Unfortunately, the website hasn't been functioning properly over the last week, with missing traffic stats and such, and we haven't been able to see how many people are reading. Hopefully we'll be able to see them soon.
Reviews are still visible for us though thankfully, and are always appreciated and we would both love to hear your opinions and criticisms.
We appreciate your support.
Side note: I wanted to add a song to some of the chapters we upload. Something that I've found to be nice to listen to recently.
I've been liking Boards of Canada recently. It's a really strange type of electronic music, and a lot of their songs are quite old now. Corsair is a nice and simple song I've liked recently.
...
...
...
So abruptly. So abruptly. How did it all go wrong?
The shining speck of sand escaping from within her palm. What did Mew do? What could she do?
Only the smallest fracture and now the cracks were running deep, shattering through that which did not yet exist and destroying those that had come before.
Mew could not control it. The spiderweb of fate was unravelling before her eyes. Her game had more than run its course. A soul detached from its body, yet the wrong one had died.
Then she saw it. The great golden halo. The furious green eyes with irises of crimson and pupils as black as the nothingness that Mew had helped tear apart.
What had she done?
...
...
...
He fell forever and for less than an instant. He felt himself rip into pieces, yet stay healthy and whole. He saw the crashing rocks and felt each deadly impact time and time again. Yet he was still alive. Or was he?
The deep void between one life and too many others to count. All of them his and yet, not quite his alone. He plummeted even through the lack of gravity. He could not see, not entirely, for he had no eyes. He could feel, but it was not the tactile sensation he had come to call his own. He felt the pull on his being, or his lack of being, towards each different existence. A call to his soul to find somewhere to name home. Each call was left unanswered. Each home already inhabited. Somehow, he knew he was not meant to be in each and every existence that called out to him. He tried to reach out to them, but he had no arms, no stretching fingers to grasp onto the fading sense of life.
He had already forgotten what it had felt like to touch, to hear, to see, taste, smell; to live. Was this what it meant to experience non-existence? He was already living in each concurrent existence that he spiraled past. Somehow, he was both here and there. They weren't fully him, but he still recognized them as such. A being too alike to tell apart and yet, living a life so different it could not be imagined by a mind such as his.
How was he to stop? Was this all that was meant to be after the end? The inevitable fall? Where was the impact, the pain, the release?
He saw a light, even through his sightless form, a ring too golden to fully comprehend. Green, red, black eyes. He was found. The golden light split and continued to fracture outwards, fractal patterns filling the void with light; a painful, searing light that he just wished would go away. If only he could run from it. Run from the unforgiving glare. He could feel again. He didn't want to. It hurt to feel. It reminded him of pain suffered too long ago, in a body that was not his.
And then the pain was gone.
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...!
Marshadow opened his eyes to the new day. He was grateful for his place in the shade. The cooling comfort of the grass eased him awake to greet whatever came his way.
No, this is wrong.
Instinctively, he stretched. He hoped to loosen up the muscles that were surely aching after such a long sleep. Surprisingly enough, another thing to be grateful for, no joints or muscles ached.
What is happening? Where am I?
He looked down at the grass, thanking it for providing him with such a pleasant night's sleep. It had been such a deep and dreamless sleep that he had almost-
Almost.
-Forgotten how he had gotten there. How had he managed to find such a snug little cluster of roots to lay his head against?
I didn't.
He didn't.
I'm lost.
He didn't recognize where he was at all.
Who is speaking?
His senses were all wrong. A misplaced madness sowed its seeds within his mind.
What am I?
Marshadow began to shake with fear. He couldn't place a single memory prior to when he had fallen asleep. He couldn't even work out why he was calling himself Marshadow. What was a Marshadow? His quivering was set from deep within himself. He had not felt a fear such as this before. Or had he? He tried to sift through the murk of his memories but the closer he came, the faster the images flew away.
Marshadow threw his hands to his face, instinct trying to claw the visions out from within his brain, but it was no use. All he achieved was sorrowfully massaging his headache and sudden, mind-shattering confusion.
He pulled his hands away from his face. What was wrong with them? They felt foreign.
Wrong.
They felt different somehow, but he had always had these hands.
New.
Deep grey, almost black hands. A normal amount of fingers on each hand. Four. Five, if you count the thumbs. What even is a normal amount of fingers? Was this not the right amount? They felt off. Stubby. Weightless. He tried to move his hands, reflexively, but could not feel any resistance from his skin when he bent and flexed his fingers. Did… did he have skin? He tried to pluck at the back of his hand with the short fingers on his other hand. They met resistance, but couldn't pull back anything resembling skin. Of course, he didn't have skin. Why would he think he had skin?
Natural. Unnatural.
He began to pass his gaze over the rest of his arms now, the fear continuing to shake those very appendages, but the curiosity keeping his investigation going. Where were his wrists? He was meant to have bony bumps at the base of the backs of his hands; instead, there was barely a break at all between his smooth, veinless hand and the forearm it clung to. There were large dome-like additions to his forearms, sticking out away from his sides.
Additions. Alterations. Aberrations.
The dark grey of his hands and forearms shifted more rapidly into a deeper, almost black tone. It was difficult to make out from the angle he was looking down, struggling to bend his head to look down at his shoulders. There was something frilly in the way that he hadn't noticed until that moment.
In his confusion at being unable to look at his shoulders properly to figure out the reason for the color shift, Marshadow noticed the floor again. The black contrasting so greatly with the lush, green grass. The grass that happened to be far closer to his face than he expected. Was he still sitting or crouching down after waking up? No. He had been standing up and stretching. Why was the grass so tall? Why were the trees around him so large?
Perspective. There is a problem here. Wake up. Wake up now!
Marshadow saw his feet, dug under the grass, clearly, to hide his toes. To hide his entire feet.
Wrong again.
Marshadow lifted one leg up to inspect it, the muddled thoughts becoming the new norm in these waking moments. He had no foot. No indication of an ankle. No toes. Merely a stump at the end of his leg. A tassel hung from the back of where his ankle should be.
Should be? Was. Or was it?
It did not dangle and lie on the ground, but instead resisted gravity in a slightly eerie way. It was long and, oddly, appeared to be a part of him, like a ponytail but made of his own flesh. If he had been made of any flesh, of course.
Flesh. Ponytail. Lost.
His legs were short, stubby things. They felt unfamiliar in the same way his fingers did. He reached down to grab at the tassel and lost his balance, falling to the ground and driving his face into the grass. Thankfully, it was overgrown enough to provide a soft landing. Was the landing even softer than it should have been?
Falling. Falling without-
Was gravity different here?
Where is here?
Marshadow didn't know what gravity was, but he knew he wanted to test his thought out. The fleeting question prompted a quick jump. He pushed himself back up onto his feet, wobbling slightly. He had such short arms and legs that he felt top-heavy for some reason. Why should he feel top heavy with small limbs? Wouldn't it all be proportional?
Proportionate to what?
Finding his balance for but a moment, Marshadow jumped and landed. He fell at the right rate for what seemed natural, but the landing felt easier than he expected. As if he never truly touched the ground, even though he could see, plainly, that he was indeed standing on the ground.
From the portion of the torso that he could see, Marshadow noticed just how short it was, too. The torso matched the width and length appropriate for his arms and legs, with both footless stumps having their own tassels trailing behind him, fluttering ever so slightly in the still morning air.
The breeze. The morning breeze. Feel it across your cheek. Please. Feel it and understand!
Marshadow waited. He could see his tassels fluttering, he could see the grass around his feet twisting slightly and playing as the air passed by them. What air? He couldn't feel any draft passing over his body. He almost thought skin again, but he knew that was wrong now. No skin. Only body.
Wrong again.
His tassels. They moved incorrectly. Differently to the speed at which the grass twitched. As he turned in a slow circle, watching them closely, they stayed behind him, unaffected by the change in direction.
Marshadow was confused by he was more confused by the lack of reasoning behind this self-investigation. He had always been like this.
Like what?
While the area he pondered within was not a proper clearing in this forest, just a few trees away, Marshadow could see a small pond. The grass was dry, so he knew it couldn't be a puddle caused by recent rainfall. This ideal-looking forest didn't seem like the type for rain, even though all the plants looked healthy and well-nourished.
Nourishment. Hunger.
Marshadow slowly moved one leg in front of the other. The top-heavy feeling had yet to leave and he was worried about possibly falling over again. His lack of feet didn't help, even though he had never owned feet. He planted one leg as firmly as he could atop the grass and tipped himself forward slowly, only to stop the fall with his other leg. He had to continuously and carefully do this in order to avoid crawling on all fours to the lake like some infant or wild animal.
Beast. Inhuman. Subhuman. Embarrassment.
He had apposable thumbs and could walk upright. Surely, that meant he wasn't an animal, right? Why did he care? What classified something as not an animal?
Marshadow, on his way to the pond to seek out his reflection, reconsidered a previous passing thought. Was it his own thought, or something else? Food. Was he hungry? When did he last eat? Did he eat? He didn't feel hungry, nor did he feel the absence of food. What did that feeling feel like again? How would he even know?
The pond was within reach. Marshadow didn't want to fall into it, so he slowly sank down to his knees and crawled the final couple of feet to the water's edge. It rippled ever so slightly with the same wind that messed with the taller blades of grass. It was at least still enough for him to get a good look at his face.
Fear grabbed at him and he scrambled back. Luck, or misfortune, had played a part in his shock. Something else, below the water, had come to peer up at him at the exact moment he had sought to view his face. Something horrid and melancholic, with eyes that were closer described as the lit pin-pricks of candles, rimmed with red. Gazing up at him with an unknowable sorrow.
And yet you know it.
Likely due to the movement of the water, the creature's head had shifted and bowed beneath the waves. Grey and black swirls of a smoke-like substance, barely held together to form its head, crowned in curls. It had a round enough face, with a small mouth. The more Marshadow considered the snapshot of the creature, the less he feared it. It had simply been the shock of seeing something else so suddenly and unexpectedly. Perhaps it was as afraid as he was, as alone.
This forest, while beautiful, was deathly quiet. A ripe breeding ground for isolation.
Marshadow took a deep breath in. Or he tried to. Could he breathe? He didn't feel the air rush in to fill his lungs. He realized he hadn't been breathing since he had risen from his sleep. To attempt to felt unnatural, but now that he was aware of it, he couldn't help but try. He felt an instinctual need to breathe.
Take in air. Drag it into you. Breathe life to your worthless corpse.
It was no use. He couldn't figure out how to breathe and didn't understand why he had tried in the first place. He returned to all fours and started to creep towards the water again, searching below the surface as he approached, looking for the creature he had seen.
He couldn't see it. It must have ducked further below. Possibly the pond was deeper than he thought. Marshadow saw this as his opportunity to view himself now, before any further distractions.
And there was the creature. The entire head, as he had first seen it, but with a ruffled charcoal frill forming a collar around its neck. His neck. He was looking at his reflection. There was no other creature, only him, peering mournfully into his own eyes.
Marshadow was unsure why he felt such a deep sorrow. Had he lost something? Someone close to him perhaps? If they were so important, why couldn't he remember their face? Their name? Anything at all?
Mistakes. Gods and their games. Naivety.
Marshadow pulled himself away from the water. He no longer wanted to look at himself. His curiosity had only been replaced by further confusion and a deep self-loathing. He didn't know what for. Why did he hate himself so much? What had he done wrong?
They lost you for a dream. How is this dream treating you now?
Who was it that he had let down? Surely it wasn't himself. Only a vain creature would dislike themselves for such an offence. Perhaps he felt guilt for letting someone else down, although he didn't know anyone but himself. He barely knew himself. All he knew was fear, confusion and anger.
How can you not remember them? They were everything to me. They were… they… who were they?
Marshadow couldn't connect the distant dots. It was like trying to find that word on the tip of your tongue, but instead it was an idea on the tip of someone else's mind.
Why can't I remember them? Why can't I… why can't you? Why… who am I?
Marshadow was unsure where he was, even though it was clearly a pleasant place to be. It was quiet and isolated and that was how he liked it. He wanted to be alone, to be given a chance to rifle through his thoughts and somehow put together what had somehow dissolved overnight.
He felt an absence. A presence that had been lingering, fighting to stay upon a pedestal within him; now gone.
Marshadow waited a while. He wasn't certain how long he sat down by the pond. He had found a neat little area to lean up against some raised roots of a larger tree, where grass had grown to provide a soft surface, almost like a cushion. The water glinted from the splinters of sunlight pushing through the treetops, but Marshadow was happiest in the shade.
It had taken a long time, most of the morning most likely, but Marshadow's heightened stress from the confusion of waking up had lessened significantly during his rest by the roots. There was something about the natural environment, about this forest, that calmed him. He felt like he was at peace. He giggled ever so slightly at the thought, but didn't understand why.
He tried to get more comfortable in his already calm state, pushing further into the grass and roots. He continued to sink into them, clearly close to getting the perfect spot. He only had to push a little further.
It was cold. Marshadow's content eyes flew open at the sudden feeling. This sensation was definitive. The others had been hints of feeling, like sense that were working on muscle memory alone, a placebo effect from another time. This rush of cold, however. That was felt.
Marshadow looked around and, even though he was shorter than he had anticipated when waking up, his view was absurd. He was peering through the blades of grass as if they were head height. They were head height. He was simply stuck between being under and over the ground level, with his head being the only body part not entirely submerged in the soil. All that lay underground felt cold, touching the ground that had never been touched by the sun's rays. It was in him. He had not burrowed down; he had only sunk. Sank into the shadows. He pushed his arms back out of the ground and pulled himself back up, unwilling to continue feeling such an intense chill after an entire morning devoid of stronger senses.
Taking an instinctual shaky breath and remembering that it would do him no good, Marshadow realized something new- once again. He could smell the grass beneath him. He could hear the creak of the trees as they shifted overhead. In the distance, there were birds calling to each other. At least, they sounded like birds, but also sounded like they were singing out words. The sunlight piercing down from above was now sharply bright to him. For some reason, the shock caused by accidentally sinking into the shadows where he lay, had restarted his senses. Restarted? He thought, how do I know they weren't always muted like that, until just now?
His senses were hitting him in a way he wasn't prepared for, and didn't know how to fully react to. He could feel the grass beneath his feet and he could smell it, but it smelled different to what he expected. In his mind, he had an idea of what grass should smell like. Instead, it smelled sweeter. If he had the urge to eat at all, he wouldn't protest.
The birds sounded further away, but louder than he would have thought, given the distance. His hearing was sharper and more precise than he had imagined.
Tactile senses didn't feel as definite as he was used to. Used to? He thought again, isn't this what I've always been used to? It was more like he was putting his hand just ever so close to the physical objects without fully touching them.
He could see through the shadows more clearly, but the light was hurting his eyes simply by being in the way. He would have to get used to that if he wanted to travel during the day.
Marshadow's mind caught on the idea of travelling. Travelling where? Where was he right now, let alone where was he to go? He was a being formed of shadow and smoke, would leaving the forest cause him to simply cease to be? Did he need to stay in the shade or behind the cover of the trees to stop his wisps from wandering away? He loved the idea of travel, though. He knew it felt natural to him. He was an explorer at heart. He didn't know how he knew this, but he did. It felt right.
Things felt natural. Other things felt deeply wrong. Marshadow couldn't work out the difference and he felt like he was either tearing at his mind or his soul to try and figure it out. Nothing made sense and yet, everything was there right in front of him. If seeing was believing, how come he could do anything but believe what was going on? He had no memories and no clue of why they were gone or how to get them back. He was lost. Split apart from his mind, in a place unknown to him and he had no clue of when it was either. Looking himself over, he didn't know if he was a young being or something older than the forest itself. How was he to know?
The confusion was getting to him. He just wanted to be left alone and couldn't trust his own mind to do that for him. The senses were compounding the issue. One moment absent, the next they were too strong, too loud, crowding him into a corner that he couldn't hide in. The stress began to build, too much for him to control. He wanted out from whatever this was. Marshadow closed his eyes and felt a white hot burning. He had only felt such a pain once before, or perhaps he never had. He saw deep green, yellow; felt a burst of strength and then he collapsed in exhaustion. He had little to no control over his own body. After a few moments to gather his strength, once again, he dragged himself back up onto his feet, unwilling to lie down and succumb to his stressed state.
A twig snapped. Marshadow whipped his head around to eye up whatever had made the noise. Something that had been lurking since before he had accidentally roused himself from his comforting spot by the lake. Something that had been watching him, stalking him. A hunter? A predator? Why was he thinking automatically like he was prey? He had never been prey before, right? He didn't want to wait and find out the answers to any of those questions. He shot up onto his feet and stared whatever was watching him directly in the eyes.
The human stared back. Their eyes met.
The Marshadow fled.