a/n: for the PFC Key Signature Competition and The Lowercase Challenge
|blue-eyed seraph scrivener|
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997 words
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she's the lowercase lover; an empty flower wanting to bloom
Names have power. Words have the ability to change, to create, to define and limit and negate.
A letter is stronger than all the swords in the world, mightier than even the most powerful of kings, as great as the Divine themselves. A letter shapes and brings the unsaid into creation. A letter erases the world and reduces it to nothing, rendering once-vibrant plains grey as ash and the sun a lusterless, pallid thing.
Which reigns triumphant? The power to capitalize and make or the power to write only in lowercase and destroy?
Lowercase is the half-capitalized state of the universe, the not-formed, the unborn, the still-breathing fetus.
Lowercase is destiny not yet cemented in the halls of Arceus.
There is a girl with pigtails and a visor and sparkling ocean eyes who dares to be her own scribe, to write her name in lowercase lettering, ink splashing across the white page. Words in black and white. The unformed. To defy her writer, to prove that she is more than a character to be manipulated.
There is a man with acid-green hair who can spit acid-words that melt and corrupt the people around him, thus allowing him to enter their hearts with the sinuous grace of a serpent. He is her Destiny, the inevitable conclusion at the end of the book.
He wears a robe of black with which to greet the unborn shell of the dragon gods, the relinquished, the lowercase animal. Kyurem, herald of a thousand winters and bane of the drakes, outcast and exile. It yearns to be something more than a letter on the Creator's page, and so the acid-hair man grants its wish.
And then, there is a boy with the same acid-green hair but in a softer shade, an emerald color. He attempts to wash himself clean with ablutions in the form of altruistic actions, to be the hero instead of the villain in the story.
She's fought long and hard, and she's come to realize that fairytale stories don't happen in real life. That monsters will rise up from the death-soil of Hades no matter how many times you cut them down. This is the burden of the powerful: to cut down the chthonians only to have them brought back to life.
The men and women she face have stripped off their people-faces and show how ugly they are. That makes it easier, at least, but they just keep coming at her. In cities, in towns, in the sanctity of her own home they come in swarms. Neo-Team Plasma, bearing a darker mantle than ever before and led again by the man with the acid-hair. He's a lowercase writer, twisting the dragon shell for his own vile purposes. In seconds, Unova is blanketed in ice.
All alone, she fights through the un-ending legions and makes her way to his battleship, warping so many times through the numerous panels that her molecules must surely be discombobulated. She defeats the scientist, the man who is grey with no discernible loyalty, and then she heads into the cave. There, she confronts him, Ghetsis, and he readies the brainwashed ice god against her.
A seraph comes, cloaked in fire, and strikes the dragon down with heavenly judgement. She's happy and angry and so sad, so empty, just like the abandoned one lying in a heap before her. Ghetsis quickly falls to her team without the ice god to protect him, and then his plan is foiled once again by another brunette. He can shove it up his own ass, for all she cares. She's furious with him, her savior.
Her prince is always too late.
He's at the gates of the League building.
"You look just like her," he murmurs, reaching for her cheek but she slaps his hand away. She mustn't let him do this to her. She has to scribble out her heart and write it again in black ink; this is what a princess must do to escape from her tower.
She can't do it.
His eyes are dark and watchful, his jaw smooth and aquiline, his tousled hair blowing gently in the wind.
She lets him kiss her.
The next day, she wakes up in a stranger's bed, frightened that someone has seen them. The space next to her is empty. There is no note.
She's just cheated on a dead girl. Bitterness rises in her throat, bile threatening to spill through her teeth. She clenches her mouth and forces the vomit back down. His taste still lingers on her tongue.
People always stay the same. All characters in real life are static.
They're in a castle. He's sad.
"Mei..."
"Shut up. I don't want to hear your excuses." Her eyes are sour, watery, like rotten onions. There is the taste of spearmint gum on her breath to mask the tang of salt. "What was I? Just a diversion?" She gives a harsh laugh.
He shakes his head. "It was nothing like that."
"It was everything like that. You filled me up with sweet nothings, just like you did with her."
His face becomes a mask of shock. "No. No, I never meant to-"
"Goodbye, N."
Without a word, she hops onto the angel-winged dragon and soars up to the stars, out of the ruins of a once-bright dream.
There's something ironic about it.
She wanted him to love her, to cherish her. She wanted to step out from the damned shadow of her ghost sister and be herself, be more than a pawn. She never wanted to shoulder Unova's burdens.
Fuck them. Fuck them all.
In the end, she's just a little girl writing a bad story, where everything is lowercase and unfulfilled. Empty lust for empty hearts.
Ink splatters onto her hands like blood.
(gone)