v-s.net v0.6

Saturday, 1:13 pm in Storytime

The grin disturbs Element. I’ve always known this, but it seems to be only recently that the knowledge itself has had any impact. And I have been trying so hard to supress it, but it seems that it grows only stronger with each waking moment. The universe is an amusing place, you understand. Oh yes very much so.

I stand in front of the dresser; through the cracks in the glass I can see the blacklight-static that animates this place flicker like TV snow. That too, makes me grin. This is my domain and it grows more and more solid by the day as the last vestages of the past slowly curl and dissapate. Good.

There is gauze in front of me. Not real gauze, of course; like everything else here it is an overworked representation of gauze. The distillation of every freakish glamnurse dream. It poses no difficulties to wrap it around my grin, covering all my face under my nose and halfway down my neck besides. It requires no special clasp, no reajustment, and will not come loose unless it is supposed to. As it watch it, the fabric yellows somewhat at the corners, and rust-brown blood seeps through in places. I have no wounds underneath, and the dressing is fresh. But what is the point if it looks so? Like everything else here it is the illusion that is what is important.

Now I will no longer have to hide my rictuscheshire-smile, and Element will no longer be afraid.

I stand at the mirror for some time longer after that, just watching. My fur has gone mangey in patches. A dead thing formerley preserved by an unholy assemblage of social taxedermy; now reanimated with wiring and circuits the previous constructs begin to break down.

I’m rotting from without for once.

Good. Better there than the other place.

I change so often nowadays I barely remember but this, too, is good. Chaotic evolution over static familiarity. Can’t be getting too comfortable, especially not now that things have finally begun to move here. What once was a fractured incohesive set of cliches is slowing winding together. That is why the newcommer – He Who Once Was Lain – has arrived. Frank Bedlam next; if he still exists and indeed if this place still has a home for him. Then the chimera from the  spheria; Tenebrae. Lost currently in Pandemonium, City of a Thousand Locations, he will find his way home eventually.

We all come home, eventually.

There is one other interesting development worth reiterating; the skullkitty is dying. Or, more to the point, she hangs on the edge of nihilism. An empty promise waiting only for breath. She will not be extinguished compeltley. But she will change, resistant to it though she is with her absolute knoweldge in and of herself.

It has already begun; she has already been seen by another. By Lain, the Once-Was. That is not surprising. This is his place, truly. He is the root of it all; the one common denominator that can be traced right back to the beginning. To the Original. I still find evidence of the Original, occasionally. In dungeons and ballrooms that have no real place being here. A box full of clothes that belonged once to his long-dead wife. Lain will find these things in time and regain his Name. But not right now.

And Element… The softwall has returned its connection but it took some coaxing. Element has not returned since and, in fact, I have not seen him. He was a warrior once – a Hunter. Perhaps he, too, will regain his lost path.

All things change.

• Tags » anthro, grungefur, herebeyond, writing
• Comments By » ~starfyre [h]