Work Text:
RULERZREACHF4N: i.yhink.ivr.jst sra bdvmusekt
hello_willow: ?
hello_willow: repeat that?
RULERZREACHF4N: stabbed myeg
RULERZREACHF4N: myselg
Hello_willow: ??
Hello_willow: CALEB?
[skara]: umm
[skara]: context????
[skara]: with u i can never be too sure
RULERZREACHF4N: on.purpode
inthikk
was.zomed kut sorru
i domy.tjjnk jts veryucomnin to azcidrbrapltbstav yo8rself in the Tomafu
not veyr lethal ritger if tgat aas mu intention
haga
Hellow_willow: oh my titan
where ar eyou?
RULERZREACHF4N: u m
du nno
[skara]: WHAT THE TITS
WHAT THE TITS WHAT TH3 TITS
QRE YOU OK OH TITS
[viney]: wh
the hells goin on jn here
[skara]: READ UP
[viney]: ?
oh
CALEB
GOOD TITAN
RULERZREACHF4N: i.fonf teaally know euat jappened
djnt know.wagt i was.dking
just zonedboi6 and then bM
knifd ib ne
nd im holdong it and its.mibw
[viney]: CALL
[viney] started a call
Hunter: [slightly slurred, but absurdly calm and collected] Sorry for bothering you all.
Viney: What the fuck don't apologize! You just!
Skara: Yeah!
Hello_willow: srry guys ill be there in a sec
caleb can i tell my dads and luz
Hunter: Tell her sure. It's hard to type.
[viney]: he says sure
Hunter: Thanks.
Viney: Okay. Don't die.
Skara: Please!
Hunter: Hah. I'll try. I've survived worse.
...
Hunter: That's probably less reassuring than I meant it to be. It's fine. I'm fine.
Viney: C– Actually, can I call you your real name? Hunter, right?
Hunter: Yeah. I don't care.
Viney: Cool. Okay, Hunter? Can you tell me where you are?
Hunter: Um. I don't... actually know.
Viney: Uh. Hm. Okay. Describe what's around you?
Hunter: ...Trees. A wall, I think.
Viney: That's.
Skara: So unhelpful! That is so unhelpful! Titan fuck me!
Hunter: Relax. Breathe.
Skara: I'M NOT THE ONE DYING!!!
Hunter: First of all, I'm not dying. Second of all. There isn't a second. Hmm.
Skara: Why did you even stab yourself in a forest?
Hunter: I don't know, sometimes I just do things. I don't even know why I'm in the forest.
Willow: Hunter! Titan, are you okay?
Hunter: Bleeding pretty hard, Captain, I don't think that's "okay".
Skara: He's in a forest!
Willow: A forest?
Viney: A forest.
Hunter: 'S not really a forest, there's a wall right over there.
Viney: Go see if there's someone over there, maybe?
...
Hunter: Mm. Nob'dy there.
Willow: You okay?
Hunter: ...Shit. 'M tired. Shit.
Willow: Don't, don't fall asleep.
Hunter: I'm not an idiot.
Viney: [hums] Did you take the knife out? The bleeding—
Hunter: Yeah, took it out when I realized it was in me. Wasn't really thinking.
Viney: Hm. Keep pressure on the injury.
Hunter: I know. I'm not 'n idiot.
Skara: Mmmm!! Oh, oh! Turn your location on!
Hunter: ...I dunno how t' do that.
Skara: [walks him thru it]
Hunter: ...Mkay. 'T's on.
Viney: Oh, awesome, I'm on my way with some medical stuff. Griffins are real fast.
Willow: I'll go update my dads, we'll have someone else with you soon.
Hunter: Jus' Viney's fine. Don' want too many people.
Willow: Eda, then.
Hunter: [exhale-huff thing]
Skara: Mm, I wish I could do something!
Willow: Just update the groupchat, that's enough for now.
Skara: Oh! Right!
[skara]: help on its way to caleb
[viney]: not dying on our watch mf
[skara]: U R ON A GRIFFIN DO NOT TEXT AND FLY
[viney]: yes maam
[gus]: What.
[gus]: wtf happened to hunter!
[skara]: read the chat!
[gus]: i did! wtf@!
RULERZREACHF4N: SOMETHING IS WRONG
[gus]: OH NO
RULERZREACHF4N: SOMETHING IS BAD
[skara]: whats wrong!?
RULERZREACHF4N: I AM NOT REAL I AM NOT REAL I AM NOT REAL AND NOBODY HERE COULD HELP ME BECAUSE I AM NOT REAL
I AM SORRY AND I DO NOT KNOW WHAT I HAVE DONE WHAT HAVE I DONE WHAT HAVE I DONE WHAT HAVE I DONE
Hunter comes back to his body with a knife in his hands and his stomach and he thinks, oh, shit .
And he looks up, and he does not know where he is.
What a predicament.
There is a buzz in his pocket, and he realizes—he has his scroll. So he pulls out the knife, which, he only realizes after he does so, is a bad idea. He's bleeding a lot now. He presses his left hand to his stomach and scrabbles for his scroll in his pocket with his other, made clumsy by panic and pain. It's fine. He can handle it.
It's fine.
He types something, hardly knowing what it is he's saying, and there is a response, and he responds back.
He has a conversation, somehow, though his mind is so fuzzy is so fuzzy is so fuzzy he does not know what he's saying. He is like a puppet. He feels like something false.
He is speaking. There is no hum in his throat but noise comes out anyway. He suppresses a cough. He is at a wall now, instead of his tree, and around this wall there is nobody. It is just a wall.
It is silent.
Despite the voices. From his scroll, of course, he doesn't hear voices in his head. Only himself, and sometimes not even that, and it is lonely.
There is no-one around. He hopes it stays that way, and he wishes there was someone with him. Nowhere in the world is somewhere he can be, because he is a doll to be played with. "He is not real." How dull. What is the date? How long has it been? What is his state of mind and his place in his mind and his mind and mind and his mind?
His place is exhaustion. Always is. Always has been. His place is to shoot his only companion in the head. Always has been. Have you been jarred? Has your immersion been shocked, or was it ever steady here, with all his broken thoughts and such and such? His hasn't been. He is feeling strange, with this hole in him. Shouldn't be there. That's a problem, a problem a problem a problem a problem.
There is help on the way. Help is on the way. There is help coming.
His mind is clumped. He feels like bad scrambled eggs. Never had good ones, he doesn't think. Sad.
Here, here is his mind being stretched like, like something, he doesn't know, wouldn't know. Doesn't know wouldn't know shouldn't know.
Oh, his mind is like wild magic. How lovely.
There is a bird above him. Birds are nice. Birds, birds, he hates birds.
The wall shifts and morphs around him.
The bird lands. He's always liked birds.
[viney]: bro passed out as soon as i landed i think
[viney]: seems unrelated to the stab wound tho. p sure hes just exhausted from whatever the hell he does all day
[skara]: ohh i hope hes ok
[viney]: hes tough
[viney]: hell be fine
hell be fine
hell be fine
hell be fine
hell be with you
He will be lying on a couch. It is sometime in the night, and the House is quiet. The House. He feels the need to capitalize House.
The House is quiet and the House is dark. Something terrible is happening will happen has happened—he doesn't know when in time this is. Could be during the climax of the story happening elsewhere, or the rising action, or even somewhere past the resolution.
He wouldn't know. There is only himself and the House.
Time could be a relic, and he would be none the wiser.
He could be a relic, and he would be none the wiser—and he is, and he was. He is made of misplaced nostalgia.
He stands. His stomach hurts, not in a nauseous way but a sore aching muscles way, but. That's hardly important, ever. How he got here is irrelevant, why he is here is irrelevant.
He walks down a hall. It is long, and long, and he turns into a doorway and it is another hallway. There is a door to the right, immediately, and he enters it too, and it breaks how space works because the door is in the center of the wall of the room and so there is room where there should be hallway. There is nothing in it but a jagged knife. The room is small. The jagged knife is misplaced nostalgia, and he is made of it, and he is made of the jagged knife and he himself is a jagged knife. An inconvenient convenient weapon. Convenient inconvenient weapon.
He is jagged, he is a knife, there is a knife in his stomach and it might be jagged, but he wouldn't know, because he can't see the blade for the flesh.
Can't see the flesh for the blade. Can't see the flesh for the—
There is a face in his. In his face, right in front of him, he means. It is an owl. It sounds hellish. Hell be with you. To hell with you. Will be in hell with you. See you in hell? Watching you is hell enough for me.
"Hiya!" says the face in front of him. "You're not supposed to be up, hoot."
He is supposed to be six feet under.
He is deposited back on the couch, so far away, far away, and consciousness too is far away, far away.
Hunter is woken up in some hours, by a human being loud and yelling and such. For breakfast is pancakes, and distantly, he wonders what state of existence is his bird in? Is the bird, too, misplaced nostalgia? So many things here are echoes. It is like a loop.
A loop a loop a loop a loop. And it is looping. Et cetera. He eats pancakes.
They taste sweet. And like nothing.
hello_willow: hey hunter
hello_willow: are u doing better?
RULERZREACHF4N: kindA
feel.weurd stilll
whst day.isiut by the wsy
Hello_willow: [here is the date. it is after everything is finished; why are you still like this?]
hello_willow: feel better soon please
RULERZREACHF4N: haha mo promisef
willntry though
hello_willow: :)
RULERZREACHF4N: di you evervfeelbenpty and farawsy
aabd misplaced inbtime andvspace
Hello_willow: no, not really
RULERZREACHF4N: darkn
whe4es flaphack
Hello_willow: ...
i think you should try going back to sleep
okay?
feel better soon
RULERZREACHF4N: oj
ok
Something is soft and snoring near him, little hum-snores that sound like tiny sighs every second or so. Something is soft in his arm, hard parts shoved into his ribs, curled up and breathing.
He has a distant memory (that he knows is false, he knows he didn't exist yet then, was never a child so small) of someone singing something to him, about the Titan. A little nursery rhyme that he knows doesn't exist, not here, not here, so it's probably a human realm religion thing that Belos twisted to fit the Titan.
He—the Titan—has the whole world, and he is holding the world, because the Titan is so large that He can do that, and the Titan is the world and the Titan is everything. And the Titan holds the whole world in his hands, so gentle and loving and large and larger than life and is life.
And yet.
Hunter holds a Titan in his arm.
He is so small, and he could not and should not hold the whole world in his hands—far too large a responsibility for such a tiny, soft creature.
Belos had a Book with him at all times, a human Book. He read it to Hunter sometimes, when he was small, and it was soothing and strange and spoke not quite like any other book. It was a Book, not a book, with the first letter capitalized and to be spoken of with reverence.
Hunter would like to burn this Book. He could not care less at the same time. It doesn't matter to him what fate this Book is left to.
Such a hypocrite, his Uncle was, to read the Book and love the Book and yet ignore everything said by the Book in favor of, of what? Misplaced nostalgia?
The Titan in his arm makes a sweet little sound and stretches, and grips his shirt with one clawed hand.
He could not worship this thing. That is far too much responsibility to rest on a little child. On a baby.
There is a comparison he could make, if he remembered this Book better. It's getting old.
The Book is old, four hundred years old, and this topic is old, three minutes old.
Hunter sits up. The Titan whines, and Hunter only laughs because really. His God is a baby who wants to cuddle him.
The Light in the corner sits up and lights up like her name. She makes Hunter wish wish wish wish—
For something. Not sure what. Not sure why.
"Hunter!" she says, "You're up!"
"Mhm," he says.
"Feeling better?" she says.
"Mm," he says.
"Um," she says. She is uncertain. "So, like, what happened?"
"Dunno," he says.
"Did you lose your memory?" she asks. She's closer now. "Is it am amnesia plot, and we have to figure out what happened before?"
"No," he says. "I just, zoned out. Happens sometimes."
"You need therapy," she says.
"Whatever," he says. He knows. He knows.
He'd rather ignore it all. He wants to heal, knows he should, but something self destructive in him says it will feel better to stay the way he is. He gets attention out of it, something he never had enough of, something he wants wants needs wants so badly it hurts. This pain feels good, like stretching sore muscles or pressing a bruise or pinching a cold sore on your tongue between your teeth.
It makes him feel a little more solid, when he doesn't feel like his mind fills his body quite like it should.
"Y'know," Luz says, "in 9th grade we watched a Romeo and Juliet movie set in the 80s." This doesn't make sense, because he is missing all the context. "You remind me of, what's his face, is it Mercutio?" (Is that how you spell it?) "The guy who says, like, 'Tis but a flesh wound!' or whatever, then dies. You'd do that."
"That means nothing to me," he says.
"Yeah, I know. Hm, Lilith would like Shakespeare, I think. I should introduce her. To his work. Not the guy. He's dead." Luz grins. She's sitting next to him now. The Titan has crawled over his lap to fall back to sleep in hers. "Anyways, I liked that movie. It was pretty good. When we were reading the actual play, like before we watched the movie, some boy insisted he read Juliet's lines. He spoke all high pitched and over-the-top, it was great."
She keeps rambling. He listens, sort of, just enough that he doesn't think but not quite enough to actually process any of her words. He'd like to listen more. He's just. Tired.
Or something. Maybe, maybe it's just that he's too used to doing this? To listening but not really? How strange, how strange. He hopes she realizes and gets annoyed. So that he can apologize without pointing it out and interrupting her, so he can pretend it was less on purpose.
He wishes he could listen. He can't ask, can you please repeat that? Sorry I wasn't listening, I didn't mean to—because if he really cared, he would listen, if he really cared, he would remember, if he really cared if he really cared if he really cared. So, clearly, he doesn't care. He doesn't care, because if he did then then then then then he would do better . He's just not trying.
But he tries so hard. Tried so hard, really, because if it's never enough to stretch his will painfully taught, then why should he do that?
(Because it will hurt more if he doesn't.)(He just pretends he doesn't care, doesn't try, then.)
Apathy was his saving grace. Why should he care about the future, if whatever happens is inevitable? Success is a given, but if he fails, it doesn't really matter even if it does it does it does it does matter, so much so much.
He walks, casually, through an impossible little cave tunnel of knife rocks, jagged knife rocks, perfectly sized just for him and covered in the blades of jagged knives.
His mind is just this.
Deep in the solidified veins of the Titan, the dead one.
When a Titan reaches adolescence, it grows like cancer. And it never stops growing; Luz read this in an ancient, ancient book that Lilith painstakingly transated as best she could. The book is, amusingly, a parenting guide. Strange to think about, that Titans were once so similar to witches and even humans, just larger than life and large enough to cup the world in their hands. Luz compared how Titans grow to lobsters, a human realm sea creature that cheated death and never die of old age. Not in the traditional way, where cells stop replicating and so dead cells are never replaced, and eventually so much of you cannot do its job that you cease to function. Lobsters, instead, die from getting too big. They shed their exoskeleton when it starts getting tight, and since they keep growing and keep growing and keep growing they will need to do this forever, or their armor will squish them to death. Lobsters die of old age not because their cells die, but because shedding their massive armor takes more energy than they can produce, and so they must keep it, and they grow larger than the container that holds them and they die slow and painful and uncomfortably.
Titans, though, have no exoskeleton—their skull, Luz explains, is more like a turtle's shell, because it grows with the Titan and is part of the Titan and if you remove it you rip out the spine. Or whatever it's connected to. So, a Titan will not die of old age and it will not die of being crushed in its own body, and it will just keep on growing and growing and growing forever.
Functionally immortal, she says. Not invincible, of course, the Collector notes, or they'd all still be around and you little weirdos wouldn't exist!
Hunter wonders if a Grimwalker dies of old age. None of his predecessors would have been able to, all killed long before. He's sure there have been other Grimwalkers, but he wouldn't know where to look to find them or their records.
A Titan is not a God. A God is immortal and invincible, Belos said. And then he would contradict himself, and say the Titan, the dead body they live on, is their God. And he will read his Book, and read of a man who died and is God and died because he is God.
Death is a lowly thing. Immortal means you cannot die, but a Titan is immortal and a God is immortal and yet, both die. Eventually.
And Belos was playing God for a God. He played God, making men and killing them, setting plagues upon civilizations, sorting them neatly into redundant categories and killing everyone who denied his game and killing everyone who didn't.
To play God is to create a false idol out of yourself. To play God is to build a Tower of Babel of Unity on your own and for yourself. To play God is to think, I can do God's job better than He ever could.
To play God is to lie and lie and lie. And to tell everyone, it is the Titan's will that I am your God; I am your God because my God said so and your God does not exist and so I am pretending my God is your God and I am both Gods.
A Titan is no God. A Collector is no God. A Titan could crumble everything and hold the world in its hands and a Collector could move the moon with a single outstretched finger God could flood the world on a whim but none of them are Gods, not here. Eda says, historically, religion is just a way to explain the things we don't understand and to praise things we do and to believe there is inherent meaning in our lives. Eda says, it's all bullshit, 'cuz I've got two "Gods" in my living room right now and they're playing some human board game called "Sorry".
"I think you'd appreciate The Tell-Tale Heart," Luz says. Her legs are draped over his lap now. King is still asleep on hers.
Hunter hums.
"It's about a guy who killed someone and thinks he can hear their heart under his floorboards," she says.
"That sounds... unnerving," he says.
"It is. Pretty cool, huh?" she says.
"Hm."
Someone killed watches unendingly.
How... interesting.
It is time for dinner. Dinner is some meat thing. He wasn't paying attention really, when Eda said what it was.
It's human, he thinks, because Luz is eating it and she can't have most Boiling Isles meat. Her mother is here, as well.
He sits down, and he takes a bite.
His stomach aches. There is a jagged knife inside, a bandage strapping it down. How long has it been there? Time could be false in this House—the short walk down the hallway to the kitchen stretched, and it stretched far, and yet. And yet! When he looked back, he had only walked a few feet in a short moment that took an indeterminable length.
Hallways do that far too often here. Just enough that he forgets until it happens. Often enough that he couldn't count how many times.
Time, time, time.
He takes a bite.
His stomach aches.
This all feels so dreadfully in-between. The hallways, in This House, are the hallways, like the hallways, in the palace, walking from his room to the throne room.
There is one hallway that he's come across, when he wakes up in the middle of the night and wanders, that feels strangely, uncomfortably reminiscent of those castle halls. It is differently, clearly, but he's blurred his memories to the point that it feels the same. He sat down, there, and stayed for a very long time. He woke up back on the couch. He hasn't been able to find that hallway again.
Another instance of misplaced nostalgia.
Another bite.
Another ache in his stomach.
It hurts, and this time it is in a nauseous way. He takes a bite.
It hurts. Hurts, hurts, and he stands and leaves.
In the bathroom, he dumps something else's flesh into the toilet and misses things he shouldn't.
He finds himself in a hallway. He, immediately, loses himself again.
And he loses the hallway.
This hallway, a different one, is carpeted. It's upstairs, he thinks, but he's so deep in the House that it's no longer static and set in place. He will step through a doorway and turn around and there won't be a doorway anymore, just a wall mirror hung at the perfect height for him specifically.
The walls this far in breathe deeper. The trim and chair rail molding pump like veins. He's spotted a few pipes in the open. It reminds him of the pipes in the palace leading to the Titan's still-beating heart.
In some places, there is no ceiling. Or, more accurately, the real ceiling is impossibly high, and at the height where a normal ceiling would be, there are criss-crossing metal bars from which the lights hang. It feels somewhat commercial.
An IKEA showroom, if you will. He went there once, on a visit to the human realm. It was unnerving. He felt watched.
Eventually, the House begins to expand around him. He realizes this, and realizes along with it that all he had seen previously was built on other people. He'd come across a bedroom that he couldn't describe in any way other than as a jail cell flavored like house arrest. And there is a living room with a television, a distinctly human thing. And that hallway, the hallway like the palace but not quite. A library of empty books. A room with red carpet and nothing but a blocky chair built up from the floor, plush and with golden accents like a throne. A set of rooms like a cabin. A set of rooms so detailed and personal to someone else that he can't help but feel that he's intruding. A room with a large imposing desk. Another library of empty books, but distinctly brighter, more welcoming. A classroom that feels, strangely, like an interrogation room.
And so on. Not necessarily in that order.
But the House is expanding around him, now. Nobody else but Eda, it seems, has gone this far, because anything not familiar to him specifically is wholly unknown and, simultaneously, somehow more reminiscent of the main section of the House, the part that doesn't fold in on itself nonsensically, than that section is reminiscent of itself. There are rooms that feel the same—more like the main House than the House is—but very much different. He suspects those rooms, due to their far larger number and consistency throughout, are the rooms of the House. The true inner rooms. The rooms not made by the reference of another being's mind.
The House is expanding around him. Him and him , as one. The House, it seems, cannot separate them.
He is only somewhat disappointed by that.
He finds something like his old bedroom in the palace, uncomfortably empty aside from his(?) desk. He finds another hallway like the castle, this one more accurate. From what he can remember. It stretches on for a very long time, and it curves and loops and turns and folds and so on and so forth. When he finally reaches the end, after so so long of just walking straight, on into darkness, and walks through the door there, he is met with a room that looks built. Built, as in not professionally, as in put together by someone intending to live in it themself. There is a window, and if he looks out, he sees blurry hints of green. It's about as much as you get from any window this far into the House. They're all fogged up so badly that you don't even get color, sometimes, just values.
There are no doors. The one he entered through has disappeared; that, he's found, is normal.
So he sits on the lone plush chair, pushed uncaringly off to the side.
There is a jagged knife on the table under the window.
BADGIRLCOVEN[luz]: yo
BADGIRLCOVEN: wherefore art thou romeo oh romeo
RULERZREACHF4N: wgat
???
BADGIRLCOVEN: hwere are you 🔎
RULERZREACHF4N: dont.know
[image]
BADGIRLCOVEN: wth
where js that
never seen that before!
RULERZREACHF4N: i never left.the housebif thatd what you"re..wonderibg
BADGIRLCOVEN: dude you type so weird
and oh yeah!
i forgot this place does that 🏠 weird
get hooty to brjng you back👍
RULERZREACHF4N: why
BADGIRLCOVEN: i jeed you
magic and stuff
He calls for the bird demon.
He gets no response.
RULERZREACHF4N: i dont think.hecan hear me this.far
BADGIRLCOVEN: whatt
what!
how long have you been walking????
RULERZREACHF4N: no.clue
since breakfast
BADGIRLCOVEN: its like 4pm.
ill tell hooty myself👍👍👍
RULERZREACHF4N: ok
tuanks
On the couch, he lies awake. The ceiling in this room is normal. It is a normal height. The decorations are normal. But outside is so close and infinity is closer, and he wonders, how does anyone feel truly safe in this House?
He realizes, after a moment, that maybe he just doesn't feel properly safe anywhere. The world is out to get him, or at least, his mind tells him it is.
He takes out his scroll, looks at Penstagram for a bit.
Looks at the photo he took. Of the room, that one. That photo.
There were some things, far back into the House, that he has no idea how he knew were from what people. Aside from the human things, there's no real connections, not that he can remember.
It was just a feeling. Some fuzzy, distant feeling. He's very good at feeling fuzzy, distant feelings. He feels them a lot.
Like right now. He'd like to sleep. Can't, though, for whatever reason.
His stomach hurts. He wants that knife gone. That stupid stupid knife, all sharp edges—which, is just what a knife is. Sharp edges. So why should he care? What is the significance of a knife that is jagged and a knife that is not?
He looks at the photo again. There it sits, so casually, so innocently, on the table.
He burns. His stomach and mind, they burn.
He burns.
His hair has gotten soft, in the last while. Since the Day of Unity. Since he started washing it regularly.
He's gotten soft, too, but that's hardly a problem. Everyone says so.
Not that soft hair is a problem. Willow has soft hair, which he knows because—
Speak of the devil, and he shall appear. (He has no clue what this devil is. But Belos said that phrase, once or twice, and Luz says just "speak of the devil" when someone shows up while they're being talked about.)
There is a knock on the door, and Eda answers. Willow is on the other side.
"Willow!" Luz says.
"Hi, Luz. Hi, Ms. Eda," Willow says.
"Don't call me miss," Eda says. "Makes me feel my age."
"Any specific reason you're here?" Luz says. Not because she doubts Willow's intentions, but because she's curious. Luz is confusing to get used to.
Willow looks at Hunter. "I wanted to see how Hunter was doing. After, um, all that."
Luz looks at him, too. She's smiling. She wants him to reply.
"I'm good," he says.
"Wanna talk somewhere else?"
Not much else to say.
He shakes his head. She sits beside him and hums.
"Help me braid my hair?" she says.
He sits up straighter, and she undoes her braids.
"Thanks. They got a little messy on the flight here," she says with a smile.
He takes the offered hair bands and gets to work. He's glad for something to do with his hands.
He's been sewing a lot, lately. Eda has a lot of clothes with holes, and she offered them up for him to patch. She said she didn't care how it looked; Luz said that haphazard patching and embroidery is an aesthetic.
Embroidery, he's found, is a good hobby. Less practical than just sewing, but not everything needs a practical use. Sometimes, Luz says, things exist to be fun or look pretty, and that's all. Like fiction or video games or flowers. (Oh, actually, flowers aren't really the best example, she says. Willow nods excitedly and says, In the human realm I read a book about the language of flowers, and then she talks about that for a while. It's interesting. He has mountain laurel growing from every mark upon his skin and from the hole in his stomach, and it is toxic.)
Mountain laurel is a pretty flower. Willow says, it's the "state flower" of Connecticut, which is the part of the human realm Luz is from. It is toxic, and its meaning feels cruel to the story, but he might just be stretching it to fit things he knows.
It's a pretty flower.
He has to wonder if touching it would irritate his skin the same as anyone else's.
He touches Willow's hair. It's soft. He folds and twirls it into braids; it relents easily under his fingers. He becomes gentle, as opposed to ragged, as opposed to a jagged knife, as opposed to a soldier of, for, and from death, when he can truly relax at the hands of an activity like this. When he can stitch mountain laurels into a sweatshirt thrifted in the human realm, when he can ease Willow's hair into order, when he can do whatever he likes.
It's nice.
He can pretend his world isn't that so repetitive phrase, Misplaced nostalgia , for just a moment.
He finishes a braid and snaps a hairband on the end. Willow smiles.
This will be nostalgic, someday. (If he lasts long enough. He seems to want himself dead, even if he doesn't want to die.)
He finds the room again. It's different this time—nothing in this House ever repeats exactly, there are only ever recreations of rooms and halls, like memories—but the knife is unchanged. Jagged as always.
He picks it up, driven by nothing solid. Hardly impulse, even. It's just an action, raw, unthinking, action.
He picks it up with one hand, and with the other, presses the pad of his thumb against the blade, just by the end, so that the flesh curls around the tip and length.
Strange way to describe a thumb on a knife, he notes.
Blood starts to well before he really registers any pain.
"You know it's hard to reach you down here, right?"
He jumps. The House demon is directly in front of him.
"Oh," he says. "Hi."
The demon grabs the knife from his hand in its beak. "Blegh, who knows how old that thing is!"
He makes a short, confused noise.
"Smells ancient. And—" it sniffs, loudly— "like you, but less like dirt and more likeee.... Luz. Yep, smells like humans!"
Hunter grimaces.
It's another late night, post-nightmare, when he comes across a courtyard in his wanders. It's small, sqaure, it's got a circular stone fountain in the center, and he's certainly never seen it before.
It's nice, though. Comfortable.
The sky is blue. It's night. He opts not to think too hard about that.
He sits on the edge of the fountain.
He's in the room again, holding the jagged knife, and it his pressed to his stomach. Again. Only just broken the skin, only the tip has breached his flesh.
As they say, third time's a charm.
His hand pulls it closer. He did not choose for it to do so.
Why the stomach, he wonders? That's not lethal, far from lethal. Then again, his heart is not full of blood. The blood he does have, as far as he knows, is just there for appearances.
Maybe it's fear.
He doesn't want to die, he only wants him dead.
He pushes the knife in deeper, but no further than the first bend, and knocks on the wall and calls out, "Hooty!"
"I haven't gone that far back in ages," Eda says.
He picks at his new bandages.
"You should probably stay out. It'll do weird things to your head, if you're there too long. And," she says, "that's Hooty's guts, basically. Which, after you've figured that out, starts to make it feel real weird to explore."
"Like the Mystery Flesh Pit!" Luz says.
"...Please tell me that's not a real thing here."
"It's not," Eda says. "Sounds hellish."
Luz beams and nods wildly. " It is ."
Hunter stares down at the knife in his hands. He wants to throw it into the Boiling Sea.
...Maybe he will.
He'll be fine.