#cari writes

[cari-morningcrest]

(pretend it's still Halloween)

[Cari hears a knock on their door and a voice call out]

Sunshine! You got a costume?

-@loyalty-goddess-pt2

[They open the door, frowning slightly]

What?

[cari-writes]

Prologue - J.M. Eckleburg Books & Tea

A prologue for a TMA x DC fic that I'm currently writing. Constructive criticism is welcome!

“Cut the tether, send them away. Maybe we both die. Probably.” Jon’s voice falters, just slightly. “But maybe not. Maybe everything works out, and we end up somewhere else.”

The words hang between them, thin and fragile against the groaning collapse of the Panopticon.

Stone shifts as something vast and unseen turns its attention towards them.

Martin’s hands tremble where they clutch Jon’s. “Together?” he asks, the word breaking halfway through.

Jon smiles, small, sad, and terribly certain. “One way or another,” he says. “Together.”

Martin looks down at the knife.

“I don’t know if I can,” he whispers.

“You have to,” Jon replies softly. “The Eye won’t let me do it.”

The pressure builds, awareness pressing in from all sides, a suffocating knowing. The weight of a thousand, thousand unseen gazes.

“Are you sure about this?” Martin asks, though they have long since passed the point where certainty matters.

Jon lets out a quiet, humorless laugh. “No,” he says, and threads their fingers together, gripping tight as if to anchor himself to something smaller, something human. “But I know that I love you.”

Martin chokes on a sob. “I love you, too.”

He pulls Jon close, desperate and shaking, and kisses him like it might be enough to hold the world together.

It isn’t.

The knife sinks in with a muted, terrible finality.

Jon gasps, and for a moment the watching stutters. The great, all-seeing presence flickers, fractured by an act it cannot control.

The Panopticon begins to fall. The great, impossible architecture of the Eye collapses inward, spiraling into itself as though reality has simply…lost the will to continue holding it together.

Jon’s grip slackens, but he does not let go. Martin holds on as everything else breaks.

And then, nothing. 

At first, there was silence.

Not peace, or rest. Just the absence of anything that could be called real.

Then came a low, crackling hum, like a tape struggling to remember how to play.

A voice bleeds through, overlapping itself, layered and distorted:

“Everyone fears death. Of course they do.”

“Perhaps they sensed it.”

“The song is loud and beautiful and I am so very afraid.”

“It’s like there’s a door, in my mind.”

“There is a wasps’ nest in my attic. Perhaps it can soothe my itching soul.”

The voices multiply, familiar and unfamiliar voices bleeding into one another. Statements without context, without beginning or end.

“Above us, you see, there’s only the sky, the infinite, a void of space and emptiness so incredible that to think of it in detail is to overwhelm the mind,”

“May you find your rest where no shadows are cast, and no eyes may see you slumber,”

“How much in this world is done because we fear death, the last and greatest terror,”

“Let us simply say that once there was a place,”

“It is astounding the sort of thing you're willing to choose, given an unpleasant-enough alternative, isn't it?”

“A place where the universe had… cracked.”

The static builds, layers upon layers of voices, statements folding over one another until meaning collapses under the weight of its own telling.

Until something focuses into a singular point. 

Not a place, but the certainty that there must be a place to go.

A tear forms in the nothingness.

Not jagged or violent, but precise, and intentional.

And the tear begins to widen.

Reality, new and unfamiliar, pushes back, but not enough. Not quite enough, at least.

And through that fragile, impossible opening, two bodies fall, unceremonious and unobserved by the world’s inhabitants.

They hit cold stone hard enough to knock the breath from their lungs.

For a moment, neither of them moves.

The world around them is quiet, but not empty. 

There is wind, somewhere high above. The distant hum of a city that does not sleep. The faint, ever-present tension of something coiled beneath the surface that's watching.

Waiting.

Far above, unseen by any human eye, something shifts. A gaze, fractured and unfamiliar, opens, filled with curiosity and hunger. In the quiet, terrible need to know.

And somewhere in the dark heart of a city built on terror, a new story begins.

[praxidikekore]

Look at her. Look at her claws, look at her teeth. Her fangs. There's dried blood there, covered up by the fruity scent of her lipstick like bright flowers planted over a grave. Look at her eyes. There's an urge buried there. It's hidden but ever-present. She wants to devour you. Nobody is safe around her.

She can try to hide it, dress up like anyone else and hide the fur around her feet, the luminosity of her eyes, the way her face is uncannily pointed like a canid's snout. She can try, but you can see past it.

Her voice is honey bearing poison. Plug your ears, and remind yourself that all of her promises of happiness and freedom for the two of you together are lies. A monster will always be a monster.

[youreyesarelikestarlightnow]

My dearest If you feared the lack of gravity, And knew you could not handle it, Why ask to become an astronaut? Why tempt the sky with your presence, If you only ever wanted to live on the earth? It never asked. You offered. And now look at where we are. Your feet on solid ground, And a murky sky above. Stars would fall for what you did. Gleaming tear tracks and scar tissue cutting deep across space And the spaces between

you could hurt someone with that kind of recklessness; c.u.

[cari-morningcrest]

[ A video loads on communicator screens ]

It’s Cari sitting up in their room, sitting at their desk and doodling in a notebook, a tall bottle is sitting on the desk next to them. With their free hand, they’re massaging their temple.

Suddenly they drop the pen, pressing their hands to either side of their head and almost falling out of their chair, crying out in pain.

“O- ow- ow!”

Tears run down their face.

“V- Vaeh- Dad- a- anyone- please! I- it hurts-”

[ The video cuts and the comms go back to normal ]

@thebestestnightingstar, @caspian-solcrect, @vessel-of-wonder

[cari-morningcrest]

Cari was sunggled in the corner of the nest they’d made on their bed, hugging a plush sniffer close to their chest and burying their face in the toy’s side.

Their lights were off and curtains were closed- the only light in the room coming from the stringlights around the nest and the soft glow of the stars painted on their ceiling.

“Everything’s so loud..” Cari whispered, pressing their hands over their ears and closing their eyes, curling into a ball- the sniffer plushie between their legs and chest.

“Why wont it just shut up.? Everything feels so wrong…”

[cari-morningcrest]

Hello, I know it’s been a while, but I made you something

-Prince Icarus of the Morningstar Kingdom @im-prince-icarus

Blaze??- youre back!! How are you?- howve you been?

[cari-morningcrest]

[Cari gets a message from Vaeh after V had gone on a mission and not returned for a bit]

Hello?

-@fallen-nightingstar

Vaeh?!?- oh gods- are you okay?? Whereve you been?-