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IT SHOULD'VE BEEN FINE. HE'D BEEN HEARTLESS BEFORE.
But this felt differently as the hollow within now began to feel...sore(?). His soul sharpened into the same jagged frequency of those vexing peeves, and that realization further served to rile him. I'm not a peeve, I'm just a Swish...
The emptiness was familiar—with nothing to lose, nothing to miss. But the scarecrow now wanted to scream. In his newfound heartlessness, Swishy grew sensitive—much more sensitive than he ever remembered being. Swishy's peeved soul keyed into the memory-searing magic of Trey's pocketed flashcards, his essence thumbing through the most applicable, aggravating ones: DISGUST. DISGRACE. AGITATION. ENNUI.
It didn't help that Ruby trumpeted his loss. Everyone, absolutely everyone, had to know.
Even during The Curseworks' quaking metamorphosis, Ruby mobilized her shadowclaw lieutenants: she sent one up to the zeppelin pilot to update the signage with the news; she sent others to the homes of her sorcerers to study the magical properties of the emerging wheat; she tossed her phone to an obvious sugar-wraith—which used its dexterous talons to film and post brief video clips of cloud-tapper and sky-piercer birth onto the LITTLE-GEM_BIG-HEART page, the alerts of which lit up Trey's phone.
And then Ruby remembered to send the boys on their way, walking them to the front door. "Thank you, Swishy!" She motioned to smooth his head but Swishy instinctively ducked it—flesh to straw was a no-no. He'd had enough of the soul connection, the visions of ruthlessness inside her, and he didn't even want to greet the friendly ancestors drifting in her abyss. Add in the fact that he'd had enough of her, too, as a person. He wouldn't touch her even if he was wrapped in a tarp and stuffed inside a suit of armor.
"Oh..." Ruby smirked, her red lip slashing upwards in bladed drama. "How heartless of you."
Heartless...inside Swishy trembled. The blue flames of his eyes morphed into twin tornados. Turbulence, he was nothing but turbulence. And there were several cards whose letters were aglow within Trey's pocket, but his friend clutched the deck tightly, firmly resisting the activation of those spells—whatever they were. Swishy understood two things: firstly, that the spells were bad, curses perhaps. And second—now wasn't the time for curses, but the time to go home.
Swishy glanced at Trey, and Trey nodded slightly.
Ruby's sickle-shaped smirk relaxed slightly, ever so slightly, before she held out a double-knotted Bane-Bread Bakery bag to Trey. "Here you go, Mr. Glizzy. Your to-go plate."
"Thanks," Trey said, grabbing the bag.
"And Trey."
"Yes, Ruby?"
"Don't fear the magic. Clayhearth may be hands-off. But in Straw City, we handle it."
Trey's jaw tightened at the comment but immediately took the advice. Swishy's soul traced itself over the active letters in Trey's pocket: PATIENCE.
"Of course, Ruby." Trey summoned a smile. "Understood!"
"Okay, good night."
Trey and Swishy stepped through the front door—and a wind eased it shut.
(...)
Outside, the zeppelin drifted around town with tremendous LED lettering across the sky, blinding signage illuminating the night: SWISHY SEED SAVES THE DAY.
The luminous declaration incensed Swishy.
He spun; he threw straw; he rolled on the floor; he jumped and jumped and jumped and jumped. The indignity of it, the insult, the betrayal. He missed his heart but didn't know why; he didn't know what it meant to have heart, to go forth with heart. All he knew is that he'd grown it inside him. It was precious. It was his. Swishy punched walls and kicked crates—though thankfully the straw bristles didn't make much noise, even in the night.
"There, there, Swish," Trey consoled. "Let it out, my guy. Let it out."
Swishy gathered himself. The soul in his discarded straw began to condense, drawing the brush back into the main body, and reconstituting his scarecrow form. The outburst calmed him—while the straw recovery impressed him. Wow…Swishy stared at his surprisingly perfect hand. He punched the wall again and watched the wheat briefly drift. His soul extended from his hand in thin blue vines, catching and absorbing and re-weaving back to form.
“Cool trick,” Trey said.
“What is this body?”
“A blessing.”
Blessing. Another word unknown to Swishy, but the sound of it soothed him.
As the pair traveled to Trey's apartment near the Straw City entrance, Swishy had broken the situation down, explaining with surprising clarity. The calm left him as he relived the Ruby incident. He flailed his arms about in scarecrow'd shock and terror about the Stormcellar, the sugar-wraiths, the shadowclaws, the bird-souls. Swishy's straw scraps flung about every which way, flying from his body then yo-yo-ing back to him, his desperately swished-out exclamations hitting home with Trey.
During the explanation, Swishy's amorphous blue eyes absorbed the sight of his frazzled, curse-shaken friend. Trey whispered Fuck over and over and over and over again, and though Swishy wasn't sure about the literal mechanics of the phrase, he related to Trey's quickened pace and hardened jaw. Trey brought a straw-chew to his mouth, then discarded it. Fear. Swishy didn't need a card to tell him. The dark was fraught with trepidation, horror, dismay. Swishy was naturally talented at reading the bad feelings, the uncertain ones.
"Wow, so you're a flap-flap for real..." Trey’s mouth hung open. Swishy tried to press it closed but the Clayborne’s jaw remained—understandably—unhinged.
"But I can't fly," Swishy continued, "Can you teach me?"
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"Sorry, Swish. I'm more of a walker."
"I mean teach me with the cards.” Swishy hopefully flapped his arms.
"The card spell gives knowledge about things. They’re the fastest way to give you expertise and mastery for concepts. But these spells don’t change your anatomy. You can’t grow wings or acquire levitation with anything I have in the deck."
"Ah, yes..." Swishy hung his head and slumped his shoulders. The bird-soul in him whimpered. He could feel its essence curl and shrink. The more time he'd spent in the light, the more he'd come to realize he lacked.
But there was no time to sulk—no space, no silence, no solitude in which to work out the troubles of his soul.
Ruby's will, her magic and influence and conjured adoration, arrowed through the pathways and windows of the city in precise shadowclaw flight. Rubella Castór demanded that the resting city rise. In no time at all, yellowed lights blazed against the inside of every window, and the cozy human shadows roused themselves into their devoted wakefulness.
Like flipping a switch, the night came alive.
The blimp returned, an enormous brightly lit stalker. The message now read: SWISHY IS THE SAVIOR. SCARECROW SEED FOR ALL.
The citizens emerged from their front doors: they stared into their phone screens; they took pictures of the drifting zeppelin; they carefully tracked the shadowclaws; and they all, inevitably, craned their necks into the distant northern end of Straw City—absorbing, processing, and quickly understanding the transformed version of The Curseworks.
Swishy's name began to fill the streets. Swishy! Swish-God! Swish-Almighty! Straw Savior Swish!
The scarecrow wasn't prepared for the level of devotion and venerable attention his namesake garnered. The adoration was Ruby's game—not his. And while he vaguely understood that his power of proliferation was unique, a true anomaly in the world of light, he dragged his feet in deep worry. His original home in darkness had comforted him. The darkness never addressed him or asked anything of him. But now he was wanted. Desired. Targeted. His own name now made his straw curl.
Trey crammed Swishy's bulbous pumpkin head into the hood of his North Face, then tied a scarf around his face, before they proceeded onwards.
In the distance, The Curseworks—now elevated from Swishy's heart-fed tree roots—towered as the indisputable Straw City landmark. It drew eyes from any location, looming over the soul of the city. The infant forest, monstrously huge, wielded scraggly tree branches which extended in possessive, covetous claws. The sky was tinged blue in the residential bazaar as a scarred, ancient midnight corrupted the ominous, spellcaster plaza. The roots, those rough-hewn and bulging tendrils, protruded out of the ground with purpose, serving as both a foundation for the pavement and buildings—but also as a walkway, a spiraling ramp, dark and winding, sinuous and seductive.
Along each side of the formidable woodworks stood lofty stalks of orangey wheat which became yellowed wheat, and yellowed wheat which became golden, and the gold-straw deepening starkly towards the highest point, THE LAST STRAW, into lush groupings of a mysterious blackwheat.
The blackwheat shimmered dreadfully, scaring Swishy. He didn't know what it was but had the good sense to recognize its fiendishness. The fears, the reservations, and the heart-harvesting trauma hardened within his chest. These feelings vibrated through his entire body, jolting him, enraging him. And he knew, or feared at least, that these were the types of feelings creating the blackwheat which so decorated the accursed plaza. He loved creating gold-straw but hated his capacity for blackwheat, too, of prime curse-sustaining habitat.
"That came from me... didn't it?"
"We are all things, young Swish." Trey gazed into his eyes, his stare like a hug on the soul. "We all got shadows, homie. Inside, we’re bottomless. Inside, you never know what you’re dealing with in there. But I think I have something that might help you." He drew a card: SHAME. "See this?"
Swishy nodded.
Trey ripped the card in pieces and tossed the remnants up, its sparkling essence raining down on Swishy, the glimmering SHAME diffusing, dispersing, gradually shrinking on its way down. It wasn't dust. It wasn't air. It wasn't anything.
Swishy understood but didn't feel much better. Still, he was encouraged.
Trey shook his shoulder, snatching his focus from the murkiness of his mind. "A wise man once said, a snake'll hang itself with its own rope. Or I guess in your case, the scarecrow loses itself in its own haystack."
"Do you mean...calm down?"
"Exactly! You're the sharpest scarecrow I’ve ever met!"
"So whose the wise snake expert?"
"MF Doom—The Metal-Face—a legendary poet from Clayhearth. He always wore a steel mask. When he died, we buried him in a gold one. The gold back home is so bright; it glows like the sun. We have diamonds and sapphires and platinum—we have every type of gem you can imagine—but gold shines against the Clayborne pigment. Gold is my people's blessing, and golden burial rites is the highest honor you can dream of."
Swishy ruminated on Trey's words, the way the Clayborne wanted each other to shine, the way they adorned the vessel and hopefully the soul—in gold. Everything sounded so kind, so magnificent, and it was no wonder that Swishy acquired a heart after a single day with Trey. "That's such a pretty way to return to the dark."
CACAW! A flurry of shadowclaw screeches scraped against the pair's bubble of peace. From all the way in The Curseworks, it was clear the sugar-wraiths either heard, knew, or felt Swishy's resolve—likely all of the above. But Swishy didn't flinch or blink or shiver or shrink. He stood tall—with no T-pose. He could feel the night upon him like a blanket, clinging to him, steadying him. Swishy glowered at the aerial crime scene, the flock of feather thieves imperfectly flying.
He faced the shadowclaw fiends with his full personhood, a confusing type of personhood, but formidable and strong. "I wish I was a shadowclaw again. I'd fly all over the world, spreading good in lost feathers."
"That's heavenly, my guy"
"I wish you could fly with me."
"Unfortunately, I can’t. Besides, the grounded life is more for me. I’m meant to stomp. I’m meant to journey across God’s great cobblestones." He stomped his foot twice. The Timb clomps were like music to Swishy’s soul.
Swishy held out his fist; Trey dapped him up.
"Yes..." Swishy began, resolutely, the decision-making obvious in his swift, compact headshakes. "I'm going to become a shadowclaw again. Having a heart feels good...but it's dangerous. The flap-flapping, though...maybe that's who I am."
"If that's who you are, then that's what we'll make sure you'll be."
“Do you think Ruby will let me go back? She transformed me the first time. Maybe she can put me back. What do you think?”
Trey’s expression darkened and Swishy wanted to know the thoughts behind it. He stared into Trey’s lowered brow, wishing he could stare inside. And Swishy could—if he touched him. He fidgeted with his mittens, thinking about removing them, sneaking a straw-to-flesh touch. But something stopped him. He liked that Trey spoke to him, that Trey was honest with him, that Trey was the best brother he could ever have. Swishy was troubled by the idea of invading his friend’s memories. He pulled his mittens as high on his wrist as they would go, and waited for Trey’s response.
”No,” Trey finally said. “She’s not going to put you back. She’ll want you—as you are now—to serve her. Will you be okay with that?”
”I don’t know…maybe I can try this for a little. If I work with her, maybe she’ll have a change of heart.” Swishy wanted to believe in Ruby—or rather, he wanted to believe in a non-confrontational path to flight.
”If you’re willing to try, then I’m down with that. But what if she says no?”
“She won’t say no.”
“So you believe in Ruby that much?” Trey arched his eyebrow, perplexed.
“I believe in me to convince her. I can do this. It might be hard but I’ll make her turn me back.”
Trey smiled. “That’s right. Nothing comes easy. As long as you don’t quit, you’ll make something happen.”
The scarecrow's soul tuned into a card activating in Trey's pocket, a mighty one. The concealed lettering glowed vibrantly, guiding Swishy's soul around the shape of DETERMINATION. Trey smirked, then pulled out—not the card—but his apartment keys. "Right down the block! We made it!"
Swishy turned a final time towards the Curseworks—its greedy roots, its atrocious blackwheat—with an unwavering soul. The city folks amplified their Swishy praise as well. The city was built anew, and though no one understood the changes, the frenzied revelry possessed the locals. Swish-Almighty! Straw Savior Swish!
The scarecrow dulled the refrain, locating his damaged willpower.
He closely followed Trey into the apartment, his smoldering blue optics gracefully forming into the shape of wings.