[hallowe'en] blood and apples

[lyseandpurge]

The fearful mist descends on the garden in the middle of the night, on tireless pink light hidden in the depths of the water. Refracted through the myriad mist droplets the immortal cell is visible, a million brilliant pinpoints, a will-o'-the-wisp glow, stars floating over the fountains, secret no longer.

All at once there is a great inrush of air, a clap of thunder, and the light flares once, screeching static, the earth heaving beneath the mound of glass—and goes out.

= <o> =



This is the sight in the garden in the morning: a creature slumped at the foot of the glass hill. She is covered by a thick layer of downy golden feathers that trail along the ground like a great cloak, like great wings, too heavy to fly. She

is human-shaped, lying still on her side, the thick dark tresses of her hair matted and ragged around her head, her pale palms stained with mud. From her own arms, tearing through the shoulder of her garments and reaching to the ends of her little fingers, grow the feathers, rows and rows of them bursting starkly from her dark skin, so that it swells and bruises around them.

There is only one sight in the gardens, the feathers, bright and beautiful and perfect. There is only one feature of the gardens, the feathers, lovely and precious and worth anyone's fortune. There is only one odour in the gardens, the odour of the feathers, as sweet and as delicious as the best thing you have ever tasted.

This strange bird, flightless, stirs.

She opens her eyes—sclera of molten gold, beautiful, squinting narrow as she rises in the dull grey morning; her feathers are as bright as any firelight. She gasps a shuddering, difficult breath; golden teeth flash in her mouth, precious.

She struggles to her feet: first one knee then the other; first one foot and then the other; first one stumbling and giving way and then the other—she cannot bear the weight of the golden mantle—she falls hard, panting, blood dripping from the bruised pores of her arms: bright, golden, and delicious.

Golden feathers sweep across the ground as she plants her hands in the grass to support herself, and remains there for a while. Then at last she heaves back and falls, almost supine, at the base of the hill, to listlessly watch the sun rise.

ooc. || hey everyone!! here's a little explanation, in case my silly post is too confusing.

i've basically transformed Judgement into a human for the hallowe'en event, with the small change that the feathers she grows from her body (and the other golden parts of her) have magical properties.

the feathers are profoundly alluring, although not irresistibly so: just by looking at them you know that they taste delicious and can fill you up for weeks, that any clothing you sew them into will become beautiful, that if you trim them and set them to paper they will write beautiful poetry and music. they can be powdered and cure any illness, they can be cut and turn into gemstones, they can be melted and forged into magical weapons and tools, they can fletch arrows that fly true and come back, and even just having them with you will bring good luck.

that's not all—basically, they can help you in almost any way you can imagine! and best of all, there's no limit to how many there are! even if you pluck all the feathers, she'll grow more in just the blink of an eye.

so come one and come all! take what you need, what you want, and maybe some spare just in case. you know you want to!

Comments

[dustless]

Movement. Their throat rumbles, their teeth bare.

'Don't look at me like that!'

Not at her, not at only her, at that thing. At that eye. What is it? Is it the Castle looking at its handiwork? Is it the Cell?



The golden feathers they swallowed keep the bones and other feathers down, though it's all unpleasant and churning.

They're less empty, less hungry, that counts for a lot after the nightmares of last night, of moments ago--old fears of not enough chase enough keep enough are rushing through their head anyway.

Those feathers tempt them anyway, too, and that's worse.

'No, no, no, I'm not gonna eat you!' What the hell does she think they are? Even if they ate a bird, even if they still taste the gold laced between their teeth.

They don't want to stay. They don't want to go.

They don't know what to do.

[lyseandpurge]

She lowers her head, her own eyes fixed on the ground, not looking at them; but still the great golden plume pulls her by the arm towards Frisk, like a child with a doll. Gold streams steadily from her arm: droplets of sweet blood splatter on the soil, and there in seconds spring up tall grasses and thick tangled shrubs instantly in flower, wrapping around her bare feet, yielding giant insects and molluscs that creep out from between heavy leaves.

"But you—are—you're a little better, you must be, aren't you?" she insists. "If it heals, if it helps, it's worth it—isn't it?"

Finally, steps away from them, she flings out an arm and catches herself on an old tree that slowly begins to sprout new branches. Wrapping around its trunk, the eyespot still strains and stares and weeps at Frisk. Her legs wobble; it is only the force pulling at her that keeps her upright.

"Frisk, talk to me, please—tell me what you want—as you always do." Her voice strains, her voice is painful in her throat. "I don't know what has happened to me—maybe, I think, this is my only chance."

[dustless]

'You--yes,' they tell her, ears folding back and fangs baring bright. It smells so good and they're better but they still hate it. 'Yes, I'm better, you did it, you helped! It's done! I'm not gonna EAT you! I'm not, not, not!'

They don't hurt so bad anymore, they're not so hungry--but fine, she wants to do more, they'll work with what they have.



Frisk draws closer, a padding step, too, and promptly shoves their snout into the grass. There's blood spattered there from that thing and from the wolf body itself, it's easy to lap it from the blades.

She wants them to talk. She wants them to tell her something important.

'Want it to stop! But it won't! You can't do it!' She can't stop the castle, she can't even stop the eye they bring their face back up just to snarl at again.

wolves eat fruit, right

[lyseandpurge]

The great plume droops as they draw near, and the girl pushes it away, behind her back, as she kneels heavily in front of them, dense grass springing up around her feathers as if to support them.

She reaches out towards them and thinks—thinks, they have told me what they want, I can hear their voice more clearly than ever, and they are no humming insect...

Her arm extends in an awkward way, twisted by the weight of the feathers upon it. Her fingers slowly brush their snout, slip through the tangled fur on their head. She doesn't know to fear their teeth—it hasn't occurred to her yet—but she seems transfixed by their solidity, by the sensation of touching them. Her palm is as hot as sun-warmed stone.

"You can," she says, and lifts her hand away. "You can do anything—and so you must—I remember that..."

The tree that she touched has grown thick and heavy with its own mass. Light courses under its rough skin, through its transmissive tissues. She turns to it now, wondering at its shape. It's gorged with her life; it moves visibly in the light of her lambent eyes.

She extends her lighter arm towards it, which aches less; and it seems, just under its own weight, the trunk is bending to meet her. One of its heavy boughs comes within reach.

And snap! she tears out a feather from her skin, pinched between her fingers, and touches its bleeding root to the branch, where it fuses instantly with the wood, its core becoming a stem, its vanes furling in on themselves and thickening.

The tree transforms with a great burst of light, every pore of it glowing for an instant as it crackles and groans; its roots burrow through the ground, its trunk and becomes stout, and after the shining has passed every one of its leaves is translucent amber, with tiny glowing specks swimming about inside them like embers. In no more than a minute all of its old fruit is sucked up and reinternalised, and it yields instead a harvest of one.

The feather has completed its metamorphosis, and reaching up with both hands, the girl plucks down a single unidentifiable fruit, almost too large to grasp. It does not smell sweet—it smells of something—it is the colour of sunflower petals and far more lustrous, and it smells delicious.

"I used to sow," she murmurs, holding it in front of her face. "I used to be able to sow..."

She finally turns back to Frisk, and offers the rounded yellow fruit to them. "Maybe—maybe this will do?"

maybe. probably. must be better-tasting than a hand made of ashes

[dustless]

They send her a snarl, a wave of heat pressing forth the air of her golden blood and the denser, ranker stink of bird and simple morning-breath.

But they don't move. Playing with fur is far from the worst thing that could be happening.

'If I could do anything, I--you--we wouldn't be like this! Our...bodies, this changing, it'd be good!' She'd at least hurt less people like this, no more sickness, but these feathers mean she's still hurting. Get rid of those. Get rid of the rage and the moon that can sink into their bones and change them that way, make it something they can pick.

'The Castle doesn't listen to anybody! 'Specially not me,' they tell her, a warped rumble in their throat underscoring it all. And how many times have they said that, now?

They take a step away.

...But they stay. And they watch.

The tree...it's changing. It's growing. She's doing the complete opposite of what she used to do, a cure instead of disease--but still, she bleeds for it.



...And still, Frisk doesn't understand what she can do.

She already hurt herself for it, and they can't make her take that back.

One quick movement forward, and their fangs sink into the fruit's flesh instead of Judgem--of hers.

As the juices run over their tongue, they ask: 'You're not "the Judgement" anymore. What's your name?'

[lyseandpurge]

The flesh of the fruit is dense and rich. As it leaves her hands, the girl who was Judgement exhales, her thick cloak of feathers falling limp; the weight drags her down into a rough sitting position, both legs folded underneath, upon the uneven soil.

"My name," she murmurs—"I don't know. In becoming—like this—I've lost... words. Even before, even as I was supposed to be—I forgot it, I left it behind, it was taken from me. I can't get it back. I have no name."

The burning leaves of the newborn tree rustle and whisper to each other, like a restless audience. The girl who was Judgement closes her eyes as if she is listening.

"This is all," she says without looking; "the castle, it must be the castle, it's given me this. Enough to heal. Enough to feed. That's what I mean—what you, too, must have thought, that you were enough, to offer yourself up to me, though I was insatiable... you tried to help me, because you could."

Then she lifts her head, enough to prop her chin up on the heel of her hand, just to watch Frisk eat.

src: the secret of kells

[dustless]

The wolf watches her. Frisk, Frisk watches. They're Frisk and they're feeling more like themselves and they're not going to let it go so easily now that they've got it.



'The castle gives lots of things. Takes things too. You...need a name.' These subjects are related in their head. There was a stolen name, there should be a given one, but the castle shouldn't give it, and they don't know if they should be the one to try. It's a problem they can tackle better than the rest of this halloween wreck.

They chew awkwardly, gingerly--these oversized teeth aren't built well for anything that isn't meat, and a part of them expects a trick. Will this hurt her more? Will this change them further, somehow, the way she's changed them so much along with the deeds the castle's done?

...It doesn't seem like it. Not quickly, at least.

Some of her words are sensible, now. They're Frisk, they're Frisk, they wanted to help her, and they still do, even though they've taken from her. Again, again, again.

'You're hurt again, you're bleeding,' they tell her, 'voice' even, mouth baring teeth and loosing a rough half-bark. Not fair, they can't control this body as well as their old one. 'Let's go somewhere else. There's...bandages inside sometimes.'

The things at the end of their front limbs have too much length to be paws, too short and jointless to be fingers, they can't pull or pick her up. They spend a few moments to stare down at her ground-bound form, head cocked, and then shuffle around to offer her their flank. 'Here. Get up. Hold on.'

ooh neat source...

[lyseandpurge]

The way she reaches out to them is the way of a person trying to touch a dead body, ginger, helpless, and afraid; her hands shake and tighten, and her fingers brush their fur and pull back, as if the sensation is too much, and then seize hold clumsily, pulling taut on handfuls of fur.

"You, you shouldn't do this," she stammers, "you shouldn't have to do this, the world doesn't need it," but she clings on; "only I do; I want to spend this time making it up to you, for me, for the whole world."

The weight of the feathers makes her unnaturally heavy, and her weak grip turns her knuckles pale and strains the blood more freely from her perforated arms. As she tries to lift her legs off the ground she slips; she falls hard, thump on the ground.

"S-sorry," she mumbles, and reaches out to try again. "I—you—did you need a name? Is that why you're Frisk?"

=w=

[dustless]

'The castle's the world, it's our world, and it hurt us over and over, and I don't care about it. You're here and you're bleeding and I'm gonna help you for real this time.' Instead of only arguing until their throat bleeds and they can feel their time ticking down. That's been useless.

Her falling's a surprise. They find themselves staring down at her again, somewhat more bemused.

Frisk huffs frustration, snaps teeth towards that heavy eye-wing, and then lets themselves fall too, right onto their side and into the strange new plants that her blood sowed. Something's going to have to work here.



'Yeah. Had one before I was Frisk and I threw it away. It's good to have something to call you, anyway. Should grab my back down here if you can't even stand.'

[lyseandpurge]

"Thank you," says the girl who was Judgement, and coughs, and crawls up onto Frisk's back, one leg on each side. Her feathers grow suddenly light, shimmering and waving as Frisk talks, but then settle their full weight upon them—at least as heavy as a full-grown person. The great plume drags in the soil, gazing sightlessly up at the sky, watering. A bed of dandelions begins to spread from its edges, blossom after spiderweb blossom.

She combs her fingers through Frisk's fur, searching for the roughness of scars or the damp of fresh wounds, before tightening her grip. "I can't think of a name I'd deserve. What would you pick?"

[dustless]

The wolf's ears flick back towards her. Coughing. They can't see her now, can't smell if there's more blood than what's already spilled. If she's sick...if she's sick...

She might just be tired. It might just be something about a new body. It might be nothing. It better be nothing.

Hands tugging fur is as painful as any sort of hair-pulling should be, but they can handle it, it's nothing compared to the rest of their changes. They roll onto their stomach, waiting for her weight to settle over their back. Heavy, heavy, and they're slow to push their body up to all-fours.



'...Me?' Despite everything, they're startled. They loll their head back, trying to get a good look at her face. 'I...you sure you want me to give you names?' In their lifetime, they picked a name for themselves and a bird. That's not a lot of experience.

[lyseandpurge]

She breaths in sharply as Frisk stands up, feeling the feathers hang down from her arms; they fall over Frisk's sides like leaden caparisons, veiling the shape of their body. Although she does not pull, her fingers dig into their fur, making tight fists to match her grimace.

"I—I don't know," she says through her teeth. "Could you? I can't."

It doesn't matter to her, really. She is beginning to see how this will end. But if Frisk wants it, then that is one more thing she can allow them to do that will, afterwards, no longer be possible.

"If you could—then what name would you give?"

src: the secret of kells again~

[dustless]

The feathers are too heavy for real ones. Did they taste like feathers, or gold, or something else? Frisk wasn't paying enough attention when they swallowed them down.

Claws scraping through the dirt uneasily, they start moving. Towards the walls of the Castle, and now she can fit inside without breaking things, without needing their eyes to look for enemies. Maybe that's gonna be nice. They just need to get through the gardens to get there--they'll try to be careful not to strike her against anything, careful to stay as in the shadows as they can even with her messing up their gait. Don't let anyone else see her, don't let anyone else hurt her.

(They don't know they're not the only person who'd want to take those feathers, they're just going to keep her safe anyway.)

'I...named a bird, once,' they tell her inanely.

...Some kind of dove, or pigeon, they don't know the difference. They haven't seen that bird for a while. Frisk can only hope Gretel didn't get eaten during the mess last night.

Birds, feathers. Maybe they can find something to do with that? Except that's a pointless bit of being unfair, naming her after things that hurt her too.



Gretel, magic, fairy tales, Frisk. Frisk-the-wolf, that wanted to eat.

'Red Riding Hood--Red. Just Red? It's from a story--and Red's a nice color...I think.' She's not red, they are, they're supposed to be. Maybe not, it's probably a stupid name for her...

ooooh this is a good name... i might reuse it later...

[lyseandpurge]

Moving bumps the girl about at first, but she lowers her arms gradually to better hold on to their sides, and her grip on their fur relaxes gradually.

"Red," she mumbles to herself, squinting through the dull shadows cast by the diffuse morning light. Golden feathers glow faintly; their yellow light faintly traces little hollows in the paving stones as Frisk steps over them.

"Red," repeats Red—this time louder slightly than the breeze rustling the grass. "I'll be Red. I'd be a bird if I could—so I may as well be Red."

She presses her face into the curious texture of Frisk's fur. "Where did it come from?—the story. What is it, I mean?"

0:

[dustless]

...Okay, then. That was easier than they thought. It still feels funny to name something that talks.

'You can fix it later, if you don't like it. I don't know where the story came from. It's...really old. It's mixed with lots of other stories called fairy tales. That one's about a girl who walks through the forest to give her grandma a basket of food, and meets a wolf...'

The wolf picks up their pace. They're in trees now, walking through shadows, watching the ones that Red's glow makes around their legs. There's an odd feeling in their guts, not hunger, not quite pain. An expectation that isn't being met. What is it?

--They were talking. Telling. Don't forget, even though they don't remember the story very well.

'...she gets away from the wolf, Little Red Riding Hood. But when she gets to grandma's house, something's wrong. "Grandma, what big feet you have. Grandma, what a big nose you have. Grandma, what big teeth you have!" 'Cause the wolf got the grandma first and pretended to be her. An' then...I think there's different ways the story goes, but...'

The plants are thinning, and the ground is more stone.

'...then, Red Riding Hood doesn't get tricked, and she runs, and she finds an axe out back and chops up the wolf to get her grandma back from the wolf's stomach.'



'It's just a story, only one with a wolf I can remember. Real wolves can't do that, an' they're not bad. People used to think that.'

Why was Frisk, then? Why were they so hungry, why did they want to eat everything, even friends? But they're not a real wolf. They're...the castle's fault, again. They don't need to get mad at themselves over this, so they won't.

Finally, there's a door, just a step up. Not totally broken, but when they shove it with their snout to watch it snap from a hinge and hang. Almost enough room to slip through, only Red might get bumped, and rearing up would be trouble. '...Can you push that a little more? If I use my...hand-paws, you might fall off.'

♥

[lyseandpurge]

Red listens silently, because the story is familiar, because the story, she thinks, is hers. "I understand," she says at last, and coughs on the last syllable, her throat dry. "Wolves—I know wolves. But in a story, a wolf doesn't have to be a wolf, does it? No one's afraid of a wolf in a story. When it comes to life, and they see it, it isn't a wolf any longer. It's something real."

The wood of the door, too, is dry and dead, as she reaches for it, her hand trembling a little from the slight effort she has to make. Dead wood, old stone, this ruined castle is just that. It is like a corpse that still breathes, or a living thing that has slept too long.

Lost in her own thought, Red pauses just before touching the broken door. "Every story is about something real. Usually it's fear. Fear eats up grandma, although a wolf might not... that's why people started telling stories about me—about plagues, and invasions, and machine rebellions. I scared them, so they turned me into a wolf, and they hugged their axes for comfort..."

She stretches out again and this time, with a quiet grunt, just brushes the edge of the door with her fingertips. The last hinge bursts open with a loud crack, sending metal splinters flying; and the door crashes to the ground.

From the side of it that faced the hinge, tendrils are slowly growing, waving lazily towards the low light, and barky knots have swollen up, digging into the ground with their roots.

"Sorry," Red says.

[dustless]

'Wolves're real. They--the stories just made them scarier to people, so...people just thought they were scary. Monsters too, a long time ago. Everyone gets scared of what they don't understand.'

(Frisk thinks they're immune to that. Not quite, but fear's warped into anger and anger into determination, so it isn't always so bad.)

'And wolves got hurt, and monsters got hurt, and you got hurt. But people know wolves now, and they're gonna know monsters aren't so bad, and maybe you will too.' Maybe, maybe. There needs to be a way for her not to be so...dangerous, once everything goes back.

--and Red's stronger than she looks. Frisk flinches to duck in a half-cower at the noise that rings in their ears.



'Thanks,' they say instead. She did what they asked, didn't she? It wasn't her fault.

They skirt around the door anyway.

The halls are dark. Frisk sticks their nose in the air, trying to catch the scent of...something. A Chara found disinfectant stuff in a bottle for them once, maybe they can find it now, somewhere in all the rows of doors.

'You should have a room,' they tell Red as they start again. 'Floors and ground are bad to sleep on.'

this is a long one sorry......

[lyseandpurge]

"I shouldn't sleep," Red protests weakly. The wooden tendrils, thickening gradually into branches, continue to bend and grow towards her as Frisk carries her around them. "I'm not finished yet, it isn't time to rest."

She frowns into the dim hallway, as if her shining gaze will pierce the walls and find whatever Frisk is looking for. But there's nothing hiding in the walls, no sickly stolen light tapped from her flesh and imprisoned in a battery of metal. It's dark—and the only motion is that of a rat skittering stealthily across the dusty floor.

A little spider drops from the ceiling right into her lap as she sits up. She watches it gradually up her robes, towards her exposed shoulder, the light red joints of its legs flashing.

"I don't think monsters are bad," she murmurs, "or wolves. They're just living things—hungry, but innocent... they become the victims of stories that are told about disasters, about sicknesses, about me."

She leans forward, exhaling. The little spider is on her forearm now, the tips of its legs sticky with little beads of blood that it has slipped in. "It's my fault, those stories. But no one ever hurt me because of them. When they wanted the cell..."

She frowns. "I... remember. They wanted the cell, and all the cell could do was give... like me, like now. I couldn't hurt anyone. But when I was born... no one ever hurt me. No one has ever hurt me, since then. No one has ever wanted me. They all ran, they all tried to hide. And they told these stories, pretending I was something else, or some one else."

The spider is spinning a thread of gold between the tips of two feathers.

"I saw into their thoughts... when they died, I heard their stories. I've seen wolves killed, and monsters; a little part of them rotted and became a little part of me. They died because some one told a story about how they were me, about how killing them would let people live without fear again. Living things dying for the fantasy of killing me—it's just another kind of the poison I was made from, I infected their stories, I made them hate and destroy, until they killed each other. Judgement."

✌️

[dustless]

'Finish what?' they ask, a drop of irritability sliding over their thought-voice's edge again. 'You're hurt, you're bleeding, we...there's a month of this jus' like last year, and you're not gonna be up the whole time, that's stupid.' Even Frisk tries to rest when they've got active wounds. Unless it's an emergency. Red shouldn't have any emergencies, except maybe running away if someone else tries to hurt her, and they can do that for her anyway.

Tell me what you want, she said before, and she wants to help, so they add a half-truth of 'I need some sleep too. Should be beds big enough for both of us.' Even if they end up being those mats on the floor, those're better than the floor only, bare and cold and getting colder. And if they don't feel tired enough to try resting yet, the weight on their back could change that in a little while.

They wander, and listen, though warm instinct directs their attention towards blood or pack or, in general, others now that they're not full of empty, and it's hard to ignore. Chase the rat, bite it or sniff it, explore it, this is their territory now, just like it always has been.

No. They're looking for alcohol, and not the beer or wine kind, those won't work, will they? At least being able to smell so strong means they can pass by doors instead of trying to nose every single one open.

Red shifts. They pause just long enough to be sure she's not going to slide right off.

Gentler. 'Not all the stories are your fault. You're not where my monsters are from, and people killed and locked them up anyway. It's not your fault you're...usually big and scary, is it?'



Frisk looks over their shoulder.

Judgement.

'Don't know,' they venture, 'what people here think you are.' Frisk never asked anyone. They never wanted to aim eyes her way. Some friends would try to kill her if they knew the truth of Frisk's illness, and they'd probably just get killed trying. Or infected, which would be worse. Or even try to steal her power too, and neither of them want that.