In the beginning, they were lonely. Then, it washed over them… noise, grating, unbearable noise.
Loud.
Loud, lonely and cold.
The being – in the most abstract sense of the word – tried to move with limbs tendons muscles tissues that didn't exist. Thoughts came difficultly, a dull strangely existential ache the only feeling they could sense. Well, that and the loud ceaseless noise polluting their mind.
They wanted out.
Anywhere away from the loud.
Their frayed nerves trembled under the strain as their body – a memory of it, fragmented and hazy – began to form again, clumsily moving, scrambling for reprieve.
The first features to coagulate out of the dimensional soup were two beady, brilliant green eyes. They pooled into existence, blinking once, then twice. Then came the face, featureless, dripping with the same fluid that they were born out of the depths of; framed by short unkempt locks of brilliant silver hair.
The body began to gather into existence next, though the flailing arms melted away past their sleeves, and everything below their ribs was unaccounted for. Their spine dangled uselessly, a network of emerald strings keeping it linked to the primordial soup, permeating the nooks and crannies of its every vertebrae.
They, with difficulty, willed themself a mouth– and their face split open a misshapen, beak-like crevice, from which came a broken, pitiful sound.
Everything was loud and cold.
They needed out. Needed warm soft tender quiet– needed…
A few dots start to link. Warm, tender, fabric. They look down at the darkness from which their form sprang into existence, and something slowly clicks. Dark, shiny, warm, kind, tender.
It was something much like tenderness, and had the same ring to it. Something with a voice, though not too loud, not too grating. Something warm that radiated safety. It made the subtle, existential ache bleed into their arms, pour from their cracked maw, and spill out of their disembowelled innards. It ebbed and flowed, pulsing slower as they moved, worsening, then loosening.
The creature lay down, their best attempt at a body creaking weakly. As their head lulled under their own weight, the pain loosened slightly, but got worse shortly after.
All they wanted was to sleep, but it didn't seem like they could do that anymore.
Conscious thought was becoming impossible to muster, and they, it, started to fall apart under the sheer pressure of existence.
It writhes in the filth with nobody to witness its agony, collapsing into nothing, then building itself from the rubble again. Every unstable structure it manifests as falls apart, forcing it to trial and error its way into physical space. The process feels like it lasts hundreds upon hundreds of hours, but only a few minutes tick by.
Time passes.
And as such, it begins to learn.
Not words, words carry no value to it in this moment without a mouth to utter them. Stringing together its atoms one by one, it slows down its movements, and the body begins to solidify into something more structurally sound.
The only thing to plummet from that ghastly, dripping orifice they called a mouth were silver feathers. Though, it wasn't entirely without use. Those helped it find its way when the smallest thoughts grew too painful.
It treks, trudging through the strange, non-euclidean sludge caking its very existence, walking in circles without legs to carry it.
Its mind, heavy with thoughts, lulls from side to side as it walks; akin to the needle of a compass, it's drawn towards something, something deeply familiar yet unrecognisable. Muscle memory fills in gaps that the mind lacks. It leaves a trail of matted feathers behind, like a scar carved out in the fabric of dimensions.
The world poured into its little chamber of a mind and flowed out just as roughly, spilling all over its body, washing over it incomprehensible, meaningless chatter. Words, voices, noises, dialogue– or monologue, at times it didn't know. It had no use for words, not when it was so undeniably, unbearably alone.
The sensation cuts through it like a torrent of blades, and it shudders. The same instinct comes back, as if it were its essence’s soft whispered prayer, its only hope.
Tender.
Tender hands would make it all go away.
Whose hands, that it didn't know. But it had an inkling of where to go, a feeling of strange, flailing need, and that began to guide it towards its target.
In the dimensional space, there was no sense of uniformity– looking for patterns would just lead one into further insanity. But, somehow, it knew where to go. The world caved in around it the further it dove, warping as if weighed down by its touch. Eventually, something refuses to budge: a wall stands in its path, soft and wet and undeniably organic, standing out from everything else around it. The creature's fingers – much like talons – dig into the wall as if its life hung in the balance, eventually piercing through the thin, skin-like barrier, and it tumbles through into someplace dim.
The room is dark, sterile, the walls a dreary gray. Light is streaming in from somewhere. Boxy things in abundant numbers rest upon equally boxy other things. It raises its head, then shudders– vomiting a slew of liquid-soiled feathers onto the pristine white floors. A steady pressure drags it to the floor, something strange and unwelcome. It feels constricting, hostile.
But, what it sought was here for sure. The need within it was raging like an unbearable flame, almost making it empty its innards again. Crawling towards the nearby doors, it doesn't know how it'll cut through them, but knows it must. The moment its hands touch them, a darkness pools out from the area– the same dimensional fabric that wove its atoms into place assists them, shattering the limits of physical space for its convenience. It crawls through the newfound hole to the other side, a painfully lit room.
A figure stands down the hall, frozen in what seems to be terror, though the creature doesn't move. Its instinct guides it towards this very entity, and yet it's hesitant. It has suffered great pain in its undefined amount of time existing, and so it stops its crawl, staring down the figure.
It takes it a while to realise the figure is speaking, takes it even more time to realise what the figure is saying. Filtering out their voice from the torrent of words assaulting its mind was a Herculean feat, especially when the figure sounded just like those voices running around its fractured psyche.
“You… oh god… What happened? Who did this to you?!”
It blinked, unbothered by the figure's distress– though it found the horror odd. It did this to itself, no? This physical form was its handiwork, agonisingly mustered through what felt like weeks of effort. Were they not proud?
As it ponders these questions, the figure approaches, slowly, carefully. Its features come into focus; a face worn down by hours of work, eyes black like obsidian shards, soft hair that seems to almost beg for the creature to brush its fingers against it…
And the figure smelled rather distinct, unusual, unique… lovely.
“I'm going to fix this, okay? I'm going to fix this, I promise.” They reassured, though it seemed to be more towards themself than the entity before them. It simply craned its neck up to get a better look, those beady eyes blinking slowly.
The figure met its gaze, only to choke up; a hand covering their mouth in abject distress. Said hand moves up to cover their eyes, as if they refuse to look the creature in the eye anymore yet cannot avert their gaze. “God, I'm so sorry… how… how could I let this happen…”
The figure's head shakes, like they're trying to literally shake the reality of things off their mind. “This is my fault. If I hadn't been so careless…”
It didn't understand what exactly the figure was going on about, but their distress was starting to become upsetting. It felt wrong to see such outright despair marring such a lovely person's face.
Why were they so sad?
Yes, existence was painful, but the worst had passed, hadn't it?
“I'll help you, Yabusame, I promise I'll help you. I'll do anything– everything.” They vowed, yet the creature only blinked in response, processing the words agonisingly slow. Yabusame was a word that tended to spring up quite frequently in the conversational soup that occupied their mind… and now that they heard it from someone who seemed to know its meaning, it started to make more sense. Whatever a Yabusame was, they seemed to lead quite unpleasant lives.
But, if those conversations were something this figure was familiar with, then perhaps… the creature opened its maw, and instead of vocal chords attempting noise again came out a soft, distant dialogue.
“I'll be fine, Tsuba, don't worry about me so much! I know you'll be here if anything goes wrong!”
“I'm not going to spend all day patching you up if you get hurt.”
The figure – Tsuba, now it knew their name – choked out a cry at hearing their own voice coming from the dimensional entity’s mouth. They shook, body trembling violently as they couldn't tear themself away from the sight before them.
“That’s true, you'd be done in a couple of minutes!”
“That doesn't make it better you know, what if I don't get there in time? Have you thought of that?”
“Sorry, I don't really like to think~”
“Exactly.”
The cries turned into full-on sobs, Tsuba falling to their knees before the entity. As the distance between them grew smaller, the sadness within it compounded.
Tsuba was sad, and that made it– no, them sad.
So it reaches out, talons and toxins and angles and irregularities and all. Tsuba seemed to be yearning to be held. Or did they yearn for Tsuba to hold them instead? Whatever it may be, the threshold was too tempting to cross.
“You do all the thinking for me, Tsuba~ that's why I like you.”
“You’re awful, you know that?”
Their digits made contact. A tenderness formed with them, a warmth spread through their frigid limbs, bringing with them momentary joy. Their senses were overloaded by the sensation of a warm body in their arms, letting their mind tune out the scream it let out.
“Ehehe~”
“I like you too, Yabusame.”
...
...
...
In the beginning, they were lonely. Then, it washed over them… noise, grating, unbearable noise.
Loud.
Loud, lonely and cold.
The fluorescent lights beat down on their form with unforgiving harshness, the sterile floor hard to navigate. The being – in the most abstract sense of the word – tried to move with limbs tendons muscles tissues that didn't know movement well enough yet. Thoughts came difficultly, a dull strangely existential ache the only feeling they could sense in the suddenly barren space. Well, that and the loud ceaseless noise polluting their mind.
They wanted out.
Anywhere away from the loud.
Their frayed nerves trembled under the strain as their body – a memory of it, fragmented and hazy – began to clumsily move, scrambling for reprieve.
Everything was loud and cold.
They needed out. Needed warm soft tender quiet– needed…
A few dots start to link. Warm, tender, fabric. They look down at a discarded object laying close, something they somehow knew was called a “hat”, and something slowly clicks. Dark, shiny, warm, kind, tender.
It was something much like tenderness, and had the same ring to it. Something with a voice, though not too loud, not too grating. Something warm that radiated safety. It made the subtle, existential ache bleed into their arms, pour from their cracked maw, and spill out of their disembowelled innards. It ebbed and flowed, pulsing slower as they moved, worsening, then loosening.
It had a name.
Tsuba.
The enlightenment of knowledge fills it with a strange catharsis, and it shudders. The same instinct comes back, as if it were its essence’s soft whispered prayer, its only hope.
Tsuba would make it all go away.
