⊗ go to sleeeeeeep.
⊗ go eepy aaaaaa go sleeby...hope Singer doesn't attack their brother or something
⊗ dream about eating a dandelion peach...... or floating away on a giant one...........
You are sitting with someone. They say, Is anybody out there?
You say, Yes, I'm right here.
They say, is anybody listening?
You, confused, say, Yes, I'm listening.
The Singer stretches out before you, as long as a centipede. He's so big, but the shelter is big too, ceiling so tall you can't see it. He's coiled around himself a little, leaning over his own body to look at you.
Singer, You say sternly, paws on your hips. What did you do with your brother?
They look at you, shiny eyes wide and innocent. What do you mean, Wiwi?
Where's your brother, Singer? You ask again, trying your best imitating-Silky voice.
The Moon?
Yeah, that's your brother.
They're up in the sky, of course! The Singer points up, and up, and up, past the crystals lighting up around you, blue instead of the neutral shelter light or lantern red. As you look up at the black sky and its glowing rings, Singer reaches out a paw and grabs the fluff of it, pulling hard. There's a squeal, and the sky starts getting pulled down towards you.
You suddenly understand that this is very bad, because if the sky comes down any more it's going to squash you. You try to explain to The Singer that he needs to leave The Moon alone and let them stay up there, but he doesn't listen. Why doesn't he ever listen to you anyway?? Where's The Gull when you need her? You bet they'd listen to her. Or The Rust.
You grab the very tip of his tail and yank with both paws
I am standing in a shelter that would be no good when the rain comes. The walls have gaping holes that you can see right through. I am looking through a hole in the wall and I see towers, a forest of towers that stretches all the way to the edge of the world. And above the towers is the sky, and the sky is not foggy but clear, and beyond the edge of the world is blue.
It is a beautiful sight, but I am not out there, where the blue is. I am here, in the shelter. Despite the holes in its walls, it is small. It is too small for my body. My body grows and grows, pressing against the walls without ever poking out of the holes. I begin to suffocate.
When the walls break, it happens all at once. They break and I am terrified. I am terrified to breathe or stretch my limbs, but I have broken the walls and now I cannot put them back together. I unfold and unfold until I am standing, and then I am running. I am running. With terror and with joy I am running.
I am standing by the great metal seaside and the masses of people are flowing around me. Now I hear someone call my name. They sound furious, or like they are in agony. I clutch my outside pouch tightly. I turn and I run again, and I am running through the sea of people and the predator is behind me, and I am afraid but the real sea, the sea that I love, is waiting. When I plunge into the water I am safe.
In the sea is the monster that is mine. When I dive into its belly I am burning with terror and with thrill. Here I am, skimming across the surface, hurtling through the depths, and when I leap into the air I am before a new mountain. This is my triumph! I weep for joy!
I am standing in a shelter that would be no good when the rain comes. The walls have gaping holes that you can see right through, and sometimes I look through them, but more often I look at what is inside. When I go to sleep, I think of waking up and looking more.
Now I am looking at something far, far, far away. I am looking at a place I do not recognise. I am looking at an empty space where there once was a shelter that was too small for me.
I do not understand what I am looking at. I do not understand how something that always was can become nothing at all. I do not understand what I have done.
I do not wish that I could go back there. I do not want to sleep there or to wake up and look out of that dismal hole. But I was not there when it was gone, and now no one will be there, because it is no longer. What I have has come at a price I did not know I needed to pay.
And I weep.
And I...
And...
And the dandelion peach is a rare fruit indeed, one with somewhat odd growing habits. It is capable of forming permanent bushes, but its criteria for doing so is highly selective, requiring partial shade and very particular levels of moisture and elevation. If the seed feels the time is wrong, the place is wrong, the world is wrong for it, it will accept its fate as a wayfarer and root long enough to bear one, two fruit, til the rain batters its shallow roots and it is no more. In this way, the dandelion peach makes its long, slow way across the landscape, til it can find someplace to call home.
This is not a home. Despite an auspicious start, an updraft sent it high, high, too high, into that place above the clouds where the sun shines bright and the rain never falls, and now it can only accept its fate, a step on the journey instead of its conclusion. The blessing of this vantage is obvious; its seeds will travel far and wide, and one of them will find all they can be.
This seed, however, will not. It will not feel even its parent's modicum of success; it will not bear fruit at all. This seed, a dun flake caught in that pool of dead glimmering air, instead falls down, down, down, caught in the fur of a batfly, dislodged again, first below its sweet spot and then below habitable land at all. It drifts down past girders, past struts, past long-battered metal, past plates teeming with its own microbial doom...
Until it settles, finally, upon the snout of a small red slugpup.