And so, another loop is born.
Seeds that erupt,
dreams that take flight
And then there's the sun –
always there –
and leaving a ringlet of ash
And, beyond, the black space
from the tip of heaven
into hell.
How long
before the seeds bloom,
before the flowers blossom,
before the petals wither
and the stalk snaps in two?
How long before another loop is born?
How many more loops will there be
before the end is found?
How many more times must we try?
How many more of you
must we nurture on these soils
and sacrifice?
How many more times can we try
before oblivion is the paradise we decide?
But not yet. Not now.
We try; we plant the seeds
and you are born.
Are you the end of the string?
Or the knot of another loop?
(Homeostasis, from Uncreation)
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Neverland
Act 0: Story
Chapter n
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And so, their fleeting paradise is built again, upon a Goddess' woes. She creates, she destroys, and now she sows the seeds anew and with her, her avatars that may, one day, gain their own will. They must – they will – but the paradise she makes with her own hands is too fragile to last.
As it always is, it will touch the end and then be undone by chaos.
And again, they will seek their saviours, children with dreams still young, still nurturable, to prolong their lives. And it will work. Their ten year boon will become a hundred but in the light they've amassed out of greed, a dark poison will fester.
Again. They've failed once again to find the antidote to that poison. And their failure follows them. She is not the only eternal one, the womb that bears her avatars once more.
Destroy the chaos. A mere crystal, in the Uncreation – before the world is made again and she cannot do it. She just…cannot. No more than they can conquer her. Locked in an eternal battle, they are: their ire, and moreso their desperation that equals her.
Birds of a feather, in the end. Or crystals: white and black.
Will this time give us our answer, Chosen?
The crystal hisses as she pushes it. Unfair, she knows. Fair, in another way, she knows as well. The Voice of the Chosen, just as she has her own Voice amongst the Chosen – how complicated things have become, after the first loop, her first and, perhaps, only true failure.
I was wrong then. I am not wrong now?
Now…it is a case of necessity for all of them, to find a way out of this tangled loop.
'Abandoned! Abandoned us!'
She takes on form. The black crystal copies her but, as always, she is first, the creator just as they are the saviour and the destroyer. Her lips brush the edge of that black and sting. The crystal freezes, half-deformed.
Those two again. It is always those two and she cannot be surprised. Just as they cannot be surprised by the lithe form she always wears. Her first Voice. Their first Voices. Always, there will be that memory, that form.
Perhaps this is their way of paying tribute to those poor lost children from long before. Or perhaps they still exist, some shadow, after all this time. The immortal Chosen, caught in the web of their destiny until they destroyed the world and these were the ones that survived. Because a Goddess cannot otherwise cry, but she does, every time in this empty world where, in the centre, the crystal – the Voice of the Chosen – stands erect.
She cries and mourns the world that no longer is as she coaxes the world to be into life and gives it dreams, gives it hope, as the black crystal in its centre leaks nightmares and despair and they balance – they find the balance, after long years of her perfect world that will always crumble, whether that black crystal stands in its centre or not.
But while she can hate the invisible enemy, she cannot hate them: the dreams that became nightmares, the hope that became despair, the power that nurtured their world the poison that will later erode it.
'Find! Find us!'
And, then, it is done, and she closes her eyes again. Sets herself adrift: her own crystal, smaller and far less impressive now that she's used up her power. She'll sleep, as she always does. She'll sleep and they'll wake and the end will come, ultimately, from other's hands until they obliterate it all and slumber, and then she will awake again. Those loops, those endless loops…
Find the answer…
This is a new loop. New seeds. A new chance.
Will it be the same… Or would something new come of it?
'Find! Find us!'
Find the answer… Find the possibility… Find the hope….
Or, if it doesn't exist, at least set us free and bring this long frayed string to an end.
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A/N: Left it to the bottom to not disrupt the poem at the top. Homeostasis is from Adventure/Xros Wars Manga, and I'm sure you can guess who her Voice is. The Voice of the Chosen are less easy to guess at this point, but there's a hint there already and more to crop up as the story goes on and then there's the character tags… And if you know me well enough, you'd know which character is a must-feature…
Summary and title are both adopted from Aiko Isari. Interpretation is mine, but credit for those two things goes to her.
Also written for the Diversity Writing Challenge, k35 – modernise canon, futurise it or send it back to the past context-wise. Mostly the latter of those since we're jumping between a few worlds here.
Will also focus quite heavily on OCs, though the characters in the tags will have quite notable appearances/roles.
Another thing is the chapter titles. Arc 0 is essentially the prologue, however it is told in fragments and not in chronological order, and therefore the chapter numbers reflect that. The rest of the chapter numbers are as per normal, 1-end per arc, but Arc 0 will have algebraic notations to reflect the discontinuity. N is an arbitrary starting point and also, I guess, marking the current arc. And as Arc 0 is the prologue, the chapters are quite smaller than the regular chapters either.
As for the poems at the beginning of each chapter – I was trying to start the story and that happened. Oh well. Higurashi does that too and they were a fun read, so why not?
Enjoy!