I was told repeatedly about an art show-thing my uncle’s church was having this weekend. I considered this an attempt at convincing me because after pointing out that precious little of my art would be contextually accessible to average church-goers, the fifth time it was brought up I finally broke down and decided to do something with a piece I already had. I worked from 10AM Friday morning to 2:30AM this morning. No one bothered to ask me before my uncle left for whatever the fuck how my progress was coming along or if I thought I could finish it before the show-thing started.
My art, that I spent over sixteen hours painstakingly painting in a program I am barely familiar with, will once again be lost to the sea of shitty fan art and even shittier fetish porn, because no one in my family gives a fuck about the labors of my craft enough to even see what the fuck I’m doing when the work is at their prompting/behest. I skipped two sleeping periods and was ultimately awake for over twenty-four hours for this. For nothing. Because no one in my family knows how the fuck to communicate ANYTHING.
I fucking hate everything and I fucking hate how much of my life I no longer have a grasp on. This was the first painting I did in four years, and that’s been the trend ever since my grandmother died. Four years. And the people who were supposed to acknowledge that can’t even give enough fucks to glance at it and tell me whether it sucks. I don’t know why the fuck I bother anymore.
Nobody in my family cares about my creative endeavors. The internet at large gives zero fucks about my creative endeavors, even if I sink to the level of pandering to fandoms. I don’t want to stop forever, but I have precious little, basically nothing, to push me along.
Why continue to pursue art when it’s an unforgiving struggle with no reward? I’m just crazy, I guess, and can’t let go of the few things that really defined me after I reached self-awareness. I can’t stop calling myself an artist even though I have drawn nothing new or substantial since December 2011. I can’t stop calling myself a writer even though the last thing I acknowledge as worth being considered proper narrative was written in September of 2009. I just think up shit. My mind fills up with shit that is never artfully articulated.
Am I really either of these things anymore?
Either way, here you go, internet. Have this thing that cost me way too much sleep to complete, only to never see the light of day. Enjoy.
Found this in my files as the start of an RP thread.
Life… a meaningless struggle for the souls of the lost… They all had grown weary of such an existence long ago, but little things—coincidental and important things—kept them going. Some things were greater than others, and some were so small that the outside would consider them insignificant, but whether large or small, they were enough to keep the desire for life a surviving spark throughout the game of trial, tribulation, and endurance.
Seconds, minutes, hours and days, weeks, months, and years had all lost their real meaning and significance, melding together into a single illusion that called itself time, which they all still kept close watch over, even after understanding its falseness. What was this thing that governed the lives of the masses so? It was the illusion of time that tried the patience, put thoughts and actions into motion, withered the mortal, and made the steady suffering so much more unbearable. It was a despicable thing, yet so heavily relied upon that it became impossible to erase, and difficult to disregard.
It was life that dragged them all into its own deranged and twisted game. It was time, in all of its illusory splendor, that took them through and through into the continuous helix spiraling downward into nothing. It was time and life together that wrenched all things violently to their end, only to continue the eternal cycle of futility that called itself existence.
It had been warm, a surprisingly pleasant change from the cold and dreary rains that had been plaguing the region all week. My legs finally stopped aching, though a light headache was prodding at the very edges of my temples. It was only normal; sudden changes in barometric pressure were one of the many banes of my existence, but I’d always hope something else was digging edges into my skull.
Though the raw cold of the rains often hurt my knee and hip joints, the pains and weather didn’t always coincide with each other. I cannot even begin to describe the fluctuations of my energy during that time, save, perhaps, now that I look back on it, that it was like it was trying to reach far beyond the confines of my body. I was barely awakened then, less so than I am now; my awareness could have been likened to a school child groggily begging to sleep just five more minutes before their parent dragged them out of bed.
That brief escape from the cold, however. I remember it, perhaps, a little too clearly—or maybe as clearly as I should, considering the circumstances. I was sitting comfortably in the sun—a startling feat, considering I easily got headaches from excessive exposure to natural light as well—among the tiny troupe I had followed to the continental coastline. There were only three of us, including myself. I remember feeling somewhat pleased; it was our first day on the shore, and I hadn’t seen the waterfront in nearly two years.
For the time, the creeping pain in my head was somewhat of a hind-thought. We were having lunch on the balcony of an old diner, and since I had nothing in the ways of remedial substances to alleviate the pain, there was the vain hope that perhaps food would rid me of it instead. Eating was a very good way to make me forget I had a little one, at least until I was done, and we figured it would be nice to have a spot that overlooked the bay while we quelled our appetites.
The gesture was nice, and it probably would have extended into the experience, had the very cosmos itself not mobilized to make its will recognized. Call it fate. Call it destiny. Call it what you will, but I don’t use these words to describe how or why what happened that day came to pass upon me. I might have been foolish…naiive… to think that I could make it back before it happened, but whatever the case, it was a harsh plunge back into reality.
I was conversing with my companions—my friends—at the time, joking a little, deigning even to chuckle at a few of my own silly statements, though by now I wouldn’t be able to tell you anything we said. I was finished eating—the last one, too. I was always the slowest, partly due to the often delicate nature of my stomach. I had still been poking at lingering remnants on my plate, but for the most part they were largely ignored. Though I don’t remember much of what we talked about, I do recall that it began to turn enough from general repartee to light conversation that my mind was able to drift a little, my attention deficit was able to shift, and my surroundings balanced with their voices.
I turned to look out on the water. It was just as blue as I remembered it back home; a deep, stormy color, which left you to ponder whether it hid an open void, or an explosive ecosystem riddled with secrets. Closer in the color faded until it was clear, and it looked brown from the sand. My eyes, straining against the glare of the sun, caught the shadow of an immense depth-creeper drifting through the shallows, and for a brief moment I began to wonder what it was, until a familiar noise, one that pushed into memories even of my early youth, pierced through my thoughts.
Suddenly I heard the harsh cry of a corvid. It clicked in my mind the second time its guttural voice hit my ears, and as my displacement from home fell into place shortly thereafter, I looked up. I had been away for nearly a year. In all that time, I almost never heard, let alone saw, a crow, and yet, there, flying overhead, was the same black bird I grew up seeing throughout my childhood. Right behind it, as though in close pursuit, was a white sparrow. I don’t know how I knew what it was, but the instant I laid eyes on it, an elder’s voice slipped through my mind, and I felt a crippling ache rise up from the depths of my soul, like the Native American fragment running through my blood had suddenly cried out in anguish, and then was silenced.
I watched, dumbstruck, as the two birds whirled about, and then flew away into the distance over the open ocean. It was like they lingered just long enough for me to notice them. Next I recall, an immense weight bore down on me, on my head, and instinctively I clutched my skull for a moment, before I turned towards the two I was with. To this day I don’t know what I looked like, but whatever god-awful face I was making turned the conversation silent, and then words, which I would not realize I’d said until several seconds after I said them, came spilling out of my mouth.
“I think…” I began quietly, slack-jawed, my voice shaken and breaking, “…I think a significant part of my childhood just died.” I involuntarily bit my lip and furrowed my brows.
I sat across from a slender man with delicate features and black hair, and a silvery-skinned woman whose hair had feathers mingling with it. They briefly exchanged glances before looking back at me. “What?” the man, Djinn, had ventured.
Suddenly the weight grew heavier. The distance spanning between my family and myself across the cosmos felt like it was closing in on me, crushing me. “I don’t know,” I blurted out again, nigh whimpering. I didn’t know exactly how far apart we were, but I knew this much: I was on another planet, something major or terrible had just happened on what could very well have been the other end of the universe, and I couldn’t be there. I couldn’t be there.
The tremors came next, and slowly I sank to the table. I had no idea what I was doing, but I began to search with my energy and reach out. I had to figure out what was going on. Why did I say that? What part of my childhood? Who? The revelation quickly dawned on me, and in the same instant the monstrosity of the universe clenched inward. My strength had drained, and rising back up was a struggle in itself, but I managed to meet my friends with a resigned look, which was as composed as I could manage despite my shaking.
“Grandma,” I said, my voice steady. I lightly shook my head at their subsequently confused expressions. “Grandpa died almost a year before I got myself lost and ended up here on Wieraiden. That in itself was a shock to everyone; out of the two of them, he was the healthier one. He was the one that took care of grandma. Suddenly he got sick, ended up in the hospital, and then died two weeks later.” I could feel the threatening ache in the back of my throat, that horrid choke, as I spoke, but I pressed forward. “Grandma was devastated. Their lives after retirement were spent sharing nearly every waking moment together. They sat together, ate together, went and got the mail together—they didn’t share the same bed, but they slept in the same room and even went to bed at the same time.
“Grandma was weak, sickly. She had a bad heart, bad knee, bad circulation, and any number of strange diseases I don’t even know about. After he died, she got weaker. When I left for my road trip, mom was going to her house several times a week. We… we actually thought she’d be gone within six months of his passing.” Instinctively I bit my lip again. My face burned up, my eyes swiftly flared, and from behind my glasses my view of the two across from me distorted into a watery haze. The choking worsened, but, stubbornly, I still continued on.
“She wasn’t though. Nearly a year later and she was still around. Still sharp as ever, still refusing to sit down and let us do the dishes for her. Somewhere I had hoped that I could make it back and see her again before she went,” fussing with my fingers, I looked up, my composure still hurriedly crumbling, “y’know… show her I was still alive, but… That sparrow.” Blindly I pointed an arm into the distance; my face—so intent on corrupting itself into probably one of the most unattractive it could manage, red-faced, scrunched eyes, stretched lip, and lord only knew what my nose was doing—remained locked on them, even as burning hot tears squeezed out of one of my eyes. My voice had fallen to a broken, feeble whine.
“…With the crow—call me crazy, but I think that sparrow was her,” I strained, my head pounding.
My companions looked at each other again, this time exchanging dubious glances. Something I said made less sense than I realized, I assumed, until one of them opened their mouth. “What sparrow? And what crow?”
I knew for certain then. I heard things all the time, and I acknowledged that from the time I was a teenager, but I had heard that crow twice, and I didn’t hallucinate birds. I still don’t. I wasn’t seeing things when I saw the crow leading the sparrow over the ocean. “Oh god,” slipped off my tongue with a breath. “…She came to say good-bye.” It was all over at that point; I had lost the battle with myself, and in bereaved defeat I sank back into the table and cursed myself. I cursed myself loudly. I cursed and insulted myself and the shortcomings I alone had brought on myself, because after all the weekends I spent with my grandparents, after all the years I loved that woman to death (no pun intended), I couldn’t be there for her last days, her last moments… her last breaths. I would give no departing endearments, no embraces, no kisses.
I was so devastated and angry with myself that I didn’t even notice when the silver-skinned woman, Meija’anrii, had moved to the other side of the table and pulled me to her front. I didn’t stop viciously demeaning myself until her voice, like a mother’s at the time, broke into my thoughts.
“No one is going to blame you for being lost and off-planet, Calogera,” she assured.
I felt her fingers run through my hair shortly thereafter, and I quieted for a moment, before doing the only thing I could do: grip her middle with my free arm and cry “I wasn’t there!!” into her tunic. It was one of the only times I ever sobbed even remotely noisily, though to be more accurate, according to Djinn at least, it was apparently akin to quiet wailing.
The memory still stings. As much as they may try to convince me otherwise—Meija especially—I doubt I’ll ever stop regretting my absence that day. I still boggle over how those two apparitions even made it to Wieraiden in the first place, but I guess in a way I’m glad, too. It’ll feel very strange to go home and find grandma isn’t there anymore, if I ever make it back to Earth, but she’s no longer sick. She’s no longer achy. She doesn’t miss grandpa anymore, because he’s right there with her again. Or, at least, I’d like to think so. My only hope is that I won’t forget where the cemetery is before I get back.
(And now here's my (Cos's) post which probably is really awkward and bumbling after reading Kai's writing but I'm sharing it with all of you anyway.)
A fair distance from a quiet-looking town, a doggish nose twitched. A fair breeze flowed through long, thick whiskers placed sparingly in the nose’s vicinity. The owner of such an appendage, a stout fuzzy subterranean beast, halted his travels for a moment to survey his new surroundings. The forest had thinned to a sparse scattering of brush, and long-traversed dirt paths gave way to more modern roads, cobblestones worn smooth from erosion and use. He had been a bit hesitant to free himself from the comforting restriction of the trees; he still wasn’t entirely used to the feel of open areas.
His conical ears occasionally swiveled in the direction of a fellow traveler sauntering along the road behind him, and large foot-paws felt the vibrations of approaching footsteps, as they had been for quite some time now. The young mole-dog gave it no mind, blissfully unaware of the reason that brought so much traffic bustling past him. Leashed to a belt holding up a pair of khaki shorts, a four-legged doppelganger bounded playfully around its owner as he knelt to pick up a medium-sized stone, large claws bringing it up close to one of the three bright green lenses of the goggles that concealed his eyes. On the outside, the stone was nothing special, but the pup barked at it enthusiastically.
The mole-dog patted his companion on the head gently before sliding a large backpack and traveler’s ensemble down to the ground, and placed his find into a side pocket. He stood up, hefting his supplies over his shoulders and turning to look at the oncoming stampede of [Kai's character]'s fat ass or something I don't know this is where it cuts off so I can incorporate the other post.
