SWISHY LOVED LIFE: he loved it so much it hurt.
There was nothing like having hands full of his ground-up selves.
His textures, his grains, his fairy magic had brought him back to his every joy. Everything he touched, everything he’d become, was an enchantment that took him time and effort to one day appreciate. When it came to the straw sprites, his precious Goldies, that moment was now.
G-L-I-T-T-E-R…
The words formed around his hands through the pebbles of the straw sprites, their golden atoms strung together and moving around his palms and fingers like an ornament. The coarse light of himself dragged against his joint folds. His knuckles felt the pleasing scratch and pleasure of sprite dust. He rolled himself in his palm. Swishy gathered the glitter in one mass and poured it from hand to hand, creating gold waterfalls and then catching them in the other hand, watching the dust pool in mounds and dunes.
“What do I do with this?” Swishy, who’d been so certain of the answers moments before, now was lost in the euphoria.
“Shh…” Myst said.
“But what—”
“No, shh.”
“I have ques—”
“Play, my boy, just play.”
Myst’s genie form swam around his head, a gentle smile paired with intense midnight eyes. Her gaze filled with expectation.
Swishy took her expression for the stern reminder that it was. He knew what he was expected to provide.
[Trust].
“Good boy, Swishy, good boy.”
And so the giant boy stepped forward absent-mindedly. His steps were a little less rhythmic. But the clumsiness suited his state of play, especially as his ethereal foot swallowed the budding neighborhoods and trees and bird nest. He stomped through, displacing nothing, but casting the unsuspecting inhabitants in his confusing and terrifying shrouds.
But there was glitter in Swishy’s hands, so that was all he saw, all he felt. The deconstructed Swish sprites turned his colossal hands into constellations. They sifted along his shadows like asteroids, drifting and drifting, casting sparkles upon everything beneath them. Swishy kept pouring sandy waterfalls from hand to hand, rolling them, making waves, slinging stunning curvatures of golden crescents.
GLITTER…what did Myst know about it?
And as Swishy walked, his glitter play progressed through his spirit. Now he’d begun to see Myst’s contribution to the glimmering concept, and what these grains meant to her. Emotions welled into him. Carrying the feelings of others was something that he’d grown accustomed to, the weight of others being ever more familiar as he ate crows, absorbed curses, and allowed Myst’s residence in him. Now it’d happened again as Myst’s feelings came to him from a specific, very special point in time.
The boy felt when Myst received his heart.
Swishy remembered seeing Myst’s soaring celebration when she integrated the heart into her body. It never occurred to him that there were a plethora of words that she had no concept of until those precious moments. The DOUBT of her ability to carry it. The JOY of its suspension in her chest. VALIDATION at the hearts acceptance of her as a vessel. Myst was an intelligent creature, a genie, a shadow mistress of the highest order. But even her scope of life had been suppressed. She never left the altar until she was forced from it. Life was as new to her as it was to Swishy, so revealed the glitter.
Living in the world had a lot of steps, a ton to know and internalize, and the fusion with the straw heart sped Myst through that process.
Words just floated in Myst’s body, covered by her shadows for nobody else to see, but inviting Swishy to read them all.
Swishy decided not to delve into her like this. He’d become versed in the nuances of privacy, of allowing others to keep their lives for themselves even as they opened the curtains and broke down the doors for him.
Another element of [Trust].
His thoughts and duties moved beyond Myst to his curses. The beings in his palms and knuckles that now swam around the gold flakes, behaving like fishes, curling around the bright landmarks. They wanted light and texture. Something beyond shadow. Variety. A full spectrum of a life.
The boy knew more of his importance, especially as he once again traced the progression of Ruby.
Within Ruby’s hand, she gripped Swishy’s heart, and her high-speed flight and careless handling of that core created a flurry of harvestable crumbs.
Every existence wanted a piece of the spillage. Some snitchtalons caught the crumbs from out of the air. Some bees grabbed at the flakes and carried them like pollen. All around, his heart particles were spread through the ecosystem like the most valuable of seeds.
The creatures, though, got a little something different from the heart-crumb lottery.
His heart, naturally, had the full variety of straw.
Oranges, yellows, blacks, and golds.
The corresponding auras burst from the land in the colors that everyone had harvested. Trees and huts and buildings either went bright or full dark depending on the variant. Silhouettes of creatures did the same, succumbing to the wheat infusion of their choice.
Red-orange-honey. Magic, love, and light. Scarecrows were doing their unimportant but fully engrossing work. Birds were flying. Beetles crossed horns atop branches everywhere. Lines of ants collected luminous minerals, also red-orange-honey. Blackness existed, too, those woods and buildings sticking out in gothic silhouettes. The world as Swishy saw it was almost perfect.
Shadows were stunning against the light, and the reverse was true as well, as always. But the balance was threatened. Leakage or explosion was inevitable.
And that, Swishy accepted, was life.
Chaos was just part of the deal. Nothing to shy away from. Swishy stomped along with dreamy confidence, knowing that fate wouldn't offer him a grimy outcome.
Everywhere that carried even a hint of his former heart now became a hotbed of creatures and shadows.
The collective attention of the High Chasm’s eyes went toward wherever they sensed the flakes. No matter the type of creature, they gathered within branches and nests, ponds and creeks, and piles of cast-off leaves and sticks. They also congregated around the constructed kiosks and buildings, taking in the manmade curiosities.
A new shop sign was even erected, the first Swishy had seen in forever. GOLD FURY, a weapon shop. Swishy knew from the wood carving of crossed tridents set over the door. He then noticed a second shop—MYSTERY EATS—which, of course, was made of black everytree lumber, and displayed its selection of shadow-laden everyfruits.
Trey would love that, he joked in his mind.
Myst laughed.
The joyous energy was stored away in the glitter.
A world was being built and the city demanded more to build it, and so the eyes darted into Swishy.
A magic giant—of course he was popular.
Eyes pressured him as he stepped through a rather steep uphill incline, scaling the smooth bark of the tree settlement.
Wind gathered around Swishy’s hands. This was the soaring currents of creatures waiting for him to release the goods. When Swishy looked at his hands and all the flighted critters that perched atop them, he was conflicted. For one, Swishy was a world-builder, perhaps even a world.
But the boy wasn’t actually in said world. He imagined himself as small again, rolling around the world as his straw-to-ground contact grew even more of that nature. He didn’t want to be a seed, but a catalyst, and by the end he’d be someone that got to enjoy the result of said magic. He’d finally gotten here, to the moment where he wanted to benefit, to gain for himself.
And that selfish thought didn’t make him feel any degree of guilt. He deserved it. Swishy was brought face-to-glitter, body-to-world with what he wanted for himself.
He was bodiless, though—because the Possessed Guardian wasn’t his true body, or at least not what he wanted for himself.
“I promise you’ll get a body,” Myst said, reading his thoughts.
“I need it. Even more than a heart. Is that strange for me to say?”
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“No, it’s not. Whatever you think you need for yourself is valid. And essential. And it’s what we’re all fighting for.”
“I see…thank you for that.”
“No, thank you, dear altar.”
“I don’t know where to put all this.”
“Oh, my little straw. You should know the answer to that.”
“I’m overthinking, yeah?”
“As always, dearest straw.”
And with that, Swishy brought his arms apart, posing as a scarecrow. The T-pose sent waves of darkness radiating outward, freezing the creatures in the air. There was no harm, no attack, but they were wary of the sudden shifting of shadows and the power contained in his black aura.
The curses that constructed him were excited, though, because they could read his intentions and were happy to aid in the next movements.
“One…two…”
Clap!
(…)
Gold, everywhere.
A snow, a blizzard, an iridescent flavor of air.
Swishy the giant had smashed his hands together, causing his shadows to whorl together from the force, swirling, creating a wind that ultimately spread the glitter everywhere.
A gold wind ebbed from the hands, and those flakes emitted their auras.
Gold beads took over the skies, drifting with the physics of a snow globe. They never landed. They only drifted along until a creature or curse went and collected them. Soon the snitchtalons and beetles began to bring the beads to their nests. Squirrels in the trees then pillaged those beads for themselves, running off into hollows, or burying them in the ground. Lizards, too, sneakily tongue-snatched the gold and retreated to their burrows.
It didn’t take long for the Goldie remains to disperse throughout The High Chasm.
Even on the distant horizon, Swishy watched wishwillows burst from the ground and skip the sapling stage in total. Adult trees grew into the world, cloud-tappers that came to Swishy’s knees and sky-piercers that reached his chest. Swishy’s surroundings became flush with wishwillows, a number that far outstripped that collection of licorice black everytrees. And even those had merged with the preexisting red-orange-honey.
The trees, then, had a convenient effect, a collateral impact on the progress of Ruby.
Wishwillows grew in Ruby’s path, forcing her to dodge. One of the burgeoning cloud-tappers even knocked her from her broom and caught her in a tangle of branches, an accident that she gracefully escaped by [Adieu]-warping from further harm. Ruby seamlessly shot through the treetop on her broom, raising Swishy’s heart in hand while his dead torso remained on her broom.
Other wishwillows came to impede Ruby, striking her, entangling her, but she wouldn’t be stopped.
And neither would Ruby’s [Midnight] curses that followed her along the ground, weaving around the sudden growths in a sludge wave. Despite the stunning changes to the environment, the greedy curses were following the Ruby crumbs, the promise of Swishy’s enchanted heart.
The heart, though, wasn’t in the greatest shape. As Ruby paraded it up The High Chasm, Swishy tuned into its waning spirit.
Help me, it said.
A jolt of sorrow—and then he kept going.
Now that Swishy’s latest influx of GLITTER spread on the land, he was more in tune with the first heart again. The High Chasm was cheering him on, leading him toward its location.
Go boy go! The land is healing! I AM HEALING! (But still, get me out of here. Bring me back, baby)!
“Baby?”
It’s just an expression.
“Cool, baby Swishy is coming for you!”
Swishy was even walking and clapping at the same time, doing so with great control, with finesse that he never expected to achieve with the giant.
Step-clap, step-clap, step-clap.
Meanwhile, Swishy discovered the secret to his coordination as a marching glitter bomb: Myst. She’d taken ownership of the giant, using it for her own. Her presence poured through every [Possessed Guardian] movement. Naturally, she’d done much better than Swishy ever could.
“Thank you, Mysty!”
“I love hearing those words from you.”
“Gratitude must be new for you but I’ll never forget, I promise.” His head flashed with the prayer faces, people crying before the altar and asking for one thing or another. There was always a human aspect to transactions. But nobody cared for the interaction itself, the connection between a person speaking to a person, only the conditions and exchanges.
“I love your consideration. It’s my favorite thing about you.”
“And I like that you dance so cool with the shadows—especially now that you’re on our side.”
“I can show you another trick, something that’ll help us manage our…problem up there.”
The pair stared at Ruby’s silhouette in the distance, her DEATH-TYRANNY-ENVY strings orbiting her.
“I like glitter. But I love tricks.”
Myst laughed, then changed the direction of the shadow currents, stopping the giant in its tracks. The [Possessed Guardian] was morphing, taking on a form that seemed more to Myst’s liking. His arms and leg and stake all thinned out, receding into the main body and then stretching outward in thin sinews again.
The pumpkin stem stretched out in a sixth tendril.
Two more appendages sprouted from the shoulders, counting as numbers seven and eight.
And then the torso expanded into a bulbous orb, Swishy recognizing that his guardian was now transforming into a giant of Myst’s making, a true reflection of her.
ARACHNID, each of the letters streaming within each of the limbs before finally being absorbed.
“Leave it to me,” Myst said, then taking control over the whole body, Swishy’s consciousness getting sucked from the giant.
Swishy now soared into the darkness. He felt like he was in the altar again. Nothingness was such a beautiful thing in these moments. The void was gracefully withstood when it belonged to him, when the shadows were homegrown and trusted. He’d never forget the cozy sensation of his original darkness. It was better than lunging into a hay bale. It was better than thousands of hugs at once.
Then glitter gathered at the tip of one of the arachnid legs.
Next, his soul was slipped from the giant’s head and drawn into his abyss. He flowed onward until a blinding light encompassed him—his essence was pulled into the glitter node.
Myst raised him with her leg, then created a straw sprite, one last gold one for Swishy to now inhabit. He closed his eyes and eased into the vacuuming of his soul. He indulged in the full-bodied warmth. When the heat settled, Swishy knew he was in a Goldie once again.
The boy fluttered before the [Possessed Guardian]’s eyes, which now was a giant form of spider Myst.
“Go get your body, little one.”
“I don’t know where one would be.”
“Grabbing it from Ruby would be a bit dangerous. But this is a luminous land now, is it not? Surely, there’s plenty for you to farm. How does it feel being the harvest AND the harvester?”
“I feel good about it but I won’t know until it’s done.”
“Good luck, my dear. Say hi to Trey for me.”
”Where did you leave him?”
”Around.”
”Around is very specific.”
”It is. You just don’t see what I see.”
”Fair enough.”
[Trust]. It continued. It grew.
Swishy felt the thumping High Chasm heart, its tremendous power easier to feel now that he’d returned to fairy smallness again.
The boy glanced up at Myst, awed at the monstrous beauty.
He ascended once more toward Ruby, skimming the population of sludge shadows beneath him.
Myst, however, relaxed into the ground, bent at her spidery joints, then jumped.
Shadows everywhere, Myst launching herself at Ruby. She laughed and laughed and laughed.
Ruby, when she noticed, released an echoing laugh as well.
Then, in her grasp, Swishy’s heart emitted a troublesome glow.
And then a blackness burst from it, enlarging her trinity of intents.
(…)
Swishy was a sprite again, one on the verge of another change.
And change he must, now that Ruby had made another move with his other heart. Ruby’s declaration of Heaven was frightening to him. He got the feeling that if she achieved the wouldn’t get to converse with the latest heart like The High Chasm one. His losses from this point forward, seemed like a permanent deal.
He fluttered with all his might.
The sprite sped through the massive and colorful world, the autumnal colors blurring by him. As a small fairy again, the reds were redder, the honeyed tree trunks made Swishy feel like he soared amid a hall of honeycombs. Finally, as he entered one tree hollow and exited through a higher one he was inundated with darkness.
A sudden night.
Ghostliness was everywhere, looming over his tiny body. The auras of curses and the soul signatures of full-bodied creatures appeared as cyan blue and pale gray.
Onward.
The land’s wheat glowed all around him—until entering a total blackwheat zone. A red energy ebbed from the stalks toward Swishy. He shut his mind to them.
“Thank you,” he said, truly meaning it. “But no thanks.”
Still, it seemed like forever before he could find usable straw. There were signs of it, an infrared sense of his preferred stalks barrier’d behind sections of blackwheat.
Whoosh! The smooth flight of the Sling-ravens carrying Trey.
The darkness cleared by degrees from the Sling-raven absorption, feasting on the curses and blackwheat with their feathers.
Evening and its fall hues returned, and Swishy waved at his crew as they collected straw on his behalf. There were wheat clumps clutched within their talons. Trey, too, used his [Zlide] portals to move through the patches of wheat stalks, collecting strands in his jacket. Swishy’s gaze moved from corner to corner, following the blur of movement.
The Sling-ravens and Trey took one path—and competing snitchtalons and curses leaped after them.
But his friends were one step ahead. Always chased but never caught. Swishy stayed true to his path, knowing the crew would meet him with straw.
Along his path, Sling-raven flight and Trey warps occurred to drop their offerings. While the straw drifted down, it levitated in mid-air, waiting for Swishy. He imagined himself as a small boy, diving into the wheat, losing himself in the softness and brightness. His soul and the straw cache shared a magnetic connection. The soul-deep bond started early.
Swishy flew through pile after pile, speeding toward his future body.
But they were in a blackened region—all everytrees, all snitches and curses and the like.
Enemies stalked their progress, darting from hollows and canopies. Random beaks, talons, and scarecrow vines stretched toward them. Everytrees shifted their positioning, attempting to bump Trey and the Sling-ravens. The boys were caught in a moving labyrinth. Straw appeared—then disappeared as the dark trees scuttled to the way with their roots.
Caws, screeches, and creaking woods. Spirits gasped from every corner.
The wind of the noise brushed through Swishy, but he plunged headlong into the wall of sound. The threats, the insults, the declarations of undying devotion to Ruby—Swishy cut through them all.
A body, a body—he wanted nothing more. He was getting bigger. When he couldn’t find the straw, the straw found him instead. Every part of his body became firmer, and that was how he knew.
And his heart? That’d come in time. But at least his High Chasm heart urged him forward.
You can do it! That witch is gone anyway! Get to me while you can!
“I will!”
I can’t hear what your sprite is saying but I feel your effort!
The High Chasm heart thumped harder and the reverb thrummed through Swishy.
Swishy brightened his glow.
And it was a large brightness. He lit the next clearing all on his own. The light-blasted everytrees recoiled in shock, their scarred mouths gaping dumbly.
The boy was bigger now, almost whole.
His sprite days were done. Now he was a proper scarecrow. He spread his arms as such, less of a T-pose and more of waiting for someone to put on his coat.
It wasn’t a coat he waited for.
The Sling-ravens circled overhead, gripping snitchtalons in their hands.
CACAW, CACAW! The scarecrow was serenaded in pain. But it wasn’t the pain he wanted.
It was their bodies.
Feathers drifted down, a tunneling progression, a mingling of his gold pebbles and their oil-slick plumage. And they landed perfectly across his shoulders, sinking into the straw. His weaves wrapped around the ends of the feathers, taking them into his body.
One wing was finished, anciently black.
And a second one came, smooth and bright like Clayhearth gold.
He was still headless, though, as he’d left his gourd in Myst’s commandeered guardian. Swishy settled for a pumpkin-shaped fog, embracing another iteration of hellish aesthetic.
Aside from headless, he was heartless too.
A presence knotted in his chest. The city wanted a heart machine.
Now they got it.
Swishy reached inside his chest and poked at his newest little friend.