Angsty Cryptid!Jemima thoughts
*banging my head into desk*
Okay, but what about when Cryptid!Jemima has a loved one die and this little bb Cryptid, who has waded through seas of blood and stood atop mountains of bones, finally understands death?
It fully sends her world into a tailspin.
("Mister, am I really going to live forever?"
"That's the way it goes for beings like us."
"Oh.")
Time keeps happening and Jemima still looks the same, perhaps a tad more like an actual creature, but grey is starting to seep into Tugger's mane and Munkustrap needs a little help to get to his feet.
Misto looks the same though and she clings to that like a comfort that can save her from seeing what she's already seen. Her friends are growing up and having kits of their own. She plays with their kits and looks up at her friends and decides the latter was a bad decision.
(The way they look at her like an imaginary friend they've grown up from is more bitter than wormwood.)
Jemima decides she doesn't want to see any of it. She vanishes in the folds of other dimensions. She devours knowledge with greedy teeth, perfecting her power until the monsters that monsters dream about call her something other than Mistoffelees' runt.
There's a part of her that hopes that all this unholy power thrumming inside her is a solution to her problems. Time is just another beast to conquer and she can make whole countries kneel if she wanted to.
She comes back between journeys and adds a name to her list for every face she doesn't see, adds another idea, another solution, another lead to stop this waking nightmare.
(Misto visits her once, while she's grinding up organ meat and sculpting it into an angry oozing spire to let some Nether God know she's coming.
"What are you doing?" He asks, eyes soft
"It's really hard to explain. I'm- I'm sorry."
"That's okay," he says, putting a hand on her shoulder, "I have to go back, Tugger is waiting for me. You should come home soon, we could have a tea party."
"Yeah, yeah, of course." Jemima agrees without meeting any of his eyes)
Jemima screams, she rages, she destroys. Why is it so damn easy to take a life but so hard to bring one back? She tosses out another lump of meat, a failed recreation of her sweet aunt who always scratched behind her ears and saved fishcakes for her.
She yells into the void and faces of Gods
"My purpose can't be to be alone."
(She finds her way home again. Only the stars know how long she was gone this time. It's tea party time, she knows at least that in her soul.
She stops at the entryway and make no moves further.
Misto is oh so gentle with Tugger, holding his hands to lessen their shaking. Whispers of inaudible sweetness as Jemima watches Tugger struggle through the paper flowers she's seen him fold a million times before.
Paper flowers litter the ground like the flower fields that always eluded her and Jemima's lower lip trembles.
Her uncle has taught her so much but she's not ready to learn how to say good-bye.)