Once when I was in undergrad, someone described something as “problematic” in class and our professor was like, “That’s cool, but ‘problematic’ doesn’t really mean anything. It means that the thing you’re describing has a problem, and in and of itself that’s not bad. Art, especially, should always have problems, or else it’s not interesting and not art, either. It sounds like you’re trying to say that this is bad, but you don’t want to say ‘bad.’ Is that right?”
So from then on whenever one of us called something problematic, he would make us talk it out until we could name the “bad” thing we were hinting at. In this particular class, 7/10 it was some type of oppression, and the remainder was like, “I’m uncomfortable because this is very new/confusing/pushing boundaries that made me feel safe.”
Once we stopped calling things “problematic” and stopping at that, class got way more interesting and... we all had to say, like, “that’s racist” or “that’s misogynistic” or “ew capitalism gross” out loud, which a lot of us had never done in a classroom before. Or we had to be like, “Uhhh... I’m not sure what’s so bad?” and confront our own beliefs and that was maybe even more useful.
Anyway. Whenever I see the word problematic, I can’t help but think of this professor being like, “Good starting point, now let’s get specific.” I think when we have to commit to saying “that’s ___” it requires a lot more careful thought about the truth and impact and complexities of whatever we’re claiming. Sometimes there really is some bullshit afoot, and also sometimes it’s art, and it should be full of problems, because that’s what art is.
Yes! Absolutely. Identify the problems. Just like “bug” can mean anything from computer glitch to giant hornet, “problematic” is way too vague. What is it and how big is it?
or Dissociation Rice if we’re being real specific about the food part
♞ @theboredvoid
Mood Swings Red Bull
♞ @starving-little-orphan-boy
@counting-horses please let at least one of these be real
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Dakko stirred and curled tighter under his blanket. Underneath, it was warm and safe. At least, warmer and safer than the noise he hid from.
The wool barely muted the sound of whimpers. After everything, he still heard someone meant to be strong and reliable reduced to tears and agony. As he half-slept, it almost felt like Haode was still there, crying for help no one could give him.
Haode isn't crying anymore, he reminded himself. He isn't here. He'll never hit you or scream at you again. He remembered clutching Xigon's hands and the quiet waves of a power the master seemed to want the boy to fear, but all Dakko could find was relief in the thought of it being one's last sensation. We're safe now, all of us.
But someone was still whining above him, muffled as if through a coat sleeve, like no one else was supposed to hear it. The sound of sobs into the stale air of a dusty shed while Dakko tried to pretend they were safe. It was too familiar.
He stirred and a gentle hand rubbed his shoulder through the blanket.
"Seiri..." he mumbled. "What's...?"
"Shhh." Lalek hushed him in a hoarse whisper. "Sorry I woke you up."
"It's not your fault." Wrong sister, but he still needed to say it. "Just don't go, please don't go." Dakko reached out from under the blanket to grab her hand.
"I'm....I'm not going anywhere." Lalek gave his cold fingers a squeeze. "Who's Seiri?"
Dakko peeked out from under his cover. Lalek sat with her head on her knees, and the hand that wasn't comforting him pushed and pulled in aimless motions at the bandages under her scarf. It reminded him of how Haode – as he'd once been, not the monster he'd become – had brought Seiri down from the tree, shrouded the abrasions around her broken neck with such teary eyes, and apologized to her lifeless face for being too late to save her too.
"When Ido and I were little, before we knew anything else, Seiri was our big sister." He held Lalek's hand a bit tighter. It was little more than brittle skin and bone now, but it was still alive. "Our father hated us, but he loved Seiri the wrong way, and it must have hurt so much worse than being hated, because she didn't know any other way to make it stop hurting, except to die."
Dakko went very quiet as he remembered Haode's explanation, how he'd tried to be so gentle about something so ugly. How he used to be gentle at all before he'd done something that made Ami's venomous rage shatter their lives. Dakko's teeth chattered. He felt like he didn't have any right to miss someone who'd turned out so horrid.
Lalek stopped worrying at her neck and brought another cachectic-looking hand down to dry his tears before they froze. "I'm sorry. I had no idea."
"Don't be sorry, just...please don't..." Dakko leaned into her palm. "We love you too."
Lalek didn't respond.
"I like the way you cut my hair," Dakko added. "And your cooking's the best."
That made her chuckle.
"Did Channei really burn water?" he asked.
"That was a joke." Lalek's smile lingered a few more precious seconds. "But if anyone could, she would. She burns so many things trying to cook, I think that's why she eats almost everything raw."
Dakko's eyelids grew heavy again. "Gross."
He half-slept for a few more hours, lulled back and forth by warm memories and ones that lined his eyelids with frost. It came in blinks that weren't quite dreams.
Lalek was crying and trying to hide it. Seiri hadn't cried in front of them. She'd been better at hiding it and now Dakko and Ido were older than their big sister. It was all wrong.
A pretty red songbird flitted down to feast that first morning in the sun. Its feathers fluffed under a fine dust of snow, its voice a high and happy chirp. He always liked the red birds, so warm and vibrant in the blight.
Dakko's wrists curled under Rizval's wrappings. His palms felt damp, though whether from sweat or blood, he couldn't tell.
Blood stained snow such a vicious bright red. It burned like looking straight at the sun. Channei had reassured him and Ido, when it was over, that bleeding out didn't really hurt as much as it looked like it did. That it felt more cold and confusing than outright painful, but to Dakko that just sounded worse. Channei hadn't asked. She'd just hugged him and soaked up his tears for a monster.
Channei. Where's Channei?
Dakko stirred back to wakefulness when the shed's door opened and let in both a cold draft and a flood of sunlight.
Lalek threw her arm up to shield her eyes as they adjusted. Dakko sat up and pulled the blanket tighter around himself.
Rizval guided a squinting and wincing Ido back into the dark of the shed. "Too bright out for him right now."
Ido snapped back at Rizval. "I just need snow goggles." When Rizval tensed up, so did Ido. "I'm sorry."
"You lost yours?" Dakko asked.
Ido rubbed his eyes. "They fell off."
Dakko gave a small smile. "And you didn't pick them back up?"
Rizval giggled like a small child. "Tell him, kid! It was amazing!"
Ido blinked a few times. "Huh?"
Rizval butted in. "Yayaba took him flying!"
Lalek smacked her knees. "What? Ido, really?"
Dakko practically leapt to his feet and stumbled over to his brother. "So you really can fly now, huh?"
"She kind of made me do it." Ido let out an awkward chuckle. "I didn't really do much of anything."
"And neither did I, for that matter." Rizval threw their hands up. "Because I'm evidently very bad at fishing, today's provisions are courtesy of Yayaba."
Ido dropped a sack on the floor. Dakko pulled it open to reveal two huge, toothy-looking fish.
Lalek wrinkled her nose and turned away. "Rizval, remember my rule about fish."
"That you'll cook them nicely if I do the nasty work first and don't leave a mess." They let out an exaggerated sigh. "Fine. No, all right, I've got it covered. But Lalek, you need to eat some."
"You all need it more," she rasped.
"Don't give me that shit, rockpile." Rizval's nickname for Lalek sounded sharper than usual. "There's plenty for all of us."
"I..." Lalek clutched a weak hand over her sunken abdomen. "I'll try."
Dakko and Ido exchanged a worried look.
Rizval picked the sack of fish back up. "You'd better." Their tone carried an edge of venom that sealed Dakko's lips before he could interject anything. "I'll be back soon. Boys, get some rest."
Dakko sputtered. "Rizval, I—"
The door closed.
"Leave 'em be," Lalek grumbled. "They're just in a mood."
Ido stirred up dust as he settled down and made himself sneeze. "This shed's filthy."
"Told the owner we'd clean it before we left." Lalek gave him a mischievous look. "Wanna start on that?"
"Um..." Ido looked around at all the disorganized crates and piles of debris. "Maybe later. I'm tired."
Dakko didn't notice his own smile until it vanished at the sound of Lalek gagging as she tried to swallow some water from her flask. He didn't say anything until Ido had fallen into a fitful sleep.
"Just in a mood, huh?" Dakko swept his fingers through the grit on the floor. "Sure."
"Our lovely crocodile has moods, yes. And they'll never tell anyone why." Lalek scratched her neck and coughed.
"I think it's pretty obvious this time." Dakko's lip quivered. "They're worried about you."
"Why would they be?" she scoffed. "Rizval's old enough to know what crocodiles and mosquitoes are. They've seen lots of people come and go. What's one more matter?"
He glanced toward the door. "Maybe that's exactly why it matters."
"Rockpile." Lalek rasped Rizval's nickname for her. "Rockpile. Crocodile. Kid. Fuzzball. Kittycat. We're not even people to them. They can handle it." She stared off into space, seeming to talk more to herself than to him. "I can't, though. Not like this...m'tired..."
Dakko's eyes widened. "Lalek?"
She flinched. "Sorry."
"No, it's fine." Dakko hauled himself up and brushed dust off himself. "I think I just need some air," he lied. "Going for a walk. Take care of my brother for me?"
Of course, all it took to make Lalek smile was the suggestion that she could still be helpful somehow. "Of course."
He forced a smile in return and stepped outside with some half-true reassurance he'd be back soon, but as he closed the door, it felt far too final.
Rizval's tracks stretched around the back of the shed, and Dakko could just make out the sound of their voice as they sang off-pitch, some nonsense serenading to a cat begging them for fish scraps.
Dakko couldn't resist a chuckle. He knew Rizval always thought no one could hear them singing, and he wasn't about to be the first one to tell them otherwise. That off-kilter song was like birds in the trees. A silent world meant peril. He couldn't stand quiet ever again.
Rizval's singing softened to humming when a wagon clattered its way down the nearest path, accompanied by the chatter of children clearly making too much fun out of an errand. Someone yelled a greeting, and Rizval yelled one back.
We're not even people to them. Lalek's words resonated in his mind. In how many ways was that true?
Focus. Dakko bit his tongue. Lalek needed help, even if she wouldn't let anyone know it, but who could help? Ami had rushed them all out of the farmhouse and said she'd come find them when it was safe, but how would anyone know?
She'd said there was a holf. A beast that hides in holes and sings you lies, she'd explained, and it can take a brown bear's head off in just one bite.
He'd tried to ask where Kolo and Azvalath were. When Xigon and Qila would get back. But she'd just hurried him and his brother out with Lalek, Rizval, and the medicine that Lalek kept refusing to take because she insisted it made it even harder to eat and drink.
When the cart and its passengers were gone, Dakko stumbled out and down the path in some direction he vaguely remembered having come from.
It was a slightly warmer day than usual, which Dakko was grateful for, but it also meant more people were out, and after prolonged dark and quiet he quickly found himself overwhelmed by the village's bustle. By the time he managed to stagger into wider streets, his head ached almost worse than his joints. "Focus, just focus," he muttered to himself. "Just need to find...who? Who can help?"
He nearly ran into someone carrying a heavy crate, then scrambled sideways and tripped on the edge of a pothole. Dakko flailed his arms out and caught himself at the last second on another stranger's coat.
He thought it was Master Qila for a split second, at least until she shoved him backward. "Hands to yourself, boy! I'm not your mother. "
"Sorry!" He staggered into a wall. "I didn't mean..."
She left before he could finish the sentence. Dakko sank against the wall and curled his head into his knees, feeling utterly helpless.
He stayed there for a while, shivering and scared to look up. People passed him by without even the slightest acknowledgement. Somehow, being ignored felt worse than being hit or kicked or screamed at. Dakko scolded himself in the silence. He wasn't an innocent little boy and hadn't been for ages. It wasn't anyone else's job to pick him up and do all the hard things for him.
Air chilled to near-liquid cold in his lungs. He held his breath for a moment, let it burn, then sighed out a cloud of scalding cold steam. Spikes of pinkish-tinged ice bristled through his knuckles and nailbeds. It shouldn't have felt as good as it did. It shouldn't have sung to his heart as it did.
He drank in the cold until a long shadow fell over him. Then he drank in the bliss of something immense wrapping its grip around his nerves. Dakko leaned back, nearly content enough to sleep right then and there.
Long fingers caught the back of his skull and forced his eyes to meet another gaze. One of Master Xigon's eyes was obscured by a bandage, but the other was dilated with something fierce. "Dakko, get up."
"Mmh..." He blinked heavy eyelids. "What happened?"
"You tell me." Xigon pulled Dakko's hood tighter over his head and drew him into a warming embrace. "What are you doing out here alone, hypothermic enough to draw me in from halfway across the village? Do you know what could happen?"
"Hypothermic...?" Dakko couldn't understand why. It had seemed almost hot outside not too long ago. "Drew you in...?"
"Get up." Xigon pressed his thumb near the base of Dakko's neck, flooding him with a sense of warmth that unlocked his icy joints. "With me. One, two—"
Dakko yelped as the tall man hoisted him up, but managed not to fall back down. Sweat and frost mixed on his brow. "I'm sorry, I wasn't trying to...I didn't mean to..."
Xigon planted one of his crutches between them. "Walk with me."
He placed an unsteady hand over Xigon's and did as he was told, struck mute with a dread he couldn't name. Passersby scattered as they went. Dakko rubbed his eyes with his other wrist and kept scolding himself. Why had he let that happen just now? Why had he almost given up in the middle of a street on a day that wasn't even that terrible?
Why was he leaning on someone else's crutch for bare minimum strength?
"You could have frozen to death," Xigon said at some point, once they were out of anyone else's sight or earshot. "And everyone on that street would have let you."
"But you didn't," Dakko stammered. He followed Xigon into a sheltered nook between two houses built close together, both of them ducking to avoid icicles.
Xigon leaned against a wall and brought one arm around Dakko's shoulders. "I'm keeping my promise." Something heavy hung over those words. "Listen to me next time."
"Your promise." The boy stared up at a melting icicle, then down at the tiny, deepening crater where cold drips landed like tears. "Can Haode still feel anything?"
"I'll never let Kaosaan..." Xigon trailed off, then shook his head. "What are you really asking?"
"I don't know." Dakko reached up and clenched his fingers around Xigon's hand again. Even with the master's glove and Dakko's wrist brace between them, the contact soothed the ache deep in his bones. "And I don't know why I did any of that just now. I was looking for you, or for anyone who could help really, but I didn't mean to—”
“—endanger yourself in the process?" Xigon finished. "As it stands now, to look for me is to endanger yourself. On some level, you must know that." His fingers trembled slightly under Dakko's. "It's about Lalek, isn't it?"
"How'd you know?" The boy knew the answer as soon as he'd asked.
Xigon's more pronounced tremor was all the confirmation he needed.
"What can we do to help her?" Dakko squeezed the master's hand. "There's got to be something, right?"
Xigon's breath caught for a second. "You've already demonstrated you wouldn't resist me even if I commanded it of you."
The dripping icicle snapped and then shattered against the hard-packed dirt.
"Only Kolo has succeeded in that, and she's left everyone but Azvalath unguarded." There was a strange shift in his tone. "I'll try again, then, and if you refuse again, understand you're eventually condemning Lalek to what I would have just done to you as well as Haode, were I even slightly less sound."
Dakko's heart dropped into his stomach, but he didn't move a muscle.
"Dakko." The master's voice snapped him back to attention. "Incapacitate me right now, make your escape, and wait for Ami to come. She will feel the same draw as I do, but not to consume." He pulled his hand away from Dakko and gripped his crutches tighter. "Don't hold back. I know what you can do."
"No!" The boy yelped like he'd been struck. "I don't want to hurt you!"
"You won't, Dakko." Xigon's posture straightened and his unbandaged eye grew wider, drinking in something no one else could see. "I can no longer guarantee I won't hurt any of you, though. Spare me that risk a little longer. I beg it of you."
Dakko took a step back.
Xigon dropped one crutch and shot his arm out to grab Dakko. He didn't say anything else, but his uncovered eye was impossibly wide and an insidious violet was creeping into it. Were there tears behind that deepening pulse of some far more colossal power?
The boy had never seen anything like it. He wanted to behold it forever, even if it meant—
"Please." Xigon's voice cracked. "Help me."
That pleading was too cruel of an echo to ignore, so Dakko tried Ami's suggestion from earlier and chilled Xigon's inner ear.
Xigon clutched his temple and sank against the wall before folding to his knees. His head dropped toward his chest. "Thank you. Now run."
"No." Dakko crouched in front of the disoriented man. "Ami's got it from here, right? You said so. I'm not leaving you."
"I could kill you," Xigon hissed.
"You won't, though." Dakko let out a dry chuckle. "If it were as straightforward as monsters and good people, I'd just be another tragedy." His cold fingers brushed over shards of half-melted ice, refreezing them. "I know someone or another would be up in arms, but I'd rather you teach me your way than let me be another damned tragedy."
Xigon pursed his lips. A small streak of blood leaked out from under the bandage over his eye. "Very well, then." He wiped the blood away. "If for no other reason than this is the loudest you've spoken your will since we met."
They grabbed each other's hands, one cold and one bloody, and neither shaking any longer.
I'm a writer. I was wondering if you can give pointers on realistic and respectful writing of a character who has had a brain injury. Especially things to avoid that may be wrong/hurtful.
I'm sure this person would love extra contributions in replies or reblogs too! But here's some stuff I compiled so far
1.
I think it's important to think about why you want to portray a character with a brain injury
If your reason for wanting to portray it is anything related to using that character's brain injury as a major plot inconvenience (eg. they forget a piece of information and the whole mission is ruined), I really don't recommend it. It's not entertaining writing as it is and just it makes the character seem like a burden to the plot.
If you just want one symptom for plot reasons (like memory difficulties), also ditch the brain injury idea. Either you intend to represent the whole experience or none of it!
I'd say similar things if the character is just going to feel hopeless or awful about it the entire time and it's going to be constantly used to make the readers emotional - we eventually have to live with it, even if accepting it takes time, and learning to accept your disabilities is something that desperately needs representing. Brain injuries are not some kind of eternal punishment for people with them, nor a tear-jerking tragedy for people without them
2.
Do proper research into brain injuries and zone in on what's applicable to your character
What is the cause of their brain injury? What type of brain injury is it?What parts of the brain were affected? How long has it been since they acquired it? How comfortable are they with their reality now? Do they have access to proper medical care and means of recovery? What will their symptoms actually look like?
All of this is important if you want your character to feel fleshed out in this area too
3.
Run your work by people with brain injuries who offer it!!!! You can find people on writing subreddits, discord servers, in-person, all sorts of places, who'd like you to ask questions and help in the writing of your character
Don't just talk about us, include us in the conversation. Acknowledge that you cannot fully understand our experience and so you cannot make the rules on how to portray it respectfully!
4.
Listen to our stories! Spend time with us online and in person if you can! There are so many stories from people with brain injuries on all social media platforms - do not use their words directly without permission, but you can certainly learn from their experiences and think about what your character's experience might look like
I really like this article it goes pretty in-depth into all areas of brain damage & injuries and recovery in writing
5.
Flesh out your character just as much in every other applicable area - if you overly expand upon their disabilities only for the character themself to be pretty lackluster, you're not portraying a real person anymore, you're just portraying the concept of a brain injury
AVOID:
- The 'You're not the same person anymore' trope, where a character experiences an accident or head trauma and is suddenly an entirely different person on every level. It's pretty much just used as an emotional plot device. Severe brain damage can result in significant changes in personality, but they are the same person
- Doom and gloom, where you're essentially just writing pure angst intended to make the audience emotional with no real representation of the disability outside the context of 'this is really sad'
- Comedic relief, where a character's brain injury is used almost exclusively as a humorous tool (eg. haha they keep forgetting things, haha they talk weird, haha they lost their train of thought, haha they behave inappropriately and don't realise it)
- And I'm not saying you can't do something amnesia-related, but if you're looking for a plot device that'll cause a character to do something like forget their entire life before that point for a very prolonged period of time and receive little to no medical intervention, please find a fictional means for it (eg. fantasy/sci-fi elements) instead. It's just so overdone and it's always written as caused by a head injury that you'd expect to result in TBI, but those effects are not realistic for TBI
How to write a character with amnesia article
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I'd love to see what others have to add to this! I know it's not uncommon for some people to say you shouldn't even try to represent other people's disabilities, but I don't think that's a realistic way to approach it, especially when lots of us would love to write fiction about brain injuries but struggle to because of said brain injury
Brain injury survivor myself, and also a writer. “Brain injury” is as much a blanket term as “bone injury.” Which bone? How severe? A mild concussion is a brain injury, and so is getting shot in the head. And depending on which regions are affected, your character’s experience could look any number of ways.
My injury was severe enough that I spent a month in the ICU and a couple more months in outpatient rehab. Seven months later I still have reduced short-term memory, difficulty producing verbal speech (though I can understand it perfectly), weakness and altered sensation in my right leg, chronic nerve pain in my right hand, inability to feel hunger or thirst, and episodes of debilitating fatigue after cognitively demanding tasks. None of that bothers me half as much as the mood swings between explosive rage and near lethal depression that are more likely a side effect of my anti-seizure medication.
I don’t appreciate pity. What I do appreciate is people treating me like a person and assuming I am capable, but still lending a hand when I ask. Just like I would do for them if our situations were reversed.
And FFS, do NOT use it for plot-convenient amnesia! Don’t! Find any other way to do that. My protagonist’s plot-convenient amnesia (hello, I’m not above that either!) was magically induced. Not a brain injury.
While we’re on that, I’m begging all of writerdom to stop hitting characters in the head to knock them out and using that as a temporary, harmless way to remove someone from a scene until they wake back up.
Easy enough to say the first words, but when the corpselike beast’s head wrenched up with a sound like bone cracking, Kolo’s resolve snuffed out like a candle under a cold draft.
Azvalath squeezed their hands together around the talisman. He was shaking too, but his words came out sharp. “Now do as Kolo commands.”
The emaciated dog stood up on frail, bony legs that seemed far too long for its body. It took a few heaving gasps of air and pressed its head firmly into the wall behind the altar. Linn’s smile only brightened as the rest of the body contorted in his host’s agony.
Kolo swallowed hard. “Why are you still here?”
Hello starving, starving. It hurts, it hurts, it hurts, hurts, hurts starving please KOLO PLEASE
Linn didn’t speak so much as fill her mind with harsh noise.
“I’m not here to feed you,” she said coldly. “It’s not my fault you used this host up faster than you should have. It’s yours.”
Azvalath gave her a strange look.
“How many bodies have you gone through now?” Kolo remembered Valielit’s crawling husk. “Kaosaan must be engorged on your scraps by this point. Yet we call her Destroyer, and you the Iron God’s will. How could that be?”
Linn didn’t say anything, but Kolo’s eyes told her enough; their god’s will was nothing but a corpse that couldn’t stop breathing. It pushed its head into walls for meager relief from pain that devoured. And it smiled like it burned in hope crueler than flames.
Or maybe it only looked like a smile because that was what everyone said. Maybe it was really a grimace or a wound.
Linn turned toward her. A string of saliva dripped from a broken yellow tooth. Their eyes met, mirror images despite everything. Kolo broke out in sweat. The universe narrowed to the space between their gazes.
Kolo forgot their surroundings. Her childhood home and hell. The talisman. Aza’s hand. Everything but the gap.
She reached an unseen hand across. As she closed the distance, the air around them stilled, then grew so scorching hot her head seemed to spin. She went from shivering to sweating through her coat in half a second, like something immense was breathing gusts of heat down her back.
Then there was an all-too-familiar needling crawl around her nerves.
“Kaosaan.”
Kolo gasped.
Perpendicular to her and Linn were two other figures, immaterial but somehow still present. One was Xigon, holding something that might have once been a human but now looked stripped of all that made it so. The other was the hungry thing Vraelen had spared them all from once or twice, to some end that probably didn’t mean anything.
If they could still see, the great blue eyes surely wept.
Kolo was dimly aware of tears running down her cheeks as Xigon diverted Kaosaan’s attention. She couldn’t help but wonder how long he’d been doing that while everyone else carried on.
Because no one else will, the image of Linn’s vacant smile supplied. Kolo’s skin crawled with the memory of Valielit’s cold claw-fingers on her neck. Had it even been Valielit at that point? She clutched her forehead. Her skull pounded like it might burst, and she started to grasp what she’d fought and failed to forget.
As Vraelen fought and failed to forfeit his own heart and will, lest he not be, lest he become undoing.
Kolo was, because Vraelen was too much of a coward to not be.
Linn and then Valielit became, multiplied, and devoured, because Vraelen was too craven to hold onto power and risk becoming something more like Kaosaan.
The squirming pain behind her eyes blurred and tinted everything purplish. “You wished I’d realize your disciples’ dream, Vraelen?” Kolo took a shaky breath. “You should’ve done that yourself, or at least let us all die in peace.”
Linn’s host whined in what seemed like its own voice, breaking through the forced grin for a last plea. Kolo let it sniff her ghost hand and it leaned into a gentle scratch behind what remained of an ear.
In the corner of her eye, Xigon’s mirage moved and diverted Kaosaan’s attention. Kolo couldn’t help but feel she and the master were caught in the same web. Driven to give what no god could. She could only hope she would stay a shred more human than he was, if she were ever unfortunate enough to endure five digits’ worth of years.
She petted Linn’s spent host as much as it wanted, until the smile vanished.
The images of Xigon and Kaosaan faded too, leaving her with the emaciated dog and no Azvalath.
Kolo’s fist tightened around the lightningfisher tooth. “Aza? Aza!”
“Shhh!”
Their eyes illuminated and found each other. He was at the front door, holding it shut.
Kolo backed into the loathsome portrait, knocking its frame askew. “What’s going on?”
“Kolo, I’m sorry. I know you said—” He strained to catch his breath. “You said Linn preyed on the lone, right? Well, we’re most certainly not alone here.”
She heard it then. Heavy boots descended the front steps, followed by the whistling of a tune that sounded all too familiar.
Kolo clutched her ears and choked back a scream.
“Yeah, there’s someone else here.” Azvalath shuddered. “Kolo, where can we hide?”
She grabbed him in her unseen arms and bolted with him over to a ladder she remembered led to a storage loft.
Kolo scuttled up like a fleeing insect. When Azvalath followed, he made it two-thirds of the way up before a rung snapped under his foot and Kolo had to yank him up with her ghost appendages.
They had barely managed to duck under a roll of torn-up canvas before the door opened and spilled light across the cabin.
Kolo grabbed Azvalath’s hand and wrapped both their fingers around the lightningfisher tooth. His jaw clenched.
Another person, one bundled to obscurity in cold-weather gear, held the door open with one arm and had the other wrapped around a horse’s neck. In crept four fierce-looking hounds. Kolo would have thought they were wolves if not for the faintly glistening collars they wore.
Azvalath looked at the stranger and then at Kolo. She shrugged. She’d never seen them before, but she knew none of her old kin had survived. She couldn’t know this person. But what were they doing here?
The four hounds congregated around Linn’s spent host until their master spoke up. A man’s voice, soft and lilting. “Leave it. What’s in the loft?”
Kolo’s hands tightened into fists as claws clicked around the base of the ladder.
“Dinner, children?”
She felt Aza shiver against her. Kolo kept peeking through a hole in the blanket. The man looked taller than most of her kin had been, but it wasn’t impossible he had white hair under his hood or cloth mask. The dogs looked similar to the mongrels who rummaged the streets for food scraps and sometimes hosted the Grinner. What was dinner in any of their minds?
“Really? Then come on out.” The hounds’ master beckoned them back. “Go tell our friends.”
The dogs bounded back to him, tails wagging and jaws dripping, then disappeared out the door at full speed. Kolo gulped.
“Kaja, dear.” The stranger turned to his horse. “Someone is in the loft and scared to come down. Isn’t that funny?”
“Come on, Aza,” Kolo whispered. “Make him go away.”
Azvalath pressed a finger to his lips, urging her to be quiet.
The stranger didn’t seem to notice any noise, but the horse’s ears twitched.
“Oh, Kaja, it’ll be fine,” the man below cooed. “Today’s not a bad day at all. We can come back later.”
Kolo stared down as the intruder guided the horse backwards and closed the door. A moment later, there was a drum of hoofbeats as whoever it was rode off. Then she turned to Azvalath and snapped. “Why didn’t you do anything?”
Azvalath shrugged the canvas off. “Did you see how he talked to his animals? Like they understood?”
“People talk to walls if they’re lonely or mad enough,” Kolo pointed out. “I…didn’t like that at all.”
“Me neither.” Azvalath shook his head. “Because I think they did understand him. Which could be power from the Iron God.”
Kolo cocked her head. “Yeah, and?”
“And he mentioned friends.” Aza gave a miserable sneer. “Kolo, you might be about to meet your first outsiders.”
She still didn’t understand. “And…?”
“Well, maybe I’m wrong about him and his friends.” Azvalath looked down. “Rather hope so. Because most other Ferash Therall don’t like us.”
Kolo smirked. “Wonder why.”
He tried to change the subject. “For me, it looked like you and the Grinner stared at each other for ages like statues. What did it look like for you?”
Kolo pursed her lips. “I don’t know how to explain it, but I think you wouldn’t have wanted to see it.”
Aza rubbed his forehead. “You don’t have to shield me.”
“And you didn’t have to run me down and stab me.” She glared at him. “Yet here we are. I’ll do what I want.”
He shriveled at her words. “I guess you’re right.”
Any other trans identity that doesn’t fit into those three
Cis people who changed their name
Anyone who goes by a different name then the one their parents gave them regardless of how “good” of a person they are, or your personal feeling towards them
Somewhere, a fragile little god’s heart and will recognized each other, and something unfathomable held its breath.
The colossus craved what came next. No soul was too small for her to savor its exquisite undoing. Even before she was, she must have gazed long and wondered at the gap between existing and not. And when at last she could reach through that gap and bite and take, the Sight only grew more beautiful.
“Kaosaan.”
When another voice dared to draw her focus, her jaw poured a hot gust of wind and she offered her blessing again. Per usual, her stubborn little serpent refused. He clung to his ignorance and despair like a child to a cold mother’s hand.
“Mine are not yours to take,” he hissed.
right. they are yours. Kaosaan stared in amusement at what remained of the prey he’d stolen with the realization of his penultimate sacrament. The first soul he’d taken in full, and surely not the last. yours to hold in peace forever until nothing is left of their souls to break. receive my wisdom and my way is yours.
Xigon shielded his ears and held his walls.
Kaosaan whispered through his nerves anyway. repeat after me. She spelled out a secret he already knew. henceforth, you shall feast upon all souls to which you are drawn. drawn as the hound to the blood trail’s end, the culmination of Sight and Destruction.
For all his stubborn refusal, he couldn’t resist a glance.
good.
“Spare me your curse,” he all but begged, as if he hadn’t been the one to draw her attention.
She wrapped ink-black, pitying fingers around him. why protect them so, the heart and the reason? Kaosaan already knew, of course. But she wanted to hear him say it anyway.
“If Kolo doesn’t succeed before I fail…” The pain in his voice delighted her. Pain and something like a child’s innocence despite everything. She kept squeezing the words from him. “...then they’re the last hope…of this…” Xigon clutched his still-bleeding prize. “Of me...not being the fate of every person in the world.”
you are not such a bad way to die. Kaosaan tittered in his head. I wish you would try again sometime. the way you used to try when you hurt too much. don’t you remember how we became so familiar? you gave, you tried, you wondered, perfected, and finally, you took. take more. there is plenty. swallow their pain. feast.
“Leave me be,” Xigon growled. “Whatever you want, it won’t be here and now.”
Sure enough, he got up and walked off and returned to waking. He slept less again now, likely because she’d figured out how to creep in through his walls whenever he did. Not that he always noticed. He usually only thought he was dreaming — something he never used to do.
Even the wisest humans were naive when it came to what they couldn’t see.
When she turned her gaze back to the heart, the will, and the reason, they weren’t visible anymore. The beckon of a feast was gone. Kaosaan resigned herself once more to wait, knowing it likely wouldn’t be too long.
I'm a beta reader and editor happy to provide a honest and detailed feedback to strengthen your book, stories and genres
THIS AND ANY OTHER DOZENS OR SO OF BLOGS THAT RANDOMLY REACH OUT TO YOU AND OFFER TO “BETA READ YOUR WORKS” ARE BOTS BY THE WAY
>>> I’ve already talked about it here
Normally I’d just block and report, but I thought I’d post an example of what these bots are, since I got this ChatGPT ass ask “let me beta read your works 🥺” at least a dozen times from different dozen blogs with very similar scripts in the past few days.
Also, for a “beta reader and editor” there’s already a grammatical error in their message lol
Kolo met back with Azvalath, more than slightly shocked he hadn't changed his mind about accompanying her. If anything, the smile he gave when she greeted him was like a spark of life returned to a body that had little left.
He crouched down to inspect the contents of his rucksack. "How'd you know what to pack?"
"You left all your things in a drawer with a packing list from Qila. Written like you were some reckless little boy who always forgot socks." Kolo held out Aza's sword. "And needed permission from the four-legged glaring scarecrow to have this."
"Excuse me?" Azvalath stood up and snatched the hilt from her hand. "How did you...?"
"Long story." Kolo hauled the barn door open. A frigid gust swept her white hair back. "Maybe just imagine for right now."
A spark in the clouds caught her eye. Too small for a storm. A lightningfisher?
"Aza?" Kolo's voice dropped down to barely a squeak. "Yayaba and Jai-Lag have abilities like the rest of us, right?" She pressed her thumb into her teeth. "What are they?"
"Yayaba can see through blueholes and map the whole world in her head to locate the tiniest speck." Azvalath came up beside her. "And Jai-Lag always tracks down what she's looking for, no matter how or where. Why?"
"Just been wondering." Kolo swallowed. "Let's go."
Everything she didn't say tightened around her like cold claws.
Azvalath kept pace with her until the wind picked up enough to rip the warmth from their bodies. Drowning on dry land or not, he was still more fragile than he'd once been. Kolo's immediate reaction when he slumped down and curled in on himself was to snap and tug at him, only to realize she was shivering just as bad if not worse.
She hated to contemplate how often looking weak was just being honest. "Aza, please." Kolo wrapped invisible arms around him. "Come on."
"Where are we even going?" Azvalath's breath trembled. "Back to where it started, you said, but do you even know how to get there? Look around us. You see a path? A bluehole? A landmark? Anything?"
"Would you rather freeze to death in a field?" Kolo dug her numb hands into her pockets. "Aza, even the worst idea's better than that."
A sharper gust tore across the field. Azvalath's arms shifted to shield his ears.
Kolo crouched next to him. "All right, but it might be the worst idea I've ever had."
"First step, we stand back up." Azvalath got up and lended his arm to help her. "Cold ground's deadlier than the wind, I should know. Now what's the worst idea you've ever had?"
Kolo hauled herself up and brushed snow off her sleeves. Her hands, which had been stiff and numb a moment ago, now itched so bad she had to fight the urge to tear her gloves off.
...no one ever did find his fingers…
She pursed her lips. Vali, why?
Aza stepped in front of her. "You all right, Kolo?"
"Yeah." She forced a smile. "Just got two more ideas. One's good. One's even worse. Here's the good one."
Kolo reached out with several unseen appendages and bent them in such a way that her and Azvalath's shivering bodies were shielded from the wind. They both let out heavy sighs of relief. Aza even smiled. Really smiled. She didn't want that smile to fade. She feared if she spoke again, it would.
She swallowed the lump in her throat and spoke anyway. "At first, I thought the worst idea ever would be trying to get Sothyrion's attention somehow so he'd let us through right where we are. But no, I don't think we'll need to do that if we look for streams and follow the land downward, so the very worst idea I've ever had is telling you anything I'm about to tell you."
His eyebrows pressed into a slight scowl.
"I need to know what happened in my old village, not just me, but all of it. Valielit, the curses, all of it. I need to meet Linn again." Her fingers moved to the talisman at her neck. "And I need you for backup. He, Valielit, they preyed on the lone, I think."
The smile was gone. Somewhere, Linn's grin must have widened.
"There's something else too." As the ground sloped down the slightest bit, she practically leapt. "Aza, it's in the open now. Channei and I, we saw Qila..." Kolo choked up when she remembered the look of horror on Channei's face.
Azvalath cocked his head. "What about Qila?"
Kolo shook her head. "She wasn't acting right."
"Now..." Azvalath cut himself off as she pushed ahead of him. "Sorry. Could you elaborate?"
Kolo's stance relaxed. "Well, it didn't look right. But Xigon didn't seem all that shocked. He was way more worried about what might happen to you, I think. So he said—"
Azvalath interrupted like a reflex. "Now tell me exactly what Xigon said."
She glared over her shoulder. "He said you shouldn't seek him or Qila without me by your side, given evolving circumstances that make them both a growing danger." Kolo spilled what she remembered until the compulsion faded, then spoke her retaliation. "Now be silent until I say your name."
Azvalath's voice died in an instant. She couldn't hold back a sneer.
The long stretch of his forced silence, admittedly, did make it much easier for her to focus. Without his complaints, she even imagined they were making progress.
What she didn't consider, that maybe Aza might have considered, was the possibility they were being watched. Well, she didn't consider it until she saw another flicker of lightning in the clouds and remembered what Aza had said earlier about Yayaba and Jai-Lag's abilities.
Kolo snapped what she knew was a bizarre question over her shoulder. "Can Yaya and Jai-Lag read?"
Azvalath raised an eyebrow and shrugged.
Kolo cupped her hands in front of her mouth and yelled up at the sky. "Yaya! Master Xigon knows we're out here! Don't worry about it!"
The flashes stopped.
"Mighty good hearing." Kolo cleared her throat. "The more you know, the worse it gets, hm?"
Aza crossed his arms and looked away from her.
As they descended another slope, the ground under the snow seemed to grab at Kolo's feet. She lifted her leg up and found dark mud on the sole of her boot. When Azvalath discovered mud on his own boot, they met each other's gaze and ran together toward what surely awaited.
The glint of unfrozen water, the promised passage, had it ever looked so welcoming? So warm? Compared to the white wastes, boiling. She could have cried tears of joy.
Aza strayed from her side.
With unseen hands, she covered both their ears.
The bluehole wasn't a lie, but Kolo still wasn't impressed. "Slaaek, I don't appreciate you greeting us like prey."
The holf's jaw clamped shut. He sank deeper into his wallow, nearly vanishing into the earth despite his size.
"What?" Kolo strode up to him. "Are you following us?"
No, i'iba, never there again. One tufted ear pricked up and shifted toward the bluehole. There is something where you came from that even I dread.
"I'm done hiding from it." Kolo clutched her necklace and felt her own heart racing beneath. "I have to face it."
Slaaek's head lifted, then twisted to an uncanny angle that made his neck look broken. You're tiny little things to face what I cannot bite. He straightened, then hummed a soft, familiar tune she immediately hated to remember.
"Stop that." Kolo's voice came out less angry and more frightened. "Why do you know that tune?"
Behind her, Azvalath snapped his fingers. When she looked at him, he gestured frantically at the bluehole.
"Just a moment," she told him, then turned back to Slaaek's wide prying eyes. "The will-hound song. Like my grandmother would sing."
I don't know why you hear what you hear. Why do you see what you see? Because you're looking for it? Slaaek's lips curled back ever so slightly. It takes two to lure, i'iba.
Before she could think of anything else to say, Azvalath lost his patience and dragged her into the bluehole with him.
Sothyrion's unfreezing water ejected them somewhere the sun had just begun to rise. Kolo pushed herself up onto a gray slab of rock and tried to collect herself, to little avail. So she gave up and called Azvalath's name, loud and clear as she could manage.
Freed from his silence, he snapped at her. "Kolo, why'd you practically gag me for however long that was? Look, I'm sorry I used my power on you, but did you really have to do that?"
"Yeah." Kolo pulled a stray bit of white hair out of her face. "Otherwise, you'd have been asking a lot more questions than I would've been ready to answer."
Azvalath gave an exaggerated eyeroll, then came and sat down on the rock next to her.
She shifted slightly away from him. "What?"
"You said Master Xigon knows we're out here, and you got my sword from him, but you never told me how." Aza gripped the hilt on his belt. "You've barely said anything that makes sense."
"Because barely any of it makes sense." Kolo clutched her arms together. "Have you ever seen someone attack Xigon, but then he didn't fight back?"
"Yeah, he doesn't even flinch if I try to hit him. Just stops me mid-swing and redirects, like I'm no obstacle and he's not bothered." Azvalath stared off at nothing. "Hard to imagine anyone ever beating him at anything, but I've seen the scarring on his torso, and...well, you know how he has trouble walking, but I've never really understood how that—"
"Qila."
"Qila?" Azvalath repeated the name with a cracked voice. "What about her?"
Kolo took a deep, shaky breath. "I saw Qila dig her fingers in his eyes and threaten him while he just sat there shivering and didn't even try to fight back. Then all he did was worry about you. Not her, not himself. Just you. Like despite everything, he couldn't stand you not being all right. And it doesn't make any sense."
She watched Aza's fingers dig into his knees. His teeth bared. "I wish I never knew." His chin sank toward his chest. "How much the masters hate each other, and which one I'd choose if it came to that. Shit." He wiped sweat off his brow. "I've loved them both for so long. Trusted them better than my own eyes and ears. I shouldn't even think about this."
Kolo elbowed him sharply. "Think about it anyway." Then she stood up and took in their surroundings. The bluehole they'd emerged from was surrounded by weathered gray rock that gave way abruptly to the tallest grasses Kolo had ever seen, stalks that somehow stayed somewhat green pushing up through the snow like coarse hair. "I remember this place. Vali said it looked like bad sewing."
"Bad sewing, hm?" Azvalath glanced at a roughly-patched hole in his coat. "We must not be far, then."
"No." Kolo pursed her cracked lips. "I don't even wanna think about what we'll find."
"Think about it anyway." Aza repeated her earlier jab. "That's why we're here, right? Face our dread."
She scoffed. "Fuck you."
When Aza stood to follow her, Kolo pulled the talisman up out of her coat, then freed the cord from her neck. He watched with wary eyes. "You never take that off."
"Valielit showed me what this was for." She gripped the cord tight. The lightningfisher tooth glistened as she held it out to Azvalath. "And if I'm right, we're going to meet her father. So let's both hold it."
That was enough for him to take the tooth in shaky fingers, and they set off carrying it together.
The tall grass seemed to whisper with every rustle. Each slip and give of the unusually warm soil felt more like walking on a holf's back than on neutral ground. Even the way prickling grass stalks and shrub branches grabbed at their sleeves seemed calculated.
It was as if the land itself knew Kolo, had known she'd come right back. Like a moth burning its wings against Xigon's lamp.
When they came upon the dead village, the decaying structures judged her with even less subtlety. Holes in walls gaped at her. Skulls' empty eye sockets glared. Once-familiar corners and paths refused to speak.
They passed by a door hanging off rusted hinges, creaking lazily in the wind. Inside, three half-eaten skeletons lay under a broken table.
Azvalath stared through the entry. "Who were they?"
Kolo couldn't come up with an answer, so she simply tugged him past.
There were still fragments of old bones scattered around the pathways. Some still had torn fabric clinging to them. Their silence was louder than a whole world.
She brought Azvalath to a structure that still looked familiar. It was the biggest cabin, situated close to the village's center. A juvenile lightningfisher's skull with a huge hole between its eyes hung over the front door. A baby shot with a bolt through its head. Something Grandmother always called a trophy, but had always made Kolo want to put a similar hole in a cruel person's skull.
Azvalath's boot clinked against a broken chain that had once bound a guard dog.
"I lived here with my grandmother." Kolo forced the door open. "She was in charge of everything. When she died, I still lived here with the next person in charge. Then the next one, and the next one, and the next one, and so on."
Azvalath followed her in and coughed at all the dust. He looked around, and when he noticed what Kolo was already staring at, he squeezed her hand in some meager attempt at comfort.
Hanging on the wall was a painting of Kolo, as she'd once been. What they'd once desired. Her hair was much longer, and expression was inscrutable, more like Xigon's face than her own. No talisman around her neck. A grinning demon by her side. Just below it, a placard still glinted.
As promised, the heart and will
On the table that had once been a sort of altar, an emaciated dog lay with its muzzle split in a skull-like smile. And it sank right back in. "As promised, the heart and will." She gripped Azvalath's hand even tighter than he held hers. "Linn, I command thee..."
The thing's head shot up like a string pulled taut.
Once Kolo departed, Xigon hauled himself back up and jolted at every shadow in his peripheral vision. Had Qila not had her fill with him?
Or maybe she was finally done with him, and wanted to draw it out a good long time before plunging him into a torpor that could be his last. Before setting an hourglass for what could spell this world's doom, and she couldn't even know that.
He stared out into the dark snow-covered field and forced his way forward. Not that he could run, or even walk, really. He didn't have anything to aid his mobility, and he didn't have his goggles. All he could do was stagger near-blind. Each unsteady footfall shot pain all the way up his spine that was still mangled after all these years, every nerve and tissue he'd needed to rebuild after Qila unmade him all shrieking agony. With no one to see him, he didn't try to hold his tears back.
The first time he fell, it hardly fazed him. He forced himself back up, driven by a singular urge to get away from Qila. Even if he had earned her rage, she didn't know what was at stake if she had her way. She couldn't know. Nobody could know.
He fell again, much harder. It knocked his breath out. From there, he crawled on his stomach. The old scars, the ones that horrified everyone who saw them, felt colder than everything else.
Eventually, too drained to go on, he sat up and clawed blood out of his eye. Qila had it down to an exact methodology. If she wanted compliance he wouldn't give willingly, always his eyes.
But she had it all wrong this time. It wasn't a matter of willingness, he couldn't say why he was refusing. Not even Qila deserved Kaosaan's...NO not her STOP
As if trying not to think about something ever really made it smaller.
He looked down and watched his blood drip onto the snow, spotting the white with vivid red. A tiny red crater formed under his eyes while he curled inward, contorted in pain. He couldn't remember a time without pain. He also couldn't remember a time he'd been so incapable of detachment.
For all Qila's talk about necessary sacrifice and pushing through the grief, he rarely saw her do any of her own. No, he had always been the one to get his hands bloody. He had always watched her tears for a dead god carve and hollow her, like a slow trickle of water through rock. What had he ever been but a serpent to swallow her pain?
It didn't matter. Nothing mattered. Not when her command was inaction, vague enough out loud, but the intent left unspoken was perfectly clear. She wanted him to let Azvalath die out there, out of sight and mind.
Qila wasn't a fool. She must have known he would refuse. Just like he'd known Kolo would refuse his gift. He hadn't only known that, he'd counted on it. It seemed entirely feasible Qila might count on his defiance in the same way, maybe to justify something to herself. Or maybe he was spiraling to justify his own paranoia.
He curled his fingers into the ground until they were numb. His straining eyes fixated on the slow drip of red, so stark against the snow it practically had a light of its own. Light...a shadow…
Xigon turned with such speed he nearly fell backwards. His eyes landed on soul-heat and reacted with what he realized too late was excessive force. He couldn't even make out who it was until the person yelped and spewed obscenities in a voice he knew all too well by now.
"Ah! Fuck you, and fuck your filthy eyeballs!" Ami recoiled and pulled her lichen-crusted hat lower, as if it could shield her. "Do that again and I'll put 'em out for the deer, you paranoid shit."
"Deluminate your eyes." Panic leaked through his voice. "Now."
"Right, I can do that now." Ami rubbed her eyes. "Wait, why?"
"Light lets shadows through. Qila can reach me that way." He made a grabbing gesture. "Not like anyone except I would know. Is she still there? Are the others still with her?"
"No, no. Don't sweat that." Ami hooked his left arm around her shoulders and took up as much of his weight as she could bear. "Qila made herself scarce. No saying when she'd come back to collect, though. So I ran outside, rolled in some mud, then came back in and told everyone I smelled a holf been lurkin' near the house and everyone had to leave. So they all cleared out, even our lovely hosts. Though, come to think of it, I never did put my eyes on Channei."
"Good. She might have taken my word, then." He tried to shift some of his weight off Ami, even though it made him wince. "And I apologize. I mistook you for someone else at first."
"Like anyone else could've sniffed you out past the front door? Save it and take these." She dug something out of her pocket and handed it to him. His goggles returned some clarity to the world when he put them back on. Before he could thank her, she gave him an ugly look. "If you want your crutches back too, those come with a price. Come on now, before you try and heckle, see how you like me dragging you first. Too damn cold for this."
Xigon fought to contain his shivers as Ami coaxed him somewhere. He hoped it could pass for a mere physical reaction to the cold wind, rather than intense fear clawing through every nerve. As if he could hide it from her after she'd tracked him down by scent. He held his breath when he saw Ami's nostrils flare, then let out a quiet sigh when she made no comment.
All her wildness and bluster aside, Ami was surprisingly gentle. She didn't rush him the same way Qila did, and she didn't snap at him or even comment at all whenever he stumbled, just repositioned so neither of them would fall.
Painstakingly, she brought him back to the house, which, true to her word, was now deserted. As he folded to the floor in exhaustion, Ami slammed the door. "I should tell you, the holf smell wasn't wholly a lie. Can you see 'em when they're hidden in the ground?"
"Yes," he assured. "I can see their soul heat. We'll be safe."
"Good, good." Ami brushed snow off herself. "All right. Now, if you want your crutches back, I want two things in return."
"Sounds unjust." He pressed his back against the wall, tilting his head up to gaze at the ceiling. "May as well take my limbs."
Ami ignored him. "For your crutches, first, you'll let me examine and treat your injuries." She crouched in front of him. A heavy tote dropped by her side. "Second, you'll tell me straight what happened to cause 'em. Don't think I'll believe for one second that any of this was an accident or that it was just. Am I clear?"
He seethed. One of his lenses was smudged with blood, but through the other he could see she looked livid enough to strangle someone barehanded. Xigon lifted his goggles up and rubbed his eyes. "Very well."
She grabbed his wrist and yanked the hand away from his face. "Stop that. The blood's inflaming your eye." Her eyes lit up. "Sorry about the light. I do need to see what I'm doing, though."
Xigon somehow didn't startle at the light. Either because he lacked the energy, or because he was truly calmer. He wasn't sure of the difference anymore.
He did, however, wince when Ami's gloved finger brushed against the cut near his brow.
"Right down to bone." Ami's tone was icy. "And not a glancing blow. Near uniform depth, like someone made it slow and on purpose."
Xigon glared her straight in the eyes. His jaw clenched tight. So did his hands. It took every ounce of resolve to not attack the prying thing in front of him. He swallowed the lump in his throat and took a deep, shuddering breath.
She pulled back to give him space. "If you're injured anywhere else, please show me."
Xigon stared in fascination at the tears and wrath slowly igniting in Ami's eyes. His lips twitched, half-grimace and half-smirk.
Ami watched him in equally dreadful fascination as he removed his outer layers, stripping down to his undershirt. Then, after a long hesitation, he took the undershirt off as well. And he let Ami take in the awful, bloody history etched in scars.
"Do you know what Qila and I used to do?" He held his arms out. "We never called it what it was. We told ourselves we were rebalancing the world. That we were adjusting it to its new reality, and without our interventions, far more people would die fighting each other as the world died to Vraelen's absence."
"Yeah, I remember. I was born sometime in those years." Ami's nonchalant response made his stomach turn. "So what would you call it now?"
"Genocide," he snarled without much hesitation. "I always knew it. Though I still thought I'd give an end less cruel than their neighbors, than Qila, or the colder and colder nights. I thought I could take up their pain, bear it all myself. And I started to mark myself so I couldn't mistake myself for someone innocent."
"See, there you go again, pretending like you're honest." Ami bared her teeth. "What is this, then?"
Her hand pressed to the middle of his torso, right where Qila's hand had fallen to rend so much of his flesh from existence that he would never live another day without pain. And something in Xigon cracked. His head pounded. His eyes stung. And when he tried to answer, a strangled sob clawed its way from deep in his chest.
Ami flinched. "Xigon?"
"It wasn't the first time I stood over two dead armies." His fingernails dug into his palms. "But I wanted it to be my last. I'd had enough. But Qila, she was so proud of me. She loved me like a hunter loves his very best dog. I still couldn't take it anymore. So I attacked her. And she..."
Ami remained motionless, listening intently.
"She...defended herself." He didn't know how to phrase it apart from repeating Qila's justification. "That's what she told me. That's what it's always been. I've always been the one dangerous and out of control, never Qila. Never Vraelen's precious flower." His sobs cracked into hideous laughter. "Never his precious flower that he planted only to let her wither and freeze because he can't or won't provide! And still, I cannot ever be in the right, because of where all this bloodshed quite naturally leads my mind."
Ami took a sharp breath in. "So, why'd she cut you this time?"
"Because she wants me to accept my students' supposedly inevitable deaths, and I won't." Xigon reached for his eyes again, but resisted the urge to rub them. "Unlike her, I can't so easily give up the only thing that keeps me even remotely human. Because even if she somehow reunites with Vraelen through whatever she and Sothyrion are imagining, what good is that if I succumb to Kaosaan's enlightenment first?"
"Kaosaan's...wait, what?" Ami lunged and shoved him against the wall. "You're in that deep?"
"I kept reading Kiiri's last chapter." Xigon looked up at the ceiling. "Turns out, it's a warning you can only read if you're entangled enough for Kaosaan to translate the pages for you." He closed his eyes. "As far as I'm concerned, my god isn't Vraelen. My gods are the ones left behind. The ones who keep me a person.""Very well, person." Ami let go of him. "Shut up and let me work."
i mean this in the gentlest way possible: you need to eat vegetables. you need to become comfortable with doing so. i do not care if you are a picky eater because of autism (hi, i used to be this person!), you need to find at least some vegetables you can eat. find a different way to prepare them. chances are you would like a vegetable you hate if you prepared it in a stew or roasted it with seasoning or included it as an ingredient in a recipe. just. please start eating better. potatoes and corn are not sufficient vegetables for a healthy diet.
Celery sticks (add some peanut butter or cream cheese for extra flavor and protein)
Broccoli (good with ranch, cheese, or salt/pepper/butter)
Canned peas (you can microwave in a microwave-safe bowl. Good with salt/pepper/butter)
Bell peppers (cut into strips, good with cream cheese)
Canned green beans (can be microwaved in microwave-safe bowl. Good with salt/pepper/butter)
Hummus (good with crackers or tortilla chips)
Salsa (good with tortilla chips)
Guacamole (good with tortilla chips)
Need it in something?
Can't see it:
Hummus
salsa
Guacamole
Can see but disguised flavor (can usually be found store bought or done at home and use different veggies):
Dressed up ramen - just toss in some random veggies in ramen of your choice. Pretty much everything I've tried goes fine with it.
Chicken pot pie
Vegetable soup (with so many together it's hard to taste any specific one!)
Chicken noodle soup
Sweet and sour pork (haven't tried it but chicken should be fine in place of pork)
Texture problems:
Need it soft:
Hummus
Salsa
Guacamole
Cooked carrots
Avocados
Beans (personally I prefer black beans and canned baked beans)
Peas (make sure to cook well, great value brand has the softest peas I've tried)
Cooked broccoli (note: it does smell bad while cooking)
Cooked asparagus (note: also smells bad while cooking)
Cooked zucchini and squash (good together but can be eaten separate)
You can also puree most vegetables and eat with a spoon or use them as a dip
Needs to be crunchy:
Raw carrots
Raw celery
Raw bell peppers
Salad (remember you can put whatever you want in it! Even if that means no lettuce)
Most veggies are okay raw, and are usually very crunchy
Veggies google says stay crunchy after lightly cooking:
Snap peas
Brussel sprouts
Cabbage
Water chestnut
Bamboo shoots
Broad texture tips:
You can change textures by eating raw, cooking, chopping, pureeing, etc
You can separate different textures to use in different ways (ie using broccoli tops in a soup and eating the bottoms raw)
It also really helps to think about why you dislike a vegetable. I found that I am scared of green foods so I like to use those veggies for ingredients in things they are well hidden for. I've also learned that watching something while eating helps because then I'm not looking at the gross green things. When possible, I also like to get help hiding it (ie using cream of celery soup in my chicken and dumplings).
Remember that vegetables are important because they contain nutrients that other foods don’t contain. NOT because they are low calorie.
Eating vegetables slathered in pork fat is always better than not eating vegetables. In fact fat will help you absorb the nutrients. Get those nutrients in your body by any means necessary.
I’m autistic and I can attest that many of these tricks helped me go from scared of vegetables to loving them, but only if I cook them myself and have total control. Prepping your own food in general is helpful.
That being said, there is absolutely nothing wrong with buying frozen or canned vegetables. Especially if you tend to forget something is in the fridge until it’s disgusting! And don’t listen to anyone who tries to tell you they’re inferior to fresh produce. And if you have trouble chopping things, a lot of canned and frozen veggies come pre-cut!
The dark, quiet farmhouse seemed more perilous than the frigid fields. Kolo closed the door and took her boots off as silently as possible, jolting at every small scuff that might have made a noise. It was hard to tell with her ears ringing, but no one woke up and came out right away, so she figured she must have been stealthy enough.
At least, she thought so until she heard the familiar rhythm of thuds and clicks that meant Xigon was moving about somewhere. Distant, then louder, then silent. Then his gaze hooked tiny cold teeth around her nerves.
“Um…hey.” She spoke up before he could ask what she was doing. “I thought I heard someone outside. I was gonna tell you, but you were sleeping and I didn’t know if it could wait a few minutes, so I went to check.”
“I’ve been awake for well over an hour since.” Xigon leaned against the wall. “You were out for a long time, then. Was anyone there?”
“I didn’t find anyone, but I wanted to be thorough.” She looked over her shoulder. If he caught her bluff, she doubted it would end well. “I’m going back to bed now. Sorry.”
“Due diligence is nothing to apologize for.” He looked down at her as she retreated past him. “However, I can’t recommend you go alone next time.”
“Noted, thank you.” She hazarded a second of eye contact, then ducked into the bunkroom, nearly sweating through her shirt with anxiety.
To make things worse, she heard his steps thud and click to a halt right outside the door. With clenched teeth, she waited for the knob to turn. A minute stretched on long enough to make her squirm before she heard him move away.
Only when she was sure he was gone did she creep over to the bunk she’d been sharing with Channei, under which all her belongings were haphazardly squirrelled away. She tried to run a list of essentials through her mind, but she was woefully unaccustomed to doing any of this without help.
Kolo grabbed a strap on her rucksack and slid it out from under the bed as quietly as possible. It was still heavy enough that she reasoned she probably hadn’t unpacked anything vital, and if she had, well…maybe Aza had something? Did he have his things?
Fuck. Of course he didn’t have his belongings. He’d been stripped of most everything when Ami had imposed a quarantine to keep anyone else from picking up his contagions, or however she’d phrased it. She’d have to—
Something moved on the bunk. A lump that had looked more like a pillow than a cat opened drowsy eyes, then stretched into the more familiar shape of Channei. “Kolo, what’re you doing? You’re breathing so loud.”
“Huh? Sorry.” Kolo looked down and scratched the back of her neck. “I was looking for the scarf Rizval gave me, but I just remembered I let Aza borrow it. Where’d he put all his stuff? I don’t wanna bother him.”
“So you’ll snoop through his stuff instead of bothering him.” Channei smirked. “Solid plan. I’m sure he’ll love that. He put his stuff in the second drawer from the bottom of that dresser over there. Probably all jerkass-perfectionist too.” She yawned. “How badly do you need it right now, though? Come back to bed.”
“Quiet please, Channei.” Xigon’s voice broke through the door.
Channei shoved her forehead into the pillow and groaned something about surely being quieter than Aza. Xigon ordered her to step out and talk to him at once. Channei groaned some more and got up. Kolo withheld a giggle at the perfect distraction. Of course, in any other circumstance, she’d hate Channei getting lectured by a master for anything, but right now? It happened to work well in her favor.
Still as quiet as possible, Kolo opened the drawer Channei had indicated. Sure enough, inside were neat rows of rolled-up clothes and gear sorted by type and function. Best of all, at the top of the stacks was a note in Qila’s handwriting.
Azvalath – going anywhere? Don’t forget:
Spare clothing and footwear, gloves and socks not optional. Remember when Kiiri didn’t change her sock after falling through ice? Don’t do that.
Waterskin. Beware stagnant water sources.
Provisions with long shelf life
Flint for firesetting
Bedroll (remember, cold ground kills faster than cold wind!)
If given clearance, report to Master Xigon for armament.
Kolo shoved everything she saw on the list into Aza’s travel pack, baffled but hardly complaining at her luck, though when she got to the end of the list, her blood went cold.
If given clearance, report to Master Xigon for armament. It seemed wrong. Like mockery. Sure, Azvalath couldn’t be trusted with a weapon, but…neither could Xigon. At least Aza was honest in his brutality. Aza didn’t hide it under some soft-spoken illusion.
Kolo secured the rucksack closed and pushed the drawer shut. From the hallway there was clattering, then a shrill laugh from Channei, then dead silence.
Rizval stirred at all the noise, then rolled over and pulled their blanket over their head.
Kolo swallowed hard and looked at everyone else to make sure she wasn’t being watched. Ido was sweating on top of his blanket, having dozed off with a sketchpad still in his hand. Dakko was cocooned in all the warmth he couldn’t be without, twitching with each breath he released. Lalek lay curled in on herself, gaunt and grimacing. Kolo’s gaze lingered on her and Channei’s old roommate. How wrong the image was. Where were Lalek’s muscles now? Where was the smile that lit up a room?
Channei was right. Valielit had brought freezing hell into their home, and Lalek deserved it the least out of everyone.
Valielit.
Heat flared in Kolo’s chest. Anger gnawed its way through whatever semblance of caution she’d tried to maintain.
When she heard more noise from the hallway, she opened the drawer, grabbed both Aza’s rucksack and her own in invisible appendages, and threw her own over her shoulders. The next sound she heard was alien enough to break her focus and her phantom grip. Azvalath’s rucksack fell beside the door when she heard Xigon take a sharp breath, as if something had burned him, then whimpered in a way that made him sound small. She remembered Valielit.
She stormed out into the hall.
Channei was flattened against the wall, both hands clamping her own mouth closed, and her skin was a haphazard fluctuating patchwork of every shape she’d ever been. Her eyes were blown wide with panic, but not for herself. She was staring over at Xigon and Qila.
Qila had him on his knees, pressing his eyelids shut with her thumbs. His goggles and crutches lay thrown out of his reach. There was fresh blood running down the side of his face, and he was visibly, violently shaking.
“Don’t spend yourself on a fool’s errand. You know better.” The old woman’s tone was more venomous than Kolo had ever known was possible. “I’m quite certain you also know better than to throw a fit while I’m talking to you.” She pressed harder into his eyes, making him stop breathing for a moment. “You know we have to accept what happens even if it breaks our hearts. Tell me you understand.”
Kolo broke into a cold sweat. When Channei grabbed her hand, she felt it trembling as hard as her own.
They fled down the hall and out onto the front porch as fast as they could. Once they were outside, Channei crumpled, shivering against the deck rail. “Kolo, did you know?”
“Know what?” Kolo settled next to Channei and wrapped an arm around her.
“That Master Qila…” Her breath caught on a sob. “That she treats him like that?”
Kolo shook her head. “No, not really. What started it, do you know?”
“Master Xigon didn’t pull me out to scold me.” Channei glanced back at the front door. “He called me out of the room to tell me that Azvalath was missing, could be in danger, and needed me to scout the area for evidence of his whereabouts. He also didn’t want you or Qila knowing. Well, once one ship sailed, might as well let the other too.” She let out a dry chuckle. “Thing is, why would Master Qila be so angry at him for wanting to save…?”
Channei didn’t even finish the question.
“Maybe they don’t want the same things.” Kolo squeezed Channei’s hand. “Could you distract them for me long enough to get something out of the bunkroom?”
“How?” Channei asked.
Kolo’s lips curled in a tiny smirk. “Ever seen a badger?”
“Yeah, can’t decide whether they’re ugly or cute.” She cocked her head. “How’s that relevant?”
“Make yourself a badger,” Kolo instructed, “then wander up to them and ask them in a weirdly-condescending-uncle-sounding voice why Qila’s up so late hurting his best friend. Trust me, it’ll work.”
“Umm…” Channei looked at her fingers, then turned them into badger claws. “All right…? What else?”
“The badger’s name is Talin and he’s not a Ferash Therall, so don’t light your eyes up.” Kolo watched Channei get down on all fours and curl into the fur that sprang up along her back. When she looked up with a black-and-white snout, Kolo gave a thumbs-up. “Perfect.”
Channei’s lips pulled back, practically grinning, and she set off to the task.
Kolo waited a few painstaking minutes before creeping back in. She peeked down the hall, practically holding her breath, and saw Channei seemed to have both masters staring at her in utter confusion. She seized the opportunity and flung unseen hands out to open the door and snatch Azvalath’s bag.
The head that snapped toward her was the one with the ice-needle gaze.
Whatever escape plan she’d devised jumbled into a frantic, animalistic urge to run.
So she tried. But her movements weren’t even the slightest bit coordinated. Her feet stopped landing where she aimed them. Her vision doubled, her head got too heavy to lift, and her knees threatened to fold with each motion.
Somehow, she made it as far as the last step off the front porch before collapsing into the snow. She got up on her hands and knees, rubbing her head in case she’d hit it.
“The intent was quite clever, Kolo, but the more complex your lie, the harder it is to make it sound true.” Xigon stood at the top of the steps, leaning into the railings. “First, Talin has met Qila and already knows how she…corrects me. Second, Channei, never having heard his voice, couldn’t hope to replicate it.”
She tried to stand up, but he took another step down and her joints seemed to liquefy.
“What I want to know,” Xigon lowered his voice to a near-whisper, “is where Azvalath is, your planned next steps, and whether or not he’s safe.”
Kolo looked up at the eyes keeping her down, then dug ghost limbs into the ground. “Where we’re going and what we’re doing is something I can only discuss with him, Master. But he’s not any less safe than usual.”
“Is that so?” Xigon descended the steps in heavy staggers and crouched over her like some trembling gravebird. “And what of his illness?” Blood pooled into his left eye from a new wound, trickling down his face like tears whenever he blinked. “Qila says his living or dying shouldn’t concern me, but it does. So speak.”
Kolo hesitated far too long before mumbling something vague about Ami’s treatment.
She didn’t expect Xigon to believe her, but she certainly didn’t expect him to get that haunted yet frenzied stare like she’d seen before he extracted a nearly-dead Ami from the bedding closet. The corners of his mouth twitched into a split-second smirk. “I know what you’re not telling me.”
She pushed her body upright on unseen appendages, bracing her flesh-and-bone limbs that still refused all motion.
Xigon grabbed a splintery-looking post holding up the railing and hauled himself up to leer down at her, looking so gratingly smug despite her defiance. “Remember what I told you right after you destroyed Valielit?”
Sweat broke out across her neck and shoulders as she extended another invisible limb toward him.
His eyes squinted, straining for focus without the goggles, but then he snatched her extension in a bare hand. She seethed. Of course he could see them. That bastard…
She caught herself starting to relax again, nearly swept under by some urge to simply let his power commandeer her, but her clarity returned the minute she remembered that one rage-sparking line in Qila’s note to Azvalath.
If given clearance, report to Master Xigon for armament.
And she resisted.
He closed the distance between them with a few unsteady steps and put his hand directly on her forehead. He didn’t look at all angry, only focused as Kolo kept up her refusal through shudders and sweat and stubborn fury.
“I’ve always wondered, Kolo.” He blinked more blood out of his eye. “Unstoppable force meets immovable object. What happens?” His brow tensed. “Show me.”
His brow tensed. Strain. He felt strain against her. She fixated on that miniscule change in his expression and watched his scowl deepen, watched his jaw gape and pant as strain contorted into agony. Even as her own body reacted the same way, she kept pushing against him, her own pain something like a drug if it kept her seeing this, someone larger than life struggling against her.
They pushed until impossibly bright light flashed where they made contact. They both fell backwards, Kolo tumbling into the snow and Xigon crashing against the steps. Kolo’s limb strength returned in an instant, and she stood with triumph over…
No, he looked broken.
He opened his eyes, gasped to catch his breath, and then took a sword off his belt and handed it to her. “For Azvalath. I wish you both well.”
She took it with caution. “What just happened?”
Xigon sat up, rubbed the back of his head, then smiled. “You’ve done what no one else has. You’ve willingly broken the command of my power over your soul. My touch shouldn’t affect you now unless you specifically allow it.” He beamed at her with pride like she’d never seen before. “Please tell Azvalath the following, if you’re ready to hear it.”
Kolo nodded.
“Tell Azvalath to not seek Qila or me without you by his side. Given…evolving circumstances, we may both pose a significant danger, and he should not face us unaccompanied by one capable of resisting us.” He looked down at her and smiled again. “Best of luck, little wonder.”
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