Austria's thoughts are my own… Can you deep fry a bomb pop?
I don't think I've formally introduced my world's Austria yet!
Ach, how do I even begin to describe this guy? Even when I've turned into quantum stuff with consciousness, Austria still sits as this massive blob of worldly mass, neither sucking anything in nor putting anything out. He's completely unchanged in my ascended view. Just another basin of carbon and water and gas, laced with complex latices of invisible silicon. I look at him with my pan-dimensional eyes and get no spiritual insight. No cosmic conclusions. The only thing that looks different is that he gives off a few 11-D vibewaves here and there, but as far as I can tell, Austria's never touched a magic wand in his life. No tampering with the universe at all! Absolutely mundane!
Oh. You didn't want to know about his chemical properties. You wanted to know about his "human" characteristics. How thick his eyebrows are and how often he tweezes his bellybutton. (Yeah, we have those. Weird, huh?)
Fine. I'll compress myself down and tell you he's a disgusting nation-man. Somehow ugly enough to be handsome, (if you're into guys even hairier than Italy with actual beaks for noses. Then there are his congenital spider fingers and the cake belly he loves to stuff into tiny waistcoats. Germany once told me he could identify how much Austria weighs at any given moment just based on how much baking powder is left in his cupboard and how hard he's straining to breathe. I told him he should win a prize for that, but he needs to finish the dissertation first.
Most otherworldly impersonators do him justice. He really does sound like a goose and a seagull choking on opposite ends of the same corn cob while a duck plays the musical saw in the background. And Italy tells me Germans aren't creative. We're extremely creative when ridiculing each other! Sometimes, at least! Maybe it's only my special hatred of Austria that leads me to colorful language. Germany's citizens are still insulting each other with "Easterner" and "Westerner," purely based on who can make a hamburger correctly.
Since the 19th Century, Austria's lived in a mansion called Edelweiss. (There goes the creativity.) On the outside, it's a pleasant highland estate. Flower beds and orchards and pressure-washed brickwork and a vintage car he's still using to get places. On the inside, it's a constant dust storm, and it smells like moldy, sweaty cigars in flowerpots. Middle notes of powdered sugar and final hints of partly-melted 1960s shag carpet.
Austria likes to think he's different from the rest of us. He has taste, and class, and a non-intimidating eye shape. He would've raised Germany into a gentleman who didn't dare swear and coat himself in oil and throw pens at his enemies. Austria can grow a dEceNT mUstAcHE. AuStRiA diREctEd tHe pIt foR dScHingHis kHaN aT eUroViSiOn.
You want my honest opinion of Austria and I'll start by describing what a chicken looks like and slowly devolve into the lexicon of curses from some archaic Indo-European tongue that has way too many words for sour beer.
But since you're mortal, I can explain it to you in the simplest terms I can think of:
Repulsive, roll the R, extra vibrato.
I'm at Edelweiss today. Superpositioned pile of Prussian positrons or not, I still need to taste those Austrian tears to keep my strength up. I already wiped my muddy boots all over the rug and hung my hoodie on the curve of the bannister in the entryway. Like the trained hunting hound, I can smell that honey-avocado shampoo to the first door my right. It used to be a receiving room. Now it's a yarn room. Yes, a yarn room.
Austria sits in his rocking chair in the corner, right in front of an entire wall of shelves, stuffed with every color, gauge, and texture of yarn available, and not organized one bit. The first place I look, a cheap scratchy yellow acrylic roll is stashed on top of a fifty-euro hank of hand-dyed alpaca, imported directly from Turkey with all the duties imposed.
"Ceesus chips, is this why the Pam lady looked so grumpy to see you? You spend all your personal subsidies on yarn? And you don't even bother to organize it? Keep this up and you'll actually need to leave your house, and… and work! Dear God, Austria, the delicate bureaucracy of our human supervisors can't handle this insanity of yours! You don't need eucalyptus yarn!"
Austria doesn't even look up from his burgundy granny square. A stack of a hundred of them towers precariously on his coffee table in the center of the room. It's a decent change from the doilies, in my opinion.
"On the contrary, Prussia, I make up for the spending by selling all my patterns online. Individually or on a flash drive for a bundled price. I thought about making sponsored videos as well, but… well, I'm not a man who needs quality headphones and three different VPNs. What would my viewers think of me if I advertised those things? That I have something unsavory to hide, most likely."
"There's nothing wrong with being into blueberry inflation."
"I thought you were into pumpkin inflation."
"I am into pumpkin in… fla… tion… you damn Ostrich! You do that every time!"
Austria purses his lips. "I'll crochet you a flag with orange and green stripes for your struggle."
"And I juicy blue for yours," I grumble, plopping down on the moth-eaten couch across from Austria.
"Your tongue is still sharp as steel after all this time. What will you do when it dulls?"
"Are you expecting it to dull? Do you want me gone? I can leave if you want. I can close my eyes and let my flesh peel away into iron shavings while my spirit flies off into the fourth dimension. I can talk to Socrates and Anaximander, Pythagoras, Anaxagoras, at least when they're allowed to stroll outside the pearly gates of the Archexod Plane. I'll never be allowed in, but they won't stop me when I harass the great thinkers. Ach, it sounds like such an exciting time now that I think of it. When I visit as a ghost, I'll tell everyone it was your idea."
I flash him a pitiful look, and with brows that furry, it's hard to miss him flinching. My eyes dart to the bubble of Anticanon hovering above his head. His thought bubble. Usually they appear to me as a faint mist that ripples and expands when the imagination is particularly active. Austria's has just grown to the size of his head, and it's flickering and pulsing the outlines of what looks to be my body peeling away into shavings and sweeping into the wind. Like an impressionist painting, the same shadowy outline now strolls on sparkly green grass and talks to some fat people in togas.
Thoughts themselves look like wonky electrical impulses with some shape to them. You can imagine a dog, but how long can you keep imagining it before it flickers into something else? You'd have to be fully immersed in a dream to keep the dog looking like a dog for a while.
But nation thoughts are finer. Cleaner. More detailed and lasting longer. Both because you do a lot of thinking over hundreds of years, and because we're partly rocks living as humans, and our brains are better suited for documenting the human experiences we have. Austria's thoughts look like impressionist oil paintings. Germany's look like infinitely intricate blueprints. America's look like a colorful grease fire. Mine are pages and pages of wicked blackletter etched by spikes of graphite.
The creativity is back! Or maybe I'm just being objective. America's brain is an actual grease fire. Or is it like a sparkler? A grease sparkler? A greasy bomb pop?
I reach above my head and grasp the thin fibers of that last thought, being careful not to pull it out into reality. Gently I pull it down into my field of vision. It flashes and sparks bright cherry red and lemony white and artificial chemical blue. Hm, yeah. A whole box of bomb pops melting in a grease fire. That's what America's brain looks like.
"Was there a fly?" Austria asks. He narrows those big doe purple eyes at me.
"No, I'm inspecting your dust," I tell him, looking back at my thought in its cobweb. It's already deforming back into the blackletter static of my brainwaves.
I wonder…
With a quick twitch of my wrist I toss the blank thought over to Austria. It lands with a soft poosh in his thought bubble, distorting the serene watercolors and mixing them with sharp carbon gray.
Austria twitches. His whole body shivers for a moment.
"What? You looked scared there," I say.
He does that weird neck-stretch thing and goes back to counting stitches. "I don't know. I felt odd for a moment."
"Odd? How odd? Are you inhaling too much yarn dust?"
"No, it was… only peculiar."
Not good enough for my empirical mind. I stare at a thirty-euro rainbow wool cake and let my brain go blank on its colors. Then I steel my gaze at Austria's thought bubble. I watch my thoughts wander over to him, creeping in, felting with the other nonexistent matter. Soon the Prussian thoughts overtake the Austrian. Oil paintings fade under printed perfection.
"That's not right," Austria says.
"What's not—"
Austria slams his hook down on the side table, then throws himself up out of the chair and kicks the thing. His coffee splatters everywhere, and the stacks of granny squares scatter disheveled on the rug. Gritting his teeth, he snatches up two of them and marches over to me with a deadly fire in his eyes. His whole body is big now. Legs are spread far apart. Arms are gesticulating. Stomach is bulging more than ever.
"These fucking granny squares!" he screeches in my face. "The first two rounds of them. Look at this one. I made the first two rounds on the right side. And this one. I made the first round on the right side and the second on the wrong side. Dammit, why didn't I notice!? I have to pull them out and start from the beginning! I can't crochet an afghan with mismatched squares!"
He huffs a breath so hot I can feel the liquid condense on my own pointy nose.
I notice the discrepancy between the squares. Annoying once I notice it. One has little bumps where the other one is smooth. Perhaps if there were enough of each, a pattern could be constructed, but I know that's not the case.
And Austria's already started ripping them out, one by one. I watch and wait, savoring such satisfying activity. Curious, I keep feeding him little puffs of Prussian thought, overriding the natural flow of his neurons.
Twenty minutes later, he's deconstructed the entire pile of granny squares. The mess annoys both of us, so together we detangle and tie the bits into one string so it can be rolled into one massive ball of burgundy.
"Did you ever swear this much?" I ask him once we're finished with the cleanup and move on to organizing all the yarn. Mmm, maybe this Turkish angora is necessary. It's so soft! Both of us are cuddling it, and he's got so much we have to stash some in totes and keep them under the desk for easy access. It's a new priority to use the cuddliest yarns first! After the practical ones, of course. It's summer. Bamboo and cotton are a must.
Austria smirks, and it's awful. Like watching a fleshy mask trying to shape itself like a human would.
"It's not swearing if Gilshart Vile-Shit is actually your name," he honks.
"And how are you doing this afternoon, Herr Doddering Idle Swine?"
"Another day in absolute paradise!"
"I thought you were in hell."
"I am in… hell…" Austria squeaks. Score two for that joke today.
I slap him on the back. "Hey, no need to be so self-deprecating. It's the twenty-first century. A new era full of fun! Cute animal videos at your fingertips! Stores that sell birdseed! Banana pudding! Constant American politics to laugh at! Pumpkin inflation! Powdered chocolate milk! Girls who put glitter on their eyebrows! Soft hoodies! Ice cream cake!"
"Ice cream cake… cake… "
Austria's stomach grumbles. His face scrunches into a bulgy-eyed mess. Cheekbones aren't as defined as mine, and the charm of my expressions is lost in foreign skin.
It all quickly dissipates, however. The word "cake" must have triggered his normal brain function, and suddenly the peaceful flashing of oil paints and the delicate humming of music flushes out my influence.
Austria's rounded cheeks turn bright pink, but he says nothing. Oh, he knows what just happened. He just doesn't know how it happened.
"I feel peculiar," is all he chirps out.
Nothing of the "I just swore" or "I just tore out my entire project over a missed detail." Oh, none of that Prussian stuff. Now he's Austria again. Covering up those faults with a bubble of pride and cakiness.
"Would you like some cake, Prussia?" he asks. His voice is curt, steely. He pushes me forward and out of the room with a trembling fist.
"Totally! I'll eat it if you won't!"
"I will eat it too."
"Sure you will. You've got enough thread to resew the seams on that silk shirt."
"Shut it before I call you something nasty again."
"You can shove some cake in my face and I'll do exactly that."
My thoughts for the next hour are mostly about how much cake I'd end up eating if I had the thoughts of an Austrian swirling around my head.
~N~
Lion Brand now makes Mandala cakes that are twice the size of a normal Mandala cake. I bought the one called "Meowth."
Published by Syntax-N on FanFiction . Net June 16th, 2021. Praise Prussia. Don't repost.