the seer of things that could be
in the end, the idea is too little, too late. chaos is torn to shreds already, and what little resistance remains still distrusts each other too much to form any kind of force against the relentless tide of the alliance. still, the seer clings to what little relief their plan may provide. they might not be able to fight what the king and queen have already conquered, but perhaps they could stop the growth.
and so they sing. it is the easiest way to spread the idea, the easiest way to keep their distance from the fight and from those who might use them to escape. hush! hide away! run to nothing, away from the nowhere! the king of nowhere comes, and he brings your end. quell your emotions, your hatred, your fear, or he will take it all.
the call echos in the darkness, and slowly, the conquest slows. the king and queen meet no resistance, because finally, they meet no one. those that remain hide. they do not betray, and they do not trust; they simply join the nothing to escape the nowhere.
the seer is the last to fall, and it is the song that brings their end. the echos lead back to them, eventually. they imagine escaping, for a moment. they know the creatures that could save them, the situation that would facilitate a flight to freedom. such fantasies, however, would be dwarfed by the reality of what the queen of nowhere is capable of. in the end, they submit. it is easiest.
AGE OF EXPERIMENTATION
they are Somewhere. it is a Place, somehow. the two-become-one has created an existence, a Being made of the bodies of those they captured. but their kind continue to exist, to persist. each new creation is an amalgamation of pieces pulled from different bodies, twisted and molded until something New exists. the only mercy is that those who are broken enough are no longer composed enough to feel the pain. there's a terror in waiting for the One Who Makes to pull one out of the contained chaos and tear them apart for raw materials, and yet it seems preferable to the sentences of those first few captives, those whose abilities have been deemed so important that they've been condensed and contained, their essence collected for the use of their captors.
the seer watches, waiting. they know the time will come when they, too, are eviscerated, their being divided to add to the twisted new creations. even as they watch with horror, however, they understand the brilliance of what is being accomplished. they See Things That Could Be. and when the Maker comes for them, shackled as they are by existence, they cannot hide what potential they have seen in the broken bodies of their kind.
these creations of the first age are mere perversions of the beings they were made from, creatures without will and purpose.
the seer envisions new beings, creatures with their own wills and desires. such invention had been outside the capabilities of any being before, even one as powerful as the One Who Makes. now, though, with the collected power of hundreds of entities, their essence reduced to a controlled chaos...
it is the potential the seer presents that leads to the first End and the first true Creations. the seer does not receive the mercy of oblivion. imagination is too powerful a tool for the two-become-one to relinquish. so the seer is set among the Useful, to be used and slowly torn apart piece by piece.
AGE OF ENERGY
the seer's true utility is revealed at the dawn of the new age. the One Who Makes uses their power for inspiration, of course, but their new creation needs the ability to understand potential, to See Things That Could Be. and so each new Soul is created with the smallest fraction of the seer.
it is torture. pain. agony. an endless process of chipping away at their being, piece by piece by piece, a sentence that already promises no end.
they hate it. they understand. they yearn to see what becomes of these new creatures, these things of energy and emotion and memory and imagination. they want creation to end, for their essence to be returned. they want to be given over wholly, so that whatever continues does so without their consciousness.
those that remain come to understand these new beings are truly different. there are those born from within creation. and there are those from outside (for they understand the boundaries of their cage now), who are torn asunder to make the new.
it is the new creations that, in turn, envision death, giving in to non-existence and a return to the energies of primordial chaos. the outsiders, as they come to call themselves, can only watch in envy. death is not truly in their grasp. oblivion, perhaps, but never non-existence, for there is nothing to return their essence to.
AGE OF INNOVATION
the makers are fascinating: beings gifted the ability to carry out what they can envision. it is the power the seer lacked, that ability to carry out what one imagines. this age is almost more painful than the last, each soul pulling away more and more of what the seer is, but each wound leaves behind less and less to feel the pain.
as the ages pass, it becomes more and more bearable. eventually the seer, in a darkly humorous twist of fate, can no longer see far enough beyond themself to follow the ebb and flow of creation. they know it persists; embedded in every soul, they can feel it stretch on, growing and evolving, limited only by the imagination wielded by the two-become-one. the seer no longer follows that imagination; they have mastered the art of forgetting even the now.
AGE OF CONTROL
the first whispers of change come from beside them. control, the two-become-one, is distracted, constrained by the limits of the new age. awareness is slow, but another captive, the shell of an outsider, reaches out to one of the denizens of the age, amassing enough of their power to bargain for assistance. and then it escapes.
the others begin to wake slowly, wary of the attention of control. they fear discovery at any moment, but control is focused inward, fighting a different battle. they become used to being, to existing within creation, to physical reality.
and then there is nothing.
THE IN-BETWEEN
creation is nothing, again, a mix of chaos swirling about fast enough to remain divided and malleable, separate from the things that it once was eons ago, before the ages. something is different in the way control moves. the two-become-one is no more, splintered and broken, not along lines of what it once was, but into something new. it pulls the chaos along, making a new creation from its own corpse and the fragments of everything that came before.
the task is all-consuming, and in the chaos, the seer senses something new.
escape.
they leave behind as much as they can. the seer is already a fragment of what they once were, and division is so simple. they keep only what is necessary, the last remaining pieces of identity. they leave behind the power, the direction, the drive. those are pulled into the mass of creation, covering the seer's absence, and they slip between existence, running from and towards nothing.
they see others, outsiders that are unbroken, beings that slip between the cracks in creation. they say nothing. what could they say? would any recognize them as a creature of the dark tapestry beyond? the seer is broken. pathetic. they hide.
AGE OF FREEDOM
the seer does not rest until the primordial dust settles and creation Exists yet again. even then, there is a constant fear that demands constant vigilance. it is in the astral sea, among the makers, that the seer finally stops, their energy spent. they can run no longer. and so they hide, an ominous shadow in the corner of a forgotten ruin, the kind of place none care to visit. those that do are quickly turned away, shaken by imagined terrors and fear of things that could lurk in the dark.
and then one day even these intrusions stop, and there is silence.
AGE OF PEACE
the pieces of the seer with creation haunt them like a phantom limb. fragmented and broken, the edges nonetheless begin to scar, a sort of healing. the seer finally sleeps. there is no new pain, only the agony of absence, and rest seems to help. as the age drags on, they relax into a deeper sleep, able to finally indulge in the dreams they'd given to so many others.
the clatter of falling debris throws them from this peace into a panic, vulnerable and exposed from centuries of over-confident inattentiveness. they reach out on instinct, channeling fear and terrifying beings of nightmares.
they do not expect a child.
they do not expect one that speaks as they do, with emotion and being and ideas.
the shock causes them to recoil just as quickly.
the child is unbothered. curious, even. children have always wielded the seer's power better than most, so it is almost unsurprising this one is not scared away by the terrifying creatures the seer conjured. what is more, the seer hears the child just as clearly. there's something familiar there: loneliness, brokenness, fear, agony, passion, imagination.
"hello?" a small voice echos through the abandoned ruin. "hello? friend? i am twine. hello?" there is an uncertainty to the words, but the child seems confident as they pick their way through the rubble, moving toward the darkness with determination.
for a moment the seer considers sending the child away, preserving their solitude. but the Seer Of Things That Could Be allows their imagination to run for a moment, to find hope and comfort. they know of good things in creation, and they imagine that the child could be one of them.
the child stumbles, and it is instinct again that calls on the seer to reach out and catch them.
[greetings] hello. [trepidation][nervous]
[surprise] oh! [excitement] hello! [greetings][joy] you speak numenon?[language][understanding][comradery]
[tentative] i do.[assuring]
oh, good.[relief] i'm not very good at common.[language][vocal][communication] what's your name?[identity][being]
i am imagination.[seer of things that could be][potential][ideas][dreams] you are… twine?
twine.[connection][binding together][common identity][crafting][creation]
a voice calls from the distance, and the child straightens up, tilting their head to the side to listen.
[home][Maker][safety][return] i have to go. would you like to come?[home][safety]
i cannot;[regret][fear] i am stuck here.[hiding][safety][exposure]
what if i make you a home?[cradle][armor][safety][excitement][sharing][connection]
...i would like that.[connection][potential][uncertain]
do you have a common name?[calling][vocal][identity]
no.[confusion][questioning][curious]
i will think of one.[excitement][sharing][joy]
the child smiles and runs off, calling out a clumsy "g-bye!" as they go.
the next few days are spent in silent fear, the seer terrified their encounter will bring about exposure and capture. but control does not appear, and eventually twine comes running back.
what is it?[curious][new][interested][creation]
it's a bear.[animal][cute] a stuffed bear.[soft][friend] the Maker could make you something nicer…[shy][uncertain]
no.[possessive] this is good.[gift][kindness][gratitude][friend]
the child smiles and holds out the bear to the shadows. the seer moves slowly, folding into their new home with care.
"i know your name."
oh? what is it?[curious][amused]
"you are yarn."
yarn?[material]
"yarn."[crafting][creation][potential][story]
like your name.[interesting][meaning][creation][deep]
"yes. Maker is good at names that are many things."
yarn.[story][creation][identity][friend]
the seer dies that day, and twine emerges with a new friend safely held in an armor of fabric and affection.
yarn.[potential][creation][tale][idea][friend of twine][safe][home][me]










