Telling small stories in big worlds
c/w insects, eating of an envoy, temporary hearing loss
“The Gall, naturally, fell into Oken’s hands. That discarded thing, relic lost and living, vessel to a remnant’s power. I’m not sure whether then or later, he understood the potential of what he carried. Raised himself on power’s sap, could he truly read its dread portent? Maybe he saw it only as ember, in the carcass the jackal only sees a thing to be consumed, it does not behold the new life promised in the ground beneath.”
c/w insect-like envoy
“Lilylium was the second. Envoy born before there was Embrace, before there was Alamire. In many ways we were lucky that it was the Jubilant that faced them, even if it was to be in the labyrinth they’d made their hunting grounds.“
c/w arrest
“But while we fought for the right to weave our own fates, the Jubilant stood defiantly against the forces of regression. The Cut has always been the domain of the dead and the ghostly, weighed down by the heft what came before. The labyrinth echoed with the siren song of glories past.”
c/w possession, injury
“It shouldn’t be a surprise to hear that for some, the Cut were a better home than Embrace above. There were many who’d take dangerous strangeness over the hatred and oppression of the city proper.”
CW: possession, body horror, use of corpses, insects, uncertain reality
“But you know what unites the theories we had about that place? In all of them, the Cut is subject. It’s something attached, a barnacle lodged to the city.
But the Cut is not addition or reflection or parasite. It’s not mirror, but window – mud-caked, fogged and frosted. If we’re lucky, we can spy glimpses of the silhouettes inside. We can see the wonder, a whole ecosystem – spirit-grown and built from alien perspective.”
“I sent them to the Cut because it seemed like the best place for them. It’s obviously not a safe-house, but it were out of the authority’s control. As close to out of the city as I could get the Jubilant. They’d still have to survive, to be canny; but at least there wouldn’t be half a city baying for their blood. If I’d known what was waiting for them down there…”
“But what they created wasn’t remnant or envoy, it was something different. The many stories differ on what – a drifter, a machine, a seeker, a monster. For years it wandered, collecting tales as others would figurines. Everywhere it went new stories blossomed, until, they just stopped.” – a fragment from the memories of Serrata Paige.
“We searched for ages for rumour, for story, for precedent for what we were about to do. If anyone before us had created a remnant, perhaps then the path that we were on wasn’t heresy, perhaps what we were creating wouldn’t be an abomination.
The closest we could find was a collection of stories from the Sounds; of something called the Spindle, called the Anchor, called Nepps.” – A fragment from the memories of Serrata Paige.
c/w psychological trauma, eyes
“I wouldn’t let Ezra be the middle of that blaze. They would not be our revolution’s effigy. I couldn’t… I wouldn’t… They meant so much more than that.”
c/w police, between 55’33 and 59’57: family conflict/threats and discussion of disfigurement
“Drawing connection between the revolution’s many parts was its own challenge. Both because we were a house built with uncommon brick and because of the families desire to keep us disparate. Ezra and Oken wouldn’t be the only ones to find trouble.”