I've got the marshmallow touch… Where's the nearest hero school?
Cultural avatars, humanoid terran manifestations, national anthropomorphic personifications, whatever it is you want to call us to make yourself sound smarter than the average country huggin' girl, I'm going to tell you something very serious about us, and you must listen like the Prussian regular who has tasted so much metal his ears can pick up the sound of cream being whipped from an ocean away.
WE ARE NOT PLANTS.
It may seem like a non sequitur, but I think it's very important to mention! No nation remembers his birth. Not even Old Man China, who claims to know everything. (If he did, he'd be forging antimatter in his basement like he says he is, but I know otherwise!) The birth of my people is not a highly guarded secret only because we don't know how we came to be in the first place. Oh, there are theories out there. All kinds. In my edgy phase, I liked the one about a Mesopotamian god gluing the souls of the fallen together, creating the ultimate patriotic fighting machine. But for those on the other side of the equation, there's the one about a fluke in evolution. It all depends on what sounds the most interesting. Stare at us and study us, you fools!
We don't know where we came from, and we don't know how we're born. It could be science. It could be magic. It could be both! Magical meteorites or some shit! I probably saw our origin in my visions, but I forgot it in favor of seeing the magical marshmallow meteorite that fell to earth forty million years ago. There's a lot of crap scientists don't know about!
But we don't shrug at every question! We know how we work, at least, which is why I have to disregard all theories about us growing out of the earth! To grow, a plant needs sunlight! And for us to grow, we need earthlight.
Nations work like this: the cultural consciousness of a people — their loves, fears, values, traditions, disposition, and so forth, react and fuse with geothermal energy from beneath the earth's crust, to create earth power, EP — the "magical force" which keeps us moving and breathing. It's a perfect formula. If either part is tainted, we can feel it. Luckily, the planet itself isn't scheduled to explode anytime soon, so we can rely on it as a steady source of sustenance. It's mostly cultural shit we have to worry about. Political turmoil, economic boom and bust — purely personal how much each nation is affected, from flu-like symptoms to mere headaches. This is why "nation doctor" is the most important public service position you've never heard of!
Our bodies are conductors of earth power. We fuse it, burn it, and spread the fumes around to our people, making them feel good to be alive in their countries. So we must be born when the fusion becomes strong enough to require a body. That would explain how most of us came to be. There are some, like the North America twins, who were born from the opportunity for a new culture rather than a pre-existing one. Germany's the result of a little alchemy I used to speed up his fusion process. And this kid…
Nobody knows why this kid exists.
"JClayton 1994 has some very funny YTPs, doesn't he, Prussia? I like the joke he makes about Harry throwing a potato at Sirius Black to topple him. They do get repetitive after a while, but they are a nice alternative to the other Harry Potter YTPs that make your sides burst from laughter. I can't watch those all the time, or I'll get the phone taken away. Did you see the one I sent you yesterday? You left me on read."
One time Sealand and I got locked out of the same meeting, so I showed him a YTP. Now we're friends.
"Kid, do you ever take your eyes off your phone? Social media doesn't equal a social life."
"That's rich. What about all the selfies you post? 'Here's the Awesome Me in the Andromeda galaxy and boy is it hard to find ice cream here.' How long did you spend editing this?"
"Not too long. I've had many years of photoshop training in the Order of the Basement Dwellers."
"Well, it looks like crap. You should've spent longer. The stars are all pixelly."
I give the kid a hard look, wondering if he'll call me old if I tell him off more. I decide instead to snatch his phone away and hold it behind my back. With both arms back there, I squeeze it down into a pocket dimension and toss it up into a tree. Hey, I'm getting better at this! How much should I sell the Poké Balls for? Germany says at least a billion, but Georg, the sixth-grader up the street, says he only has twenty euros, and I don't want to let him down!
"Hey! Give that back! Which pocket is it in? I'll tell Germany."
"Germany won't let me play with an iMac from 1999. He'll understand."
"Then what am I supposed to do while I'm waiting for Germany and Sweden's cakes to finish baking?"
My stare intensifies. The kid's got one, too — all steely and stormy. His EP aura is black, like thick smoke, and I see it snaking around his ankles.
"Geez, kid! Don't summon your aura like that! It's discourteous! The old-fashioned nations will see it as an act of hostility."
"They do, all right," he huffs, swinging his legs. We're in the backyard relaxing on the swinging bench while Europe's greatest cake wizards conduct their sorcery in secret. France has nothing on my little bro's Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte! He can't even pronounce it!
"If you want, we could use our imaginations," I suggest, holding up a fist. "Look, I'm made of steel, too! Wicked punch I've got revving up."
"You don't have a punch like mine."
"How do you know? I could. I'm just using my imagination."
"You know I'm not a real little kid."
"So what? Time is an illusion."
"The History channel says time is like a loaf of bread."
"The History channel says the universe is donut-shaped. But I can tell you it's shaped like a mushroom because I've been outside of it. I've flown far past the stars and seen what everything really looks like." I rise from my position on the bench, then scoop up the kid in my arms and jump up on the picnic table, showing him the whole of the backyard. "I stood on a table like this and surveyed all of creation! At least, our little corner of creation. And wow, is it lopsided! You won't find many spherical planets outside our own solar system, that's for sure! Gravity likes pulling things into cubes!"
"That's not true," Sealand says, squirming.
"It is true. I'm imagining it! Can't you imagine things?"
"I'm imagining that you put me down."
I put the kid down.
"And I'm imagining…" He paces around the yard a bit until he comes to the back fence. "Here, look at this! This lichen right here. Is this regular Earth lichen, or is it from… aliens?"
I scramble to where he's seated. "Hmm… not the garden variety lichen, that's for sure! I'd better scan it."
I hold up my "scanner," inputting information about this mysterious lichen. "You're right, my space detective friend. This lichen's crystalline chemical composition is cuboid! It must be from another world! The marshmallow world, to be exact. Their people have visited this planet before. They're the evolutionary ancestors of seagulls!"
"Really? Then this is an important artifact. I wonder if it tastes like marshmallows. Let's give it a try."
Right before my eyes, the kid scrapes some lichen off the fence with a stick and brings it toward his lips, a look of dead seriousness taking root in his dark eyes. I can't tell if he's doing it to spite me, or if his imagination really is that powerful once activated. He spent a long time alone on that military platform before he became a "country." If he ate rust, why should lichen be a concern?
But old instincts resurface. My Germany would never eat lichen! My left hand shoots forward, snatching it from his fingers and smacking the side of his face.
"You fool!" I bark at him. "Let me try it first. I can't get in trouble for poisoning the youngest cadet."
Sealand is intrigued. I cup the lichen in my hands. It's been so long since I survived on the stuff, all I remember of its taste comes from a vague image of Lithuania with his hair full of chewed up, spitty moss. Germany would let me eat lichen, but not our northern neighbor's precious purchase! We've got my sword in the utensil drawer. We don't need Sweden's sword in the countertop, too.
It's time to warp the fabric of reality!
My magenta stare intensifies once more. The lichen in my hands stares back from its dark pores. Breathing in, I focus on the balance in my body. I'm steady here on this earth, centered, clear. Here and not here. Powerless and powerful, super powerful!
My form flickers, and I allow my awareness to ascend and expand. My hands glow a dull pink. The world goes soupy. I hear the synthwave and see the grid shaping things in three dimensions, including the lichen. The taste of marshmallow fills my mouth, and I center that taste onto the lichen. A mantra fills my head.
Change, transform, transmute! By the power of Prussia, I command you defy all logic and become what I ask!
I see the lichen's deepest chemical structure — its DNA. Welp, RIP algae and fungus, today you're being transmogrified into puffy amounts of glucose.
The lichen swells and thickens and softens. Its pores quiver before utterly dissolving, replaced by little pockets of sugar. Not ten seconds after I began my focus on the stuff, it's become a little lichen-shaped marshmallow. I pull some off and pop it into my mouth, pleasantly surprised this food transmuting time around! Das ist köstlich!
Sealand is staring at me, so I shove the lichen past his lips and into his mouth so fast, he can't see its marshmallowy shape and color. He chews a bit before his face lights up.
"This is an actual marshmallow… wait… are we still using our imaginations?"
"Maybe… maybe not."
I stick my hands down into my butt pockets and push them as deep as they'll go, then deeper, into my butt pocket dimensions. From them, I produce whole handfuls of marshmallows, which I pull out and offer to the kid. Sealand smiles, then bursts out laughing.
"What a funny magic trick! You must tell me how you did it!"
"Nope. Can't reveal anything. Hm, but maybe…"
Behind my back, I beckon to the pocket dimension containing the phone, which floats down from the tree behind me and into my left hand. I stick it up my shirt, cringe a bit as time-space returns to normal so close to my skin, and pull out the phone, perfectly unharmed. To the kid, it looks like I just pulled it right out of my shirt. Now that's a magic trick!
"The world has many more secrets than technology can solve for us. You want to be a real country? You must be clever, and you must never stop seeking out new knowledge."
He's not listening to me. He's texting his friends that I'm a marshmallow magician.
My Germany would never do such a thing.
~N~
For more on Prussia's alchemy, read "The Pride of Wisdom" by Tearsofbreakingglass. Her historical stuff and headcanons are awesome!
Updated by Syntax-N FanFiction . Net June 27th, 2020.