You've engaged me River cryptid
You and your gay fog that makes people forget things. Tell me more....
MMMMM DELICIOUS YES HI sorry it took me a while to get to this ask I kept meaning to (and then forgetting) (I’m very tired it’s late) BUT. allow me to yap
So! The “fog” is from Eternal Sugar, it’s her doing. It started as far back as right when Truthless Recluse entered the Garden with Shadow Milk, because it’s meant to serve as a sort of sedative? It’s drawn loosely from canon— it calms the afflicted down and leaves them drowsy and sluggish often. TR was hyper on edge when he first set foot in the Garden, and of course ES couldn’t have that, so she… gave him a little help.
It’s insidious magic, really. At first, it was only meant to keep him calm, to put him at ease in this place; after all, if she can’t convince her dear friend Shadow Milk cookie to stay, she can convince Pure Vanilla cookie, and since Shadow Milk won’t leave without him, she gets two birds with one stone, right? But as she watches the two of them grow closer and bond with only a smidge of her input, she sees how similar Truthless is to the Fount. How similar Pure Vanilla cookie is to the fount. And a part of her registers this poor, broken soul, who Shadow Milk has dressed up like the Fount, as a gift to her.
She can fix all the things she wasn’t able to fix in the past. She can make him happy. She can make her friend happy, and she can right an ancient wrong she was never able to fulfill. By taking Pure Vanilla cookie and twisting him slowly to be the Fount of Knowledge instead, she can make her friend happy.
The fog works to keep him calm. The fog works to put him at ease in the Garden. The Garden is a carnivorous plant, waiting to swallow him whole. Pure Vanilla cookie seems happier, doesn’t he? He’s breathing a little bit easier. He’s eating more. He’s on a consistent sleep schedule, now. But most of that is Shadow Milk’s doing— and Eternal Sugar is weaving her control in inbetween that, right under his nose.
I imagine the food to be much like how it works with the fae, similar in nature; if you eat it, you become part of this place. If you eat the fruit of the Garden, it traps you in its snare. Pure Vanilla cookie was able to resist for so long due to his nature as a souljam wielder combined with his cripplingly low self esteem and guilt. In order for Sugar to keep him here, because of how truly and utterly selfless he is— she needs to make him forget the outside world.
So the fog slips in while he sleeps upon the soft, pink clouds, or through the berries and foods he’s been eating as Shadow Milk tries to help him return to a healthy weight after having been starved for so long. It slips into the back of his mind and carefully eases his worries in the only way that he can— by forgetting. Because if he knows, if he’s even slightly aware there is a threat, he is fully on edge. His body and mind reacts as though every threat is a life threatening one, because it very well may be— and he is more than willing to throw his life away for the sake of other cookies.
So it takes the worries and repressed emotions and it buries them gently in the haze. It draws his attention quietly to things in the Garden and removes it from the outside world. He knows something is wrong, but he cannot put his finger on it. There is a piece of him that is fighting desperately against it and with each passing moment he remains, its struggling weakens. Maybe one day it will make him forget the outside world entirely.
Where else would he want to be, after all?
