|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 Posted: Fri Jun 20, 2025 8:40 am
It's a secret that you can look even more fabulous? He signed, though part of that sentence trailed away.
He stared for a while, transfixed on Malory. Stupefied by the headache that continued to pound on the walls of his skull. Replaying those last few moments as if he missed something crucial, some tell that flipped the script, that told him that gossamer-spun burn in his chest was all his own fault. A figment.
Drawing a breath, Eles reminded himself to focus. What had he just said?
He's not supposed to do that. The wrong people could find him. If he was found out, he'd be erased. Reskinned as a new person. Spoken like Eles should be catching on.
Absently, he rubbed at the center of his chest. As he breathed, that gossamer broke up and swept away.
So you think that happened to me? Might explain why there's no signs of me anywhere, but why can't I remember anything?
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Fri Jun 20, 2025 8:42 am
"No, what's the point in being beautiful if you never have a chance to be more beautiful? Or at least differently beautiful?" Malory gave Eles a sage look before laying back until he was splayed out on the rug. "If not exactly that, then something to do with magic at least. Even the doctor noticed how... unmarred your body was for, your type." His voice changed for the last two words, deeper and with an accent that spoke of a certain type of classical education. "Your type, by the way," he explained, unprompted and with obvious glee, "...is a swarm of poor impulses incessantly writhing to escape the sack unfortunate enough to contain their multitudes." He beamed over at Eles, apparently proud of him for achieving that level of assessment. "With magic, things like bodies and memories don't really matter as much. The most important constant is," he tapped his chest, and instead of saying something typical and cliched like heart or soul, what Eles would hear was, "...our starseeds."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Fri Jun 20, 2025 8:47 am
Eles was left to stare unapologetically at Malory's a** while the boy spoke to the ceiling. He couldn't say he knew anything about being beautiful. Or that he'd ever been beautiful.
Certainly his type didn't sound beautiful at all. Like a mass of roaches shrink-wrapped into a human-shaped algorithm. Like he was something to be detested and discarded for his ugliness, his poor impulse control. Maybe that was right. He did, after all, try to peel his skin off after drinking an entire bottle of wine by himself.
But at least he had the forethought to curl up in the bathroom afterward. That had to count for something.
He became suddenly aware of a lurking familiarity — like it swam just outside of the bounds of this room, their reality. It circled the edges of Malory's words, coming teasingly close to the surface. A shadow on the back of a hand. A blade hidden in Malory's smile. But for all his mental diving in those silent moments thereafter, he never quite caught up. Never glimpsed the shape of the thing that felt so putridly familiar.
'Our starseeds.' He almost caught sight of it there, just beneath the sea spray. Beneath the placid spell of the mundane.
What would that mean? He signed while Malory was looking his way. That infectious smile sprawled like a symptom. Because magic, I can't remember s**t and I don't have any scars? No one knows me anymore?
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Fri Jun 20, 2025 8:54 am
Malory watched Eles process the information and the promising frustration that skated across his features. It occurred to him that, while he got to witness (and incite) many little firsts for Eles, this was also the first time he'd told someone about Hybris, about being magic. Was it another indulgence? Another debt to slowly, persistently press upon Eles's shoulders? Maybe! It should be. After all, this wasn't his story. It belonged to, and was about, Eles. "They're like souls only, they're physical...slightly to the side of this dimension is my personal theory." Sitting up, Malory grew a little excited, indulging in the sort of talk he rarely allowed himself out of concern that people come to him for things like thoughts and solutions. "There's a lot of little dimensions, a couple I have access to, I can show you later, but with starseeds, they can be changed, broken, fixed! But not everyone can touch or affect them, which is really unfair if you ask me? I'd love to be able to touch mine. But anyway, I've been told that the whole and pure ones can connect a person to their past lives, Reincarnation is real by the way." He paused and that, and remembered that reincarnation was the point he'd meant to get to in a much more smooth and playful way. "Starseeds are the core of people as they reincarnate. The body doesn't matter, the memories can be iffy, but the starseed is the same. So I think you've been reincarnated in some way. In some really strange way." Even if Eles was new to the world in a number of different ways, he was most definitely not a child, let alone an adult-shaped newborn. He took a moment to take a less enthusiastic and more aloof, lounging state of repose.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Fri Jun 20, 2025 8:55 am
Eles ran a hand up his sweat-slicked face, through his dampened hair. Did it ever occur to you, he signed slowly, that this is the worst. time. to explain any of this? I mean, really. A hangover and ******** blood loss and you're getting some type of quantum theoretical on me like it won't make my soul want to die.
Starseed, he corrected after a minute. Whatever that is.
Slouching deeper against the side of the bed, Eles tried to walk himself back through the explanation. It occurred to him, then, that should Malory have a stash of MDMA somewhere, or maybe some acid, then this whole talk would be a lot more tolerable. It was the sort of mind-opening, world-inverting s**t he would expect to come out when one wasn't stone-cold sober. But there had been no offers of party drugs. He wasn't even sure if Malory was secretly a dealer or if he didn't even know what they were.
The dimensions… That wasn't happening. He'd come back to that. Raincheck for a day when he wasn't bled dry and tragically sober.
Something something touch his own starseed something reincarnation. So he might be reincarnated? He squinted at Malory as if looking for a tell, some sign that this was all a drawn-out joke. Some pastime of his. Some new skit for some new play and he wanted the prime parts. Needed to lay it on convincingly. Use some hapless dumbshit of a stranger who didn't know any better and sell him on all parts of it.
That was what this was, wasn't it? Some 'gotcha' moment, probably caught on tape, probably streamed live to an audience of fans that wanted their chance on this ******** up show.
But what if it was true? He couldn't deny how neatly such a solution fit his predicament, if he could bring himself to believe such a thing. Reincarnation is real and there's physical manifestations of souls inside of people called starseeds. Not everyone can touch them, though. Not everyone can affect them.
Say you're right, he ventured at last. Starseeds are real. Magic is real. Reincarnation is real. How are you going to prove it? And how would we figure out if that happened to me?
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Fri Jun 20, 2025 9:12 am
It was a relief to see that Eles apparently regretted Malory's little gushing of enthusiasm even more than Malory. This was, in fact, the perfect time to gently torture the other boy with useful information. He wondered if it would keep Eles up, or if his mind would be racing all day even though his body wouldn't let him do even the littlest bit of anything. Not even well enough to clean up all the dried blood in his bathroom. Idly, Malory wondered if blood got harder or easier to clean over time. Well, Eles could let him know later. And then came the consequences of Malory's own actions: someone asking him to think and do work and solve problems. "I mean...I could ask one of the people who can touch them to demonstrate? But I can't promise you'd be particularly safe around them, or that they'd be useful beyond that." But, he had to admit, it'd be interesting to see what happened. "Were you scared?"
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Fri Jun 20, 2025 9:18 am
Fine, he signed. Do that. They can demonstrate on you. If nothing else, it would give Malory a reason to cry about it later on. Then he could act the victim all he wanted.
His question… Goading, but not amiss. Eles clicked his tongue against his mouth, cocked his head in consideration. Startled. Worried. Felt like I was losing my grip on reality. But not… Afraid for my life. Just afraid of the tragedy in losing his mind. Being eternally relegated to his own lonely reality.
But if you let me sleep here, he pointed at the spot where he was parked, I'll tell you I was terrified.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
