to become the sky
Oct. 8th, 2024 03:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
flowersforgraves posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
leetoltreatexTitle: to become the sky
Fandom: Friends at the Table: Sangfielle
Rated: Mature
Character: Chine
Treat: Apotheosis
For:shadaras
Chine carried the book with them for years. The fables, every time they read one, seemed to take on new meanings, despite their familiarity. As their travels took them around Sangfielle, to and from Blackwick, they focused their attention on specific passages. As their body changed, becoming less human, so too did the fables change. What was once a story about a little farm girl became a story about a creature that lived beneath a pasture, churning through the dirt. What was once a cautionary tale about the dangers of greed became a love story between a young Ojantani boy and the moon. A gruesome story of a Caprak consumed by a monster became an epic tale of two star-crossed but doomed souls caught in the same orbit.
Chine did not share the book with anyone. They didn’t want to know if it was the stories that had changed, or if it was they who had changed. Somewhere deep inside, they had to confront the possibility that it was both.
Watching another Cleaver become an angel (even at a distance, even through the eyes and words of the other Blackwick Group members) was transformative. Until that point, there was part of Chine that never truly believed it was possible. Newly armed with that knowledge, they began to feel their transformation accelerate.
Having It alongside them presented a problem only in that Chine was concerned about It’s well-being after their full transformation. They had few friends; the Blackwick Group, with whom Chine had spent most of their time with over the last months, was at best a collection of colleagues. Of the Blackwick Group, they knew Duvall longest and best, and considering his ties to the Sleeping City, Chine wasn’t entirely sure they would want to entrust It’s care to Duvall. Certainly he was the best option of the group, and It liked him, but It was the last thing tying Chine back to his humanity.
But when the circus arrived in Blackwick, everything began to snowball.
The clowns, and the jugglers, and the vendors, and the creatures, and the costumes and the masked, cloaked figure of Dyre Ode, and the sounds and sights and smells – it all overwhelmed Chine’s senses, even as it overwhelmed the other members of the Blackwick Group in different ways. Chine felt the Course tugging at them, something deep in their chest, the way the acrobats performing an aerial dance number might be pulled by a thin rope up to the top of the tent. Something inside them curled and twisted and expanded, stretching their selfhood outward.
It seemed to sense that something was changing. It butted its head against Chine’s hip, mewling with its multi-jawed mouth as it sought their attention. Chine scratched it absently behind one ear, the way it liked, and began to write a letter instructing Duvall in It’s care, Sleeping City be damned. They hoped to speak to him in person, but as the transformation continued to progress, Chine was finding it harder and harder to hold a pen. “Duvall will care for you when I’m gone,” Chine said, holding onto It after they finished writing. “You listen to him, okay? He wants what’s best for you.”
It made a small, sad noise, and Chine kissed the top of its skull.
The bags of dust the clowns had in the back were tempting. Chine wanted to sink their claws – not hands or fingers now, but claws – into the powder. The Course called out to them, singing them home. Lyke tried to stop them, but his god-thing, Aterika-Kaal, the thorny rose-shard in the jar, was weak. It did not love him, and he did not love it, not in the way the Course loved Chine and Chine loved the Course.
Chine let it take them. The pain of transformation ceased to matter. Their body twisted, grew, shrank, lightened, darkened, and became something else. The angel of their body was huge, and delicate, and raw flesh and tendon and muscle, and charred from the heat of their life. Their mind stretched too, yawning cavernously, becoming something else alongside their body. The angel of their mind spiraled into something both larger and smaller than anything Chine could conceive of, and they stopped being able to process physical sensation in the way humans do, or even the way Cleavers do.
The thing that had once been pain twisted up around the thing that had once been their throat. It threatened to overwhelm Chine, swelling until it burst from what was once their mouth. When it did, it was blue and green and yellow and pink, and bitter and salty and sweet all at once. Their body, shattered and reformed, molded by the Course into something new and greater, spasmed mightily.
Slowly, awareness outside of themself returned. Chine no longer saw Lyke, or the circus, or even Blackwick; instead they felt the thrumming in their bones of where the people of Blackwick still breathed, in time with the Course. And they felt smaller pockets too, of other members of the Blackwick Group who had been touched by powers greater than each other: Duvall, a set of long thin wooden slats; Pickman, warmth blazing too hot to look at; Es, a pile of snow and ash; even Lyke, ruby-red drops of blood quivering on the thorn of a rose. Each of them paled in the wonder that Chine felt, the wonder of the Course rushing through them, beating in time to what was once their heart. This, after all, was what being a Cleaver meant. This was what the book of fables was dragging them toward. This was the end state, the final stop, the last fragment before everything was the Course for them.
A shape, one that Chine heard and smelled more than saw, was small below them. It ran towards them on its wobbly deer-legs, crying wordlessly. Chine, the angel that had once been Chine, reached out towards it with something not unlike a limb, before they could stop themself.
"Go," they said, in a voice that looked like fresh berries and rotting fish. "I will become the sky."
And so they did.
Fandom: Friends at the Table: Sangfielle
Rated: Mature
Character: Chine
Treat: Apotheosis
For:
shadarasChine carried the book with them for years. The fables, every time they read one, seemed to take on new meanings, despite their familiarity. As their travels took them around Sangfielle, to and from Blackwick, they focused their attention on specific passages. As their body changed, becoming less human, so too did the fables change. What was once a story about a little farm girl became a story about a creature that lived beneath a pasture, churning through the dirt. What was once a cautionary tale about the dangers of greed became a love story between a young Ojantani boy and the moon. A gruesome story of a Caprak consumed by a monster became an epic tale of two star-crossed but doomed souls caught in the same orbit.
Chine did not share the book with anyone. They didn’t want to know if it was the stories that had changed, or if it was they who had changed. Somewhere deep inside, they had to confront the possibility that it was both.
Watching another Cleaver become an angel (even at a distance, even through the eyes and words of the other Blackwick Group members) was transformative. Until that point, there was part of Chine that never truly believed it was possible. Newly armed with that knowledge, they began to feel their transformation accelerate.
Having It alongside them presented a problem only in that Chine was concerned about It’s well-being after their full transformation. They had few friends; the Blackwick Group, with whom Chine had spent most of their time with over the last months, was at best a collection of colleagues. Of the Blackwick Group, they knew Duvall longest and best, and considering his ties to the Sleeping City, Chine wasn’t entirely sure they would want to entrust It’s care to Duvall. Certainly he was the best option of the group, and It liked him, but It was the last thing tying Chine back to his humanity.
But when the circus arrived in Blackwick, everything began to snowball.
The clowns, and the jugglers, and the vendors, and the creatures, and the costumes and the masked, cloaked figure of Dyre Ode, and the sounds and sights and smells – it all overwhelmed Chine’s senses, even as it overwhelmed the other members of the Blackwick Group in different ways. Chine felt the Course tugging at them, something deep in their chest, the way the acrobats performing an aerial dance number might be pulled by a thin rope up to the top of the tent. Something inside them curled and twisted and expanded, stretching their selfhood outward.
It seemed to sense that something was changing. It butted its head against Chine’s hip, mewling with its multi-jawed mouth as it sought their attention. Chine scratched it absently behind one ear, the way it liked, and began to write a letter instructing Duvall in It’s care, Sleeping City be damned. They hoped to speak to him in person, but as the transformation continued to progress, Chine was finding it harder and harder to hold a pen. “Duvall will care for you when I’m gone,” Chine said, holding onto It after they finished writing. “You listen to him, okay? He wants what’s best for you.”
It made a small, sad noise, and Chine kissed the top of its skull.
The bags of dust the clowns had in the back were tempting. Chine wanted to sink their claws – not hands or fingers now, but claws – into the powder. The Course called out to them, singing them home. Lyke tried to stop them, but his god-thing, Aterika-Kaal, the thorny rose-shard in the jar, was weak. It did not love him, and he did not love it, not in the way the Course loved Chine and Chine loved the Course.
Chine let it take them. The pain of transformation ceased to matter. Their body twisted, grew, shrank, lightened, darkened, and became something else. The angel of their body was huge, and delicate, and raw flesh and tendon and muscle, and charred from the heat of their life. Their mind stretched too, yawning cavernously, becoming something else alongside their body. The angel of their mind spiraled into something both larger and smaller than anything Chine could conceive of, and they stopped being able to process physical sensation in the way humans do, or even the way Cleavers do.
The thing that had once been pain twisted up around the thing that had once been their throat. It threatened to overwhelm Chine, swelling until it burst from what was once their mouth. When it did, it was blue and green and yellow and pink, and bitter and salty and sweet all at once. Their body, shattered and reformed, molded by the Course into something new and greater, spasmed mightily.
Slowly, awareness outside of themself returned. Chine no longer saw Lyke, or the circus, or even Blackwick; instead they felt the thrumming in their bones of where the people of Blackwick still breathed, in time with the Course. And they felt smaller pockets too, of other members of the Blackwick Group who had been touched by powers greater than each other: Duvall, a set of long thin wooden slats; Pickman, warmth blazing too hot to look at; Es, a pile of snow and ash; even Lyke, ruby-red drops of blood quivering on the thorn of a rose. Each of them paled in the wonder that Chine felt, the wonder of the Course rushing through them, beating in time to what was once their heart. This, after all, was what being a Cleaver meant. This was what the book of fables was dragging them toward. This was the end state, the final stop, the last fragment before everything was the Course for them.
A shape, one that Chine heard and smelled more than saw, was small below them. It ran towards them on its wobbly deer-legs, crying wordlessly. Chine, the angel that had once been Chine, reached out towards it with something not unlike a limb, before they could stop themself.
"Go," they said, in a voice that looked like fresh berries and rotting fish. "I will become the sky."
And so they did.
no subject
Date: 2024-10-12 08:44 pm (UTC)This is what Chine deserves, the inevitable conclusion of their changes. I love the book, and the changes within it, and the way Chine doesn't want to leave It behind. I am delighted by the scorn they show for Aterika-Laal and Lyke.
I particularly adore this paragraph:
"The thing that had once been pain twisted up around the thing that had once been their throat. It threatened to overwhelm Chine, swelling until it burst from what was once their mouth. When it did, it was blue and green and yellow and pink, and bitter and salty and sweet all at once. Their body, shattered and reformed, molded by the Course into something new and greater, spasmed mightily."
Thank you! This was very fun to read!