some new status quo (batty phase of their life)™ notes for future reference:
〰️ Reisz mixes a combo of their glasswork illusion + aotrs skills to keep the baby hidden from the firmy (and airship) crew. No one in text has acknowledged Their Burden so it's 👍 working
I'm usually wary of just going and stating things that wouldn't be believable/feasible with the skills they have, but I think 19 GW + 16 RS May be enough...?
i got spoiled about summer, which is sad, but at least i can more or less affirm she's likely the Only one that's like. 🤨? trickery afoot? but then she also seems to have the right personality to never directly confront the reisz about this LOL
〰️ The batby detaches, actually, so they're not walking around with it 100% of the time. More like 77%
〰️ It lives in the airship, which is coincidentally the bee-est one, so whenever weird things happen the crew just thinks it's the infernal red science in the machinery instead of an actual critter crawling inside the pipes
〰️ It may or may not have been Marked By Zenith. what that entails is a mystery
〰️ Can't fly yet, hasn't grown Much, but the nubs that one day will turn into wings have started growing fingers. Reisz will very likely never open it up but theyre still keeping track of its growth MA researcher style.
〰️ I was kind of concerned about its speech (and cognitive!) development since the ghostie famously has many peculiar speaking quirks,
but then i Rembered. oh curators natively speak Correspondence. and reisz is arguably? fluent? (SoTC 21 since last hallowmas, more than an year in-game)
they're also great at Rose Giveth, employing shapeling arts to assist with the more extra-limbed esoteric verses, and they genuinely do not mind breaking their bones to speak (dance) it
after the nearly half a year with extreme avulsion-induced immolating self-harm they know they heal faster from burns And their pain tolerance is (became) insane.
theyre Corresponding more than speaking english i think. so i suppose this baby is getting a very strange accent but it will be fine
〰️ I... don't think they know about the curator & music thing, y'all. Reisz hums songs to themself often and even communicates that way so they're. kind of keeping it drunk most of the time. Oopsie
〰️ The batby sees Rei as A Possession. That is not its mama but ??¿ it Is a months-old baby. This possession does not have curator milk (?? curators are mammal-adjacent so im assuming but. ¿¿) to give it, but it is very very warm. There's a cloth mother joke here somewhere
〰️ This entire situation probably consists of so many law crimes. Reisz a Despoiler of Laws fr
i got lost trying to find where shadowy gains was and ended up in mahogany hall. did you know? this paramount presence has never unlocked mahogany hall. we need to visit thru cards! we havent gone there since last whitsun :D
i wonder how much of a whiplash is it gonna be to proceed with this storyline post-hurlers, post-avulsion & post-adornment. anyway,
we not doing that right now. we are renewing our fingervows. by which i mean grinding some favors by making more cute possessed fishies and taking a trip to varchas 🥳🐍
shadowy gains spoilers below
FEAR IS AS NUTRITIOUS AS LOVE OR WORSHIP... the way the game text keeps being stuff i would make them say on its own is almost scary but. mayhaps it shouldnt be. thats the text that made them who they are after all
Oh so this place is Fingerking daycare. CUTE. horrible for the city but CUTE BABY FINGERKINGS.... am imagining them helping with that too. dreamsnek midwife momence. i appreciate this confirmation that these not-beings have a reproduction cycle but do they even share genetic not-material or is it just a ritual kinda thing? making babies by the power of intercourse dreams...? Adds this to the bunch of minor lore/worldbuilding questions I would love answered.
And ah, yes, the three other options for this mini vacation:
pretend to be a haunting snek, pretend to be a cat, and depersonalize real living people as pawns to be played with. All very in line with the ghostie's (lacking) sense of humanity! ^^
Lessons in being even more of a cryptid successfully learned. Shit like this is why Reisz can never be anything other than a Silverer tbh. who even are them if not a weirdo messing with people's heads? thats a core identity tidbit right there
so its just like that. back to their life just like that?
yapping about the ghostie's background with this casanova below bc it is, unironically, crucial early lore. It's not an exaggeration to say he's almost directly responsible for their present marriage
There's a lot I haven't posted & I need to make it clear how much this mummy Leaving messed Rei up.
extremely old doodle depicting the first moment they - a mangled half-bandaged thing post 7th Coil, literal nobody with barely a penny on their pocket - caught his eye; a writing snippet from that time & a summary i wrote before. and only remembered after rewriting the entire thing below. shdjklsk WELL I AINT DELETIN!!
more context about destiny throwing him to reisz to specifically break them just right for the blonde:
The entirety of early Light Fingers had them going on dates with him and having genuine fun while the LF cast were going thru horrors unknown (the Fading Music-Hall singer broken by hammers, for example).
Behold my favourite journal screenshot ever.
If only the world were like this. A lover who promises to wait for you to dream again. do you guys Understand why i became insane about nm. look at this literal omen. rng made it so bro. it made it so i had no choice
That honey-dream (their last honey-dream ever, bc they stopped taking honey + became a Silverer a while later), in the very next nap after escaping the arms of their husband-to-be.
After that hammer of lead they promptly limped to The Smuggler's home + had an honest talk with him. Of course the Reisz was thinking He could be the one in their desired honey-dream. The one who would promise to wait for them, who would join them in laughing pursuits through long grass. Reisz wanted to chase and be chased and be caught and laugh. It wasn't too much to ask, now, was it?
Unbeknownst to them they were with much stronger feelies than the Smuggler probably ever did.
There's this constant juxtaposition between Fun Smuggler Dates in which Reisz fully believes this is how Love must feel like; and Light Fingers horrors. They dressed up to infiltrate a party with him, then dressed up as an orderly to infiltrate the orphanage alone the literal next day, and fun fact:
He left their life the day after Reisz set fire to the Orphanage. (The hole in the back of their head still fresh, readjusting to photophobia and affected peripheral vision and issues with their hands and reading and writing and thinking. And with a new responsibility they never asked for.) The One good thing in their life, leaving them. Leaving them alone. They had never felt more dead inside on their entire months-old life (lol)
It was this that made them understand: I can't do this. I can stand damage. I can stand my broken bones and my damaged organs and my soon-to-be scars, I can stand splitting my skull open and feeling my brain collapse. But I cannot stand this. I can't do this song and dance of beginnings and endings. I can't.
i'll never love again.
And then, well. Then someone that wouldn't leave got on one knee in front of them.
SO, WITH ALL THAT CONTEXT OUT OF THE WAY,
A PROMISE TO REMAIN. I AM HERE WITH YOU.
a gemstone with the deep dark brown colour their eyes were when they met. when they still looked human. pupils round and innocent.
