06-26-2018, 09:27 PM
<link href='http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Alex+Brush|Yanone+Kaffeesatz|Armata' rel='stylesheet' type='text/css'><center><div style="position:relative; width:480px; background:-webkit-linear-gradient(top, rgba(21,21,21,1) 40%, rgba(0,0,0,1) 50%); padding:0px 10px 10px 10px; border:1px solid #000;border-left:15px solid #333; border-right:15px solid #333;"><img src="http://i.imgur.com/51uUi6R.jpg"><div style="position:relative;background:#000;padding:10px 10px 30px 10px;border:1px solid #eee; border-bottom:0px; border-radius: 30%/45px; font-family:armata; font-size: 12px; color:#fffce5; text-align:justify; margin:-150px 0px -10px 0px;"><center><font style="color:#800000; font:14px yanone kaffeesatz, sans-serif;">the first time he calls you holy, you laugh it back so hard your sides hurt.
the second time, you moan gospel around his fingers between your teeth.</font></center>
When the stars were in their infancy, the angels first flexed their wings. Wars and rebellions never came to them in even their wildest dreams, back then. Fate wove together the galaxies and mapped the course of history. They were birthed there in a cradle of golden celestial dust that would someday be a planet. But they were not so perfect or lovely as the other creations – they were one of Fate's exceedingly rare and unfortunate miscarriages. The swarm-children were never meant to exist in this plane or any other, yet the heavens wept at the thought of ending the crooked little things, believed themselves merciful to spare their lives. For centuries they cried out to their gods and yet they received no answers for their prayers. They were castaways, abandoned at the dawn of time and left to turn helplessly through the universe without end.
Try as they might, the children could not shape themselves into something solid and whole. Their only defining features are their skin, slick black like the waters in the silent depths of the Mariana Trench, and their glowing white eyes. Some of them seem female while others have a more masculine shape to them. A few of the children have nubs that may eventually grow into horns while others have stumps on their bony backs that were feathered wings some millennia ago. Their skin is somehow smooth and supple like a newborn baby while also gnarled and leathery with age. Their movements amongst one another are dizzying and any who stare too long succumb to nausea, punishment for trying to conceive what reality could not. They have never numbered themselves but they suppose there are a thousand of them, all together. Despite their primordial nature, the children count no age and have no sense of time between them. They think perhaps they have always been this many.
Yes, the children think, each mind a drop in the pool of a collective consciousness. Their thoughts echo across the hivemind and they frequently weave between this and speech without preference for either. To comprehend their minds is to speak the language of madness, though, and they often send others into a psychosis when they absorb another's consciousness to pick it apart – which they can and often do. But they have learned to be gentle in their dissections. The swarm has practiced little hands that find sleeping heads the most suitable to their needs. All they must do is pluck the dreamer's thoughts from their pillow, devour all the history of their memories and emotions, then slice it clean from their own. The slumbering strangers brush the thundering hivemind from their own as though it were all a fever dream brought about by too much stress and the children vanish into the night like hungry ghosts. The horde has learned that this is one of the few times others may gaze upon them.
The mind's eye does not fight to conceive their shape so hard as the physical eye. They have also learned that to be perceived is agony for both them and outsiders; it sends them skittering and scattering in a desperate mess until they find some shadow to cower within while the pain subsides. Once, though, they left a little fragment of themselves within an outsider when their minds married. They still hear him sometimes beneath the cacophony of their own thoughts, murmuring of his day and occasionally even telling them to silence their racket. His eyes beheld them with horror when he awoke and they fled from their torment. Yet, <I>yet</i>, their skin did not sear beneath his gaze. They felt… peace. Perhaps even comfort? They did not return for fear a second glance may not hold the same promise of paradise but the memory often churns across the pool of their mind. This is why they travel. This is why they seek a new host for a fragment of themselves.
Others had been unworthy of their gift. The others had not accepted them and instead fought with every fiber of their being. These outsiders the children abandoned, cut them from the hive and left them to their own pathetic fates. Their new brother, however, they shared all their knowledge with. Every lesson the galaxies offered was also his to revel in and fortune found him ever since. For this, they consider their gift a blessing rather than a curse.
They travel in the depth of night to find a new addition to their numbers. But this brother or sister must be truly worthy of them to risk such torture and so they cannot take just any single-mind orphan. They have scoured planets for a potential but they remain unconvinced of the prospects they find. Tonight, they have reached the shores of Beqanna and they have found an abundance of sleeping creatures to pick apart. They crawl across the beaches and the forests on all fours, each limb stretching fluidly to lengthen their strides. Occasionally a child bumps shoulders with another and they seem to simply melt into one as raindrops running down a window may. The four snow-white eyes swirl across a distorted face and three arms reached for their next step across the grasses. Then, just as quickly, they split into two once more. (Some of the children accidentally leave an eye in their sibling's head and yet they carry on as an unbothered cyclops.) Slowly, the center of the swarm converges into an amorphous heap of legs and arms steadily marching forward. Hundreds of eyes flow across the body of the behemoth while a few mouths surface to mumble, "<font color=#800000>Unworthy..</font>"
The moon is full and fat in the night sky, casting a dim light across the army of children. It is just bright enough for some stranger to make them out across the meadow. Instantly, their skin grows hot and blisters. A thousand little voices cry out in terror and the children stampede from their aggressor, who falls to the ground and shrieks in her own personal hell of pain and dizzying terror. The members of the swarm collide, one into another until they form several more giants that in turn combine into a single beast. The innumerous eyes frantically orbit their new skin in search of relief when one spots the lake. A mouth erupts to shout "<font color=#800000>SANCTUARY!</font>" before others burst forth to agree. "<font color=#800000>SANCTUARY! SANCTUARY!</font>"
They plunge, head first, into the waters and immediately swim to the floor of the warm lake. The children split apart though they remain piled on top of each other in an exhausted, shivering horde of terrified creatures. Together, they warp the shape of the lake and wear a pocket into the fabric of space and time. Reality bends to their will and the waters become like the nest of a trapdoor spider for them, impossibly deep and safe from the world above. They could tear a new hole in the fabric of space and time as they had to reach Beqanna, but they find themselves too tired to even try.
Sleep takes them for some time before they have rested enough to recover from their episode. Perhaps they have slept for a week or even a month. None of them is certain but they are not concerned with the matter. Instead, they burrow deeper into their pit while also skimming the minds around them. This one has lost their lover while that one has murdered their child. A new queen is crowned and a new foal kicks against her mother's womb for the first time. These minds do not know loneliness as the children have. None of their thoughts circle endlessly as the hivemind does and one of the hive-girls weeps in frustration. Her sister kisses her tears and holds her close.
Mother, gone. Lover, gone. Child, gone. Home, gone.
A brother perks his ears at the sound of these thoughts. Alone, alone, alone. This stranger aches for something that was never truly theirs just as the hive does! They clamber toward the surface clumsily in their haste to see this candidate, carelessly stepping on each other's shoulders and fingers. A child with wing stumps on her back sucks in her breath as she realizes the sun is out in the summer sky above them without a cloud in sight. "<font color=#800000>Flee,</font>" she whispers weakly.
"<font color=#800000>Run,</font>" agrees another. "<font color=#800000>Hide.</font>"
They murmur amongst themselves until one speaks up above the others.
"<font color=#800000>Worthy.</font>" His voice cracks but he remains poised beneath the surface. There is a fire of determination in his eyes that they have not had in eons. A hush falls over them as they consider his vote. Another concurs in thought, then another. They return to their unity once more and the boy carefully gleans her name from her mind. He takes a deep breath before he edges close enough that his lips barely kiss the surface of the lake.
"<font color=#800000>Virgo,</font>" he whispers. His voice is full of all the hope and love for his brothers and sisters. They all tense as she turns her head in search of the source and he knows it's now or never for them all. "<font color=#800000>Virgo!</font>"</div><div style="position:relative;font-family:alex brush; font-size: 38px; color:#800000; text-align:center; line-height:20px;">V<font style="font-size:34px;">irgo</font>
<font style="font-family:yanone kaffeesatz; font-size: 12px; color:#EEE; letter-spacing:1px; line-height:12px;">you will ruin him and he will thank you; he will say please.</font></div></div>1,530 words.</center>
the second time, you moan gospel around his fingers between your teeth.</font></center>
When the stars were in their infancy, the angels first flexed their wings. Wars and rebellions never came to them in even their wildest dreams, back then. Fate wove together the galaxies and mapped the course of history. They were birthed there in a cradle of golden celestial dust that would someday be a planet. But they were not so perfect or lovely as the other creations – they were one of Fate's exceedingly rare and unfortunate miscarriages. The swarm-children were never meant to exist in this plane or any other, yet the heavens wept at the thought of ending the crooked little things, believed themselves merciful to spare their lives. For centuries they cried out to their gods and yet they received no answers for their prayers. They were castaways, abandoned at the dawn of time and left to turn helplessly through the universe without end.
Try as they might, the children could not shape themselves into something solid and whole. Their only defining features are their skin, slick black like the waters in the silent depths of the Mariana Trench, and their glowing white eyes. Some of them seem female while others have a more masculine shape to them. A few of the children have nubs that may eventually grow into horns while others have stumps on their bony backs that were feathered wings some millennia ago. Their skin is somehow smooth and supple like a newborn baby while also gnarled and leathery with age. Their movements amongst one another are dizzying and any who stare too long succumb to nausea, punishment for trying to conceive what reality could not. They have never numbered themselves but they suppose there are a thousand of them, all together. Despite their primordial nature, the children count no age and have no sense of time between them. They think perhaps they have always been this many.
Yes, the children think, each mind a drop in the pool of a collective consciousness. Their thoughts echo across the hivemind and they frequently weave between this and speech without preference for either. To comprehend their minds is to speak the language of madness, though, and they often send others into a psychosis when they absorb another's consciousness to pick it apart – which they can and often do. But they have learned to be gentle in their dissections. The swarm has practiced little hands that find sleeping heads the most suitable to their needs. All they must do is pluck the dreamer's thoughts from their pillow, devour all the history of their memories and emotions, then slice it clean from their own. The slumbering strangers brush the thundering hivemind from their own as though it were all a fever dream brought about by too much stress and the children vanish into the night like hungry ghosts. The horde has learned that this is one of the few times others may gaze upon them.
The mind's eye does not fight to conceive their shape so hard as the physical eye. They have also learned that to be perceived is agony for both them and outsiders; it sends them skittering and scattering in a desperate mess until they find some shadow to cower within while the pain subsides. Once, though, they left a little fragment of themselves within an outsider when their minds married. They still hear him sometimes beneath the cacophony of their own thoughts, murmuring of his day and occasionally even telling them to silence their racket. His eyes beheld them with horror when he awoke and they fled from their torment. Yet, <I>yet</i>, their skin did not sear beneath his gaze. They felt… peace. Perhaps even comfort? They did not return for fear a second glance may not hold the same promise of paradise but the memory often churns across the pool of their mind. This is why they travel. This is why they seek a new host for a fragment of themselves.
Others had been unworthy of their gift. The others had not accepted them and instead fought with every fiber of their being. These outsiders the children abandoned, cut them from the hive and left them to their own pathetic fates. Their new brother, however, they shared all their knowledge with. Every lesson the galaxies offered was also his to revel in and fortune found him ever since. For this, they consider their gift a blessing rather than a curse.
They travel in the depth of night to find a new addition to their numbers. But this brother or sister must be truly worthy of them to risk such torture and so they cannot take just any single-mind orphan. They have scoured planets for a potential but they remain unconvinced of the prospects they find. Tonight, they have reached the shores of Beqanna and they have found an abundance of sleeping creatures to pick apart. They crawl across the beaches and the forests on all fours, each limb stretching fluidly to lengthen their strides. Occasionally a child bumps shoulders with another and they seem to simply melt into one as raindrops running down a window may. The four snow-white eyes swirl across a distorted face and three arms reached for their next step across the grasses. Then, just as quickly, they split into two once more. (Some of the children accidentally leave an eye in their sibling's head and yet they carry on as an unbothered cyclops.) Slowly, the center of the swarm converges into an amorphous heap of legs and arms steadily marching forward. Hundreds of eyes flow across the body of the behemoth while a few mouths surface to mumble, "<font color=#800000>Unworthy..</font>"
The moon is full and fat in the night sky, casting a dim light across the army of children. It is just bright enough for some stranger to make them out across the meadow. Instantly, their skin grows hot and blisters. A thousand little voices cry out in terror and the children stampede from their aggressor, who falls to the ground and shrieks in her own personal hell of pain and dizzying terror. The members of the swarm collide, one into another until they form several more giants that in turn combine into a single beast. The innumerous eyes frantically orbit their new skin in search of relief when one spots the lake. A mouth erupts to shout "<font color=#800000>SANCTUARY!</font>" before others burst forth to agree. "<font color=#800000>SANCTUARY! SANCTUARY!</font>"
They plunge, head first, into the waters and immediately swim to the floor of the warm lake. The children split apart though they remain piled on top of each other in an exhausted, shivering horde of terrified creatures. Together, they warp the shape of the lake and wear a pocket into the fabric of space and time. Reality bends to their will and the waters become like the nest of a trapdoor spider for them, impossibly deep and safe from the world above. They could tear a new hole in the fabric of space and time as they had to reach Beqanna, but they find themselves too tired to even try.
Sleep takes them for some time before they have rested enough to recover from their episode. Perhaps they have slept for a week or even a month. None of them is certain but they are not concerned with the matter. Instead, they burrow deeper into their pit while also skimming the minds around them. This one has lost their lover while that one has murdered their child. A new queen is crowned and a new foal kicks against her mother's womb for the first time. These minds do not know loneliness as the children have. None of their thoughts circle endlessly as the hivemind does and one of the hive-girls weeps in frustration. Her sister kisses her tears and holds her close.
Mother, gone. Lover, gone. Child, gone. Home, gone.
A brother perks his ears at the sound of these thoughts. Alone, alone, alone. This stranger aches for something that was never truly theirs just as the hive does! They clamber toward the surface clumsily in their haste to see this candidate, carelessly stepping on each other's shoulders and fingers. A child with wing stumps on her back sucks in her breath as she realizes the sun is out in the summer sky above them without a cloud in sight. "<font color=#800000>Flee,</font>" she whispers weakly.
"<font color=#800000>Run,</font>" agrees another. "<font color=#800000>Hide.</font>"
They murmur amongst themselves until one speaks up above the others.
"<font color=#800000>Worthy.</font>" His voice cracks but he remains poised beneath the surface. There is a fire of determination in his eyes that they have not had in eons. A hush falls over them as they consider his vote. Another concurs in thought, then another. They return to their unity once more and the boy carefully gleans her name from her mind. He takes a deep breath before he edges close enough that his lips barely kiss the surface of the lake.
"<font color=#800000>Virgo,</font>" he whispers. His voice is full of all the hope and love for his brothers and sisters. They all tense as she turns her head in search of the source and he knows it's now or never for them all. "<font color=#800000>Virgo!</font>"</div><div style="position:relative;font-family:alex brush; font-size: 38px; color:#800000; text-align:center; line-height:20px;">V<font style="font-size:34px;">irgo</font>
<font style="font-family:yanone kaffeesatz; font-size: 12px; color:#EEE; letter-spacing:1px; line-height:12px;">you will ruin him and he will thank you; he will say please.</font></div></div>1,530 words.</center>