It's the Alternian sweep 3125 and Her Imperious Condescension has just waged war on the nearby planet Earth because of it's accumulation of offensively liberal governments and general human weakness. From her island castle she commands the erection of a new Drafting Center in each of the nine Alternian districts so she can harvest the Troll youth and recruit them to fight and conquer her enemies. Trolls as young as Eight Sweeps are being carted off into the vast unknown, something usually reserved for criminals Ten Sweeps and older. Just as the first few start dying at alien hands and Her Condescension grows more determined something snaps within the bodies of young ones all over the planet and something starts that she never, with all of her eyes and ears across most of space, could have predicted.
Dried, slimy, mushy, baked, crusty, thin. It's all over, it's across the table and pushed into the corners and in a large bowl in the middle. You're by that bowl, slack jawed as you exhale through your nose and mouth. From between your two fingers dangles a crisp paper roll tinted red at either end, courtesy of Sollux. Gamzee once speculated that the strength of the different sopor slime colors determined which way the hemospectrum rolled, that the ancient trolls of whichever planet they then inhabited took a sip out of their resident yellow-blooded friend's recupracoon and learned how much weaker the red shit was than the blue shit. Of course, it's a ridiculous story and you've always seen that there were most definitely flaws with the theory, the most prominent being that recupracoons would then have to be older than the most ancient known government structure. And then, of course, there are the theories about the origin of sopor slime itself. When you were just a wriggler, before you left your hive and lusus in favor of travel with a group of long-time friends, you used to think it was made by creatures in the night. That was, of course, before your lusus showed you how to change out the slime and replace it with the slime in the four jars you receive every month in the box with the useless red flappy thing. Then one day you stepped on something hard and all the secrets the Condescension and all of her predecessors had tried to keep from the common population came leaking out. You planted the hard sphere on a hunch, and it turns out you were right. Sopor comes from a plant, more specifically a vine that curls upwards and around everything and anything. It grows little pods and thin, tasteless leaves shaped like either spades or hearts, and within each pod is the slime all trolls sleep in and trust every day of their lives. You told Vriska about the plants, and she told Terezi, who told Karkat, who told Gamzee, who asked you for a couple of the pods. It was a hard decision, especially considering Karkat's extreme aversion to the idea and several warnings, but eventually you decided that no harm could really come from a couple of pods. That's actually also the story of how Gamzee came to possess the largest, and only, known (probably) illegal sopor garden and trade business in all of Alternia.
That's not where you are right now, though. Right now you're above the greenhouse in his 'baking room', as he calls it. There's a long, complicated story about how you and all your friends got into the same kind of questionable sopor shit that Gamzee's always been into, it starts with the war and the bulletin at the local drafting center that shows the names of those who died on earth and the day Equius read off Aradia's name and fell apart. War is universally evil, especially wars so pointless as this one.
Equius is here with the rest of you. Today he must be really feeling it, he's crying lightly against a wall while Karkat reprimands him and Gamzee rolls him another blue one. You're not sure why there are different colors of sopor, but whatever that mistake the government made that let you find the seed that one time was clearly a one time occurrence because no one else has found a seed, least of all Sollux. Gamzee tries to force him to check his bottles every month just to make sure, but Sollux resists. He assures Gamzee that he'll be the first to know if he finds anything, though. Gamzee's dying to get his hands on a couple blue sopor seeds. For now, he makes due with the pre-processed stuff that Sollux brings him.
Vriska whispers something to you, but her words sound very strange, you're not sure if it's because of your own distorted perception as side effect of the slime or because of her distorted perception of how speaking works as side effect of the slime, or possibly both. You shrug at her and make hand gestures, hopefully they'll portray that you don't quite understand, she just falls apart laughing. Equius keeps crying for another ten minutes, you assume after that he falls asleep. Karkat starts another bad romance play and shows you the plot line. You say something and fall asleep.
The best part of sleeping while you're on sopor as opposed to sleeping in sopor is the dreaming. Trolls don't dream much in the sopor, and without it they have horrible nightmares. But Gamzee, when he falls asleep after eating his special pies, has good dreams, or whatever qualify in his mind. Equius dreams of Aradia, or so he's said once before. He gets upset after when he realizes she's gone, and only responds to Gamzee when he's upset. Equius's more traditional than the rest of you and he respects blood-given authority, but not the authority of your sea-dwelling friends. He believes in more power to the land-dwellers, and he phrases it like equality. That's why he's traveling with you, as well as that you were all friends of Aradia. You're all traveling to the other coast of this Alternian land mass to see the great Kankri speak, a bit of a figurehead for freedom, peace, and especially blood equality. That's the main cause you and your friends fight for. Aradia was red-blooded and Equius was about as blue as they come. In sweep 3115 their relationship would have been ten kinds of unheard of, but now youth everywhere can be found in quadrants with any other blood color. Most of the adults disapprove, and many of the lusus as well.
You dream of a planet with green trees and brown soil and running, the sun is warm in a pleasant way, as is the ground. You see a face and wake up, everything semi-forgotten. Vriska has been shaking you awake. It's time to hit the road.
This is the group's first day of traveling together. Gamzee convinced Equius to work with Sollux to repair the broken down, but not so old, van Eridan found abandoned on a random beach while sailing. It was rusty and almost all the paint was completely chipped off, the tires were popped and driftwood was found inside. It was unhappy looking, to say the least. So while the boys were fixing it up on the inside, you and Terezi decided to decorate it on the outside. In the noonday heat Terezi painted a simple, red Alternian sun onto the front while you used exotic greens, purples, yellows, and blues to make curling, twisting vines and open, spread out flowers on the sides, accompanied by words. You sat on the ground as Feferi admired your handiwork.
"Oh, Kan! It's beautiful!" she happily exclaimed, clasping her hands in front of her chest and tilting her head ever so slightly. "The trees, the flowers, the vines– all of them are so beautiful! Do you know, sometimes when I'm down there under water, I start to miss them. But down there really isn't so much different from up here, is it? There's the seaweed and the fish and up here there are the vines and the birds. It's all beautiful, all life is beautiful. Sometimes I think other trolls forget that they're life too– we all have life, you, me, the birds, the trees."
You thought about that for a moment. Life. The air through your teeth, the pulsing of your jade blood in your vanes, the flow of elements through leaves, the fluttering wings and quivering feathers of sky-flyers. Life. Everything else, trudging through life and feeling just as you are. You can't help but respect that. A tree seemed appropriate for the roof, so you and Terezi painted that together. Feferi scribed 'LIFE' in beautiful Alternian calligraphy onto the back of the van and surrounded it with all colors. You suppose it goes with the shared purpose of the group, primarily equality for all blood colors. Everyone, no matter what blood color, lives and dies. Why punish those with red and brown blood for their life? Why not celebrate it equally?
All ten of you fit easily into the van, Gamzee takes a mini greenhouse and at least two jugs of sopor slime and puts them in one corner of the trunk, or as far into that corner as he can fit them without hurting the substances. There's a bit of food stored as far back as possible before getting to the trunk, carbs and some meat and fruit but only enough to last until you can stop to get more. Everyone travels light, with at most two sets of clothing. When they wear out, you can patch them up, (you're a bit of a seamstress) and when they start falling apart irreparably you'll pick up what needs to be replaced. Everyone has their signature clothing item, which you can appreciate; Gamzee has his bell-bottom jeans, Tavros has his suede vest, Feferi has the braided yellow cloth she wears as a headband around the front of her forehead. You have a dress that's magnificent in all possible ways, if you say so yourself. You're very proud of your work with it. It's long, ankle length, with a slit up to your knee on one side. You spent the most time coloring the cloth, tying it into strange bundles and spraying it with blue and green. The end result is more stunning than you expected it to be, it looks like a whirlpool focused at the center of your stomach. Equius, Eridan, and Feferi are the only ones who have any shoes, but they originally come from higher classes than most of the rest of you.
It doesn't bother anyone on the bus that they don't have much. Their stories of why they have so little are vaguely similar, and sometimes much the same. Karkat and Tavros never really had much to start off with, because of blood oppression they had difficult wriggler years. Feferi abandoned her home and most of her wealth when Aradia was killed and Equius fell apart, she realized Her Condescension was without compassion, she was too platonic with her hate, she didn't feel any no-attachment quadrant feelings and let herself be free, and so that's what Feferi decided she must do. Eridan followed seeking quadrants, mostly Feferi's. Gamzee was always a stoner, he never had much interest in things that weren't sopor. Vriska fell from her wealth when her lusus died unexpectedly and she was unable to keep her place running, then it burned down and everything left disappeared. Sollux abandoned his programming business, working with some chunky, cool new gadgets, just so he could travel with you guys, but he never made much money off it anyway. You grew up in a stable, middle-class kind of hive, surrounded by plants and nature within your indoor gardens. You don't have much because you choose not to, just like Terezi. You want to feel nature and travel light, enjoy life while you're a part of it.
The first day you travel would be trying to the trolls of earlier generations. You and your mostly free-spirited companions are traveling partly to get to the coast in time to hear the great Kankri give a famous speech of his, and part to help petition against the war, though you know little good will come of it, to help fight for blood-color equality, and another part just for the journey and the sake of traveling. Most of you haven't travelled far from your hives, the farthest any of you has gone has been to visit one of your friends. There is so much more on this Planet to see than that one area, that one small bubble of culture. You plan to see it all.
The road is bumpy and Eridan is driving. Vriska spends a lot of time laughing, smoking a pre-packed red roll, and yelling at him. Gamzee experiments with unconventional ways to get Tavros high, which is admittedly almost strange to watch at times, but there are no judgments on this bus. It's the age of young love and young hate, everyone will feel what they will. Terezi and Karkat find a corner to curl up in, Eridan tries his very hardest to get anywhere with Feferi from the driver's seat, who's a bit flirty in response but seems dismissive of him at times. Equius has a ball of twine from god knows where, you and he tie it around some of the smaller pieces of driftwood to make a dangly decoration for the large mirror by the driver's seat. When you get hungry, you take a bite of one of the fruits, then you toss it to Vriska, who takes a bite as well, and it gets passed around the group like that, demolished one bite at a time until it's just a shred of dirty, grimy inedible and thrown out the window.
The van stops at dark, there will be no driving at night and the next town area is a quarter of a day's drive away. You can manage until then. Everyone climbs out of the van, apparently Eridan stashed most of the driftwood in a bag by the driver's seat, because soon he's bringing it out of the car and starting a small fire within a ring of stones.
Right now the group's by a creek in a heavily forested area. The trees are tall and thin, almost brittle seeming. The ground is unusually moist, and warm from a day of the summer sun shining down onto it. You curl up and dig your toes through the soil, you think you might brush by a wiggling pink dirt-muncher, but it's alright. Grass is growing around your head, tree roots are digging below you, life is everywhere. One of the jugs of sopor slime is being passed around, since you all can't sleep in it the best that can be done for you is to ingest some. Tavros lazily leans over with it, you sit up and dip two fingers in before tucking them into your mouth, and then you pass it slowly over to Terezi before lying back down in your patch of grass and closing your eyes again.
You dream of soil and trees and warm sun and running and a face, this time it's entirely new and you can almost remember it when you wake up.
The next day, you trudge through the forest some and drink from the creek. Your grey feet are brown in a kind of fresh way, you smile again. Life.
The second day of traveling is composed of extreme desert heat and Vriska takes it upon herself to distract everyone from it by preaching from her bible, which is to say reading from The Journal of Mindfang. Bibles are Earth things, which means theoretically you're supposed to hate them with passionate planetary-derived chauvinism and xenophobia, but you know there isn't any point. The Earth beings are fine with their weakness, they don't need sopor to sleep, or so you've heard. Her Imperious Condescension doesn't even take the war that seriously, it's a suspicion of yours and your friends that she just got bored sitting around her castle with less bloodshed than there used to be and no slaves to command around. She doesn't expect most of you to want to go fight, apparently a grand total of fifteen volunteered. But she also knows you can't do anything about it. You think that's not entirely true, she has power over you but she can't predict your movements, she has power over you but she can't silence thought. If only you could spread the word, if only you could get other trolls to see what you see and understand, then maybe with the whole Troll race turned against her, she'd go down in one way or another. That's much later though, far down the road. What you're doing right now is spreading the awareness, or trying to start it spreading. Troll youth everywhere are gathering to The City, there will be protests and gatherings and speeches.
When you finally get to the stop, you stock up on food and hang around outside for a bit, stretching your legs and talking to the locals. You see the weird looks some of the more traditional older-folk are giving you, they look at your bare feet and Gamzee's large hair and Karkat's half-unbuttoned blouse and they judge you, even before they judge your class. You like that, being judged by what you choose to share with the world, your clothing and your appearance as you choose to make it. Maybe they don't like what they see, but that's fine because you don't care very much about that. What you hate is judgement by class, and that comes next. They feel bad for judging Gamzee to hardly because he's a high-blood, they feel bad for judging Karkat too little because he's a low-blood. Your symbols, which don't do as much to represent you as they do to oppress you in this day and age, are currently just special heat-press-on patches wherever on your front you choose to put them.
When you get back to the car, you're forced realize that Eridan and Vriska decided to stay back and enjoy the benefits of a fresh kismesis. There's purple and blue liquid on the ground, they're cleaning it quickly with a rag left over from the repairing process, but it does little to reassure you. The thing about kismesis-ships and hate romance is you can never tell if it's genetic material, or blood, or both, and how much of each if it is both? At least some of it's blood, the huge scratches down the side of Eridan's arm tells you, but how much?
"That's unsanitary." you can't help but saying. Eridan looks much more awkward than Vriska, who's totally comfortable looking. She sweeps some of her long hair behind one shoulder and smirks.
"What, too much hate for your virgin eyes to handle? It's okay Kanaya, it's mostly blood." she laughs at you. You frown a little bit.
"Mostly." you say, and fight a shudder. Nothing wrong with hate, you endorse it, in fact. But those are your floors as much as theirs and personally, you'd prefer not to slip in Eridan's genetic material. "Do we, by any chance, have a bucket on this bus?"
"Of course! We just tossed it out onto some horrified old female troll." Vriska said. Eridan took the rag out, most likely to rinse it out.
Later on the bus, you made them matching horn-rings; not the kind that pierce the actual horn, but the kind that hang loosely around it. You made them by braiding and tying some of the twine. They are, you suppose, in some ways, a little bit like the bracelets made for human friends with their friend-emotions. But they're different, you swear, in so many ways.
While Karkat is driving, because it's unfair to make Eridan drive the whole way, you have some sopor fresh from the pod and take a nap.
This time, it's snowing in your dream, but it doesn't start until after you've already been running for a while. The thing about this dream is that you're not running from, but running to, or maybe just running for the fun of running through the woods. It starts snowing but it's not cold, the snowflakes fall gently and don't seem to start landing until past that, and then you see the face but this time it doesn't stop so quickly. The snow is covering the ground and you stop running, you look into the large eyes. Vibrant, deep colored eyes, unlike any eyes you've seen before in their coloring scheme. The eyelashes are long and pale. The skin around them is equally pale. You remember when you wake up, the eyes and the skin and the snow.
At some point, Feferi starts a song. There aren't any music-maker tools around, but she manages. She claps her two hands together, quickly so the sound echoes in a flat way throughout. Then one hand to a leg, the other hand to the other leg, then one at a time again to the seat. Repeat. Repeat. Her voice starts in the third time through, and it's gorgeous. Eridan is the next to join in, and you think this time you think it's not as much for flush for the female as flush for the song. They sound nice together, you think, and then it becomes a traveling song. Feferi keeps her smacking of hands going but stops singing and lets Eridan go solo. Tavros is the next to pick it up, though he's not quite as good at it as he might believe. He's a little bit off, but it's fine. He's lazy and smiling, Gamzee's got an arm around him and a blue roll dangling loosely from his fingers that looks like it might tap Tavros on the shoulder soon, or maybe like Tavros will pick it up. Tavros's song is sweet. Then come's Vriska, who jumps in and sings out to Eridan in a way that might provoke you to keep the doors of the bus shut when you next stop and sleep a little bit more away from them tonight. And then it's back to Eridan, who keeps up with Vriska completely, until Karkat juts in with a poorly sung interlude about how glad he is that someone's found a quadrant on this bus, really, but if they're about to fill buckets then please could they get off the bus until they're done because he doesn't need to slip in that when he gets himself some fresh sopor. That's about when it falls apart, Feferi starts laughing and everyone on the bus joins in. It's okay though. Everything is meant to end. It's part of the cycle.
You stop for the night, you make sopor things and you eat enough food to stay alive, you sleep. You dream. This creature must be female. Their hair is back in a braid. It's very white. It's very long.
You wake up, you get back in the van, you keep driving. You think of life. You think of beauty. Seven more days to get there.
This is the day that Equius breaks down a lot. He wakes up sobbing, he stays sobbing until he falls asleep a lot.
Everyone in the van suffers with him. You stare forlornly out your windows at the broken terrain at the sound of his tortured whimpers and throaty gasps of air.
The dreams keep coming. You grab bits and pieces each time, and eventually you might puzzle them together and see an image.
You drive through a small town with one nourishment warehouse to buy enough food to last the rest of the way. Mostly there are canned things, cans and cans and cans. You keep driving.
One night you're camping out in a forest cooking dinner over a campfire when you hear noises behind you. You all turn, everyone can hear them; rustlings in the bushes and such. Then a head pops out. Messy hair and big eyes, cat-like horns. She sniffs and crawls forwards. Equius looks at her and smiles, he invites her to sit with you. She accepts.
She tells her story, ad it's the same old story. A young girl living out of a tent in the woods. You smile. Yeah, you know how it is. She's invited to join you, because you're all about making new friends and hospitality and if she does ride with you, it was probably destined to be so.
The next day, she decides to join you. She and Equius get along famously, you decide they must be moirails. You believe things like that are destiny.
Two days before you're supposed to arrive on the coast, you have a bigger dream. She's in it, again, the long hair and pale skin, no horns, a lot of running and running and running. Her eyes, so bright and purplish. They must reflect her blood color, you think, but she trips and falls and oh no! she bleeds red, red into the snow, red into the trees, red into the roots of grasses and plants that bloom when it's springtime. Terezi says to you as you awake gasping, "Have you been seeing things?"
"Yes." you reply quickly. "I've been seeing a face, the face of an alien." Karkat laughs from the driver's seat.
"Aliens? Like what kinds of aliens?" he asks.
"The pale kind." you say. "I think they might be the kind we're fighting." There is silence for a moment.
"You've been having dreams about a female, haven't you?" Terezi asks. She's not quite laughing or joking like usual. It's dead serious.
"Yes." you reply. She smiles a bit.
"I've been having dreams too, of a female. But the moment I saw her I knew that she wasn't for me, so I directed her to you." she says.
"You can do that?" you ask.
"Not a whole lot." she says. "But this time it was a powerful visage, and I think it was looking. Looking for you, must be."
You ponder the eyes, the face, the hair.
You all arrive finally and see so many other trolls around, more than you'd ever seen at any one time in your entire life. They fill the grand outside, they lie together in the park under a very large sun filter. Being outside is pleasant. Most of them have the sopor, and so do you all as you go out. Gamzee does some talking and trading, you all settle down on some blanket you have, on the grass. But everything stops and you all look up when the great Kankri gives his speech.
He's young, and he looks a lot like Karkat. You think they're biobrothers for sure now. There was one part of the speech you were paying special attention to. He said: "The Condescension is powerful, she is righteous only to herself. The youth of this planet are dying and their souls are strung out across the stars, drifting between Earth, the tomb of the soldier, and Alternia, the home of their life forces and the true home of their spirits. And the so called Enemies on the weaker planet of earth– they are falling by the dozens, we are mowing them down with the terrible blindness of forced rage and desire for freedom. I plead to the Condescension: stop this madness! Let us not bury Earth but let us take her as a rival, to best in all causes and to bruise batter when the moon is low but not to drown and torture and slay! Let us hate her as a kismesis, let us lover her as a matesprit, and let us trade with her as a moirail! But let this fighting stop, by all means, stop the violence."
This is when he is interrupted by the large whirring of an engine, and all the trolls in the field scatter to the side as it lands plumply in the center. A large door lowers, and Kankri looks at it with all of his ability to be formidable. The Condesc will most likely have him slain by morning for his words, you are happy to have heard him speak. And then trolls come on this bridge to the ground, female and male, but not the worn and weary trolls of battle, but rather willing volunteers placed higher in ranking. Their uniforms are shiny, black to protect their skin. Their signs are plastered across their chests: Large, flamboyant. These are government trolls by all counts. One long row comes out, and then they fold into two prompt and inward facing parallel lines. A path. And over their shoulders you can see as they push forwards–
Pale,
Youthful,
Hair of so many colors–
Humans, bound and shackled. Their hair's so short, and they look so beaten. Bruises on their faces, their arms, their legs, as they're marched naked down this hall of army officials; to the big new prison, you assume. You watch for minutes and all is silence, but then there is chanting that starts. Free them! Free them! You join in.
And then you see her.
Her hair is cut short, her eyes are closed as she stumbles forward into the haze of a new world.
But then these eyes open, and they stare directly at you.