Hey guys! I've got a new commission type available on Vgen as of today!
(characters featured here are not mine.)
Say hello to my small pixel dolls, a fun way to spice up a character page or your livestreams! Multiple add-ons are available, including small animations!
(I'll be adding extra characters as an option soon!)
Check out my Vgen for more information (or to place an order)!
Gonna be real, boss, I'd just like to buy some groceries. One small pixel doll purchase pays for a trip to the store. If you'd rather help out with something smaller, I've also got:
Fanfic & Fiction commissions
Song-Inspired Mini Fics
Pixel Toincy Sprites
Colored Sketches
Cell-Shaded Illustrations
I'm also available for custom work, if you have an idea not suited to any of these commission types (but within my skill set).
Hey guys! I've got a new commission type available on Vgen as of today!
(characters featured here are not mine.)
Say hello to my small pixel dolls, a fun way to spice up a character page or your livestreams! Multiple add-ons are available, including small animations!
(I'll be adding extra characters as an option soon!)
Check out my Vgen for more information (or to place an order)!
Gonna be real, boss, I'd just like to buy some groceries. One small pixel doll purchase pays for a trip to the store. If you'd rather help out with something smaller, I've also got:
Fanfic & Fiction commissions
Song-Inspired Mini Fics
Pixel Toincy Sprites
Colored Sketches
Cell-Shaded Illustrations
I'm also available for custom work, if you have an idea not suited to any of these commission types (but within my skill set).
Hey guys! I've got a new commission type available on Vgen as of today!
(characters featured here are not mine.)
Say hello to my small pixel dolls, a fun way to spice up a character page or your livestreams! Multiple add-ons are available, including small animations!
(I'll be adding extra characters as an option soon!)
Check out my Vgen for more information (or to place an order)!
Gonna be real, boss, I'd just like to buy some groceries. One small pixel doll purchase pays for a trip to the store. If you'd rather help out with something smaller, I've also got:
Fanfic & Fiction commissions
Song-Inspired Mini Fics
Pixel Toincy Sprites
Colored Sketches
Cell-Shaded Illustrations
I'm also available for custom work, if you have an idea not suited to any of these commission types (but within my skill set).
Maradin fretted. She twisted in her chair 'neath the vacant scowl of the man across the desk. His eyes fell to a pen and legal pad, and he scribbled something absently. Eyes still planted firmly on the pad, he asked, "These visions you say that you're having, what do they contain?"
Maradin closed her eyelids and lines of worry gathered on her brow. She began, "Sometimes I shut my eyes and I…I begin to see things, hear things. I can even feel them, like I've really gone somewhere else."
The counselor tapped his pen on his temple then set it on the desk. "Any vision could be describe that way. Be specific now."
Maradin shut her eyes tighter. "I…I can't remember what I saw last time."
"Can you see anything now?"
She swallowed again. "…Yeah. I can see…the burn-woods, trees standing tall, branchless, leafless, like spikes of wrought iron emerging from the ground. I can see clouds of ash."
"Anything else?"
Maradin's chin tilted up slightly, then back down. "Yes. There I am, about the trees. I'm leaning against a little one, and you know how brittle they get, so it's bending and breaking and leaving black dust on my hands. I can hear it too, the crackling of the charred bark."
"Is that all?"
Maradin's mouth curled into a deep frown. Her eyes came open and she nodded.
A moment passed and she opened her mouth again. "Have you heard of anything like it? Do you ever see things when you close your eyes?"
The counselor put on a tight-lipped, trusting smile. "Only when dreaming, I'm afraid to say. This is unheard of outside of the ranks of the operators."
He took up his pen and wrote something down, and Maradin spoke as he did. "Do you think…do you think that I might be an operator?"
He shook his head. "Silence such thoughts. You have been long-chosen for a greater purpose than mere soothsaying."
Maradin deflated, but argued no further.
The counselor set down his pen. "Now, be off with you," he commanded, waving in the direction of the door. "The stationmaster will take some time to see you tomorrow morning. Drink the nectar and complete your recitations, and let this be the last we hear of your strange…" He appraised her for a moment, "…waking dreams."
Maradin shifted in her seat, hands clenched around the chair arms as if to wring them. Her gaze hovered between the floor and the desk.
The counselor sighed and set his things aside. He lent hard on his elbows. "Your record is spotless and your soul is as clean as a tin whistle. The stationmaster will have you cured in no time, alright?"
Maradin took a shuddering breath and forced a smile, letting her cloudy eyes lock with those of the counselor.
"Now, be off with you."
She rose with a creak, hair flowing and shimmering in the dim lantern-light even as darkness filled the space behind her eyes, and she left as instructed.
---
The soles of Maradin's simple shoes resonated dully as she strode down the hall. Her knees ached, her eyes stung, and she flexed her arms, stout enough they were that they tested the inside seams of her uniform. Sensations swirled in her chest: pride, uncertainty, and something sharper.
Maradin muttered, "Am I not everything my betters would ask? Pious, intelligent, strong, and my heart is driven as if by the fire of the engine itself. Yet my thoughts…there is something dark lurking in my mind, something living there that is not myself."
"And would you be rid of it?"
Maradin halted. That which spoke did not appear; it came from within.
"Would you silence it? Do you even know what it is? Are you sure that it does not belong to you? Are you sure that it is not of you?"
Maradin shook her head and answered, "It was a dream. A hallucination. The counselor told me so and I should not allow doubt to make a dwelling of my soul. This will subside."
The voice quieted. It did not speak again, but it lingered like a shadow on the edge of firelight. Maradin allowed her hair to hang over her face and clenched her jaw until she reached the safety of her quarters.
"You shall live in the shelter of the grand station," the stationmaster had once said, "with a room of one's own. A rare honor for a rare acolyte."
Maradin stared blearily into the darkened cell. Her cot sat against one wall, a cramped desk across from it, and a place to pray right between, though the kneeling pad was rolled up and tucked away: the only thing in the space to have gathered dust. Moonlight fell in through the window, laying across the room like a set of skeletal fingers.
The other voice murmured inscrutably on the edge of Maradin's mind. "Rest," it bade her, "set your weary soul to rest."
She sneered instead and marched to her place of prayer, where she knelt on the bare stone floor. Her chin drooped, her eyelids shut, her clenched fists fell against her thighs, and all the while, her bruised knees, quite familiar with their position, screamed for relief.
Maradin held her ground. Her lips parted and shut again as words rose but died instead, half-formed, ill-suited, insufficiently reverent. For agonizing minutes she found only stray syllables and phrases out of time. A choral fragment whirled by like a wraith, the flicker-flame of a half-remembered passage scathed the back of her mind, and a hundred incomplete dreams and devotions broke like drops of rain behind her eyelids, gathering as tears, threatening to break through and cascade down her cheeks.
And then a thought struck clear, not a memory, but almost as real.
Maradin stood amongst the trees of the burn-woods, which rose high, branchless, leafless, like spikes of wrought iron emerging from the ground. Another 'her' stood about the ashy woodland, and she watched from afar as the doppelganger pushed one of the trees over, the trunk shattering into flaking charcoal under the light of a pale, sunless sky.
This other Maradin, hands stained black, turned, and smiled, and spoke.
"Whatever prayers you speak, they will be a waste of breath like all the rest."
Maradin gasped aloud. Her eyes opened and her grief streamed, sparkling, down her face, off her chin, leaving dark stains on the floor of her gloomy chambers, over which no trees rose, over which no pale sky loomed.
She breathed ragged and her hands shook. She held her eyes open for a long while to ward off further visions. Her lips formed the words 'why, why, why'.
The din, the gentle hum of the room, answered, filled her ears like howling winds. She jolted to her feet and a shock of pain radiated up from her knees, first stabbing hotly, then rolling in dull waves. Her face twisted and she fell onto her bed. She did not bother to draw off her uniform, or to draw up her covers, or to drink from the flask of gold nectar at her bedside. She simply threw her head onto the pillow and shut her eyes, and the darkness swelled over her like a tide.
---
Dark gave way to light.
Dark gave way to dim, bleak light.
Maradin's eyes no longer burned, though she blinked at the ceiling blearily anyway. She twisted and her bare arms shifted against the inside of her covers. She paused. Something on the edge of her vision jostled, a form sitting at her desk, and she turned her head toward it.
"You did not touch your nectar," it spoke, dry and unjudging.
"Stationmaster!" Maradin shouted, whirling upright. She clamped her hand over her mouth and her eyes widened.
The figure rose, wisp-like in their dark cloak, gliding toward the bed. They sat on its edge, taking Maradin's hand gently by the wrist and lowering it from her mouth. Their other hand rose to dress the acolyte's hair, pulling it over the ears and brushing her cheek with just the fingertips.
Maradin released the breath she had been holding in and blinked once, slow as streaming sap.
The stationmaster nodded and folded their hands in their lap. "I found you in an odd pose, still dressed, but uncovered. It grows cold at night even within these walls. You have no need to sleep like a street hound."
Maradin took another shuddering breath and asked, "When did you find me?"
"I came at daybreak. I set you in a proper resting position and I made breakfast, though I am afraid that it has gone cold." The stationmaster smiled softly, faint warmth in their eyes.
Maradin paled. "It must be nearly ten now, I can't…I'm not worthy of your time! My other duties, I—they—"
"—They have been accounted for," The stationmaster interrupted. "As for your worthiness? Maradin, I have known you since you were young, when you were simply 'Mara'. I gave you your third syllable, I let you choose." Their voice gladdens. "Remind me, which did you pick?"
Maradin clutched her covers. "Din. It was the same third sound as yours, Toradin."
The stationmaster nodded. "See? A piece of myself lives in you, so of course you are worthy of my time."
The two sat together in quiet comfort. It faded though, and the stationmaster turned their eyes away. "You did not drink your nectar. The counselor reports that you have been experiencing something strange. Tell me of it so that I may help you."
Maradin, in her small-clothes, shivered. She pulled the covers up and shook her head. "I have been seeing things, strange things. My mind drifts and I am suddenly transported elsewhere. I told the counselor that I saw the burn-woods, but I…I remember more."
"Memories, strong ones. We all have them." The stationmaster's voice was cool, probing.
Maradin relaxed. "I see places that I have never been. Places that don't seem real, that don't even seem possible. I…I don't know how to explain."
The stationmaster rose again. Their face was as if carved from stone, but their bearing was stiffer now, forcing surety. They moved to the desk. "You should try."
Maradin rose and began to don her uniform. "These places feel like they come from inside of me, like I could step into them if I wanted, or maybe they could step out."
The stationmaster's shoulders dropped. Their delicate fingers slipped on the edges of the plate they were trying to lift and it clattered back to the desk.
Maradin took a few steps closer. "I see wonderful things, high mountains, fogless skies, cities like the ones in the old stories. The visions aren't all that I am troubled by, I have other doubts, about my piety, about my strength…I—"
"Silence!" The stationmaster snapped. They turned. Their face was still set, but the corners of their lips were turned downward. They threw out their hand in a wide arc and Maradin retreated.
"This phase," the stationmaster spat, expression turning cold, "must now end. It is worse than I feared."
"I might still be an operator! Please Toradin, I —"
The stationmaster's hand jutted up, palm forward, commanding silence. "I am the stationmaster. Do not speak my name again until these visions are conquered. I…" they hesitated. "I have something to show you."
Maradin retreated a step and her knees met the stone floor once again. She bowed her head and listened.
"This thing that you are experiencing is a curse, a quiet evil that plagues many and has been the downfall of empires. When you were very young, too young to remember…" The stationmaster cast something from their coat, a stack of papers that scattered across the floor.
Maradin's gaze walked between them, one by one. They were drawings in crayon, sheets yellowed by time, depicting crude, crumpled shapes: childlike bodies, limbs and hair jutting out wherever, eyes uneven, mouths smiling. They were people, some real, some false.
The stationmaster cleared their throat. "You made these, you took them straight from these very visions, which you suffered from as a youth. The operators are trained to control their visions, but yours were repressed, for you are to become a conductor, and conductors require minds unclouded. You cannot be an operator because it was decided that you would not be one."
Maradin's fingers parted, then clenched again around the fabric of her uniform pants. She mouthed something, a hiss escaping from between her teeth, but the stationmaster let it pass unremarked.
They started for the door, gesturing around the space. "Eat your breakfast, drink the nectar, and defeat this evil that lurks within you. You are not to leave this room, your meals will be brought up. If ever there was one strong enough to overcome this, it would be you."
Maradin dared not to lift herself from the floor. She turned her head though and asked, "What…what do we call this curse? These waking dreams?"
The stationmaster held in the doorway. Their hand twitched on the frame and they shook their head. "Words have power; I shall not say."
They closed the door. All was still, all except for the shapes that danced on the edge of vision, the sight within closed eyes, which beckoned Maradin back and sang in her own voice.
Hey guys! I've got a new commission type available on Vgen as of today!
(characters featured here are not mine.)
Say hello to my small pixel dolls, a fun way to spice up a character page or your livestreams! Multiple add-ons are available, including small animations!
(I'll be adding extra characters as an option soon!)
Check out my Vgen for more information (or to place an order)!
Gonna be real, boss, I'd just like to buy some groceries. One small pixel doll purchase pays for a trip to the store. If you'd rather help out with something smaller, I've also got:
Fanfic & Fiction commissions
Song-Inspired Mini Fics
Pixel Toincy Sprites
Colored Sketches
Cell-Shaded Illustrations
I'm also available for custom work, if you have an idea not suited to any of these commission types (but within my skill set).
"Hail to the engine! Hear the rails screech, hear the bending steel, belching steam, and the whistle…" The confessor lifted a tin whistle to his lips and blew. The sound was shrill and meek compared to his grinding, bellowing refrain, but still the terror-stricken crowd recoiled. The young stared, the old bowed their heads, and those in-between sobbed or whispered prayers.
"Be ye the brave that keep the tracks oiled? Be ye the humble who tend the wheels? Be ye the strong who shovel the coal? Or do ye deny the call?" He blew on the whistle again, and the whimpering masses huddled close, jostling, nudging, clinging.
Roem's eyes were downcast, diverted from the procession and the skies of gray, though he stole glances as he skirted past.
"Come ye and aid the engine, whose tongue never dries, whose fire never dies, come!" The confessor blew the whistle for a third time and three young boys in the crowd doffed the flat, round caps of conductors. They held buckets aloft and crude metal coins began to fill them as clattering rain.
Roem hurried his gait but not enough-so. One of the gatherers darted before him, pail aloft, eyes glistening and gray like ash.
The confessor bellowed, "May the mighty give silver, may the lowly give copper, and may all else…" his eyes fell on Roem, and so did the eyes of the crowd, "May all else give iron."
Roem's lip twitched. His hands fell to his empty pockets and he shook his head, greasy blond hair whipping in a flurry. He shouldered past the boy, bearing the gazes of all the crowd on his back, and their hushed curses on his ears.
None dared to pursue. Shame alone battered Roem as he hurried down the street, through the alley and up the crooked steps to a public square that stank of meat and blood. He gagged a moment, then drew a floral sachet up to his nose. He took a sniff of the dried petals inside, shut his eyes, and set himself upright again.
"Good day and many blessings to you, boy." The butcher leered in a doorway nearby. His apron was filthy, his arms varnished with dripping ruby. His voice was dry and unkind. He stared with a glare that fell on all sides like lingering mist.
Roem swallowed and stowed the sachet. His lips parched, as did his eyes unblinking.
The butcher's wrist twisted and a dim daylight sheen caught the edge of his cleaver, hanging just behind his waist. His eyes held Roem. His lips quivered.
Roem swallowed again and nodded. "Yes, many blessings to you. May the Engine's warmth meet you."
The butcher nodded. Slowly, slowly, he retreated into his shop and shut the door, and again Roem was alone. He placed a hand on his hollow pocket and he stared at a sign in the window. 'Help Wanted'.
Roem turned away and walked. His feet found their route but his head swam, and the winding cobble streets swallowed him, each aisle and corner gnawing until the town spat him onto its outskirts.
The far-away fields, home to clusters of sullen witch-grass and loose stone, greeted him with the embrace of an icy wind. His mind returned to him at that and at the sight of a shack, a sickly thing of brick and timber, cocked and crooked like an old, stomped-on hat.
Just as the town had, the hovel swallowed him whole into dim squalor.
"You're back." The woman's snarl was carved onto her face along with a calendar of wrinkles and scars. "You should be with the butcher."
Roem clawed at the edge of his shirt. His eyes traced the corners of the entryway, the trim, the pipes that carried stagnant oil to the ancient heater, which was curled in the corner like a fat, slumbering lizard.
The woman dropped her hands to her hips. "They'll make you a hermit if you keep this up. They'll send you away for your listlessness and you'll never set foot near the railroad again, boy. Do you know what that means? For your soul?"
"I don't want to be a butcher." Roem's eyes found the woman. His whole body tremored.
"Excuse me?" Her voice was as flat as an anvil-head, but her eyes were wide.
"I don't want to stink like meat and blood. I don't want to tailor, I don't want to mason, I don't want to weave or build or preach." Roem's shaking had stopped. He had become as still as the grave.
The woman's mouth drooped. "If you'll do nothing with your hands, if you won't be a smith, or a butcher, or a merchant, then you'll be a beggar. This house is not yours, and your right to it stops where I judge."
She continued to speak, but Roem's ears had shut tight. Her words mixed with the din of the room, of the wind outside, of the sound of blood pounding in Roem's head.
Before she finished speaking, Roem turned and left. She spoke louder, she yelled, and she followed him to the doorway, but she went no further and Roem did not heed her. His legs took him away and he went without complaint, across the field, past the sharp tufts of witch-grass, past the bones of something that had died atop a hill. His legs took him alongside the third line, a set of iron rails that lead on and on.
Roem and the line walked together for a time. They conversed, his shoes scraping, their wooden ties creaking underfoot, and then they parted ways. The rails wandered over the horizon while Roem turned away and towards a field of rusting bodies: horseless carriages, iron birds, and even the carcasses of train cars. The last were set apart from the rest and surrounded by candles and stone shrines. They were sacred and warded as such.
On the edge of the field, a carcass of its own, stood a metal shack. Roem pushed his way in through its creaking maw.
"Roem, good to see you." A girl sat under the room's single buzzing bulb. She worked at a stack of gizmos, strange, round-ish things made of metal, with odd stampings of letters and numbers on their edges.
"Blessings find you, Zeni." Roem fell into a heap of blankets near the workbench.
The girl flipped one of the devices over in her hands and opened it. She only offered a fleeting glance to Roem, her eyes and hands working in step. "What brings you to the boneyard?"
"I feel ill."
"No you don't. You wandered out here under your own power."
Roem groaned and righted himself on the floor. "I feel ill in the head."
"That sounds closer to the truth," Zeni remarked. She closed the device again and set it to the side, then took another off of the stack. She left Roem to consider his words at his own pace.
"The butcher doesn't understand me. The confessor doesn't understand me. If my name crossed the station ward's desk, he would send me to mine salt or dig graves."
Zeni's eyes stayed on her work but her lips twisted into a crooked smile. "You don't care about them though. You don't care about any of the folk in town. Someone else must have ticked you off, or something else."
Roem's shoulders tensed. "Aunt Tira. She says I'll become a hermit." Roem pulled a blanket up over his shoulders and shrunk.
"What's wrong with that? Half my family's hermits, and I run the junkyard. Hellfire, it beats salt-mining and grave-digging, doesn't it?"
Roem winced. "You curse too easily."
"Curses come from field witches and magi and conductors. My words are just sounds that come out of my mouth."
Roem's fingers played nervously in his lap. "Aren't you afraid to anger the spirits? You work with dead trains; they let you disassemble old engines."
Zeni sighed and spun in her chair. She held up one of the round objects. "I sometimes do, yes, under the supervision of confessors. Right now, however…" she raised the thing, presenting it, "I am taking apart landmines."
She tossed it into Roem's chest. It connected with a dull thud and sent him sprawling into the cloth heap.
He flailed after a moment, leaping to his feet and tossing the munition from one hand to the other, then back again, and finally back to Zeni. She let it land in her lap and the weight of it sent her rolling away.
She spun again and set the device aside, finally allowing her eyes, ice-blue and wild, to lock with Roem's. "Nothing here is dangerous, nothing except for the mad ideas frolicking in your head. Not bombs, not spirits."
"But Zeni," Roem whispered, "The trains—"
"—You don't believe in that crap. You defame your aunt, you defame the butcher, you never drop a coin for the confessor, and that isn't just because you're indigent."
Roem turned his head and grumbled, uttering, amongst other things, a few curses of his own. He let his gaze fall back into Zeni's and he complained, "I don't belong here."
Zeni laughed halfway, but the sound died in her throat. Roem's eyes were full, his brow was weary, and the weight on his shoulders seemed sufficient to flatten him against the floor. Zeni shook her head. "Nobody belongs anywhere, Roem. What if you have to find your own place? What if you have to make your own place? What if the world isn't a jigsaw puzzle that you need to fit into? What if it's a quilt? What if you're holding the needle?"
Roem stared, and there was silence in that place.
"What if you're holding the needle?"
Roem parted his lips and then drew them shut again. Zeni raised an eyebrow. Roem spoke, "What…what if I don't like the quilt?"
At that, Zeni's expression turned. She grinned and something mad, something wicked, something wonderful twinkled in her eye. "Then you have to be brave, Roem: you have to make your own."
It's important to show that you care. Fuck being nonchalant. Text first, send multiple messages in a row. Tell them what they mean to you, be honest about how you feel. Tell your friends that you love them. Love is a gift that can be given away freely, by anyone and to anyone. Show that you care.
Hey guys! I've got a new commission type available on Vgen as of today!
(characters featured here are not mine.)
Say hello to my small pixel dolls, a fun way to spice up a character page or your livestreams! Multiple add-ons are available, including small animations!
(I'll be adding extra characters as an option soon!)
Check out my Vgen for more information (or to place an order)!
Sometimes having an OC is like "this character is an outlet for my insecurity and trauma" and sometimes it's like "this character is an outlet for my love of vampires :)". Sometimes it's both
Sometimes you think it's "this character is an outlet for my love and nothing more :)" and then you look it over later like "shit. product of the deepest depths of my soul again"
