The Flame-Mothers’ preservation techniques weren’t their only claim to fame among the tribes of Thalassa. Every time Heibing found one of their old settlements, or the remnants of a former Flame-Mother caravan, he searched around for their fabric. Both the clothes in which they’d dressed their living members and the vestments in which they’d prepared their dead had earned awe and admiration, back when any Flame-Mothers had still roamed Thalassa. The intricate weaving and skillful embroidery, the stories of entire families they told with the images all over their dresses and robes, the ways they’d devised to stitch little gemstones onto the fabric to show off their skill at digging up the precious objects.
How long the fabric would last, even when exposed to the harsh Thalassan elements.
That last quality in particular inspired Heibing to rummage through every Flame-Mother dwelling he found, searching for whatever fabric he could find. Sweat oozing down his brow, glistening in a way that he still hadn’t entirely gotten used to, he dug around in their old chests and bags. Anything was fair game: bandages, children’s blankets, the shawls that old women among the Flame-Mothers favored, the wrappings that they used for their dead (so long as they hadn’t already been used on someone and Heibing didn’t find any nearby corpses that he needed to bury).
Crouching alone amidst the dust of some old family home—marked as a Flame-Mother home by the hearth-statue of the old goddess for whom the tribes had named their group—Heibing considered the array of fabric options he’d found. Anything with one of the intricate patterns, he ruled out. Those were as good as written accounts of the Flame-Mothers’ history, too valuable to destroy, even though only their failure of a senshi yet survived to understand them. No matter how great his own need, Heibing would not disregard his people—the people he had failed to save, despite the best efforts he could’ve made while only having a fraction of the story—and he would not disrespect their history by ripping it to shreds for his own sake.
Loose skin crumpled and slumped around as he moved the swaths of fabric, sifting through them for the useful pieces. Along his arms, the skin bunched up like children huddling together beneath blankets for warmth. Along his stomach, it folded in on itself, damper between those pleats than Heibing’s forehead (after what felt like so long in the face of this Chaos, he should have grown used to the heat, and the fact that he hadn’t made him itch to put his fist through a cliff-face—not that he could have done so, but trying might have made him feel better. Or anyway, the physical pain would have been easier to understand). Along the insides of his thighs, the loose skin—all this evidence of how he’d starved since the Chaos infestation had swept across his world—hung low as the moon at the start of dawn.
Every slight shift in Heibing’s position refused to let him ignore his situation: twenty-five years at war with the Chaos infecting Thalassa had stolen most of his body’s natural insulation. Some yet remained, he thought. He hoped. As soon as he figured out how to destroy the Chaos that Yuanhan had abandoned him with, Heibing would need that body fat to avoid perishing in the cold.
If Heibing ever managed to figure that out.
If he could restore his world to its former glory.
If.
If.
If.
If if if if if if if if father-cunting IF.
Always with the ******** “IF” and how it spit on everything Heibing wanted to save.
As Heibing shunted the unusable fabrics off to the side, the loose skin on his arms wobbled enough to almost create a breeze. Because he really ******** needed the reminder of how much, by Thalassan standards, his body was falling apart. He pressed on in spite of all the reasons why he should have succumbed to something-or-other by now, despite all the wisdom he’d learned while growing up about the health benefits of a full figure. How many potential wives had his parents rejected for him and Yuanhan because the unlucky womb-bearers (be they boys, girls, something else, or nothing in particular) in question hadn’t carried enough mass on their bodies, a sure sign that any children they conceived would turn out weak and sickly?
How many viable boys with wombs had his parents passed over in favor of Meiren, in spite of the two very obvious reasons why asking Heibing and Meiren to marry each other was one of the stupidest ideas in all Thalassan history? All because the boys in question—plenty of them perfectly plump and lovely, more than capable of bearing healthy children, in Heibing’s own opinion—hadn’t been quite as blessedly fat as Meiren?
She’d gotten lucky, Meiren, running away from Thalassa with the woman she’d really loved before she and Heibing could end up forcibly tied to each other. Heibing wondered where she’d wound up, wondered if she and her wife were still happy, wondered if they had found their way to somewhere safe. Somewhere untouched by Chaos.
He wondered if Meiren ever tried to call home, if she failed to get a message through, the way Heibing had failed to contact Pyrrhus.
Looking down at his array of gathered fabric, Heibing sighed. He probably had enough here without digging through any other homes. More than enough, maybe. So much the better if he did; there would be more fabric left when he needed it. With a deep breath, he stripped out of his fuku. Mixing cloth bandages and the wraps that the Flame-Mothers had once used to prepare their dead for burial, he bound the loose skin closer to the bone and muscle. First, his arms. Then, his thighs. Finally, his stomach, a process that always felt unbearably complicated, no matter how simple it should have been.
While far from an ideal solution, wraps kept the skin from getting exposed to too much. Kept it from moving around the way it did. Mostly kept sweat from sneaking into the crevices and causing problems (but only mostly).
As Heibing dressed again, a mirror teased at the corner of his vision, resting against the nearby wall. Heibing struggled to ignore it, stomach churning at the thought of his own appearance. The appearance that this fight had given him, anyway. He tried to avoid looking at it too long whenever he found himself around a reflective surface, but too many times, he’d glimpsed enough of the sharp jaw and sunken cheeks to know that he looked worse than the creatures after which the Glacial Wraith tribe’s ancestors had named themselves.
And yet, he hadn’t aged. Perhaps the signs of his physical degradation made Heibing look sick in ways that even the most wretched of his world’s dead had never looked. Otherwise, though, Heibing looked the same as he had when the Chaos had first swept over his world. Preserved as if in amber, outside of wasting into a vision of the very exhaustion that his magic induced. Unchanging—which, in a way, was a sure sign that at least Heibing hadn’t died like everybody else: corpses were allowed to decompose as the elements wore them down.
A liberty, it seemed, that Heibing was not to be afforded any longer.
How long the fabric would last, even when exposed to the harsh Thalassan elements.
That last quality in particular inspired Heibing to rummage through every Flame-Mother dwelling he found, searching for whatever fabric he could find. Sweat oozing down his brow, glistening in a way that he still hadn’t entirely gotten used to, he dug around in their old chests and bags. Anything was fair game: bandages, children’s blankets, the shawls that old women among the Flame-Mothers favored, the wrappings that they used for their dead (so long as they hadn’t already been used on someone and Heibing didn’t find any nearby corpses that he needed to bury).
Crouching alone amidst the dust of some old family home—marked as a Flame-Mother home by the hearth-statue of the old goddess for whom the tribes had named their group—Heibing considered the array of fabric options he’d found. Anything with one of the intricate patterns, he ruled out. Those were as good as written accounts of the Flame-Mothers’ history, too valuable to destroy, even though only their failure of a senshi yet survived to understand them. No matter how great his own need, Heibing would not disregard his people—the people he had failed to save, despite the best efforts he could’ve made while only having a fraction of the story—and he would not disrespect their history by ripping it to shreds for his own sake.
Loose skin crumpled and slumped around as he moved the swaths of fabric, sifting through them for the useful pieces. Along his arms, the skin bunched up like children huddling together beneath blankets for warmth. Along his stomach, it folded in on itself, damper between those pleats than Heibing’s forehead (after what felt like so long in the face of this Chaos, he should have grown used to the heat, and the fact that he hadn’t made him itch to put his fist through a cliff-face—not that he could have done so, but trying might have made him feel better. Or anyway, the physical pain would have been easier to understand). Along the insides of his thighs, the loose skin—all this evidence of how he’d starved since the Chaos infestation had swept across his world—hung low as the moon at the start of dawn.
Every slight shift in Heibing’s position refused to let him ignore his situation: twenty-five years at war with the Chaos infecting Thalassa had stolen most of his body’s natural insulation. Some yet remained, he thought. He hoped. As soon as he figured out how to destroy the Chaos that Yuanhan had abandoned him with, Heibing would need that body fat to avoid perishing in the cold.
If Heibing ever managed to figure that out.
If he could restore his world to its former glory.
If.
If.
If.
If if if if if if if if father-cunting IF.
Always with the ******** “IF” and how it spit on everything Heibing wanted to save.
As Heibing shunted the unusable fabrics off to the side, the loose skin on his arms wobbled enough to almost create a breeze. Because he really ******** needed the reminder of how much, by Thalassan standards, his body was falling apart. He pressed on in spite of all the reasons why he should have succumbed to something-or-other by now, despite all the wisdom he’d learned while growing up about the health benefits of a full figure. How many potential wives had his parents rejected for him and Yuanhan because the unlucky womb-bearers (be they boys, girls, something else, or nothing in particular) in question hadn’t carried enough mass on their bodies, a sure sign that any children they conceived would turn out weak and sickly?
How many viable boys with wombs had his parents passed over in favor of Meiren, in spite of the two very obvious reasons why asking Heibing and Meiren to marry each other was one of the stupidest ideas in all Thalassan history? All because the boys in question—plenty of them perfectly plump and lovely, more than capable of bearing healthy children, in Heibing’s own opinion—hadn’t been quite as blessedly fat as Meiren?
She’d gotten lucky, Meiren, running away from Thalassa with the woman she’d really loved before she and Heibing could end up forcibly tied to each other. Heibing wondered where she’d wound up, wondered if she and her wife were still happy, wondered if they had found their way to somewhere safe. Somewhere untouched by Chaos.
He wondered if Meiren ever tried to call home, if she failed to get a message through, the way Heibing had failed to contact Pyrrhus.
Looking down at his array of gathered fabric, Heibing sighed. He probably had enough here without digging through any other homes. More than enough, maybe. So much the better if he did; there would be more fabric left when he needed it. With a deep breath, he stripped out of his fuku. Mixing cloth bandages and the wraps that the Flame-Mothers had once used to prepare their dead for burial, he bound the loose skin closer to the bone and muscle. First, his arms. Then, his thighs. Finally, his stomach, a process that always felt unbearably complicated, no matter how simple it should have been.
While far from an ideal solution, wraps kept the skin from getting exposed to too much. Kept it from moving around the way it did. Mostly kept sweat from sneaking into the crevices and causing problems (but only mostly).
As Heibing dressed again, a mirror teased at the corner of his vision, resting against the nearby wall. Heibing struggled to ignore it, stomach churning at the thought of his own appearance. The appearance that this fight had given him, anyway. He tried to avoid looking at it too long whenever he found himself around a reflective surface, but too many times, he’d glimpsed enough of the sharp jaw and sunken cheeks to know that he looked worse than the creatures after which the Glacial Wraith tribe’s ancestors had named themselves.
And yet, he hadn’t aged. Perhaps the signs of his physical degradation made Heibing look sick in ways that even the most wretched of his world’s dead had never looked. Otherwise, though, Heibing looked the same as he had when the Chaos had first swept over his world. Preserved as if in amber, outside of wasting into a vision of the very exhaustion that his magic induced. Unchanging—which, in a way, was a sure sign that at least Heibing hadn’t died like everybody else: corpses were allowed to decompose as the elements wore them down.
A liberty, it seemed, that Heibing was not to be afforded any longer.
wc: 1,222.
total wc: 5,374.
total wc: 5,374.
