the world's most daunting poetry convention
my piece for @ldshadowzine , 3.5k words
There are some parts of this game that Lizzie is never going to get used to. The confusion on how she's ended up here. The familiar faces that she can't quite place. The barren and bare world, that'll soon become a place of chaos and danger and death.
But for now, it's peaceful. Everyone is happy and smiling and for the most part, cheery. The few nervous faces amongst them are those who haven't done this before, or who have only done it a few times, like her.
Grian sends them off, into the wilderness, with a deflated smile because he knows, like the rest of them, what's waiting. They'd be friendly and maybe even civil until someone died, properly, vanishing forever, then, carnage.
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It's not long before the whir of music is filling her ears, which can't be right because there's no way somebody has a disc already, let alone the diamonds to make a jukebox.
The notebook, made of old leather and smelling only slightly stale, lands on the floor in front of her with a merciless thud. Lizzie looks down at it, squinting, staring, as if it's going to bare holes into her soul.
She looks around, through the cherry trees, down the hill, everyone, even the small pinpricks of people in the distance, look confused.
It's now or never, she tells herself, reluctantly leaning down to pick it up.
After careful consideration, Lizzie wishes altogether that she'd rejected the fancy wax-sealed letter from Grian.
It can't be that hard. All the greats have done this, wrote a poem and performed it. She can do it too. It's just, stringing a lot of words together and making sure they rhyme. Easy.
Or so she thought.
Lizzie’s no poet, she's never ventured to claim that she was. Surprisingly (or unsurprisingly, depending on how you view the circumstances), the task wasn't her issue.
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Some things in this game are always a rarity. Or not so much a rarity as they are a tactic to scam and bargain with others. Leather has always been one of these. Unfortunately.
There'd be a cow somewhere. There had to be. It's not like this world could be completely rid of cows. A few of them should be in a corner somewhere, it's just a case of finding them.
She's walking across the surprisingly beautiful fields when she hears a murmur, an unforgettably distinct voice.
“I need to get some leather, like, pronto…”
Bdubs. Surely he'd be able to wrangle cows, or some other source of leather.
“Bdubs, here, leather.” Lizzie speaks up, pointing at the horse roaming next to them.
‘Yeah, what do you have?” Bdubs responds, frantic. Or maybe he's just energetic, Lizzie’s never had a knack, per se, for figuring out emotions.
“No, here, here.”
“That's- this is a horse.”
“Yeah, and it's leather.” Lizzie shrugs, if she had her own way, she'd have just enough leather to craft a book and be on her merry way.
Bdubs gasps. “No, no, no, never, no.”
Well.
“I need leather too, actually, I've just, well, remembered.” Lizzie smiles, redirecting her attention to the horse in front of them.
“You do? Oh. No, please don't.” Bdubs sighs, shaking his head. “This guy, this, a prized stallion here. Mhm.”
“I didn't realise you'd set your eyes on it this early. Okay, okay, I'll leave it. Sorry!” Lizzie laughs, turning promptly on her heels. She's got a new mission now, finding cows, or another horse.
“Uh-huh! Top of his class, he is. But, he does drop leather, doesn't he?”
“Yeah. Just in case things get, uh, desperate!” Lizzie nods, “I'm gonna look somewhere else, for leather. It will absolutely, certainly not be a horse.”
“That's very kind of you, very sweet.”
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Lizzie sighs, exasperated. She'd never be able to find a cow, at this rate. There were none anywhere.
Determined to not give up, however, she continues forward, hunting any bushes and collections of trees for a cow. Even one would be enough. She'd kill it, grab the leather, and run off before anyone could notice that the steak population in this world had fallen from one to none.
Bingo.
Hard work pays off eventually.
It's hard to spot at first, off in the distance, but the brown speck couldn't be anything else, it was near impossible to be anything but a cow.
“You're not killing that cow, are you? We can't be killing the cows, Lizzie.” Pearl pipes up from where she's hunched over her crafting table.
“What- why? I need it!” Lizzie sighs, stepping back from the cow, who she was very much planning on killing.
“If you kill them, they don't come back later on, and then we're all like, doomed.” Pearl replies, in that voice that she only ever uses when she's really trying to get a point across.
“What if I breed them first?”
“That's good, you can do that.”
“Yes! Okay, thank you!” Lizzie smiles, promptly heading off in a vague enough direction where there may be a slither of hope at finding some seeds.
“You're welcome!” Pearl shouts, but it's lost on Lizzie, it's barely audible, she's already off on her next mission.
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Well. That changes things. She hadn't expected things to be quite so difficult when she'd gotten that rickety old book not too long ago.
She finds a water source, and the river is warm, pretty, and reflects the sunlight in such a way that it allows her to see her work just right.
The land is tilled, the seeds are planted, and it's then, after everything is calm for a second, that she realises she has no armour.
There's no point in making a book if she's dead.
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It's darker much quicker than she'd expected. And wished for.
She has no light, no armour, no weapons. Maybe this was the point of Grian's whole task escapade. Distract people just enough so they forget the important things and in turn end up vulnerable to all the wrong things. Zombies and such.
She'd be much safer with Pearl.
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Pearl, as it turns out, is much more prepared than Lizzie.
Tools, mining down for iron, sheltering for the night. She'd come into this ready, Lizzie, on the other hand, had come into this stressing about the severity of the tasks.
Pearl, protector of the cows, the smartest being in the universe, does protect Lizzie. Kills spiders, wards off skeletons dressed in full gold (how are the dead more prepared than her?), and other such creatures.
Pearl is, however, very much losing hearts. Lizzie doesn't feel too good about that.
However, she's sure she wouldn't feel as bad if Joel was to lose a few hearts. Surely it's civil service to protect his wife? That's Lizzie’s reasoning, anyways, and it's good enough.
“Joel, save us!” Lizzie shouts when she can see the outline of his silhouette, silently praying that it works.
“Yeah, okay, I'll save you.” Joel laughs, smiling, that same smile he puts on when he knows that Lizzie is perfectly capable of defending herself, but would rather rope Joel into it, or a bit more fun.
She's seen that smile once before, she can't place it, and the memory is all hazy, but Joel had a very long beard and was living in a cave. Whatever that was about.
“Okay, so, what's up?” Joel breathes after a needlessly long battle with a spider who just won't die.
“Well, I've just lost three hearts, so..” Pearl trails off, shrugging. It wasn't a big deal at this point, she'd get them back easy enough.
“Oh, I've lost one and a half already.” Joel nods, sympathetic, to an extent.
Lizzie realises she should probably repay the favour of protection, wouldn't want any rivalries just yet. They're both lacking in hearts, it'd be the civil thing to do.
Lizzie sighs. “Well now I can't decide who to give my gift to.” She looks between them, Pearl was worse off, but Joel was her husband. Though, Pearl promised to protect her, Joel didn't.
She's never been great at making decisions.
“You can fight for my heart.” She concludes, looking expectantly at the pair.
“I'll give you this uh..” Joel starts, searching through his mass of stuff. None of it's of any value by any means. “wooden sword. I'll give you this wooden sword.”
“A porkchop?” Pearl offers up, tempting, but nevertheless, Lizzie knew she could get better.
“What if I tickle you with this feather?” Joel grins, producing a feather from behind his back, tilting his head and sneaking ever so slowly towards her.
Lizzie laughs, in confusion, more than anything, was he really offering that of all things?
“Oh, oh, skeletons! The first person to bring me back a bone can have my heart.”
They're off quicker than you can blink.
She can hear them shouting from afar, it's muffled mostly, besides from the few angry shouts from Joel and the cathartic laughing of Pearl.
Pearl runs back first.
“Yeah, yeah, bone!” Pearl shouts, smiling ear-to-ear and she waves the bone in the air, before passing it ever so gracefully to Lizzie.
“Thank you so much Pearl. Here, have a heart.” Lizzie smiles, punching the command into her communicator.
Joel's back, grumbling about losing more hearts, and how it was entirely unfair.
“You're the best, Lizzie!”
Joel shakes his head, clearly disagreeing. “I lost four hearts doing that!”
“I'll do something nice for you later.” Lizzie smiles, before changing the topic completely, “but now I need to harvest my wheat.”
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“I've got four pieces of wheat.” Lizzie exclaims, solemnly, at first. Then a change in attitude, “When the day is upon us, and the sun rises, I get those cows. I make my move.
All of this for a book. For a poem.
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She's got to move quickly, find those cows that are hopefully, and she's really hoping here, still in the same spot. All nice and calm and not tampered with.
There's mobs everywhere, well, it's not like there'd be any alternative, this wasn't and never will be a peaceful world.
But Lizzie, ever the expert when it comes to weaving and dodging mobs, gets by without so much as a scratch.
Two cows in one spot. Perfect. Call it luck, call it divine intervention, call it whatever you please. All Lizzie knows, and in fact, cares for, is that there's two cows, free roaming, just for her.
“You.. you guys will be very, very valuable.” Lizzie grins, head tilted slightly.
“Yeah you will, silly cows.” She can hear Joel shout in the distance. Teasing, but affectionate nevertheless.
“I've had to jump through so many hoops for this.” Lizzie sighs to herself, glaring at the cows as she leads them onto the empty plains. “But it's worth it. It'll all be worth it.”
Fenced in, bred, everything is moving now. She can make her book, write that poem, hand it in.
It's all looking much easier than it did, well, she'd say yesterday, but honestly, she doesn't know how long it's been.
Find some sugar cane, or rather, barter for some sugar cane, craft some paper, get a book. She'd manage that, no problem.
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One boat and some hard earned determination later, Lizzie’s off down the river, in hopes - though, they're not very high - of finding some sugar cane that no one has yet pillaged.
“Sugar cane.. sugar cane..” She mumbles mindlessly to herself, keeping a wary eye on the riverbed, which, she thinks, is the most she's ever watched a riverbed. It's not something she particularly does a lot.
“Oh, I've got sugar cane.” A voice responds, from the depths of another world, apparently, because Lizzie cannot see them at all.
“Wha- hello?” Lizzie calls out, taken aback.
It's Cleo, she can deduce that much.
“I heard somebody say sugar cane?” She continues, erring on the edge of caution, in case this all a very elaborate plan to have her killed for absolutely no reason whatsoever.
She rides the boat down to where, presumably, the voices are. They sound louder and closer at the edge of the hill, near the end of the river, so common sense dictates that Cleo's in there. Simple.
And Tango too, apparently.
“Sugar cane?” Lizzie asks, suspicious, but willing to take a good offer.
“Are you offering, or are you seeking?” Asks Tango, with a twinge to his voice that Lizzie can't place, and doesn't exactly want to place, she's suspicious of them, as all things go, and would rather not know if her untimely death is near, thank you very much.
“I'm seeking.”
“I mean, I'll give you… uh, one.” Cleo shrugs, and it sounds as if she's questioning her own decision, which wouldn't be too surprising, given the circumstances, death game and all.
“That'd be, yeah, perfect!” Lizzie smiles, anything to make this less awkward. It's probably her own doing, not trusting them, that they're being so cautious with her, but, Lizzie does not go around blindingly trusting people, she'll have you know.
“Mhm, and then you can grow more, that's fair.”
“And I'll give you.. uhm. Pink petals!” Lizzie says, with about as much triumph as a child receiving a perfectly boring Christmas gift. She doesn't have much, looking back on things, her priorities may have been a bit skewed.
“Wow, what a trade!” Tango grins, sarcastically.
So much for her attempt at making things awkward.
“And off I go!’ Lizzie nods, promptly, and very quickly, climbing into her boat. “Thank you very much.”
The wait for the sugar cane to grow is long and boring and tedious. It's really taking its time. Does it not know she's on a time crunch here?
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Her makeshift hut isn't anything to write home about, really, made in a state of panic as a creeper ran towards her and the ever-precious cows at top speed.
What is to write home about though, is the, and she doesn't mean this in any vain, monstrosity of a building that appears directly on top of her hut.
It's Cleo's work, because, well, why wouldn't it be, and Jimmy doesn't do so much to stop her as he does watch and laugh.
“You're not taking mine, are you?” Lizzie asks in a hurry, rushing inside and trying to work out what Cleo could possibly be doing.
Jimmy and his iron-clad skeleton can wait.
“No, I'm not taking yours.” Cleo replies, with a distinct lack of conviction in her voice. “It's gonna be fine, it's gonna be fine.”
She could've at least chosen to use blocks that kept with the theme, red terracotta is not it.
“Hang on a second, what's happening?” Lizzie questions, confused, bewildered, and irritated at her sugar cane's lack of growing capabilities.
“No, no, this isn't my… thing… my colours!” She continues, frantic. “What are you building!”
“I'll tell you what.” Cleo starts, climbing down from the building and dismantling everything she's built. “I'll make mine higher, okay? So it's not over yours. It's fine.”
“Do you think there's more sugar cane?” Lizzie asks a short while later, when Cleo has finally decided to not situate her home on top of her own. “Down the river, I mean.”
“Do you want me to- I can plant the other sugar cane I've got.”
“That'd be amazing.”
──── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ────
A mesa, a big, hilly, well, mesa.
It rings a memory distantly in her mind, but Lizzie cannot place what it is.
But there's no sugar cane, and the rivers at its end, and there's not exactly much to do in the mesa, because gold isn't going to be particularly useful.
She continues on foot, it's not like there was any other choice, she wasn't about to try and row a boat across mud.
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One generous lump sum of sugar cane from Skizz later and the unfortunate site of Cleo's… thing, (Lizzie would venture as far to say that you can't even call it a base.) and Lizzie finally, finally has her book.
She needs to be somewhere quiet, where no one can hear her or disturb her or tell her, in their deceitful and suspicious ways that, quite frankly, her poetry is really not that good, and well, is it really even a poem, and, if it's not actually a poem, does it mean anything?
Now, she's not naming names, but, if Bigb was to walk past whilst she was writing, there'd probably be a problem.
“Oh, now what on earth is that?” Lizzie whispers to herself as she walks to the edge of the river, turning on her heels to watch whatever the hell that is.
It can only be, in her right mind, Scar, on the back of a camel that could, at any point, have enough of their antics and attempt murder through suffocation, because he's the only one who would believe the opposite.
It's easier to pretend she didn't see that.
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Is it a good idea to venture into a deep, dark hole in an equally deep and dark cave in a situation where you have a limited number of hearts and lives? No.
Does Lizzie do this anyways? Yes.
It's a good place to write her poem, okay?
As it turns out, writing a poem in a lit, but ever so spooky cave, with no real intentions of what you're going to write, is much harder than Lizzie would've thought.
It comes to her, vaguely, and it's not so much ‘coming to her’ as it is Lizzie looking at her surroundings and thinking, well, it'll have to do, and writing that down. But it comes to her, eventually.
“You're mesa-in up my mind,
With your fabulous behind.
You won me a bone,
I'll never leave you alone.
I hope you stay alive,
and also thrive.
Don't forget to shift,
when you're near a rift.”
Beautiful, one for the ages, would challenge the likes of Burns and Byron, Lizzie's sure of it.
Now, if she could just find Joel, that'd make this whole thing complete.
People, and zombies, and people living down in the mesa caves, who could've heard her write the poem.
She's just going to have to stay in the cave for a bit, no problem. She can finally get some iron, which she should've done earlier, but a poet must always have their priorities straight.
──── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ────
Maybe it wasn't a good idea to stay in the cave, considering the injuries she's sustained, but the coast is clear now.
It's a long trek from the mesa back to her home, but it's a nice site to see once she's back.
Cleo can build her base quickly.
Joel's there too, nice coincidence, all things taken into account, the poem burning a hole in her pocket, and everything.
“Hi, Lizzie.”
“Hi, Joel.” Lizzie smiles, trying to put on the facade of someone who has not just written a love poem for the person she's talking to.
“Is there any chance I can breed your cows and take the baby?”
“Yes you can, because… I.. love you.” Lizzie says, tensely. She's never understood why people say ‘it's now or never’ until just now.
“Aw, thank you.”
“You're mesa-in up my mind, with your fabulous behind.” Lizzie starts, and, oh God, kill her, she thinks.
“You won me a bone, I’ll never leave you alone.” The awkward silence is slightly unbearable, leave it to Joel to say absolutely nothing, not that the poetry exactly helps their situation, though.
“Why are you rhyming?” Joel asks, not suspicious, questioning, but it's got the gravitas to it that he's slightly concerned this is a plot to orchestrate his demise.
“I hope you stay alive, and also thrive. Don't forget to shift, when you're near a rift!.”
“I am very confused.” Joel tips his head to the side and raises an eyebrow, “is this… something secretive? Is that what's going on?”
“I just wanted to profess my love to you! In spoken word!”
Joel does not respond, so much for making the awkward silence less awkward, then.
“Look at that!” Joel grins once he's led the calf out of the pen, nodding proudly at it. “I'm an expert! Come on baby, let's go!”
Sure, changing the subject works too, Lizzie thinks, watching Joel lead the cow.
“Thank you, I'll call him Gerald and I'll murder him in the future. Why've you got a base above yours?”
Lizzie stares at him.
“That's a good question.”
“It's ugly.”
“Yep. Yeah.”
“Okay, well, thanks for Gerald!” Joel shouts as he turns and walks away, presumably with the intent to try and forget whatever those rhyming words Lizzie had said were.
Joel's right, it's hideous and disgusting, honestly.
But first, a well earned trip to the secret keeper and a hopefully equally well earned reward.