“Okay, this is gonna sound crazy,” said Snap, “but hear me out.”
Ruby’s ears perked up at the sound of Snap’s voice, and she turned away from the thin piece of metal she was examining to look at her friend. Even though there weren’t any sources of light inside the enormous cavern that was inside of the hutch, the sun’s rays could still enter through the jagged holes in the walls, through the thin, cracked layers of glass that the humans who once inhabited the hutch had presumably acquired somewhere. There was a rustling to Ruby’s side, and she absently noted Corner peeking his head out from behind the large wooden structure he’d been poking at to listen to Snap’s words.
“Humans,” Snap declared, spreading his forelimbs out dramatically, “are bugs.”
Corner burst into giggles, and he scampered closer. “What? I- pfffffft-” His squeaks were interrupted by even more laughing, his small chest heaving. “What -huff- what do you mean humans are bugs?”
Ruby sighed, raising a paw to her forehead in exasperation. This was going to be yet another one of those sorts of conversations, wasn’t it. Snap and Corner were her best friends, but it often seemed like most of the time neither of them had a functioning mind. Thus, it once again fell to her to be the bastion of sanity while they were still out here, scavenging in the abandoned hutch. It made sense to her, in a way. Snap was the largest, Corner was the smallest, and Ruby was the sanest. “Okay, Snap. Because you are my friend, my dear friend of many seasons, I will hear you out. But you’re going to need to work to convince me.”
“Oh, rest assured, I will put in the work,” Snap responded, his ears standing straight up with completely unhidden glee. “For you see, my friends, I have a hypothesis. Nay, I have MORE than a hypothesis! I have a theory.”
“You’ve performed experiments and collected a large amount of evidence that supports your idea?” asked Corner, ever the nitpicker. “‘Cause if not, it’s still only a hypothesis.”
Snap barreled on, undeterred. “I do have evidence! So it is a theory!”
“And this theory is that humans are bugs,” Ruby responded, flatly.
“Yes!”
“Okay. So where is this evidence?”
“Why, look around you, Ruby!” Snap swung his forelimbs around again, gesturing wildly. “What is it that you see?”
“A fawn-furred theater reject making a fool of himself instead of explaining his ‘theory’.”
Ruby’s bluntness naturally made Corner crack up again, though he hurriedly muffled his laughter with his paws before she could include him in her summary. “Er, hehe… Snap, d’you mean the hutch?”
While Snap’s expression had drooped at Ruby’s harshness, when Corner spoke his ears snapped right back upwards. “Yes, exactly! The hutch! Humans build hutches! Big, huge complex structures, to provide them with shelter.”
“Yeah, we know,” Ruby said, unenthusiastically. “But they do a crap job of it and leave scraps all over the place for us to find, like we’re doing right now.”
“Exactly! Building large structures is what humans do!” Snap seemed to be appreciating Ruby’s and Corner’s indulgence of his train of thought far too much. “But when you think about it, humans aren’t the only type of creature to do this, right?”
That was actually a question worth genuine consideration, and both Ruby and Corner stopped to think for a moment. “Well,” Corner began, hesitantly. “I guess you could say we do that. Like, not all the time because usually it’s better to build houses in underground burrows, but the Hayseeds' general store is aboveground. ‘Cause it’s built into the stump. And even the burrows still have walls and stuff to give definition…”
“Yeah, but we do all that stuff on purpose,” Ruby points out. “Our ancestors had to learn and figure out how to do all that, it’s not the same thing. We do it intelligently, humans build hutches like this and their other constructions instinctively, since despite being big they don’t have good fangs and claws to defend themselves with. I think Snap’s trying to get at something else…” her brow furrowed, before she remembered Snap’s initial premise. “Well, if you’re saying humans are bugs, it must be some kind of bug, right? Like… oh, like bees?”
Corner’s eyes widened. “Oh, right, beehives! I guess they’re kinda like human hutches, aren’t they? Just way smaller, and made of different stuff. Or… like ants and termites! They make big mounds, don’t they?”
Snap nodded rapidly. “Exactly! Other animals may make stuff on occasion, but the only creatures that make stuff like human hutches are bugs!”
“I guess so…” Ruby wasn’t convinced. “But don’t humans usually live in much smaller numbers? I figured they were more like those mountain lions, with parents raising their kids along but otherwise being pretty solitary. If they were like ants, wouldn’t their hutches be way bigger to hold way more humans?”
“They do make bigger stuff sometimes,” Corner pointed out. “Didn’t you say you have a cousin who went and saw that big hutch complex?”
That was true, Ruby remembered the stories she’d heard from Bran about the massive steel hutch complexes humans had built in the distance. He’d said they were large and towering and full of many, many humans, all scuttling this way and that. Bran had said there was a huge danger of being crushed simply due to the sheer amount of humans, but it was worth it because of the amount of food and other scraps the humans had a tendency to produce.
“I guess you’re right, Bran’s stories do kinda resemble how it’d feel to be shrunken down to smaller than an ant and then placed inside an anthill,” Ruby reluctantly agreed. “But that doesn’t really explain this hutch, here. It’s just sitting here alone at the edge of the forest, by itself. Even when humans DID inhabit it there couldn’t have been more than, say, a handful of them.”
“Maybe they’re a different kind of human?” Corner theorized, though now that Ruby was paying attention she realized that Corner was probably just as disbelieving of Snap’s theory as she was, and was just playing apologist. “Like how some kinds of bees and wasps make smaller nests, with fewer bugs inside them?”
“Something like that!” Snap gleefully latched onto Corner’s suggestion, then forcibly kept talking before either of his friends could question the idea further. “But that’s not the only thing humans do! They also make traps.”
Corner’s ears flattened, confused. “Do bugs make traps?”
“Spiderwebs, Corner. Spiderwebs,” Snap explained. “Spiders and other bugs will make all sorts of traps for catching food, just like humans do! They’ll lie in wait, hoping something will fall for the trap, and then once something gets caught, they do something to their prey to make it easier to eat.”
“Humans don’t have webs, though,” Ruby pointed out. “And a lot of the stuff they do to food is only possible because the stars help them, not because the humans can do it on their own. And who knows why the stars do what they do.”
“I thought the logic was that human hutches are full of stuff that stars like living in,” Corner commented, gesturing upward to where some dark glass bulbs hung overhead, empty of the glowing stars they once presumably housed. “That was how the Hayseeds explained it to me. So the stars help care for humans like they’re pets.”
“First of all, humans don’t need help to build traps,” Snap’s voice sounded a bit harsher than normal, like it always did when people brought up the stars. “Remember that snapper trap that Mrs. Marsh has in her basement? The wooden thing with the metal wire? There aren’t any stars in it at all. And second, even if the stars DO help humans, that’s just another point in favor of my argument. People say the stars like riding on certain kinds of flies, too.”
“You’re saying… Humans and fireflies might have evolved from the same kind of bug ancestor?” Corner pondered aloud. “Both of them adapted in ways that made them more appealing to the stars as pets as a survival mechanism, but while fireflies stayed small and carry stars with them, humans got bigger and started altering their original nests into hutches that had things the stars could inhabit, meaning they became more and more reliant on the stars.”
“You’re definitely thinking way too hard about this, Corner,” Ruby refuted. “And none of that explains how humans and other bugs-”
“Other bugs?” Snap interrupted, mirthfully.
Ruby rolled her eyes and corrected herself. “None of that explains how humans and bugs look basically nothing alike. Humans are big and fleshy, bugs are small and have exoskeletons. Like turtles, but… more.”
“Worms are fleshy bugs,” Snap pointed out. “And we know bugs can get a lot bigger than we usually see them. Remember that… that centipede?”
All three of them shuddered. None of them liked remembering the centipede. But Ruby had to admit it was an excellent point. It had been a very big centipede.
“Hmm…” Ruby hummed, noncommittally. She was pretty sure all the stuff Snap was saying was nothing but badger dung, but his logic was just sound enough (and her understanding of animal biology just insufficient enough) that she couldn’t immediately reject him outright. Which was annoying.
“See? It makes sense, humans were bugs that made stuff, and they just got bigger, losing their shells in the process. Maybe that’s why they construct so much stuff aside from their hutches. The traps and constructions serve the same purpose as exoskeletons since they’re too big now to grow their own.”
“None of that sounds right,” Ruby complained.
“But you can’t find fault in it, can you?” Snap retorted, smugly. “You have to admit, it’s a viable theory!”
“I guess it’s a viable theory, but…” Corner’s ears and whiskers twitched mischievously as he spoke, and Ruby knew she was in for another headache. “Might I suggest an alternative proposal?”
Ruby groaned. Snap didn’t seem too enthused by Corner’s request either, since he had probably wanted the conversation to end with him sufficiently convincing his friends of his “humans are bugs” thesis, but he motioned for Corner to continue nonetheless.
“Humans are birds.”
“No, they’re not!” Snap immediately shouted indignantly. “That makes even less sense!”
“So you admit that humans being bugs doesn’t make sense too?” Ruby asked, seeing her chance.
“What? No! I just explained to you how it does make sense. How does humans being birds make sense???”
“Well… didn’t Mr. Gravel tell us in school that humans have warmer blood? As opposed to the colder blood that reptiles and bugs do?” Corner pointed out. “Humans can regulate their body temperature. Which means they’re either mammals like us, or they’re birds. And they don’t have fur, so they aren’t mammals, so they must be birds.”
“Now hold on! What do you mean humans don’t have fur?” Snap asked incredulously, his face reddening behind his fur in anger. “I’ve seen the pictographs they have in the library, don’t humans have fur on the tops of their heads or something?”
“Humans have hair, not fur,” Ruby pointed out, glad that she could actually remember such a small detail for once when Snap hadn’t.
She deliberately refrained from adding that she was pretty sure fur and hair were basically the same thing. A human could have sable hair just like she had sable fur, she figured, just with differing levels of thickness and density. But she figured that Snap would be too incensed to notice, and she was proven right, especially when Corner added “Yeah, I bet if humans let their hair get long enough they’d be pretty similar to feathers, but that’d just be cumbersome and heavy and leave them open to predators,” and Snap just made a frustrated sound instead of pointing out how that statement was nonsense.
“Additionally,” Ruby continued, raising one of her paws to stroke one of her ears thoughtfully, “Humans are bipedal. Birds are too. Coincidence? I think not.” She was starting to enjoy this.
“We’re bipedal!” Snap responded angrily.
“Not all the time,” Corner pointed out. “We swap between two and four all the time depending on what would be convenient.”
“Yeah, we’re adaptable,” Ruby clarified. “It’s what makes us and similar mammals different from other creatures. We evolved to be able to adapt and grow and advance, humans didn’t, so they stay on two legs, just like birds do.” Then a thought came to her, and she couldn’t help but brux a little in joy when she realized how annoyed Snap would be by her next sentence. “Maybe our adaptability is why the stars let us handle ourselves while they care for the humans as pets. We’ve got higher intelligence, after all.”
Snap growled, but neither Ruby nor Corner reacted to it. Instead Corner just nodded his head. “Yeah, humans are pretty stupid. And I actually had a thought about that. Birds are pretty stupid too, right? And they can fly up high, close to where the stars live, right?”
“Right,” Ruby nodded, excited to see where Corner was going with this.
“Soooooo…” Corner dragged the syllable out, enjoying every second of it. “What if humans are descended from a bird that was so stupid it thought it could fly even higher than the stars, and tried to fly to the sun? But that would be dangerous, because as we all know the sun is a huge ball of fire an indescribable distance away from the earth-”
“Obviously,” Ruby confirmed. Snap looked like his whiskers were going to explode off his face.
“And because the stars are wise and merciful,” Corner continued, “they grabbed the birds that tried to fly to the sun and put them back on the ground, plucking their feathers off so they couldn’t repeat their stupid mistake!”
“And since they couldn’t fly anymore,” Ruby added, struck by even further inspiration and barely holding back giggles. “The humans started building more complex and larger nests, instead!”
“Exactly!” Corner immediately pounced on that line of thought. “And it worked out for the best, because now the stars could have a place to live down on the surface too, while they kept watch over the dumb birds to keep them from trying to grow feathers and reach the sun again!”
“That doesn’t make any SENSE!” Snap finally exploded into a storm of furious squeaks. “That’s not how feathers work! That’s not how evolution works! And the stars?? The stars can’t- The stars don’t do stuff like that? Why would it work like that? It doesn’t- Is that some kind of mythology? You can’t seriously believe-”
It was too much for Ruby and Corner. They fell to the ground, laughing uproariously and shaking back and forth, unable to contain their amusement at Snap’s anger. Snap stiffened, his eyes wide, before he sighed and relaxed a bit. “Stop teasing me.”
“Sorry, sorry,” Corner apologized, pulling himself back upright and shaking dust out of his lilac fur. “But you put on such a show with your theory! I couldn't help but take the chance to ruin it a little.”
“And it is an interesting theory,” Ruby added. “I don’t think you’re right, Snap, but I can see the logic there. Once we get back home tonight we can visit the library and look into it a bit more.”
Snap huffed and rolled his eyes, but it was clear from his body language that he wasn’t too angry at them anymore.
“Speaking of which,” Corner said, glancing outside. “I think it’s almost dusk. We should get going if we want to be back under cover before the owls start coming out.”
The other two nodded, and the three mice gathered what various odd scraps they had decided to scavenge from the empty hutch into their satchels before slipping out of the large structure through a couple small holes in the walls, scampering down the grassy hill it was situated on and entering back into the forest. They ducked under some ferns to find the well-trodden pathway they’d used to arrive at the hutch to begin with.
As the sun dipped down into the horizon behind them and the forest started to darken, Ruby spoke up again, keeping her voice low. “You know, Snap, you talking about bugs has got me thinking about something. Not something related to humans, really, but something else?”
“Really? What?”
“You know how earlier we were talking about bugs and the places they live in, and how being shrunk down and living in one would be like trying to live in a big human complex? Well, like… what if we applied that to those stories we read as kids? Like, the ones where bugs are the main characters and act like people?”
“You mean like, uh…” Snap tried to recall a specific example. “Like those Jack the Cricket books? Or something like that, but taking place in some kind of… termite city?”
Corner’s eyes widened in interest. “Ooh, that’d be weird. Would it be like how we talked about it before, where you’re still a mouse but you’re shrunk down to be smaller than the termite people? Or… would you just be turned into a termite person?”
Snap’s expression looked like he’d swallowed something nasty. “Turned into a termite? Gross.”
“Well…” Ruby thought about it. “It’d be weird, but for the termite people it’d be normal. And they wouldn’t know how to react to a tiny mouse, so it might be to your advantage to be turned into a termite person, just so that you can blend in and not get into any problems.”
“So you’d really have no choice but to just roll with it and be a termite person, then,” Snap concluded. “Because… well, how would they react if they found out you were actually a mouse, instead of a termite?”
“Honestly? I’d think it’d depend on what they think of mice in general,” Corner pointed out. “I never read Jack the Cricket, but aren’t the mice in those books kind of… non-entities? Like, Jack and his friends just kind of avoid them. Do they even know the mice are also people? Just larger, not-bug people?”
“They do,” Ruby confirmed. “Mice don’t show up a lot, but Jack and Antony have to sneak around what’s very clearly a normal burrow-village. Since they don’t want the mice to know about them they have to sneak around, but they’re clearly aware that the mice are people, just a different kind of people that eat bugs because the mice in those books don’t know bugs are sapient. Bug society is specifically being hidden from mice society for, uh. Some reason. I can’t remember why, exactly, it was just sort of how it worked.” She shrugged. “Like it’s obviously a plot device but I’m pretty sure there was an in-universe reason too.”
“Though, now that you mention it, how would it work the other way?” Snap asked. “Like, how would the bugs not be able to see the mice as sapient. We’re pretty obviously advanced, aren’t we?”
“Maybe the bugs wouldn’t be able to see that the mice are people for the same reason the mice don’t see that the bugs are people?” Corner tentatively suggested. “Like, with how sophisticated bug society is in those stories, you’d think they’d have been caught by the mice already.”
“Hmm…” Ruby thought about it some more. “You’re right, honestly. When I was little I read Jack the Cricket, and then the next time I saw an actual cricket I tried to chase it back to its little cricket house. Obviously it didn’t have one, but if I’d lived in the world of Jack the Cricket I would have found one. Maybe it’s some kind of… magic?”
“Magic, really?” Snap rolled his eyes. “What, so the mice and the bugs just… magically don’t see that there’s an entire other civilization?”
“That would probably have to be how it works, though,” Corner commented. “Like, some kind of ‘one rat’s trash is another rat’s treasure’ sort of deal, but to the extreme. Or like… that fairy story?”
“Which fairy story?” Snap asked, but Ruby answered before Corner could.
“You mean like the Tale of Lillianna? Where the flower fae were invisible to mice because they could camouflage against the flowers, so the mice would look straight at the fae and not realize they were even there!” Ruby had loved that story as a kid. “So you’re thinking it’d be something like that, but two-way?”
“I guess that could kind of make sense…” Snap assented. “But… then if you were turned into a termite, you’d find out about termite society anyway. That… hmm… that’s kind of discomforting to think about, to be honest. You’d suddenly realize that what you’d thought were just mindless creepy crawlies were actually sophisticated and civilized.”
“Yeah, there’s definitely a sort of horror aspect to it,” Corner confirmed. “I know I’ve eaten tons of bugs, so that would really freak me out. Especially now that I’d be on the other side of the divide.” He paused. “What if, now that you’re a termite person, you’re subject to the same problem the rest of the termites have, and now you can’t see the mice as people anymore? Because now you’re a termite.”
“Oh, that would be messed up,” Ruby said. “Like, I’d know I’m a mouse, and I’d know that mice are people, but since termites don’t know mice are people I’d be affected by that?”
“Yeah, like that,” Corner confirmed.
“Stars, I’d hate to end up in that situation,” Snap decided.
“Language,” Ruby chided on impulse, and Snap just stuck his tongue out at her. “But yeah, I’d hate it too. It’d make for a really interesting story, though. It raises a lot of questions about how we’d know there isn’t a weird magic that keeps us from realizing bugs are actually people. It’d be fascinating.”
“I think I’d definitely want to read a story like that,” Corner said, thinking aloud. “Give me some messed-up bug world isekai.”
Ruby went to respond, but then her mind processed what Corner said and she paused.
“Sorry, a bug world what?”
“What’s an isekai?” Snap asked.
“I, er…” Corner’s ears flattened against his head in embarrassment as he realized his mistake. “It’s uh, a word I read somewhere once, I think. You know those stories where a mouse pup falls into a hole into a tree and ends up in a magic fantasy land? That’s kind of what it means. Uh. If I recall correctly.”
“Oh. Huh.” Snap nodded slowly. “Cool.”
“Yeah, I didn’t know there was a specific term for that genre,” Ruby added. “Good to know. I wonder if other recurring kinds stories have names like that?”
“Probably,” Snap shrugged.
As the three mice continued onward, their conversation moving in the direction of lighter topics as they got closer to home, Corner briefly glanced behind him.
The sun had fully set by now, and dusk was giving way to night, but in the distance behind them Corner could just barely make out the silhouette of the house through the cracks in the trees.
The house.
The house.
…The hutch.
Corner sighed, then turned forward again to scurry onward and catch up with his friends.
5-step process to write a character falling in love (CFIL)
Have the character falling in love arrange their schedule or their actions to spend as much time with their crush as possible.
Have the CFIL notice small details about the crush, like freckles (cliche), kissable lips (also cliche), little gold flecks in their eyes, the way they smile when they're amused, the way they look when they're concentrating, etc etc etc.
Have the CFIL light up like a Christmas tree when the crush enters the room, unknowingly but potentially noticed by others.
Have the CFIL notice that the crush might need someone to take care of them, and then subsequently realize they, the CFIL, could be that person.
Have the CFIL add up 1-4, realize they're attracted, and reevaluate their relationship from there.
you’ve already witnessed generations of cruelty and strife by the time you are placed on a chain around the neck of an infant. she is fussy and wild and nothing like the male heir that her parents would've scorched the earth for. still, she keeps you fastened around her neck like a promise—one that she only breaks sometimes, only when you hang too heavy and she begs her sister to take her place, just for a day, just so she can taste the freedom of running without anything knocking against her beating heart.
the girls are a pair, just like you. they joke about you—two rings, one future—and the wild one swears it's meant to be, because she cannot imagine shouldering her destiny alone. there is a reason the girls were born together, they decide. forged, like you, in the same flame. two rings, one future. two sisters, one life.
as they get older, they share your weight more evenly between them, the wild one increasingly shedding her lot in life like molted feathers. her sister steadfastly takes up the mantle—their future is a shared burden, after all—and you spend more and more of your days nestled against the quiet girl's collarbone. she traces your silver with anxious reverence—you are a promise, a promise to her. twin rings forever locked together. one life.
when the wild girl sloughs off her future for good, she takes you with her. you clang together against her pounding heart for the whole of her escape, and she doesn't slow down until she's gone. until she unstrings your twin halves from the chain and slides one onto her slender finger, one on his. she grins, tells her lover that you are a new promise. one that the wild girl has made to herself. the future is molten in her hands, it's whatever she wants it to be.
you travel with the hands of the wild girl and her lover as they stitch together a humble oasis, secluded from expectation. and when they grow bored of playing poverty, you graduate with them to stardom—with the lover's hand tracing grand outlines and cutting silken fabric and sewing neat seams. with the wild girl's manicured finger reflecting glistening gowns and camera flashes. still, no matter what he makes her, the wild girl's lover cannot make her happy. she buries her face in her hands and he holds her shaking frame. every part of you is wet with her tears. there is only one thing she wants, and it is something she cannot have.
but the future is molten, and desire burns hot. the hands that bear you now are used to fashioning life into something they want. so you join their grand search for satisfaction, tasting the salty air and thick dust of foreign lands. when doctors fail them, they seek mystics. and when mystics fail them, they seek the divine. you brush against the skin of a hunter, young and rough, who invests new blood into the search. the hands come up empty, always.
until, one day, they don't.
on the night you are changed forever, the air is charged with hope. your twin halves twinkle under candlelight. love and magic swirl together amidst sparkling laughter and bubbly champagne. lips press against you, folded into woven fingers, whispering words as fervent as a prayer.
and then—
and then everything is different. and then you are thrumming with life. and then there is a soul within you, wispy and delicate, just a flutter of consciousness. from your two halves are strung a lifeline, cords taut around the heart of a boy fashioned from magic and love.
the wild girl tugs your boy's lifeline like a puppet string, gentle enough to convince herself it's only a caress. it begins before he even tastes the air. kick for me, she whispers, twisting you with a careful thumb. I want to feel you. her prayer flows through you, strings tugging on your boy's fetal limbs until the wild girl grins at the life in her belly.
your boy, the coveted heir, is born far away from his grandparents' castle. far away from the humble oasis of his parents' youth. you brush against his lily-soft skin as he is brought into a world of harsh marble and bright lights. his squirming is calmed, his cries easily quieted. like everything else they touch, your boy is malleable in his parents' hands.
the lover—a father now, in technicality, but a lover before all else—carries you like a safeguard. he has fashioned finery with these fingers before, and now he'll wield you to fashion a son. he refines your boy like an offering, trimming the excess that hangs over the mold.
your boy grows taller and quieter, golden and careful. the molten star upon which the family hopes hang. not a prince, but an heir all the same, his inheritance is a heavy one. but all their tugging trains his muscles, and his smile stays intact. until it doesn't.
imbued with divinity as you have been lately, and witness to cruelty as you have been for much longer, you are familiar with the human impulse to play god. but no matter the lengths taken or the sacrifices made, you've learned that there is no one who can account for everything. and in the vein running through the wild girl's ring finger, you feel her pulse start to dip.
her decline is steady and wretched, a methodical deterioration of strength. you descend with her into baths of antiseptic and sweat. you rest with her brittle hand on the arm of a wheelchair. you tremble with her fingers against the wet cheek of your boy. when doctors fail her, the lover and the hunter do not bother with mystics. they barrel straight for the divine.
these years, you are split like never before. half of you waits, immobile, trapped with the wild girl—the stuck girl, dying girl, the mother—and your guilt-ridden boy within walls. and half of you leaves. over and over. you travel with the lover and the hunter everywhere, anywhere. wherever you go, desperation thickens the air. you are slick with sweat and blood. the hands come up empty, always.
when the wild girl's hand goes cold, you are laid with her to rest. artificial lights warm you both through glass, a flimsy approximation of life. but the only thing alive in your shared coffin is your boy's weary soul, heavy within you.
the half of you that remains upstairs with the living is clenched tight in the lover's fist. his grief is tactile, sharp. all-consuming. a heavy blanket that crushes the house, crushes the spirit of your boy until it's withered away to nearly nothing. when the lover pulls your boy's lifeline now, it's like the tightening of a noose. you rest hollow as a gravemarker, spanning the stories between life and death in this house.
when new magic thrums at the hollow of the lover's throat, you feel it resound in his bloodstream, humming beneath his skin. it feels like grief crystalized into something hungry and mean. it feels like hope.
the cruelty you witness in the next months is not shocking or special, not in the grand scheme of things. it is cruel nonetheless. you switch hands—from the lover to the trickster, your boy's soul twin. you brush once more against the skin of the quiet sister, louder now, having borne your promised future alone. eventually you are parted from the cold finger of that dead, wild girl, and for a time you find your halves spanned between the hands of the cruel lover and his hunter, who's resided with him all the while. you have held souls and futures and wedding vows in your bands, and now you hold something unspoken, volatile, crumbling.
at the end of it all, both of your twin halves are held victorious in the lover's fist. your boy's soul cries out, oceans away, tied up by more than just puppet strings. a knight clothed in magic puts up a valiant fight, but it is no matter.
the world is molten, and the lover shapes it into something he wants it to be.
in the aftermath, you lay cocooned in the palm of the young knight. terror rings out from her at the sight of you. the world, just reformed, hasn't cooled yet. in her hands, now.
on the day you first meet the finger of the boy whose soul your bands keep, the new world is in perfect bloom. roses sweeten the air and sunlight glints on your shiny silver. when you settle onto your boy's finger, it is the first exhale of a lifetime. his heartstrings rest, now, in his own hands, for himself alone to pull. this is the promise you hold now. but it is not the promise that the knight gives to your boy. her soft skin brushes lightly against you as she pulls your boy close and gives him a gentler promise, one that is easier to say.
you have been witness to cruelty and strife for generations by the time you are placed on the finger of a young boy made of magic and love. and you will be witness to more.
just had this normal old comic lying around….. unrelated to @hamsternamedmarinette and @anna-scribbles of course!! what would make u think this had anything to do with them haha
