#amtgbis

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Can you please add me to the taglist for And Miles To Go Before I Sleep? It sounds amazing!!

You bet I can! Thanks for asking!

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Again: not officially doing Whumptober, but...I saw that Day 8 was “Stab Wound” and I just couldn’t help myself. Here’s a very young Frost having a really, really bad time. Warnings for death, blood, and general sadness.

Also want to give a BIG content warning that this piece contains a child witnessing the death of a parent. Proceed with caution, friends.

"Little sprout," says Mama, holding Frost's shoulders. "Do you remember where Grandmama lives?"

She's holding too tight. Her fingers are digging in, and he squirms, because she never holds him like this. He tries to turn his head to see why the people far away are shouting, but Mama makes him look right at her.

"Do you remember?" she says.

"Yes," says Frost. "Why are you so shaky?"

Mama looks like she's going to cry. She never cries, not even when she and Frost gave Papa to the water a year ago. "I'm fine," she says, and her hands say she's lying. "Tell me where Grandmama lives. Tell me how you get there."

"Go down until I see the big beetle person statue," he says. "Then go past all the food places, and find the nest with the snowdrops next to the door."

"That's right, honey. Good job."

Lots of people start shouting all at once. The air smells like salt and metal. Fast footsteps come closer, and Mama presses Frost against the wood wall, squishing them both into the shadows. She whispers something in his ear, but he doesn't understand it because his heart is making too much noise.

He closes his eyes. He wants to cry, but Mama is being so quiet, so he will be too.

Usually shouting stops after a while. It doesn't this time. It just gets louder, and closer, and now it's not just people, but things Frost doesn't know - things that clatter and rasp and choke, all at once. Something smells like the bucket he'd thrown up into when he got sick last summer.

Frost presses his face into Mama's middle. She's warm and comfortable and smells much, much better. She hugs him, still too tight, but he's holding too tight also.

"I'm scared," he says, his voice all small.

"I know," Mama says, even smaller. "Me too."

Long shadows stretch up the wall, going in the wrong directions when they touch the knots in the bark. Mama looks up. She must see something, because her face goes all white, the wrong kind of white, and her fingers get tangled in Frost's hair.

"We have to run," she says. "Okay? Run as fast as you can, and don't stop."

"What about you?"

"I'll be right behind you. Promise."

He tugs urgently at her overlayer. "But what if you're not?"

She kisses his forehead. "I will be." Again. "I will be." Again. "I will be."

The footsteps are so close. Frost feels them making his own legs shake. There must be so many people coming to make that much noise.

"Let's go, little sprout." Mama takes her arms away. "To Grandmama's, fast as you can."

"Fast as I can," he says back.

She pushes him away from their nest, away from the noise. He doesn't want to run. He wants to go inside and get the soft sleeping-toy that Papa made, before they gave him to the water. He wants to go get his blanket from Grandmama. He doesn't want to leave.

But Mama said so. And Mama loves him.

So Frost runs, and runs, and runs, down the twisty wooden streets between nests, over piles of forgotten things and past smashed-open doors, and the noises get softer, and the smells fade away, and all that's left is the slap of his bare feet on the ground and the way his chest goes all burning and tight.

He reaches the big statue, the one that always looks silly, because it's of a person dressed in beetle shells. Frost leans against its foot, gasping. He barely hears anything now. Slowly, he turns, ready to ask Mama if that's a good thing.

Mama isn't there.

Mama isn't there.

He calls for her but she doesn't answer.

He looks for her but he doesn't find her.

And she said she'd be right behind him, she said she'd be right there with him, she promised -

So Frost goes back.

He runs and runs and runs and this time, he goes even faster. The noises get louder, the shadows longer, and he smells salty rotty sickness everywhere. His eyes sting, and his throat is all tight, and he can't hear his heart any more.

But then, he hears her voice. And it's wrong.

Frost presses against the wall, like she showed him. He peeks around the corner, slow as he can, and goes so cold he almost breaks in half.

There's Mama - without him, but with others. They're dressed like the big statue, wearing beetle shells. They don't look silly any more. The shells hide their faces, and Frost can't see where they're looking, or how.

"We'll make this easy for you," one of them says. "Come with us, and everything stops. We call off our swarm. No one else has to die."

"You are monstrous," Mama hisses. "Your Goodmother has poisoned your minds."

"Monstrous? That's rich, coming from a spider-lover," spits one of the beetle people. They pull something long and shiny from a tube at their side and point it at Mama's neck.

But she doesn't even blink. "At least my god loves me back."

"Blasphemer," the beetle person says. 

Frost doesn't know that word. But it must be bad, because the other beetle people take out their own shiny thorns, pointing them all at Mama.

She's crying. So, so much. But she's also praying, the one she taught Frost for when he feels afraid.

He's too afraid to pray with her now.

"You love your god so much?" says a beetle person. "Then go meet them."

They make their thorn go into Mama's chest.

Everything goes very, very quiet. Even Frost's body, like it's not even there.

They pull their thorn out. It makes a wet, sticky sound. And then there is red, the kind that happens when things hurt. It's all over her, spreading out across the overlayer Grandmama made, until the colors change and the cloth sags. Mama doesn't pray any more. She doesn't even scream, because she's too busy looking at the red.

She falls. She doesn't move any more. Just like Papa, when he got sick, and they had to give him to the water.

Papa didn't come back. Mama didn't follow.

They didn't. They couldn't. They can't.

So Frost screams in their place, because it hurts so much, and he should be covered in red and wet and hot, too, to match what's living inside him.

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Pros of having ant-sized characters:

1) smol

2) if I were to meet them, I could hug all of them at once

Cons of having ant-sized characters:

1) FEAR OF SQUISH IF HUG

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The Softness I mentioned earlier. (I promise there’s minimal angst!) Thistle and Frost get a little closer to one another. It’s very short, but so sweet. Enjoy! 

Small warning for bad memories.

“May I...?” whispers Thistle.

Frost takes a deep breath, as though about to charge back into the day’s battles. Once, twice, he wrings out his wrists, the scars there standing out in stark white. He nods stiffly, lifting his chin in preparation. Like he is a statue, or some old god, clad in chitin and moss, strange things wriggling in his shadow.

She notices everything. As she does, the realization comes. In the way she runs a hand along the side of his face, gently cupping his jaw, she explains it. She tells a story in the fingers that curl into his hair and the press of their bodies into one another.

These things – they become him. They are him. And Thistle’s heart warms, pounding a steady rhythm against Frost’s ribs.

She kisses him carefully, softly, nothing more than a whisper on his lips. Into it, she puts everything they have been through. His breath catches. His grip on her shoulders tightens. Neither moves to deepen the gesture, standing still and burning beneath a rain-soaked canopy of leaves and rotting bark.

It takes a moment for Thistle to realize something is wrong. Her eyes flutter open. Shock fizzes in her chest as she sees the tears streaking Frost’s cheeks. He weeps, silent, trembling in her arms like he is about to fall apart.

Her stomach twists. They, it seems, are falling apart too. Awkward now, she tries to pull away, but Frost refuses to let her go.

“Don’t,” he says, hoarse. “Don’t...”

Thistle’s throat tightens. “I’m sorry. I won’t do it again, if you don’t want –,”

“No!” Frost shakes his head, hard enough to fling droplets of rain from his hair. He holds tight to her shoulders, drawing her forward. Their foreheads touch. Thistle gasps at the near-fever heat on his brow.

“No what?” she manages.

“No, I – I don’t –,” Frost’s voice goes lower. “I don’t – don’t want you to stop.”

An odd lightness gathers behind Thistle’s breastbone. She tilts her head, the pieces falling together.

“Is this your first kiss?” she asks.

“No,” murmurs Frost. He licks his lips. “But it’s...it’s the first gentle one.”

The scars of manacles on his wrists linger at the corners of Thistle’s vision. A rush of images fills her mind, of Frost’s condition when first they’d met, of the life from which he’d been rescued. No, she understands, there has been nothing gentle. Nothing at all.

She tries to nod, but their faces are too close together. This makes a smile rise on her face, mirroring the one deeper inside.

“I will make them all gentle,” she says. “If that’s what you wish.”

Frost’s eyes lose some of that fathomless dark. His smile makes her heart stutter.

“Will you give me another, then?” he asks.

Thistle answers with action. The rain pours, thunder rolls, and in the midst of it all – there is quiet. There is care.

It is not a cure, but it is a promise. For now that is enough.

Tagging the AMtGBIS crew: @toboldlywrite, @heniareth, @corishadowfang, @writings-of-a-narwhal, @dreamsofbooksandmonsters, @halfbloodlycan, @the-singing-dove, @paper-shield-and-wooden-sword, @ocean-in-my-rebel-soul, @katiehahnbooks, @kittensartsbooks, @concerningwolves, @inkpot-dreamer, @somethingwriterly, @adie-dee, @miriamctaylor, @eternalwritingstudent, @roselinproductions, @runningonrain, @cogesque, @aschenink, @desperatlytryingtowriteabook, @ardawyn, @panhasablog, @sheralynnramsey, @homesteadhorner, @quilloftheclouds, @vhum, @mirror-of-too-many-books, @ratracechronicler, @kayemoriarty, @jaimistoryteller, @natalierosewrites, @raiswanson. Let me know if you’d like to be (un)tagged!

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Lock: I'll stop running after dangerous bugs to study them! Promise!

Ever:

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So, uh...I had this scene stuck in my head, and it wouldn’t go away until I got it out on paper. I’m going to put it under a readmore, since it’s kinda dark. This is how Ever got their start as a collector of thorns and killer of Dragonflies.

Big warnings for violence and blood.

There is blood on Ever’s hands. For the first time in their life, it is not their own.

Their chest heaves with ragged breaths. Sweat mats their hair to their head, makes their shirt cling to their back. They cannot feel their hands. They could, moments ago, when they screamed loud enough to shake their bones in their sockets, and threw themself at their foe with enough strength to light their nerves aflame.

They felt it, then. The heat. The straining. The tearing on the inside. Oh, yes, they felt it all.

But now they have gone so numb they can barely feel their own pulse. They know it thunders. It’s nerveless, though, heard and not experienced. Like it belongs to someone else.

The quiet after the storm. Nothing, where something once was.

Ever stumbles forward, as though dragged. Their feet splash into a growing pool of dark liquid. They stare down at a man’s body -- one that breathed and spoke and fought, now silent. A red hole is bored in his throat, raw and glistening in the fading sunlight. Scarlet beads drip down pale skin.

Those same beads slither down a fragment of the World Tree, sharpened and held tight in Ever’s hand. They cannot let go. They can never let go.

I did this. Their grip tightens. I did this.

Another step forward. Slowly, they extend their wooden sliver, prodding at the dead man hard enough to flip him over. A white mask, featureless, covers his face from hairline to chin. Long splatters of blood now adorn it, a word written in gore.

Something twists in Ever’s gut. It is not nausea, or discomfort, or any kind of pain they knew before.

It is emptiness itself.

Dizzy now, they lean down, patting over the corpse’s waist. Their hands find a material they have never before touched. Smooth, cold, and honed to an edge beyond nature.

Ever undoes the dead man’s belt. It slithers away, the sheath along with it. Carefully, they wrap their hand around the hilt, letting their fingers settle into place. This is the first time they have touched so much metal at once.

They pull the iron thorn free. Part of them pulls free beside it.

It is...cold. Heavier than they thought. They tilt the thorn, back and forth, reflecting fading sunlight. In it, they see themself reflected. They are drenched in red.

This is who I am, they realize. This is me.

For the last time, Ever allows themself a smile.

And for the first time, they loop a corpse’s belt around their waist, claiming the thorn as their own.

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@quilloftheclouds said: I’m just! So curious about the worldbuilding of And Miles to Go Before I Sleep, however did you come up with the idea for a world with tiny people and such reliance on bugs? Is the world still the same size as Earth and the people are just small or do we know this at all? How do oceans and lakes work for mini people? ALSO JUST ANY WORLDBUILDING TIDBITS IN PARTICULAR WOULD BE AMAZING, I’M SO INTERESTED IN THIS WORLD

I’m so thrilled you want to know more about this world and its origins, friend! More than happy to oblige! I’m going to put my thoughts under a readmore here, because things are sure to get a little long and rambly. If you have any more questions, please feel free to ask!

Okay, here we go: AMtGBIS, worldbuilding, bugs, and smol folks.

There’s no one inspiration for the world - it’s a combination of things that have been piling up since my childhood. For example: have you ever heard of a kids’ book series called The Littles? Essentially, it’s about a family of tiny people with mouse tails that live in the walls of an ordinary-sized family’s house. I loved that series when I was younger. The creative ways in which they got around the house, and the world outside, never ceased to amaze me. That put the idea of tiny folks inside my head, and it just never went away.

Another example: I’m lucky enough to have grown up within driving distance of a really nice museum. There’s a fantastic bug exhibit there that features some huge models of beetles and praying mantises. Child-sized me loved climbing all over the beetle and pretending to ride it. That planted an idea in my mind: what if insects really were that big? What would life be like? (Elementary school me even wrote a short story about a girl and her giant praying mantis friend!)

Another example: Mothra! I love kaiju films, and Mothra is one of my favorites. That giant, majestic moth had me fully invested when I watched it for the first time. It’s kind of funny - I love huge monsters, and those feature heavily in a lot of my stories. But I also like really small things, and wondering what it would be like to interact with them on a large scale.

As I got older, my interest in tiny things made huge never went away. I discovered my favorite Ghibli film, Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, and the massive bugs called Ohms it featured. I read a horror series called The Dark Ground, about a boy who is shrunk and must survive the ordinary made terrifying by its scale. I played tons of video games, including Xenoblade Chronicles, which is set in a world where humans live on the body of a dormant giant.

But the catalyst to start And Miles to Go was when I started playing Hollow Knight. You play as a small, insectoid creature, traversing an underground kingdom populated by other small, insectoid creatures. And some...not so small. I fell in love from the first time I pressed start. The hand-drawn animations and environments, the music, the lore, the atmosphere...all of it gave me a burst of creative inspiration.

I found a list of old character names. “Ironfriend” was one of them. I started thinking about what kinds of insects live in groups, and what it would be like to live in a fallen tree. Thus the story was born.

I’m not actually sure if this is a world with tiny people, or if everything is Just That Big. I think it’s the latter! And here’s the funny thing about oceans and lakes...the people of AMtGBIS haven’t actually discovered them yet! They have a hard enough time getting in between World Trees, let alone across bodies of water. The edge of their known world is the Rushing White, a swift expanse of water that no one has been able to cross. It would be a river by our human terms, but in theirs? It’s an impassable barrier.

More worldbuilding!

The fallen World Tree’s roots stick out over the Rushing White. This makes the view both beautiful and extremely dangerous!

That portion of the Tree houses the Palace of Roots, where the Tree’s rulers and nobility live.

This is a highly matriarchal society, and the Queen’s power is absolute. In fact, the majority of World Trees are matriarchal.

Their writing system is based on the looping dances that honeybees do to show other bees where nectar is located!

Much of the World Tree’s history was lost when it fell. All most people know for sure is, the Goodmother and her ants have been in charge since just after the fall.

Proximity to the Palace of Roots indicates social class. Most live in Low-Tree, which is mostly mushroom forest and decaying bark.

The Drones periodically sweep through Low- and Mid-Tree to collect children with the power to Shape iron. High-Tree families are expected to give up said children willingly, for the honor of service as a Dragonfly.

Dragonflies are infamous for their cruelty in battle. They wear featureless masks partially to evoke fear, but also partially to symbolize the fact that they don’t rely on sight alone in combat.

The fallen World Tree, the one where the story takes place, is the only Tree to practice the art of warfare. Before they did, relations between all Trees were very peaceful.

Long post indeed! Hope you enjoyed!

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A short piece featuring Ever and Lock of And Miles to Go Before I Sleep. These two get along surprisingly well! If you’re interested, here is the music I listened to while writing.

Small warnings for mention of nightmares and bad memories.

They start talking as the first moon rises. They are not finished by the time the third moon sets. By this time, their voices are hoarse and their throats dry, yet they continue, for there are more stories yet to tell.

The two pause as the first beams of sunlight flow through the cracks in the faraway World Tree’s bark. Spores flare beside clusters of blue flowers, an organic mirror of the starry night. Warm yellow washes over the mushroom forest, and their hands, which have sought one another out and entwined during the long dark.

Ever’s fingers trace circles on Lock’s palm. Their bony hand renders hers even smaller, which makes the knot in their stomach loosen enough for each breath to feel new.

They glance at Lock’s face. Her eyes are still red, but she is no longer crying.

She notices them looking. A wobbly smile stretches her lips. Ever blinks, turning back to their still-clasped hands. Unfamiliar heat smolders in their chest.

“It’s strange,” Lock says at last. “I don’t want the morning to come. Yet at the same time, I’m already dreading what I might see at night. Isn’t that silly? There’s no logical reason for it, but...”

A shudder rolls down the length of her spine. Lock huddles deeper into herself. Close already, Ever waits before drawing closer. She does not flinch away when they do.

“I’m...afraid,” she says, and laughs. It is not a pleasant sound. “For once in my life, I don’t want to know something. I don’t want to learn what I’m going to see when I close my eyes tonight. But I can’t very well go without sleep at all, can I?”

Ever bows their head. An echo of the same pain hums in the gaps between their ribs. It hurts like old scars, stretched skin.

“How do you do it?” asks Lock. “How do you sleep through what you’ve seen?”

She could have said what you’ve done, and been justified in it. It is a small mercy she did not, one Ever cannot help but appreciate. They run their fingers along the back of her hand.

“Sometimes, I do not,” they say softly, as they remember. “Sometimes it’s too much.”

Lock stares with eyes wide enough to catch the sunlight. They want to look, want so desperately to see. But they don’t. They, and the heaviness in their heart, cannot yet bear it.

“What do I do if it’s too much?” she asks.

Ever takes a long, slow breath. Beside her, the scents of freshly churned mud and leaf-rot are not so overwhelming. They smell flowers, far away.

“It depends,” they say. “It may feel good to just sit, and hold something soft, until it doesn’t hurt as much. It may feel good to get up and walk, and walk, until your thoughts go slow enough to manage. It may feel good to cry -- in which case, don’t deny it. Keeping it inside you will only cause more pain.”

At last, they manage to lift their eyes to hers. They are just like the night sky. She gazes with silent, rapt attention, and the rest of the world simply falls away.

Ever’s voice softens. They cannot remember the last time they spoke this way.

“It may feel good to be alone,” they say. “But if it does not, you can always find me, and I will stay with you until you can sleep again.”

Tagging the AMtGBIS crew: @toboldlywrite, @heniareth, @corishadowfang, @writings-of-a-narwhal, @dreamsofbooksandmonsters, @halfbloodlycan, @the-singing-dove, @paper-shield-and-wooden-sword, @ocean-in-my-rebel-soul, @katiehahnbooks, @kittensartsbooks, @concerningwolves, @inkpot-dreamer, @somethingwriterly, @adie-dee, @miriamctaylor, @eternalwritingstudent, @roselinproductions, @runningonrain, @cogesque, @aschenink, @desperatlytryingtowriteabook, @ardawyn, @panhasablog, @sheralynnramsey, @homesteadhorner, @quilloftheclouds, @vhum, @mirror-of-too-many-books, @ratracechronicler, @kayemoriarty, @jaimistoryteller, @reeseweston, @natalierosewrites, @raiswanson. Let me know if you’d like to be (un)tagged!