#poetnix

[all-consuming-sea]

There's not enough paper in the world to fully explain all the facets and little details of what someone truly is down to their very core, and even if there was, there's not a writer who's fully capable of expressing it all beyond the Poetnix himself, sitting alone at the top. But even just a partial description, an outline with a touch of colour and detail, can sometimes be enough. To the tailed of the feather, bringing life to their stories is not a figure of speech, but an actual skill that requires deep thought and understanding behind every word, such that only a few have the ability to conjure something alive, and even fewer have mastered it.

Simulacrum, golems, constructs, homunculi, muses, or any other of the thousand variations of words that the poetnix tailed call them by (It is, in fact, traditional that one who stumbles into the ability without any teaching create their own name for it, while those who are taught follow the naming choice of their tutor), are sheets of paper blessed to follow the behavior that was inscribed upon them. The most common kind of creation is the vertical type, where the author utilises just a few sheets at most to form the simplest of constructs. Extremly fragile and basic, they're often given a set of orders to follow until they're destroyed, fall apart, or reach a sentence that describes their own ending. Apprentices in simulacrum-making tend to make some that are able to live only for a few minutes, where masters in the art can create verticals that can not only live for months, but have a certain degree of complexity given. The key lies not solely in one's verbosity and comprehensiveness in writing, but also in their mental vision of the creation as it will exist once finished.

For those who progress in their ability, they will eventually begin creating their first layered construct, consisting of many stacked or binded paper sheets that are blessed collectively, forming a much more complex being. Despite these tending to be of a much higher quality and durability than their vertical bethren, they also require more time to be crafted, becoming year-long projects. With every drop of complexity added, a construct requires more details and rules to be added within, none being able to contradict with each other, giving way more spots where everything could go wrong. Whereas a vertical could exist by itself without much of an excuse, the tailed that wishes to describe their layered needs to be far more meticulous: To consider how warm they are, what they smell like, if they have blood, if they're able to talk (And if so, how they sound like) and so on, so on. One may conjure details from their imagination, inventing biology and creating their nature without regard for what the world already contains, but any gaps must be filled, one way or another. Failure to realize that, and one might create nothing but a corpse or a mockery of life itself. Death commands are one of the first methods most experts teach for a reason.

It is said that it'd take a hundred years of writing for a poetnix tailed to create a person. It's also said that it'd take only a single night for the Poetnix to create a nation.

[all-consuming-sea]

Poetnix Spark

An idea. Fiction. Sleep is interrupted. Your only companion is a single candle, lit in haste. The sheet is blank. Your hand trembles, and then starts writing to a single direction, the same way a spider pulls itself along a silken thread. As if your very body knows the final result. By the time you'll sleep again, the sun will have already risen, and what was inside you, a blurry vision seen only by the inner eye, is now written. Solid. Reality.

The poetnix tailed are mild when compared to most other tailed. They don't have the physique of one under the crocodile, nor the stories of long travel from the land dragon, nor the trained servitude of those beneath the fins. They tell their stories, myths of old tailed or the nine gods, yet most storytellers vanish behind their own tales. Beyond well-groomed fur, and keen interest in various personal projects, what would you have to say about the typical poetnix-born, what would you speak to them of beyond their stories? They work, and eat, and sleep, and live, and die. As average as one can find in their own society.

Except for a few. A small number scattered across settlements, a mere handful arising each generation, possessing the spark. Tigers in disguise, those are.

The spark is a blessing, that much is agreed upon. Yet must you be born with it, must you train and foster it, or will it simply make itself known? Must one even be chosen, or is it there for anyone who simply strives towards it hard enough? Ask, and you'll get different answers, each as convincing as the last. It is just known that sometimes, even the meekest poetnix tailed will say something. And their words are spoken with such natural confidence, in such a matter-of-fact way, that it simply turns into fact. As if all the world, the natural order, and the Nine Gods above that order accepted it as the superior version of events. As if truth had compared itself to their narrative, and found itself wanting.

There's no threat worse than when a poetnix simply stops and states your ultimate fate, in the very same tone that one would claim up is up and down is down. For the world may be convinced to follow suit.

Many poetnixes will never find such a spark throughout their entire lifetime, as they toil away trying to convince those around them with an excess of dramatics and long, complicated words about the arts and theatre. Merely following what they've been taught by others and their notion of what it should be, seeing their work as well-crafted fiction, and so it is fiction. Some will have a singular moment, where they crest the peak of their own creation, and speak it into being with a pure force of will, and never obtain such conviction again.

Those are preferable than those who have it, and know how to use it properly. They will not tell you about the spark, and the power it grants them. They will not speak of confidence and belief. Only by living wholly within their story can they write their words upon reality.

"The storm will end soon."

"The ground here is rich and fertile."

"You'll die to his sword."

And so it shall be.

The distance between creation and reality has always been the spring by which the poetnix tailed are wound. The spark closes that distance. And is that not a tragedy, for what is the worth of all the poetry in the world, when put close to words said with a unwavering heart?