#endreal writes

[endreal]

I grew up pretty far from any cities, and my nearest neighbors were my cousins but they were teenagers so they didn't really have a load of time for a little squeak like me so I had a lot of time by myself. all kids talk to inanimate objects I'm pretty confident and I was certainly no different. I liked to have pretend conversations with food before I ate it and it was all fun and games, especially after the food started to talk back.

the thing about food is, it really gets around. fruit and veg can teach you a lot about nature, and meat had a surprisingly sophisticated grasp of scientific topics and politics. baked goods were my favourite to chat with though. for those of you who don't know, baked goods are deeply versed in the nature of mankind. predictably, pies know anything you might care to learn about sport and hobbies. flatbreads are domestic experts (a bit of leftover naan is how I learned to fold fitted sheets) and yeast breads are consummate professionals, altho a blether with them can be soooo dry until you butter them up. cakes are poetical and literary, and biscuits are full of wank about philosophy - to this day I still know more than I wish I could forget about Dugald fucking Stewart from being stuck with with a packet of digestives one afternoon when I was 10. I liked pastries and quick breads the best. they Understood(tm) the human condition. it's where I learned about the darkness mam tried to pretend weren't there when granda finally took to bottle more than his own family. anger. sadness. jealousy. resentment. despair.

hate.

anyway, I'm pleased to announce that calton valley (not calton view thankyouverymuch) café has now been open and making profit for almost 3 years now. "but endreal," you might ask, "was it really a good idea to open an evil bakery that makes people mean when the world is already so terrible?" tbh, I don't know what to tell you. everything I know about how to feel and express all the emotions that would have burned me up from the inside out was a lesson learned from a farl - I'm a scone-told scunner.

[endreal]

Hi my name is Stetson Tex'as Yeehaw Alamo Wayne and I have tall ebony black hats (that's how I got my name) with purple hatbands and red tassle that reaches my mid-back and icy blue eyes like limpid tears and a lot of people tell me I look like Jesse James (AN: if u don't know who he is get da hell out of here!). I'm not related to John Wayne but I wish I was because he's a major fucking hottie. I'm a cowboy but my iron is big and on my hip. I have pale white skin. I'm also a buckeroo, and I go to a magic rodeo called Hogropes in Bandera where I'm in the seventh year (I'm seventeen). I'm a Johnny Cash fan (in case you couldn't tell) and I wear mostly black. I love Boot Barn and I buy all my clothes from there. For example today I was wearing a black vest with matching tassels around it and a black leather chaps, pink holsters and black cowboy boots. I was wearing black lipstick, white foundation, black eyeliner and red eye shadow. I was walking outside Hogropes. It was dust storm and drought so there was no sun, which I was very happy about. A lot of cattle rustlers stared at me. I put up my middle finger at them.

[endreal]

it'd been a long two years since the breakup, and somehow an even longer one year and 354 days since my last date. disheveled and exhausted i stare into the bathroom mirror and think about the words that used to make him laugh before head - as much an inside joke as a brag of sexual prowess. "throat goat mode activate..." i whisper glumly and then pop my evening meds into my mouth, no water. i seal my lips but not before a tiny bleat sneaks past them. i can already feel four teeny tiny hooves scaling the steep walls of my esophagus to investigate and bring the caplets back down to my stomach below.

[endreal]

The two warriors stopped, raised hands to their eyes to shield from the horizon sun, sniffed the air.

Kantír addressed her companion. "Do you smell that, Liraeia?"

Both women spoke almost in unison.

"Onions—"

"Diesel—"

They looked at each other and grinned.

"We will have fun come nightfall."

[endreal]

The year is 2059. I am about to be publicly executed for slights against the most powerful cultural forces in the land. My fortune, my vision, my legacy have been disbanded and burned to the ground. This is my fate. Perhaps I even deserve it.

After a youth spent listless and forlorn I found my passion in the needle and cloth. Literally in my grandparent's shed I practiced myself from an untrained newbie working odd jobs for Jo-Ann scraps to a dark horse studio rivaling the fashion capitals of Europe and the rest of the world.

America loved my maverick designs, until an aggressive and dedicated media campaign turned them against me. The rest of the world was bemused by me, but couldn't deny the unconventional genius of my designs. I made enemies. I never wanted to, but they'd have it no other way. And now this. Beaten and bruised, forced to my knees in the public square, surrounded by the enigmatic shadow leaders of the most powerful fashion houses in the world.

"Say it," hissed the one in front of me, and slapped me across the face, jolting me out of my foggy state and knocking the trucker hat of heart-wrenching elegance from my head. "Your dignity is ruined, you're career is over, but if you renounce your foolishness we will let you live."

I blearily did my best to make eye contact and responded in a thick drawl. If my dignity was ruined why should I bother hiding it to make an impression any more? "I will not renounce my contributions to the world of high fashion." Through ringing ears I could barely hear the jeers and mockery at the word contributions. "I...will never...apologize for my hot cooter."

[endreal]

That time I wrote a story in which gods and demons were warring over the fate of the world and the gods were losing ground because their leader had been missing since time immemorial and they each sacrificed themselves one by one to try and stem the tide of evil until there was only a prophesied mortal hero remaining to face against encroaching doom and then died but that fulfilled the prophecy and the leader of the gods was finally born (which is the reason he'd been missing for all of history) and defeated the demon lord and saved the world but then there was nobody left so he just sort of...shrugged and went away

What even was the moral I was going for?

[endreal]

"And the words of the profits were

Written on the street of wall

(Let's burn them all)

Echoing the screams

Of finance"

[endreal]

And so in the turn of the world

There were those who persisted, and when the Sun Serpent raised itself from its nest upon the Ashen Tree, hood unfurled to bathe the earth in its light, it passed over the Southern Wastes and granted those lingering people with a terrible gift - the blessing of Memory.

And the people decorated themselves in gold to honor the blessing of the Sun Serpent and in red as the Serpent enjoined them, to Remember the earth that had been lost to the Vine.

And the lingering peoples practiced lost arts. They Remembered, and scribed the Memory of the living so that it would not be lost to Time, and wove the Memory of the land—of the Wastes and before the Wastes—so that it would not be lost to the Vine. They became the Atlas-Bearers, ever creating and ever guided by their books and their woven cloth. Legends carried dutifully in their hands. Maps draped reverently upon their bodies. Ever wandering. Never lost. Always, always seeking to reclaim fragments of home from the Vine.

And among the Atlas-Bearing Folk there were those who were afflicted by the gold and the red to even deeper Memory. In dreams, in sudden insights, in visions unbidden they Remembered that which was no longer known. Remembered that which had not yet been. Some say prophecy tainted the very blood of the people of the Southern Wastes, others that it was inflicted by the Sun Serpent’s passage.

The Atlas-Bearing Folk, the people of the Southern Wastes, thus Remember for now and for all time, until the Sun Serpent’s passage returns it to the Ashen Tree, and the people are liberated from its blessing when the Ravens and Vultures snatch the last morsels of the Serpent’s gift from those burdened to bear it. And when that time comes the People will remain, with their books and their woven cloth and their record of Memory. And the red earth of Southern Wastes will remain, untended and half-unknown. And the Vine will remain, growing and devouring lest home can be once more reclaimed.