Stay here, Spinel. Don’t move. This is a game, see.
Here are your rules:
Stay here, my friend, stay here amongst the withering and the rot and these roots growing all over you. The last butterfly has long since died on your shoulder, the last flower has long since bowed its head with a sigh, and still, you stand still amongst roots and trees and forget-me-nots withering at your feet.
Watch the garden crumble. Slowly, at first, watch the cracks appear in thin, slow spreads, feel the ground shift under you – then faster, faster, a crescendo of stone and plants and star cycles all around the fixed point that is you. Ever smiling, don’t take your eyes off the warp pad.
This is a game, my little one. Don’t break your rules.
(Don’t move, stay still, don’tmovestaystill dontmovestaystillspinel) – Isn’t this fun? Isn’t this lovely? How long will you wait for me, my friend?
How long until you break your rules, how long until you lose?
Oh, you silly thing.
Here is how the game went, all this time:
I left and I didn’t turn back. I’ve no use for a spinel jumping about me when ruling a colony, see. I’ve no use for squeaky, stretchy, ever laughing little things whose eyes rattle when they move. I left and you lost your game the moment you started playing, you silly, trusting, stupid thing.
(How are your feet, my friend? How’s your hair? Can you feel the plants all around and inside of you, growing towards the light your body is made of? Isn’t this fun, Spinel, to stand, smiling, waiting, feeding the rot?)
You lost the game, Spinel. You lost it.
Play a new one with me? Oh, my friend, why don’t we play a game of movement, this time, of erratic, frantic things, so jarring that all its fun has been turned on its head and you ooze with terror, with rage? Don’t you want to know, Spinel, the things I’ve said about you, how I laughed at you, all these years? Don’t you want to see a pearl laughing at you, a fusion sneering at you and the way your arms stretch?
Let’s play that game, Spinel. You’ll win, I promise.
Here’s your rule:
You stop playing, you lose.
Can you do that? Aren’t you itching to move, after all this time, to grab a scythe and twirl it, to grab a Pearl and turn her upside down? Don’t you want to get your hands on this human I’ve become, this boy who saved everyone but you?
carves ‘bitch’ on aralu’s face with a knife right below her eye (so now they match, ‘brat’ and ‘bitch’)
spits and steps over the body of their dead gang boss after they’re caught in a crossfire
grabs a ruffian by his nose and sets off flames into his nostrils, making him burn alive from the inside out
some drunk sleaze tried to bite her lip once so she led him on and he didn’t realize she tore his tongue off with her teeth until he started choked on his own blood (she has a scar on the corner of her lip now but she wears it proudly; aralu is horrified)
forgets to watch herself herself during a bath once and her body temperature shoots up so fast and so high that everyone ends up leaping out of the water with first-degree burns
