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Post by 0 on Sept 29, 2017 6:27:27 GMT
The void was uncharacteristically colorful that timeless eve.
That empty space of indeterminate density and dimensions, not quite dark, but definitely not bright.
Leaves in fiery hues stood starkly out against a background of black, paper-thin structures that sat still in the vacuum.
Some lay clustered in piles, others arranged in a manner befitting their growth upon trees, yet no such branches could be found.
The most curious thing about the leaves was their actual substance--there being very little of it.
So little, in fact, that the slightest touch might leave them smudged upon one's fingers.
Their surfaces were a grainy, scratched texture that seemed to leave linear holes upon their faces.
The scene, all in all, was rather reminiscent of chalk drawings on a blackboard.
Amongst the scatterings of leaves was an enormous figure whose own body neither reflected nor refracted light--probably because there was none.
As long as least two city buses, and as short as half an atom, it appeared to be a big black caterpillar, holding itself aloft on a series of prolegs in a winding, S-shaped posture.
Its hairless skin was as smooth and soft as velveteen, spattered with a sparse and colorful variety of minuscule specks, like splattered paint, and a decaying maple leaf comprised the latter half of its body.
Its blunt face was topped by three small nubs, and in the midst of the trio rested a silvery lavender slug that was no bigger than a polecat.
Somewhere on the underside of its domed head was a jawless, circular hole for a mouth, bordered by fleshy, tiny mandibles that seemed to be holding a white bar between them.
A stick of sidewalk chalk, the same size as a human, or maybe it was a comet; one tip of it was splashed in an autumnal array, which dribbled bits of itself into the emptiness, leaving behind a drifting, winding trail of drops and dust that gradually disappeared as the caterpillar slowly moved itself along.
The caterpillar gave a pause here and there, swinging its upper body around to draw yet more leaves, although on its next stop it seemed to change direction: it began to sketch the beginnings of a pumpkin patch.
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Administrator
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Loner, Kazetatsu, Kaze
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Post by Loner。 on Sept 29, 2017 11:55:43 GMT
No good. No good.
Search the void as he might it was as if what he was searching for had ceased to exist.
That might be closest to the truth but it wasn't something sem could let himself believe. His very existence was at stake.
The void was just one place he had yet to fully scour.
Desperately he searched but... It wasn't doing him any good.
At a loss he drifted through the void, flickering in and out of physical form and then...
Leaves?
There shouldn't be this much color here.
He began following the trail, smudging bits and pieces of it as he went, hoping it might guide him to something he'd recognize....
Oh...
That was an unusual being.
He didn't think it was the entity he was hoping to see.
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Post by 0 on Sept 29, 2017 18:33:16 GMT
Slowly and swiftly the caterpillar drug its body through the vacuum, drawing out and then coloring in the imperfect ovals and spheres those bright orange squashes were.
A few of them it left holes in, and in others it filled those holes with yellow, like carved jack-o'-lanterns.
It wasn't nearly finished when it noticed that some of its leaves had been smeared across the void, and not by its own design or a misplaced leafy finger.
It drew itself up, watching as something like a brownish smudge came barreling through the emptiness.
A voice arose then, seeming to come from everywhere and nowhere all at once, in a tone that was much befitting of a caterpillar, although what exactly that sounded like was left up in the air.
"You must be lost," it rumbled.
The slug on its head seemed to twitch as it talked.
"The Dreaming is in the other direction."
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Administrator
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Loner, Kazetatsu, Kaze
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Post by Loner。 on Sept 29, 2017 22:34:54 GMT
The singularity's expression flat-lined. To be told that he must be lost and that he ought to be dreaming.
Well at least he knew for sure now this probably wasn't someone who could give him many answers. "If I wanted dreaming I'd take a nap corndog." Sem pointed out.
He didn't think he'd get anywhere with it, but he thought that he would ask. "you seen any beads lingering about?"
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Post by 0 on Sept 29, 2017 23:03:48 GMT
The caterpillar lowered its head as the smudge answered, and continued its work on the pumpkins.
It started to line some up in rows.
"A nap would be nice...," it drawled.
Its leaf "tail" gave a curious sway at the mention of lingering beads.
"Universes are strung up on a line.
They linger in the Void, and it eats through them one by one."
Despite the lack of surfaces for such sonar rebounds, its voice had begun to echo.
There sounded a low noise, below the range of human hearing, submerged beneath the words, the drone with an energy that scattered some of the more distant leaves.
It would boggle the mind.
The slug twitched.
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Loner, Kazetatsu, Kaze
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Post by Loner。 on Sept 29, 2017 23:12:25 GMT
"Sounds fun." Sem noted, able to relate to 'the void'.
"but Can't eat the beads I'm looking for. they're too important."
He put an inconsistently formed finger in his ear. what was that sound? it was annoying but he did not think it was very important.
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Post by 0 on Sept 29, 2017 23:45:19 GMT
There were a few moments of silence, the caterpillar quietly finishing this next row of pumpkins, before beginning on a more clustered set, which it carefully began to place somewhere above (or below, depending on one's perspective) and to the side of the short rows it had just completed.
The sound was very slowly growing louder, and something like a static hiss might soon be picked out amongst it.
The tone was enough to confuse the mind and senses of most things that required sleep, offering a sensation not dissimilar from a constant, unrelieved insomnia, although the effects would only gradually build up.
"You ARE lost," the caterpillar concluded at last.
"All things lost return to the Void, but they do not remain."
Something began to take form within the depths.
It couldn't be looked at, not directly, only glimpsed on the edges of one's visual field.
They were like drops of oily water running down a window, and at each drop's core was a single lidded spectral eye that blinked and stared in all directions, although many slowly began to focus on the paired trio.
Their edges were cloaked in black noise, and if one tried too hard to look back, that silence and its deep tone would only grow louder, more overbearing upon the consciousness.
"Why do you?"
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Loner, Kazetatsu, Kaze
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Post by Loner。 on Sept 30, 2017 0:39:47 GMT
"If that's the case why do you?" Sem asked, figuring that if it applied to him, it ought to also apply to other beings in the area. "I told you I'm looking for beads. I gotta rule out all the options." He added defensively.
He wasn't really listening for the background noise. Irritating as it was, it was still less of a priority for him than his other concerns.
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Post by 0 on Sept 30, 2017 0:59:04 GMT
A few clusters and piles complete, the caterpillar started drawing something else.
The tip of the chalk changed from warms to pale browns, as it began to put up a fence.
Something sputtered around the larva's voice; it could have been a cough, a laugh, or perhaps nothing in particular.
"Not for long," the caterpillar answered, swaying its leafed end.
At some point the noise seemed to subdue itself, remaining at a constant tone instead of rising to drown out the insect's voice, although it came close.
After a moment, however, there was a soft whisper, and its voice began to ring with multiple others as it continued, and slowly the deep tone began to grow louder once more.
The drops began to fall like rain, and the raindrops became denser, harder, washing away the leaves, pushing and smearing the pumpkins away on a wave.
"Make the autumn leaves.
Rake the falling breeze.
Shovel it up, pile them out;
his head was like a sieve."
It began to pour across the caterpillar, draining the colors from its body, the slug on its head convulsing as the waters threatened to shove it from its perch.
The storm intensified at an astonishing rate, roaring with empty wind and black noise, blocking out all other sights and sounds.
Within mere seconds everything the caterpillar was, and everything that it had made, was gone.
When the storm subsided, as quickly as it had arrived, the lavender slug was left behind, still but for the occasional twitch; holes were appearing in its body, like fire under paper, its charred skin drifting away like leaves in the wind, the slug itself disintegrating into nothing.
Whether or not the brownish smudge was still around, or whether he'd been washed away likewise, the slug would emit a high-pitched squeak, and with its last breath say:
"Eep!"
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Loner, Kazetatsu, Kaze
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Post by Loner。 on Sept 30, 2017 17:17:25 GMT
Formless, shapeless, the singularity managed to remain present, floating in the void, as he reconfigured himself to something of a form.
"Aww... they're gone." He lamented without seriousness. Well they hadn't been much help in matters.
But something else was here to have dictated that. Maybe it would know something.
If that sounds it made was its language though, it wouldn't help to ask.
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Post by 0 on Oct 1, 2017 21:41:19 GMT
The Void was empty.
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