. I may need to hire some hands for helping my friend. This is too much for me to handle alone.

[inbabylontheywept]

All that remains: Part V

It turned out that was about as bad as things ever got. 

Legion was not ready to make it into town, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t live a better life. Silas found that buying a tomb was not particularly expensive, and that keeping a living person in a tomb was legal, albeit a little morbid. Putting furniture and a well inside the graveyard was considered, yes, a mild eccentricity, but the region was close enough to Egypt that it wasn’t unheard of. So long as he didn’t trap Legion inside a catacomb to serve as his slave for all eternity, the people of the Decapolis could care less. 

He arranged for shipments of food to be brought up to his friend, and hired a talented doctor to heal the man’s wounds. Legion’s skin was a criss cross of pink, jagged scars, but the weeping sores healed and could, with time, fade. On his good days, Legion was almost normal, and on his bad, there were a few people willing to drop whatever they had on hand to restrain him before he hurt himself. 

But whatever was wrong with Legion was deeper than his skin, and no one knew how to treat it. The doctors said it was a sickness of the spirit, and the priests said that whatever it was affecting his soul was not coming from the Gods. 

Not cursed, they’d say. Wounded. The Gods cannot force him to heal, as they were not the ones that forced him to hurt. 

Which was, sure, deep and mystical and shit but also deeply unhelpful. 

Still the message was clear enough: Wait. Keep him alive long enough, and maybe, he’ll sort himself out. He was certainly trying. If he failed, it would only be because the strain killed him first. 

(And Silas - honorable, dutiful Silas - was afraid that day might come very soon.) 

[inbabylontheywept]

All that remains: Part VI

There came to Decapolis twelve men, following a thirteenth by the name of Jesus. 

It was, frankly, an odd trip. The sea of Galilee was only eight miles wide. Compared to the Mediterranean of Silas’s home, it was a puddle. But they had arrived after a storm, one where the waves had grown high enough to spill over the deck. Several other boats didn’t return at all, which was a first for the city. They’d forgotten what it was like, to have a sea could both give and take. 

Lots of stories came with that. The ship owner claimed he’d seen Jesus walk over the waters. The apostles claimed that they’d seen him do that and that he’d calmed the storm with a few words. Those claims made the Romans of the city nervous: One does not end a storm if it’s not their storm. Tempestaas did not interfere with Thor, who did not interfere with Indra, who did not interfere with Enlil. 

Which either meant this man had sent the storm, stolen the storm, or - more likely, but still a problem - was commiting casual blasphemy against foreign Gods. 

Silas kept an eye on them, because he kept an eye on all the holy men that went through the city. Priest-shopping was a little frowned upon in the world of spiritual illnesses, but he had money and hope and more care for his allies than concerns about decency. It latter was as Roman a vice as lead boiled wine. 

He did not speak with Jesus because he did not trust the man. He spoke instead with the most reasonable and respectable of the twelve-man entourage: A fellow Roman citizen by the name of Peter. 

He caught Peter in one of the markets, haggling over fish with one of the local fishermen. In his eyes, that was a great sign. A man could be as Holy as the Gods, but if he wasn’t grounded, he was useless. Like a kite without a string.  

Γεια he said to Peter in the most passable Greek he could manage. Hello. 

In the name of God, just use Latin, Peter responded. Your accent is thick enough to cut into cubes.

Silas was charmed. He liked Latin, and he liked straightforwardness. Peter paused a moment longer to inspect the fish before continuing. 

Actually, you look military, so let’s go further: Just tell me what you want. 

A miracle, Silas replied. And instead of fluffing up into some mystic man on the mountain, instead of faux stooping to dispense wisdom as if coming from a great height, Peter kept looking at the fish. 

Yeah, yeah, very dramatic, but what kind of miracle? Deaf guy? Blind guy? Lame guy?  Possessed guy? We did a dead guy once, but that was-

Possessed, Silas interrupted, both because he didn’t want to hear the story and also because it seemed closest to what Legion had described - the sensation of being full of parts he could not assimilate, of being lost within himself, teeming and wordless. 

Yeah, I can work with that. Just lemme get my fish and I’ll meet you by….?

The tombs, Silas said, and if Peter raised an eyebrow, it was an eyebrow pointed at a fish. 

[inbabylontheywept]

All that remains: Part VII

The exorcism was a disaster. 

Silas had seen exorcisms before, and appreciated them for their theatricality. They always started with the possessed being asked what the name of their demon was, which never failed to get fun answers. Replies ranged from Garalan, Lord of Whores, to Bungo, The Shit Goblin. Then there was some fun swearing, the possessed got to really get their wiggles out, and in the end, wam-bam-thank-you-maam, there was a ritually cleansed person. Sometimes, it even stuck, and the world got an actually cleansed person. 

But when Peter asked Legion what his name was, there was no theater. The man had looked at him, and in the same voice he always used, he’d said: I am Legion, for I am many. 

Which hadn’t exactly thrown Peter for a loop, but had earned him a pause. Enough that the ritual of the whole thing had broken down.

What do you wish to be cleansed of, Legion? he’d asked, and there was a moment where you could see the pieces fit together in the other man’s mind. It was like Legion was made whole just to answer the question. Healed just long enough to know what was wrong with him. 

I do not know how to begin to communicate all the things I am ashamed of, Legion confessed. But I am so tired of looking in the mirror and hating who I see. Hating who I have been, and what I have forgotten. When I have the rocks, the only thought in my mind is that I could, somehow, find the part of me that hurts and cut it out. And it never works. 

It was that last sentence that Peter had latched onto. 

I can work with that, he’d said, then he’d rolled up his sleeves and begun the work. 

Silas never could really describe what happened after that. How strange and shattered the world felt that day. He could describe how the high keening cry of Legion had split into its components, and those components had been revealed to by the core of all things. He could describe how the day had been, on one hand, every bit as bright as before, even as the sky had grown dark with the detritus of another man’s soul. Even Peter seemed confused by what he was touching there - not a serpent, but the pieces it had left behind. The shed skin. There was an unspeakable filthiness to each fragment, a smell like iron and piss, but they left without a fight. He pulled and pulled, and Legion soothed, and when the sky darkened for the second time, it was not with a cloud of inert sin but by the setting of the sun. Legion had been exorcised for more than sixteen consecutive hours before Peter finished. 

It wasn’t until Legion opened his eyes and looked at Peter that the mistake was realized. 

I have done something terrible, Peter spoke, and the truth of his words rang through the husk of Legion like a bell. It turned to him, heart beating, lungs filling, indescribably and yet undeniably dead - and spoke. 

You did, it said gently. But you did not know. Come bring Christ, Jesus, and we will see what can be done. 

And Peter did not merely walk, he ran. 

Silas had not known that sin could touch the metaphysics of the world. It was like seeing an intaglio portrait of what a human should be - the negative space equivalent of a soul. It looked at him, and the wrongness made his stomach clench. It wasn’t looking - it was moving its eyes like oiled marbles in a socket made of bone. It filled its lungs like wet bags. It was dead, and yet it chose not to rot.

What are you? he asked, and it smiled in a way that did nothing to set him at ease. Worse than the looking. Worse than the breathing.  

A gap, it said. But, fixable. You have nothing to fear. 

And then it winked, like it had just said something clever. 

Silas felt like it was baiting him to ask more questions, but he couldn’t bear to look at it. Couldn’t bear to see what had been done to his friend. 

[inbabylontheywept]

All that remains: Part VIII

Jesus, it seemed, was a carpenter. 

Load. Bearing. Demons, he said in Aramaic. Silas didn’t speak Aramaic, but the words came through perfectly clear to him. It was a miracle, but it was the kind of miracle that Jesus seemed annoyed with. The kind of miracle where if someone commented on it he’d spin his hands and roll his eyes and say Yes, yes, we could get a translator and waste a bunch of time on that or you could get on with it, which is why I bothered with this in the first place. Be impressed when I’m gone. It’ll be longer than you think. 

(At least, that was the lecture Silas had received when he’d commented on it. He was absolutely awed by the whole experience. He’d begun developing opinions on whether all holy men should spend five years training as a carpenter.)

This time, however, it was Peter’s turn to be at the receiving end of a lecture, which Silas was actually relieved about. Where Jesus had been merely a little annoyed with Silas, he seemed absolutely flabbergasted with Peter. 

You can’t just… reach in and grab all the bad things out of a soul! Jesus stressed again. You  can grab, maybe, two without doing a serious structural analysis. Five, if you’re like me, and can look at someone and know exactly how their soul fits together. But you can’t just empty the whole thing out! The Essenes phrased it like a riddle! “Jesus”, they’d say, “if you remove every sin from a man, what are you left with? God, or nothing?” 

The thing that had been Legion smirked and Jesus rolled his eyes at it.  

You really aren’t as funny as you think you are, he said, and it shrugged agreeably. Jesus seemed to be the only one not visibly disgusted by the not-dead very-dead thing momentarily  piloting Legion’s skin suit. 

How do I put them back? Peter asked. The demons are gone. I banished them. I can’t just reach into Hell and pluck them out.

Jesus nodded in agreement, even as he looked distinctly uncomfortable. 

You can’t, he said. But you can bribe them and their prices are actually reasonable. How many would you say you cast out of him? Fifty? Sixty? 

Two-thousand, replied Peter, and at that, Jesus blanched. 

Ah, he said thoughtfully. Shit. Fuck, even.

Then he looked over at Silas and asked the most expensive question of his life: 

How many pigs do you think there are, in the entire Decapolis? 

[inbabylontheywept]

All that remains: Part IX

There is no need to over describe what happened next: 

Two-thousand pigs were purchased. If they’d been killed, one by one by one, the entire land would’ve ran red with blood, and the pigs would’ve spent hours marinating in their fear. 

Instead, they were released as one herd atop the cliffside near the tombs, and herded as one screaming mass into the sea. 

The record says that they drowned. This record was made out of squeamishness. They died on impact, which is quicker and less painful, and unfortunately, fairly gruesome to watch. 

But it did happen, and from their deaths, two-thousand demons were summoned into this world. 

The worst demons of the Earth are known by name - Beelzebub and Azazel, Abbadon and Asmodeus, Belphegor and Mammon. They drive great evils - plague, famine, war and death. But there are littler, nameless demons that fulfill simpler tasks. There is a demon of Getting Drunk and Saying Mean Things. There is a demon of Getting a Giant Embarrassing Crush on Your Best Friend’s Spouse And Then Obviously Doing Nothing About It, Obviously, But One Time They Scooched Past You In a Hallway And You Thought About The Way They Pressed Up Against You For, Like, An Hour. There is a demon of Clapping After The Airplane Lands. There is a demon of Judging People For Having Food Allergies Like They Chose to Get Killed by Peanuts for Some Stupid Bozo Reason. 

There are, frankly, a lot of demons that go into the making of a human soul. Legions of them. And Jesus assembled two-thousand in front of him, in all their mildly sinful glory, and used them like individual pigments of paint to recreate a masterpiece. It was not a possession, but it was also the opposite of an exorcism. It was putting the evil back in a man, piece by piece, place by place, until they were what they should have been before. Until there were no more gaps left. Until the thing that lay in the realm past death became the man who had once screamed through the tombs and until the man who had once screamed through the tombs became the sum of his broken parts. 

Legion opened his eyes, and he saw. And he remembered. And he was a legion no more. 

My name, he said slowly, as if getting used to having a body, is Rufus. 

That’s kind of a shitty name, Silus replied, tears in his eyes. 

It is, he said back. My hair isn’t even red. I think they called me that because I was a weirdly veiny baby. 

And they both laughed until their voices were hoarse while hugging until their arms were sore. They’d never been so happy in their entire lives. 

Even then the laughter would’ve trickled away after just few minutes, fading into a warm and pleasant silence, except Jesus took the moment to confirm that yes, that was actually exactly why Rufus had gotten his name, which provoked the two men into another round of laughter so long and so raucous that it only ended when they both threw up.

[inbabylontheywept]

All that remains: Part X

Rufus departed for Rome only a few days afterwards. The city had given him enough, he said, and he was tired of taking more. When he was a madman in the hills, he could be forgiven for not noticing how scared he was making the locals. Now that he was whole, he had no such excuse. 

Silas lingered. He did not know why. He’d have journeyed to Rome for his friend’s company alone, but there was something palpable to the space that needed him there. 

So he stayed. 

Sometimes, he’d get news from across the sea - really, just a stone’s throw away - about the adventures of the carpenter. Apparently, a few years after the Rufus debacle, he was sentenced to death for some incomprehensible crime. This was not a particularly rare thing in Roman lands. Weirder than the sentencing was that it somehow managed to succeed and fail at the same time. They killed the man and made him God. A lot of people were extremely angry about it, but Silas himself was delighted. Getting a new God didn’t have to be that big of a deal, and really, maybe all Gods should spend five years as a carpenter. There’s a gravitas something can only get by being in the world and not above it. 

He heard about the whole ordeal several months too late to have any part in it of, of course, but he still made the time to travel down to the new sacred sites. He saw the cross where Christ had been hung, and he went to the tomb where he’d been laid, and for the first time since the Rufus affair he was struck by something that was inexplicably, unnaturally, empty. A place where something-that-was-not supposed-to-happen, had happened anyway. There was a gap in that cave, a spot where Jesus’s dead body was supposed to be, and he could feel something on the other side of the gap peering over at him. Smirking. 

He left. It was the cave, more than anything else, that convinced him that Jesus had done something stranger than merely dying and coming back to life. 

Jerusalem burned just two decades after that. 

Silas was old by then. His hair, once brown, once silver, was now just gone. And it was gone in the way things were supposed to go, the gapless-going that he’d spent twenty years learning to recognize. The destined death that all things were promised.  

He still made the journey out to see where the temple of Solomon had been. In fact, he begged for it, and was one of the first non-soldiers to be allowed to visit its ashes. He didn’t even have to make it through the gate to feel the void where it had been. 

He navigated by the sense of it. Like a flaming pillar, it stood, more distinguished by its absence than it could ever have been by its presence. The pattern of life becomes invisible when it is in harmony, but a sour note demands to be heard. 

He felt a little disgusted with himself for thinking in such fluffy mystic terms and scratched his ass, just to dispel himself of any illusion of wisdom. Also, because his ass itched. A twofer. 

He arrived at the square where the temple had stood and took a breath. He closed his eyes and sat, and reached. 

And it reached back. 

Ah, it said. Hello. Surprised you looked for me.  

What are you? Silas asked it for the second time in his life. 

It thrummed pleasantly through the area. When it wasn’t wearing a corpse, it was actually a joy to deal with. 

I am not Jesus, it replied. He has his own dominion. 

I know, said Silas, and he was surprised by the confidence he could say it with. But I did not ask what you aren’t. 

He felt himself smile. It was smiling. It was borrowing his face. He did not mind sharing. 

He remembered how unphased Christ had been, as he spoke with the thing. Part of him truly hoped that somehow, he’d become more like the carpenter.

Nobody does. Perhaps they should. Shall I tell you a story, Silas of Decapolis? Would you listen? 

He sat down in the ashen remnants of God's house on Earth, and opened his heart to what lay in the gap. 

Before there was anything, there was nothing. And I was that nothing. Every inch, a void. You can’t even imagine what that was like, to be everything. To be everywhere. To be completely alone.  

Images flickered through his mind. Legion clutching a bloody stone. This thing, seeing itself in Legion. Christ, eating the sacrament of his own flesh, his own blood. This thing, seeing itself in him too. 

I wanted to create, but when you are the blankness of the world, creation is like biting off chunks of yourself. Every place that you are is carved from a place I am no longer. And I wanted to give you - 

The stars whirled through the sky like dancers. Trees flowered in his mind and rotted into mushrooms, weaving through the soil in patterns beautiful and sad. Life played in a melody, roiling and changing but never silent. 

-everything. 

So I died. I ate myself, to give you, you. But there’s a caveat to that, isn’t there? 

The cave. The ashes. The husk of Rufus. 

Wherever you are missing from this world - where a gap forms in the pattern of all things. What bleeds out? If the work was my death, and the world was my work, what happens when it breaks? 

When you clear a man of all his sins, what are you left with? God, or nothing? 

[lizardho]

TW: Body image talk and everything that comes with it. The difference between hot and sexy is that one looks good but is impractical, while the other can look rough but is practical. I’m gonna come back to this in a moment, but first, a story:

When I returned home from my mission, I had gone from being 6’2” and 145 lbs to being 6’2” and 220 lbs. It turns out that I loved Mexican food, and, without other healthier outlets for my feelings, I ate to console myself and destress after what was, essentially, a 14-hour workday. This was fine to me while in the field because my heft was useful - I could help people carry heavy things, I could protect myself from dangerous companions, and I had enough energy to work. In truth, even at my heaviest I could still walk for miles and miles and miles without stopping. I could still proselyte for hours without needing more than a few minutes to rest every now and then. But when I came home, I came home to a family of insanely passionate athletes with thyroid disorders. My dad used to run thousands of miles a year. He does Jiu Jitsu and boxing weekly and lifts weights often. My mom runs marathons. I had a cousin who could slow his heart rate to like 30 BPM while sitting because he ran so far and so much. And even though I had actually gained a bit more physical ability, I felt ashamed and uncomfortable. I kept saying I wanted to lose weight, I kept trying diets that I’d give up on after a week, or getting into some kind of sport, or even just the good ol’ fashioned “counting calories,” but I never seemed to be able to make it stick, and it bothered me. Or at least, I thought it did, until one day I was talking to my brother, @inbabylontheywept, and I told him the same thing I’d been saying for over a year: “I want to lose weight!” And despite typically having the emotional wherewithal of a recently microwaved guinea pig, I was met with the mind blowing response of “No you don’t. If you did, you’d have done it already. You just want to want to lose weight.”

And I sat on that for a bit, partially because I was not yet accustomed to my baby brother being so wise, but partially because it left me with the huge, lingering question: “What do I want?” At the time, I think what I wanted was to fit in with the familial norm, but when I actually thought about it I actually kinda already did. My parents are extremely body positive, and had never pressured me or asked me to lose weight. In fact, my dad even expressed some jealousy about how easy it was for me to bulk up. I wanted to fit in to an idea I had, but as soon as I let go of that idea, that image, I found I was actually pretty happy with where I was at, in part because it served me. And this is what lies at the core of sexy vs hot, at least in my definition of these terms: sexy is practical, it’s tangible, and it can be imperfect in appearance and still do what it needs to do. Hot, on the other hand, only requires that something look or sound good, nice, or appealing. Hot can get us approval from others, since we like to praise things that look good, but hot does not always serve us. In fact, sometimes hotness actually demands we serve it.

For example: a man who makes $50k/year and can do so every year is sexy. Not always fun to look at - there may be nights spent in the office, days where he comes home dirty or stinky, times where work is stressful, but he can DO something. A millionaire with no life skills is hot. Fun to look at, but not really fun to be a part of. A man with a huge penis, massive muscles, and no care for a partner’s sexual pleasure can be hot, but not sexy. You don’t get anything from it in practice, just in theory. A man with a small penis, weak muscles, and a tongue that can make you forget human speech is sexy. You can get something real from it, and you can get it reliably.

A political theory that seems idyllic, but which cannot be practically implemented, is hot but not sexy. Trickle down economics, for example, is hot. It sounds good - a handful of people pay fewer taxes and instead use that money to fulfill a civic duty to provide for their community. Practically, though, it means Jeff Bezos pays less in taxes than a nurse or a teacher. It’s hot, but useless.

Food stamps, on the other hand, are sexy. They provide people with a real tangible benefit. While someday, sometime, Zuckerberg may decide to spend his billions to buy farms that produce free food for everyone, or Musk may decide to end homelessness, in reality giving them this much control over societal resources is impractical. Worse still, it puts us at the mercy of someone who has, to date, never done more than cause a problem. Is it hot to think of being rescued by someone who puts all the work in on our behalf? Yes! Will it happen? Not anytime soon. Food stamps, however, are tangible. They put food on your table while your wife recovers from childbirth, they feed your neighbor while he looks for a new job, they feed the medical student who will one day save the life of someone you love and care about. But it requires acknowledging the ugly truth that we cannot simply trust people to act in the benefit of society, that we have to take steps to make it happen.

Is paying for food - a universal human need - fun to think about? No, obviously not. Is struggling through hard times on limited government assistance the goal? Not really, no. But does it have a tangible effect on people’s lives? Yeah, yeah duh. So it’s sexy.

Differentiating between hot and sexy is crucial to most people’s functioning. Putting a 12x magnification scope on a Ruger 10/22 is hot, but putting a red dot scope on it is better for such a short-range gun, so it’s sexy. The sports car that costs $100k and requires another $25k/year in maintenance may seem nice, but the ability to reliably drive a used $10k car is sexy. Picking a prestigious career path is hot, but if you fucking hate it then it is not sexy because it won’t work for you. Instead, you have to work for it.

People pleasing, compulsions, avoidance, procrastination, are all hot. They give you something in return for your effort, but they give you little in comparison to the effort. Setting boundaries, resisting a compulsion, and doing the thing now instead of later, is sexy. It’s dirty, it’s messy, it doesn’t always look clean and neat and effortless, but it gives you a practical, tangible benefit. The benefit of delaying homework is temporary and usually impractical - it’s hot. The benefit of doing homework is lasting and usually practical - it’s sexy.

It’s also important to remember that some things can be both. Being able to bench 300 lbs and run 5 miles makes it easier to carry groceries, lift heavy objects at work, and fuck the bad thoughts out of your partner’s head? That can be hot and sexy. Being able to make a nice, hot meal that gives you energy and nutrition? That can be hot and sexy. But never let it be forgotten that sexy does not have to be hot - only functional. Is keeping your meds on the counter for guests to see hot? Not to most people. But if it helps you remember to take them, then it’s sexy, and that’s what matters most.

This is, at face level, a bizarre rant, but hear me out: So many people judge themselves for not being hot, and don’t give themselves credit for being sexy. If you feel that your body isn’t *hot,* please ask yourself what it can do. The thin lips that kiss your lover good morning? Sexy. The patchy beard that absorbs your friend’s tears? Sexy. The hairy legs that carry you through life? Sexy. The belly that digests the food that gives you energy? Sexy.

This works for other things about the body too. The wheelchair that gets you to your friend’s house? Sexy. The headphones that let you go to the mall without having a sensory meltdown? Sexy. The CPAP machine that lets you sleep through the night so you have energy in the morning? Sexy.

Even in a more abstract sense, it still works. The stigmatized job that pays your bills? Sexy. The extra semester you take to make it easier to pass a challenging class? Sexy. The cheap beat-up car you use to go from your job to your home? Sexy. The decision to change your major to something more enjoyable and sustainable for you? Sexy. Asking a friend for help? Sexy. Telling your neighbor to turn down the TV volume that’s been keeping you up at night? Sexy. Proposing with a ring you can afford instead of paying for the expensive (and hot) diamonds? That’s sexy too.

I’m not trying to convince anyone to love something they hate. And I certainly don’t want anyone to walk away from this with the idea that some simple platitudes can take away the entire crushing weight of judgement and mockery from others. I’m only asking that you ask yourself what you gain by changing your life for the benefit of looking better to someone who will never spend a day in your skin. I’m asking you to consider if the cost of making your appearance more appealing is worth the opportunity cost. If it is, fine, great, you’ve done a full analysis of things and still know what you want, but if it doesn’t, then ask yourself: WTF? What’s the function? If the function is insufficient to compensate for the cost, then do you ever really want to do it? Or do you just wish you wanted to do it? If you let go of the belief that you have to do things in a way that looks good, aesthetic, or clean, what are you left with? And is it worth it? Terry Pratchett said it well when he wrote that style is what people remember. We want things to look hot. But he also put it well when he said society is just two missed meals and a bad night’s sleep away from falling apart. We NEED things to be practical, to be reliable, to be sexy.

I know there has to be a better way for me to have said this. I’m even reasonably certain that someone, somewhere, has already said it better. But I also wanted to share ideas, questions, and skills that could make a real impact in your own lives. I wanted to invite people to reflect on what they really want to have, to possess, to sink their fingers into. Because when the lights are off and the crowds are gone, you’re left with what you have, what you really, tangibly, practically have, not just what it looks like you have to someone else. That is the difference between an ugly truth and a pretty lie. It’s the difference between a savior and a whited sepulcher. It’s the difference between an empty mansion and a full home. I wish this post was hotter, I really do, but if it gets the point across now then it’s sexy and I am OK with that. For those reading this, I hope that, if nothing else, this gives you something to think about, and if I’m being honest with myself I hope it helps you give yourself permission to let your life work for you instead of having to work for it.

Be gayer, be kinder - to yourselves and each other, pay attention to how you feel about yourself, not just how you feel about the reactions of others, read more Terry Pratchett, say hello to your neighbors, and remember that you have value beyond appearance.

[corvidstoneage]

Just got a new bow in for testing (the bows we currently use for the Scouts are wearing out and are discontinued so we have to pick a new model to replace them) and I split an arrow in the first 20 shots.

Luckily it's a 15# youth bow so it just destroyed the nock not the whole shaft but it's still annoying.

[idosharpiestuff]

Guy who is exactly falcon-sized: I love going on walks in the open country!

[what-even-is-thiss]

I’m kinda surprised that nalbinding isn’t as popular as crochet and knitting tbh because it has an even lower barrier of entry tools wise and unlike crochet and knitting it makes fabric that you can cut.

I guess it’s because it’s slower or something.

[what-even-is-thiss]

Nalbinding aka needle binding is when you use yarn and a big sewing needle to make fabric btw

It also has a lot of different kinds of stitches you can do that make different densities of fabric.

Some people even make rugs.

[thewolfwaitsbelow]

I feel like part of it might be casual people are generally aware of the existence of crochet and knitting, even if they don’t know very much about either, but have never heard of nalbinding

[what-even-is-thiss]

Yeah I hadn’t heard of it until recently and I ordered a big bone needle for myself to try it out and that should be arriving soon.

I was surprised that I’d never heard of it though. It’s older than knitting and crocheting and even though it’s been done all over the world it’s super relevant to Nordic culture and my grandmother and I are both into keeping in touch with our roots a bit so I’m surprised I’ve never heard of it.

It seems like the sort of thing that would be popular even if not as popular as crocheting and knitting, considering the low barrier of entry.

[inbabylontheywept]

A Short Essay on Signal Reflections

The essay nobody asked for, but I've been reading about for around a week, and now can explain very easily and intuitively.

When electricity flows from a region with low impedance to a region with high impedance, a reflection of the signal passes back up the cable towards the source. This tends to make the most intuitive sense to people - after all, the high impedance region is easy to imagine as a traffic jam, and the ripple going up the line is just all the electrons having to slam their brakes. We've seen this before.

However, you get an identical ripple when going from a region with high impedance to a region with low impedance, which kind of mangles that analogy. You don't see traffic jams in regions where the speed limit goes up, just in places where it goes down.

And so for that, we're going to have to break the signal into two parts.

V=IR is bread and butter, but nobody accounts for those in time. Everyone does DC steady state analysis, and this is slightly weirder. So in a line with low impedance to high, you just look at how much V (voltage) you need to push the same amount of current (I). Since R is getting bigger, you now run out of voltage before you run out of current. So all the voltage gets used up, some of the current gets used up, and the current that no longer has enough voltage to get pushed forward can't enter the new material and thus bounces backwards up the line. The reverse happens with high to low. You now run out of current (I) before you run out of voltage (V) because R got smaller and energy must be conserved, so you get a voltage wave that bounces up the line. So any time R changes you have too much of either current or voltage and the extra gets sent back.

There are some weird implications to this! For example, a zero impedance ground would actually be hella noisy because it would accept 100% of the current into it, but reflect the entire voltage signal back. And an infinite impedance ground would eat the entire voltage field, but reflect 100% of the current back. An ideal ground for low noise needs to have the same impedance as the node its attached to.

[corvidstoneage]

My current playthrough is the highest level I've ever gotten in skyrim because I usually get bored around lvl 35-40 and restart. That means I saw/fought a legendary dragon for the first time today. Pretty standard dragon fight right up until my boy Gregor kills it and a second one drops in out of nowhere, landing on top of me, killing me instantly before devouring poor Gregor.

Is this a thing? Legendary dragons just keep backups in a pocket dimension in case they die?

[corvidstoneage]

Also this goliath of a dude in full ebony apparently heard I killed two legendary dragons at once and wants me to kill him? And he can Shout??? Who is this dude?!

[corvidstoneage]

My current playthrough is the highest level I've ever gotten in skyrim because I usually get bored around lvl 35-40 and restart. That means I saw/fought a legendary dragon for the first time today. Pretty standard dragon fight right up until my boy Gregor kills it and a second one drops in out of nowhere, landing on top of me, killing me instantly before devouring poor Gregor.

Is this a thing? Legendary dragons just keep backups in a pocket dimension in case they die?

[tinyyellowflowers-blog]

I get heavily overwhelmed clothing shopping but I also get overwhelmed by like. Seams. So I do have to try things on in person.

And growing up we lived an hour plus from shopping and had not a lot of money — our shopping trips tended to be “until the clothing requirements are met”. And honestly there’s a point of exhaustion and misery where I’ll lie to myself and say requirements are met by a piece of clothing so I can leave.

Also my mom noticed this and took advantage of it — and even into adulthood would push me into overwhelm so that I’d be more biddable about choosing clothing. She explained this one weird trick to get her daughter to buy socks to my spouse, who was like “hey what the fuck?” and then repeated it to me when I was not overwhelmed. “Oh!” I thought, “that explains things!” and then donated about 65% of my wardrobe that I hated but felt guilty about not wearing.

Also I stopped clothes shopping with my mom.

Anyway! Here’s my tip for clothes shopping with like significant overwhelm issues and sensory issues and a human body and probably some trauma don’t worry about it.

Sit outside the store, think about the clothing item you’d like to buy. Set minimum standards for the item: comfort, price, appearance, quality. (Don’t sacrifice on comfort! Do prepare a generous fallback for the other options.) Set a timer for a short period of time: I usually do twenty minutes. Walk into the store, navigate directly to the appropriate area, identify several items that meet the minimum standards*. Try those items on, pick the most comfortable one.

*if there are no items that meet minimum standards leave the store, armed with additional knowledge, and either go to a different store OR stand outside and recalibrate standards. Do not recalibrate inside the store.

If at any time the alarm goes off, get up and exit the store. Check in with yourself after five-ten minutes outside about your ability to go back in. If you can’t: hey you have valuable market data! If you can: set the timer. Put five minutes less on the timer. Back inside.

If you find an appropriate purchase item within the set time, check the timer. If there’s more than like, seven minutes, you can do a quick comparison shop in the rest of the section, or go get baseline data for another clothing item you’ll need later. Otherwise, go check out.

[inbabylontheywept]

insane use of tumblr but this is my one month reminder to check my ladder.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

Soup is great because you can just put in whatever you fucking feel like

[scorndogs]

reblog to grow my tits a cup size & prev's tits 2 cup sizes

[scorndogs]

reblog to grow my tits a cup size & prev's tits 2 cup sizes

[inbabylontheywept]

What Talon And What Dreadful Claw

I wrote this in response to this prompt. Ivan Alexander recorded this story, so if you like audiobooks, click here to listen. I cannot understate how talented he is.

She’d watched him walking over the horizon for almost six hours now. She loved getting guests - loved seeing the resignation of men half dead with thirst, trading certain death in the sands for possible death near her waters.

And they were hers. The promise of Ramses still stood, even if it had been a millennium since the concord. By rite of blood and writ of paper she was the queen of the deeper duat. And it was a queen’s privilege to choose her guests. And, occasionally, kill them with her claws.

She could have flown over, but she had time. More time than anyone. More than enough time to wait.

𓐭 𓐮 𓁐 𓁑 𓁒 𓁓 𓁔 𓁕 𓁖 𓁗𓐭 𓐮 𓁐 𓁑 𓁒 𓁓 𓁔 𓁕 𓁗 𓐭 𓐮 𓁐 𓁑 𓁒 𓁓 𓁔 𓁕 𓁖 𓁗𓐭 𓐮 𓁐 𓁑 𓁒

Her guest was not half dead. He was, to be technical, less than a quarter dead, but that was only if you measured things in years.

He was young. His face certainly seemed less lined than her own. There wasn’t much else she could judge age from - the lines of her form folded into wings and furs and claws at the same point that his folded into silks and beads.

He’d prepared for the meeting by bringing a wealth of spices. It was a trick common to royal travelers: If sweat couldn’t be prevented, it could at least be masked. She could still pick traces of it up under the sandalwood and myrrh, but it was pleasant. Salty and metallic and sharp, underneath all the soft wisps of smoke.

He’d brought her gifts. When she told him that the gifts were not acceptable as passage, he said that wasn’t how gifts worked. Gifts weren’t given in exchanges - they were given for the joy of giving. And it brought him joy to share with her.

She didn’t know how to respond to that, so she simply asked if he intended to cross through her duat.

“Maybe,” he replied. “What’s your price?”

“A riddle,” she’d said. “If you get it right, you can pass. But if you get it wrong, I will devour even your bones.”

He grinned and it wasn’t false bravado. He’d known the cost before she said it.

“I love riddles. I accept.”

She loved this part. She loved the tension of it, that singular moment of truth where she wasn’t just a mind or a monster, but something straddling both worlds.

She spoke.

“I can survive beyond death, but can be broken without force. I can summon without breath but-”

“A promise.”

She looked at him wide-eyed. It wasn’t her best riddle, but it was one she’d made herself. It wasn’t supposed to be this easy.

She let him pass but she did - to her great shame - sulk. To his credit, he only lingered an hour or so in the shade of the oasis. There was a longing to him that she couldn’t describe. It unsettled her, but it went away when he took his camels and continued past, traveling on into the deep duat.

She forgot about his gifts until long after he’d passed the horizon. She’d expected human trinkets - gold and gems. Useless baubles. The pelts that had been carefully rolled up and placed inside the chest were strangely thoughtful.

She carried them back to her cave, and laid them flat across the floor. That night she slept better than she had in many, many years. In the morning, she woke up and smelled myrrh, and was almost happy to imagine the prince coming back. If she was disappointed to realize that the smell was coming from the scents soaked into the furs, that was a secret she could keep even from herself.

𓐭 𓐮 𓁐 𓁑 𓁒 𓁓 𓁔 𓁕 𓁖 𓁗𓐭 𓐮 𓁐 𓁑 𓁒 𓁓 𓁔 𓁖 𓁗 𓐭 𓐮 𓁐 𓁑 𓁒 𓁓 𓁔 𓁕 𓁖 𓁗𓐭 𓐮 𓁐 𓁑 𓐭

It was a week before he came back.

She recognized his outline on the horizon. She had a good memory, and beyond that, he’d made quite an impression on his first meeting with her.

He’d begun to run low on his spices, and his clothes were looking far more rumpled than they had at the start. That travel was beginning to wear him down should’ve meant nothing to her. Now, she felt odd. Would she still feel victorious if he failed her riddle? Or would it haunt her, knowing she could only catch him at his worst?

(Did she want to catch him?)

She waited for him to make it to her oasis again. It seemed to be part of the ritual, to sit and watch the speck on the horizon grow to the size of a man. They didn’t exchange pleasantries when he arrived. Instead he gave a small nod to acknowledge her before climbing down from atop his camel. She hadn’t demanded it prior because she knew all too well how easy it was to catch a camel, but there was still something respectful in the gesture. Here was a prince willing to die with dignity. Here was a man who lived and died by rules.

Could she be blamed for admiring that?

Only when he was fully settled in to listen did she begin her riddle.

“Toothless maw that eats all these:

Raw flesh, dung, fresh air, and trees.

At night I’m bright, in day I’m black,

I die, I’m gone, but always back.”

She was on the third line when she saw his face light up. He waited to answer this time, more focused on being polite than showing off how clever he was. She liked that. She knew he was clever, but now she knew he could be patient too.

“A campfire.”

It was one of her favorite riddles, and the joy she got was twofold. She was happy for the prince, happy that he would survive another day, and happy for herself too. It was infinitely preferable to lose with skill than to win through circumstance. She would feel robbed, if she had to eat the prince on a bad day. If he lost, he needed to lose at his best. He needed to lose in a way that mattered.

He went through the oasis again, but lingered far longer. They spoke in moments about each other’s lives - her memories of the time before even Ramses, and his experience as the seventh in line to the throne. He was trusted to act as an emissary specifically because he was so far from inheriting the throne.

“Not that I’d want it anyway,” he said. “A camel is a better throne than any silly golden chair. The seat in the palace only lets me see the bald spot on the high priest’s head. The saddle on this camel lets me see all the beauty in the world.”

His head wasn’t turned towards her when he said that, but she could see his eyes glance over her.

It was easy to pretend she didn’t notice, and he did nothing to press it further. She showed him the best trees for picking dates, the best ponds for catching fish, and the first cave she’d set her lair up in - back before even Ramses. Back when she was much, much smaller.

She slept in the next morning. The sunlight made a soft beam through the cave, over the pelts, before landing across her face. Any other day it would’ve been a wonderful way to wake up, but the realization that she’d missed her chance to say goodbye made her scramble. She made a short flight over the waters to see if he was gone, and got her answer before even landing - there was no camel tied to the palms.

Still, he’d left her a gift. The boar roasting over glowing coals had clearly been caught the night before, and the fact that it was unspiced meant it was for her.

It was also another oddly thoughtful gesture. How many humans would realize that unseasoned meat was a sphinx’s preference? How many would research that far?

She landed near the meal and approached. Down on the ground, there was so much more detail to see. The tracks of the camel, the care taken to not leave a mess. The simple note left besides the firepit.

She reached out and read.

I’m sure you don’t depend on travelers for your meals

But I do feel bad, having deprived you twice.

Enjoy the boar. I will be back in two weeks.

She hadn’t taken a bite yet, but she could pretend the warmth in her stomach was the meal. Two bites was all it took to make the illusion complete.

𓐭 𓐮 𓁐 𓁑 𓁒 𓁓 𓁔 𓁕 𓁖 𓁗𓐭 𓐮 𓁐 𓁑 𓁒 𓁓 𓁔 𓁕 𓁖 𓁗 𓐭 𓐮 𓁑 𓁒 𓁓 𓁔 𓁕 𓁖 𓁗 𓐮 𓁐 𓁑 𓁒

She waited until the fifteenth day before flying.

She wasn’t sure what she’d expected - a sandstorm, perhaps, or a heatstruck camel. Instead, it was only a few minutes flight before the smell of blood caught in the back of her throat.

It was hard to describe what happened after that. Sometimes, she was more mind than monster. Sometimes, she was more monster than mind. That day was a monster day.

He’d lost a lot of blood by the time she found him. A frankly terrifying amount of blood. She could carry him back to the oasis, but that’d only delay the inevitable.

But sphinx knew many things that humans did not.

She carried him, and he was light in her claws. Light in the way that humans were, but some small, scared part of her brain was worried that the blood loss made him lighter still. Like a date left in the sun.

She followed the trail through the desert until she found the thieves that did this. They had his gifts and his spices. They’d have taken the clothes off his corpse if they’d been able to catch his camel.

They’d have taken his life. The one human life she’d valued in one-thousand years, and they’d have taken his life.

It was hard to hate humans. They were so small and short lived that taking them personally felt childish. But this day, she hated, and it made killing easy. Five of the six bandits were extraneous. The last, thankfully, had blood that smelled like the prince.

(He was much less thankful about this than she was).

She took them both back, the prince held gently in her front talons, the bandit half crushed in the back. The transfer spell took exactly as much as it needed. It would’ve been crueler to let the bandit suffer the same fate he’d intended to inflict on the prince - to struggle on with too little blood, until his body failed. It was tempting, but she felt a sick gratitude that he had what she’d needed when she needed it, so she made the end quick. Or, quick enough.

Thirty seconds isn’t long, but it’s an eternity when falling.

𓐭 𓐮 𓁐 𓁑 𓁒 𓁓 𓁔 𓁕 𓁖 𓁗 𓐭 𓐮 𓁐 𓁑 𓁓 𓁔 𓁕 𓁖 𓁗 𓐭 𓐮 𓁐 𓁑 𓁒 𓁓 𓁔 𓁕 𓁖 𓁗 𓐭 𓐮 𓁐 𓁑 𓁒

The prince recovered enough to speak after three days. He asked her to tell him riddles, and if she was as jealous of her domain as she pretended, she’d have said no. But good riddles were the tool she used to rid herself of unwanted guests, and this guest was… wanted.

So she read riddles to him for days at a time. Read all the ones she’d hoarded from scholars. Read ones she wrote herself, just for fun. She started with her best riddles because she loved his praise, but moved on to her earlier ones because what they lacked in cleverness, they made up for by being earnest.

He loved those riddles the most.

One week stretched into two. He spent his days swimming after fish, chasing after boars with spears made of stone (she hadn’t seen that in a very long time) and scurrying up the trees to pick dates. And his nights, he spent imagining riddles around a campfire.

She knew it wasn’t going to be permanent, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t be beautiful. She’d outlived so many things in this world - seen rivers change courses and lakes run dry. If impermanence was a poison, then it was a poison she couldn’t avoid. There was no wall she could build to keep death at bay. She could only share her home with it and hope that one, one wonderful, far away day, that even death would die.

But that day would not be soon.

The king’s men found the oasis after a month of searching. There were no riddles this time. The prince left willingly, and the men with bronze blades stayed respectfully far from her part of the duat. It went as good as it could have gone, all things considered. If some part of her felt empty afterwards, well, maybe she just needed to eat.

Regular gifts did find her way to the duat, as thanks after that. Herds of goats were released near her borders, to hunt at her own leisure. Soft pelts from the northern lands were delivered in chests, and she luxuriated in their fluff.

Most importantly, a regular shipment of blank vellum began to make its way to the duat. She was told was explicitly that it was for her to write more riddles. And also, if she had a spare moment, she could send letters back with the vendor. The prince always made sure to send at least one out to her, and she always made sure to send one back.

Always.

𓐭 𓐮 𓁐 𓁑 𓁒 𓁓 𓁔 𓁕 𓁖 𓐭 𓐮 𓁐 𓁑 𓁒 𓁓 𓁔 𓁗 𓁖 𓁗 𓐭 𓐮 𓁐 𓁑 𓁒 𓁓 𓁔 𓁕 𓁖 𓁗 𓐭 𓐮 𓁐 𓁑𓁗

It had been decades.

She just-

She couldn’t see how humans were like this. She’d written with him six months ago! He’d been sharp as ever. Sharper, even. Time had winnowed him into a razor’s edge, and she'd been so amazed to see him change. And then he’d gotten busy, and they’d stopped writing letters for just a month, and then it was two months, and then three and now-

Now he wasn’t well.

The last letter she’d received hadn’t even been from him. It had been from his eldest brother, the reigning pharaoh. And it had broken her heart.

He was forgetting… everything. His mind was breaking. Decades of brilliance, and now he was falling apart at the seams. Some days, he didn’t even know who he was. But on the days that he did, the only thing he could talk about was going to the oasis one last time.

And his brother who had kept him close, who had been so protective of him after his near death with the bandits, had finally agreed.

He was going to be arriving any day now. The note had a sort of helpless plea attached - that he didn’t know what to do at this point, but that whatever it cost her to keep him comfortable, he would repay tenfold.

She sent a letter back saying it was a gift. She was the queen of the duat, and it pleased her to give this to her neighboring kingdom. Nevermind that her kingdom had no subjects, nevermind that she had no armies at her disposal. What she had, she could give, and this was… easy.

It made her happy to write the letter. It remind her of the first words the prince had spoken to her, all those years ago.

𓐭 𓐮 𓁐 𓁑 𓁒 𓁓 𓁔 𓁕 𓁖 𓁗 𓐭 𓐮 𓁐 𓁑 𓁒 𓁓 𓁔 𓁕 𓁖 𓁗 𓐮 𓁐 𓁑 𓁒 𓁓 𓁔 𓁕 𓁖 𓐭 𓐮 𓁐 𓁑 𓁒 𓁗

He arrived a few days later, escorted by fifty soldiers. She was grateful that he was in one of his lucid moments. She couldn’t imagine how it would be, to be seen and not known.

She didn’t wait for them to make it all the way to her oasis. She flew over to meet them, and then carried him back. The traditional wait was from when she thought she had time. Before she'd realized that there were ways for even an immortal to find themselves in a hurry.

He spent his first day back chasing fish, the same way he did before. The boars he left be - seventy, he insisted, was far too old to be messing with boars. And when the evening came, they gathered by a campfire to share riddles.

They went back and forth, laughing at each other's crafts. It was only after an hour of reminiscing that she actually asked him her favorite riddle, the riddle that she had permanently written in as His riddle. The one with toothless maws and meat and light in the dark, and he stared at her - not blankly, but worse, confused, because he recognized the riddle, but could no longer answer it.

She could see the distress growing in him, and it broke her heart. He hemmed and hawed, but right when he looked on the brink of giving up, he looked at the fire and started in relief.

“A campfire!” he said, and they laughed, and if he could pretend his tears were mirth and not mourning she could pretend that hers were the same.

𓐭 𓐮 𓁐 𓁑 𓁒 𓁓 𓁔 𓁕 𓁖 𓁗𓐭 𓐮 𓁐 𓁑 𓁒 𓁓 𓁔 𓁕 𓁖 𓁗 𓐮 𓁐 𓁑 𓁒 𓁓 𓁔 𓁕 𓁖 𓁗𓐭 𓐮 𓁐 𓁑 𓁒

He was not well the next day.

He knew who he was, thankfully, but he didn’t remember getting there. He stumbled around almost dazed until he saw her. Then he sighed in relief.

“This is my favorite dream,” he confided in her. “I’d like to get back here for real one day - but this dream is lovely. Can you read me some more riddles? Just like last time. I've never forgotten.”

She didn’t even touch her later works. She went to her earliest ones, the easy ones, and the way he pondered minutes at a time made her stomach clench.

𓐭 𓐮 𓁐 𓁑 𓁒 𓁓 𓁔 𓁕 𓁖 𓁗𓐭 𓐮 𓁐 𓁑 𓁒 𓁓 𓁔 𓁕 𓁖 𓐭 𓐮 𓁐 𓁑 𓁒 𓁓 𓁔 𓁕 𓁖 𓁗𓐭 𓐮 𓁐 𓁑 𓁒

She did not sleep that night.

She had spent literally her entire life trying to make harder and harder riddles, and now-

They needed to be easy. They needed to be simple. They needed to rhyme, and feel like riddles, but they needed to be solvable by someone that -

She had to stop writing for a few moments to compose herself. She couldn’t afford to cry on the vellum. A new shipment wouldn’t arrive in time.

She was immortal, but she was still running out of time.

𓐭 𓐮 𓁐 𓁑 𓁒 𓁓 𓁔 𓁕 𓁖 𓁗𓐭 𓐮 𓁐 𓁑 𓁒 𓁓 𓁔 𓁕 𓁖 𓐭 𓐮 𓁐 𓁑 𓁒 𓁓 𓁔 𓁕 𓁖 𓁗𓐭 𓐮 𓁐 𓁑 𓁒

He woke up the next morning completely confused. She’d prepared her first riddle as

“Who sits in the sand

Beside my lair

Who swims through fish

With thin white hair

Who braved the desert and survived

Then returned home alive and thrived?”

But after several seconds of silence she couldn’t take it anymore.

“It’s you,” she said.

“Oh!” he replied, surprised.

“What do you know about this place?”, she asked, after several more long seconds of quiet.

“…Not a lot,” he admitted. “But I know I love you.”

“I love you too,” she said.

That was the only riddle she had for the day. He fell asleep in the midmorning, and she took the time to go catch a goat for them. He was still asleep when she returned and remained that way the rest of the day. She stayed awake long after sunset, watching the gentle rise and fall of his chest and praying it would never stop. She wasn’t sure when she fell asleep - she just knew that when she woke up, her prayer had gone unanswered.

𓐮 𓁐 𓁑 𓁒 𓁓 𓁔 𓁕 𓁖 𓁗 𓐭 𓐮 𓁐 𓁑 𓁒 𓁓 𓁔 𓁕 𓁖 𓁗 𓐭 𓐮 𓁐 𓁑 𓁒 𓁓 𓁔 𓁕 𓁖 𓁗 𓐭 𓐮 𓁐 𓁑 𓁗

The vellum vendor arrived at the start of the deep duat only to find the oasis empty. He looked for hours, but there was only a single vellum left behind in the cave. He grabbed it and read the half finished riddle.

​ What hungers and is never full?

What is complete but never whole?

What pierces armor, shields, and hearts?

What ends before it even starts?

What force can make a monster thrall

What talon and what dreadful claw

Can heal the slice it makes each day?

What pain can make the godless pray?

It was all he could take back to the pharaoh.

He hoped it was enough.

[radjellyfishobservation]

Oh, this absolutely tore me limb from limb. Complete devastation.

[corvidstoneage]

I reread this every time Babylon reblogs it and I'm never ready for the ending. Which I suppose is rather the point.

[zatclaire]

I do not like this, Sam I Am. I do not trust you with that knife. I do not trust you with my life.

[lottiesagelesslands]

My love, @corvidstoneage, has a beloved stuffed lion (Lion A) they were given to help ward of nightmares when they were around 3. I'm sure you can tell which of these two lions he is. A couple years ago my partner's family found a second lion that looks exactly like what Lion A used to look like.

The idea was that Lion B would take over at night protecting my love from nightmares but his mane tickled my loves nose. So I came up with the perfect solution.

Lion footie pajamas with a hood!

Now Lion A can have his very well deserved retirement and Lion B can start his new job.