#cw csa implied

[bedrock-to-buildheight]

Gotta be green, gotta be mean, gotta be everything more

[sirizchai]

kuwadorian

[part-toons]

[cherishcoffee]

CW:csa implications

hitting dave w the projection blast

[crossiaunt]

"in hindsight, burying it was a stupid idea."

cw implied csa/child abuse, bedwetting as a result from trauma, vomit, harlequin doesn't have a good time in this. read with caution

i left the ending ambiguous for people to come up with their own continuations...i'm a big fan of reader interpretation so if you want to add on your own ideas go ahead! i think the next thing I'll do regarding him will be fluff/lighthearted, he's gone through enough. sorry harlequin...

it's implied that jester is the one in the end because his color in the dialogue is the most opaque, but it could be pierrot or someone else.

1 / 2 / 3

[wincestwhispers]

John/Dean | Yves Olade, Bloodsport

[empty-heart-princess]

The First Tool

[cw: eye gore, implied csa]

After hiking for some four hours across the trails that snaked through the woods, I finally came to the clearing I'd heard so much about.

The garden spills out through most of it, obscure berries and herbs coiling up their trellises amid the more familiar tomatoes and strawberries. Beloved yet half-wild; the same could be said for the house in the middle of it all. Sturdy-looking and well-lived in, with extra wings and spare rooms growing off it like new leaves. Chaotic, but charming. It almost made me forget this was terrifying.

I banish my trepidation, and knock. A little clatter of footsteps keeping a perfect beat. The door creaks open.

"Hello. May this one help you?" The doll towers over me--no surprise, I'm quite small. Its face is a riot of colorful glaze, deep regal blues chased by sea-greens and bright patches of bare porcelain. Its eyes are mismatched, too. The right a glassy blue, the other, dull and blind, lightly bloodshot, undeniably organic.

Oh. I'm staring. "Yes, um, I was told to ask for Anaïs?"

It spins around on its heel, and calls into the house, "Visitor, miss!" A vague noise of assent drifts back. It turns its head back to me; "Please follow it to the sitting room."

The inside, too--curated chaos. Half-finished projects evidently only barely kept in check by the doll's efforts are sat everywhere. A new dress halfway stitched together, esoteric collections of meticulously-labeled vials, a manuscript whose visible contents make me blush.

The sitting room, at least, is tidy. More nook than room, but cozy.

"Would you like tea?"

"Oh! Um, yes, tea would be lovely. Black, please."

The doll bustles off into the deeper recesses of the house, and I'm left to drum my fingers and wait. The room has a nice view of the garden, at least. I stare at it, looking for any pattern to it I can find. Peas rise up amongst herbs. Berries burst forth in the middle of a carrot patch. Surely it's not neglect, the plants are all flourishing and free of weeds, but it's nothing like the stately, organized gardens I'd seen before. Maybe--those plants out at the forest edge, they're hardy, practically grow themselves. And there right near the house are strawberries, they need constant upkeep in this climate. I squint. A picture starts to pull together; the paths laid out like a spiderweb, minimizing energy, walking; is that it? Ease of--

A cane raps twice on the floorboards. I jump straight out of my seat.

There she stands--Anaïs, no doubt. Her warm-brown skin a patchwork of scars, chubby in a muscular, pragmatic kind of way. An awful limp and a wooden cane. North of 50. Most striking of all, her left eye--a prosthetic, all golden-gilt and carved like the rays of the sun. Oh, oh no, she's gorgeous. Stop staring, Zuri, it's bad enough with the doll!

Before I could say a word--"Oh, Christ, you're one of those. Got the look in your eye." She brings herself across the room, and slumps down into the chair across from me. "Alright. What the hell d'you want?"

"...How did you become a witch?"

She snorts. "Right into it, huh. Well," she leans back and stretches, "a long time ago, I was dying. Real ugly shit. My parents were..." She grimaced, looking for the right words. "Unduly profiting off me. So I ran off, lasted something like a year and change. Wound up a kid out on the streets, feverish, septic, the works. Had an old infection eating its way through me." She tapped her golden eye. "Original one went blind, that way."

"And a thought occurred to me. Nobody, ever, had loved me. Not a single god damn fucking soul."

The doll stepped back in, placing down two mugs. My tea, and something medicinal-smelling for Anaïs. "I loved you, Miss."

"Yes, yes, Delphi, I'm getting there. Thank you, sweetest, you're a gem.

"So. Yeah. I knew, in that delirious state, there was someone who would love me. Knew her face. Knew her voice. Knew her eyes. Knew she didn't exist, couldn't exist, but she was still...true. Can't explain it, but--I think you understand.

"I spent a whole day thinking about her. Imagining what she'd say and do. All the little ways she'd love me. I kept losing consciousness, just for a second, but I'd fight my way back awake so I could dream about her more.

"Didn't last, though. Eventually I was just too weak. Slumped over, went to sleep. By all rights, I shouldn't have woken up. But, but." She takes a long sip of her 'tea.'

"I had one last dream. Not of Delphi here, but..." Her gaze turns out to the garden for a second. "What was the first tool humans ever invented?"

I'd been so engrossed in her story the question almost passed me by; a second past before I even registered she'd asked me something. "Oh! Um...That's a knapping tool, right? Flint shaped to shape flint."

"Sharp girl, good answer. Wrong, but closer than most get. Here's where you're right: The first tool was a kind of knife. Where you're wrong, is it wasn't physical. The first tool is Desire.

"Desire is a process by which we cleave the unreal into reality. Desire is the thing that turns a hunk of flint into a knapping tool--nah, more than that, Desire is what lets you divine that a knapping tool could exist, and then force it into being. Everything, everything we do or make, starts from Desire."

"So...I'm so sorry. What does this have to do with the dream?"

She gives a slow grin. Almost predatory. It makes me shiver and I refuse to think about what kind of shiver it was. "Because while I was dying, I dreamt of Desire. The raw thing. An impossible web of wants and satisfactions and disappointments. The snarls of contradiction and the crush of reality.

"In that dream I was a pure consciousness, more lucid than I had been in months. I studied the patterns, the courses of people's lives, every triumph and crushing defeat. And eventually, I understood enough to do the thing I knew I came here to do. Find her."

She beckons to Delphi to lean down, and kisses a blue-green swirl on her cheek. "Wasn't that simple, though. She wasn't in the web. Dolls don't Desire, real or unreal. I looked farther, pulled my view back. Then farther, then farther, then farther. And I realized, that all the way back, the thing I'd been staring at made up a shape. A body. A person. My perfect mirror. Reality itself. God, maybe, if you like.

"He told me--nah, 'told' is wrong, he gave me pure and unshakeable understanding--that she couldn't be. It was impossible. The world forbid it, the song of physics had no possible sequence of inputs which would result in her existence, even if I started back at the beginning of it all. Know what I told him?

"I told him, fuck you. Fuck physics. Fuck possibility. I will scrape her off your fucking bones with my teeth if I have to. And I held in my hand a knife."

"I thought you were a pure consciousness," I frown.

"Christ, girl, we'll be here all week if I have to be perfectly literal about magic dreams. I possessed in my being a spiritual certainty through which I may alter the world, is that better, your highness?"

"It lacks," I say apologetically, "A certain poetry."

"Then I held in my fucking hand a fucking knife, stop interrupting. I tackled him, stabbed at him, tore at him. Nothing took, and he was so much stronger than me. But I kept at it, didn't tire or give up for even a millisecond. And then--then, I was the knife. All of me, was pure Desire, all of it dedicated wholly to her. I split his belly. I flayed his skin. I scraped his bones. I gouged out his left eye. And when the retinal nerve broke free, against all medical possibility, I woke up.

"And it," she kisses Delphi again, "was crouching over me. Wrapping gauze over my left eye-socket. Empty, now." I stare at the doll's blind eye, organic and mismatched. "Ever since, we've never been apart. It was--hard times, still. I was still a kid on the streets. Still needed fucktons of medical care. But Delphi kept me stable, mentally and physically, 'til I could get it.

"I could do tricks, afterwards. Little stuff. Heal cuts and scrapes. Find lost things. Enough I could make a little money and not go hungry every night. And...Yeah. I got better. Stronger. Have a comfortable little living now, helping the feckless wee city-folk that make the trek.

"Left its marks, though. My musculature is a mess. Spine's curved like a fucking snake. I'll probably never walk without pain." I wince, and rub my upper thigh in sympathy. Anaïs's brow furled. "You sore, girl?"

"Ah, no, no, I'm sure it's really nothing compared to you."

"Piss off and answer the question."

"...Yes. My, um, hips. It doesn't stop hurting. A congenital defect, they say. Nothing they can do. But--I learn to live with it."

Her face softens, just a fraction. "So. You came here, asked this, and listened to me bitch, because you want to be one too. I could see it in your eyes."

I freeze, breathe, swallow. "Yes. I do. I have to."

That grin melts back over her face. Like an owl. Like a snake. "Then, you never answered my question, my little apprentice."

"I, your, what--"

"What the hell do you want?"

[mintearo]

here is scrapped art from 2022; the idea is little leona and some CSA from aniki

the cub looks so silly all confused on his tummy ... there is a heartbreak version and a general ball of horrible feelings version

noncensored, alternate color version under the cut