Time passed. Birds flocked to the altar.
Their feathers shone in purple iridescence under the sunlight, and in shimmering indigo under the moon.
Some birds settled upon the now-growing woods. Others perched upon Myst, asking for things, small favors like different colored leaves, claiming that variety was the spice of autumn. The woman didn’t know what autumn was but it was a pretty-sounding name, and she was confident that she’d collected the appropriate visions in her endless, abyss-woven dreams. A creek was asked for too, running water that trickled pleasantly during the sleeping hours but reliably ran during wakeful times. She did them one better and gave them a little stream, a tiny pond, and shadowy tadpoles that didn’t grow into anything but were fun to look at.
Yes! The birds celebrated as they smashed their faces into the water, dragging their faces back and forth across the stream bed’s pebbles and gristle. We don’t have to be so dried out anymore!
“Dehydrated?” Myst asked, unsure as to why she knew the word. Cearth seemed to provide her with these innate gifts as she needed them.
De-what? I don’t know why you need such a big word for dried-out. It’s self-explanatory. But we’ll forgive you for getting all smart on us because, guess what, thanks to you we’re DRINKING, baby!
They chirped, they rejoiced, and they cawed softly as the water slid from the tops of their shoulders down to the curved tips of their wings.
The flock dripped in opulence. Their drip was victorious and immaculate, to say the least.
Myst, however, still felt like dried-out was an unusual concept for a living being. She knew what dehydration was and had provided the shadowclaws a creek with which to protect themselves from such an unpleasant fate. Without water, their iridescent feathers flattened into a banal dark gray, no colors shifting with the light angle, just dead plumage. Beauty, Myst decided, required moisture. And she’d allow the birds to enjoy the moisture—even if they currently were too ignorant to know a simple word like dehydration.
“Drink up, be smooth, be shimmery.”
We just don’t want to be thirsty.
“Do you think a girl like me would understand that? Now drink up, my little glitter-feather.”
You don’t have to tell us twice.
Myst projected the feeling of a smile, though she hadn’t yet figured out how to make that visible. She decided that her care for the birds through the steady allocation of the Cearth’s energy was good enough.
And it was.
Another small pleasantry to Myst’s inactions with the flock was that they often wanted simple conversation from her. The shadowclaw chicks just chirped their delight at her dancing smokiness while the other more mature birds asked her where she nested, how she’d infiltrated the cross-shaped stone, and if she was comfortable inside of all that hardness.
“These tactile things you speak of don’t apply to the shadows. And I like to think I’m better for it”
So hard isn’t hard and soft isn’t soft?
“Those things exist but they don’t matter to me.”
You should try softness. You don’t know what you’re missing.
“That’s sweet of you all to think about me but don’t you think I have everything I need? I’m just a girl by the shadow of the creek. Am I truly one to be pitied?”
I guess not but you really should think about what I said. The birds adjusted their feet within their nest and perched downward, pleasingly sighed, and settled into a doze. A softness, a soft ANYTHING, is good stuff.
“When that means something to my…my essence, I suppose, I’ll try it out.”
The shadowclaws were asleep, a midday rest. Not that time mattered to them either, but they loved speaking about how the sun warmed their feathers, and how under certain weather they felt as if they were in the egg again. Eggs, too, were another concept that was foreign to Myst. She hadn’t remembered any spectacle of her own birth—if she could even call it that—but cracking through an embryotic shell didn’t exactly appeal to her ego. It was distinctly unsexy.
Living amongst the shadowclaws was the only warmth she needed. It was a cozy, cozy time.
And, as a general rule, they thanked her. Shadowclaws, on the whole, were a gracious and gentle bunch. The first bird turned out to be pretty kind, after all, and he’d only panicked about the sudden and sweeping effect of The Curse. It was quite the little craftsman, too, creating multiple nests for new arrivals that he didn’t yet know were coming. He was prepared for others to arrive, though, thoughtful at heart.
Ah, a heart.
Myst liked to stare inside the birds and watch their acorn-sized organ beat with fervor and regularity. A curious thing through which its blood—and sometimes magic—pumped and circulated.
Without noticing this herself, she spent an increasing amount of time looking after her flighted friends, and less time devoted to the restful abyss. Not that time mattered to her, and not that she possessed any meaningful measure of it as well. But time was being consumed. Her priorities and attention were shifting.
Myst was doing less dreaming in the abyss and more living in the surface realm.
It was a welcome change. An amusing one.
The surface world in its reconstruction and regrowth, at least around the altar area, was a gorgeous place. The changes were fast and beautiful and incredible. Myst was easily and constantly entertained by her evolving little ecosystem.
The flock lived well and grew in population. Sometimes they’d acquired migrating passersby that happened upon one of the oases, while most other times their numbers increased from laying and cultivating their so-called eggs.
The eggs were black and shiny. They gleamed like ovoid jewels that slid from the shadowclaws’ rears, items that the flock developed the habit of leaving at the base of the cross-shaped altar. Everyone collected their favorite leaves and pieces of brush from the trees and created ground-level nests for all the birds. During these moments of high activity, Myst noticed another concept fill their bodies. PROTECTION poofed from the birds with every caring gesture: adjusting the nests, positioning the egg, and sleeping atop them in shifts.
In those moments when there wasn’t a literal body making contact with the black eggs, they breathed out little prayers asking the growing being inside to please be okay. Stay safe. Stay warm. Rest and grow, precious one.
Myst heard these requests louder than any shout even though they were cawing under their breaths, a feeling of magic and intensity that she recognized was a form of petitioning the Cearth, currying its favor for the defensive eggs.
The girl of shadow urged herself toward the eggs as a thin trail of smoke but once she reached for them, an invisible barrier blocked her—redirecting her travel upward into the sky. There was no resistance noted as she dipped back down at the egg—but again, she simply couldn’t touch the egg.
The egg’s mother glided overhead with speed and purpose, a single tail feather jettisoning from its flight, drifting downward in pendulous arcs until landing upon the altar.
A portal opened, absorbing the feather, then closed.
Right then, a purple aura surrounded Myst, one that allowed her to break through the non-abrasive barrier and curl her smokiness around the egg. She ran her vapors across its surface, touching it for real, feeling nothing upon her friction point while an innate sense of relief filled her anyway. When the mother bird returned, after about five seconds of Myst’s protection, she sat upon the egg and settled into a nap.
Myst’s contact with the egg was broken again—she was dismissed, magically.
When she returned to the abyss to ruminate over what had transpired, to her first experience of a limit to her interaction with the world, she noticed that amid her pocket of shadow lay a strange object. She reached for it, grabbing it.
And though she couldn’t feel she knew two things: that this was a feather. And that the feather, by shadowclaw standards, was incredibly soft.
“Soft, huh?” Myst whispered, twisting the feather in her essence.
(…)
Myst had done a lot of small favors for the flock that had resulted in the restoration of the surrounding woods.
A tree here, a nest there, a place to cultivate mushrooms and grubs and other delectable bird treats to eat—and more watering holes, more creeks, more of that moisture that the birds and Myst by her admission coveted so much.
They loved the shadow girl in exchange.
She didn’t know what she would do with all this LOVE, but the spell of it was as close to tangible as an entity like her could ever hope to conceive. The LOVE came in the form of conversation, compliments, drops of water, and feathers. So many feathers. They had to be good ones, too, fresh and plucked, not anything raggedy that was shed from an injury or a molting.
Myst more or less figured out the central tenet of petitioning her favors: she was required to collect a cost. And it wasn’t a cost that she decided on her own, but one that Cearth deemed as acceptable. But judging from the entire forestry that now sprouted from nowhere, Myst possessed a whole lot of discretion when it came to moderating costs and reducing them for the local animals.
Feathers for a creek? Even an immaterial girl like her knew that the birds were getting a steal.
LOVE for a home? Well, maybe Myst received a better part of the deal than she originally thought. It was all a matter of perspective. All a matter of feeling, or exposure to such a thing.
She wondered briefly what it’d be like to join the flock. She wouldn’t fit in with them in the purest sense. Myst hadn’t hurt or gotten sick or weakened. She hadn’t grown thin. For some of the arriving birds, their ribcages were visible beneath their plumage. The feathers themselves were dull and grayed at the tips, and stiff, too, being unable to blow about from the caress of the wind. She, as of yet, hadn’t experienced anything that made her consciousness less worth it.
Another aspect of shadow dwelling that she now considered: Myst, technically, had perfect health.
Whenever a bird died, she was confused. But her first encounter with the negative intents was educational. DECAY, ROT, SICKNESS, FATIGUE—these were concepts that clung to the oldest and sickest of the shadowclaws. And the shadowclaws, wise to the usage of the altar, at least for its small matters of survival, often visited when they were in a poor or aged state.
Another intent bloomed within the weakening hearts of unhealthy birds: SACRIFICE.
The scarecrow portal opened a darkness within its rockface, one which the bird walked or glided into—whatever one their body was capable of—and disappeared.
In went a bird and out went the appropriate reward: some instantly sprouting berries, a restored canopy of leaves, stream water that was magically filtered and cleansed of build-up.
And straw. Once the flock had no more need of woods, not really needing the most expansive domain to exist in, Myst’s Cearth-granted powers were directed toward the plains. There was a great dryness over the closed-up land that now corrected itself in the form of wheat fields. The crop yield in the plains shimmered and drew the birds to them. The shadowclaws didn’t have to be told twice—or even once—to harvest the loveliness. The yellow stalks were gorgeous. And in the much-favored mid-afternoon light, they cast a golden resplendence that summoned the flock to its fields.
Even the sickly forgot the idea of SACRIFICE and took what they thought would be a final stroll around their home—until nibbling on a straw chew and relaxing. Truly relaxing. Their worries and anxieties were gone. Minor injuries were also treated. And in some cases, they healed altogether.
The flock noticed these blessings and wondered if there was more to pay. They gazed back at the scarecrow altar and Myst looked back at them.
The girl was curious.
But the flock was worried. They trembled; they clicked their beaks; they cawed sorrowfully at an unsaid something.
“Are you worried about the cost?”
We are.
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“The Cearth wants to be a healthy place, full of wheat. These gifts are more for itself than for you—but you’re welcome to do what you like with the bounty.”
Such a relief. Thank you, thank you!
“I’ve done nothing, no worries about that.”
You’ve done everything. Everything.
“I’ll be a girl, and you’ll be birds. This is how things are supposed to be as far as I know them.”
With that the birds set about their harvest.
But Myst noticed another distant sight. A flock of another kind, no type of birds at all. Sun-tanned folks. No wings. Two legs. Dozens of adults and a grouping of children, all following one child.
A girl child, a little dirty, no doubt worse for wear. She’d come a long way.
Personhood, Myst instantly decided, was ugly first, and fragile second.
Myst floated above the altar and stared across the plains at the humans, harvesting, nibbling on the straw, rubbing its texture within their fingers. Her shadows flared, greeting the unfortunate creatures. She didn’t expect a response, though, as it was rare for her to be truly perceived. She assumed she was space, air, abyss.
Everything—and also nothing.
But the girl child stared back—not at the formidable altar—but at Myst herself.
Myst studied the black chasms in the girl’s eyes. She couldn’t identify the familiarity but sensed that something in this child made her kin.
The wind whistled, reminding Myst of her beloved shadowclaws.
How strange…
(…)
The girl child came for a visit.
It didn’t take long.
The humans had built thatch-roofed homes and small campfires. They worked around the clock, weaving and harvesting, and constructing a functional village. Myst was once more reminded of how weak the organic creatures were compared to an entity like herself. It took teams, hours, and sustenance to see a simple home to completion.
For warmth, the men also teamed up, using stone hatchets to cut down saplings and strip them down into kindling.
After all these efforts, they were tired. Everyone in the village was relatively thin but they seemed to be feeding themselves. They brought their own stores of food. Bananas, mangos, berries, rice. There were plenty of things that Myst hadn’t seen with her functional sight before but that she’d already conceived of within her imagination.
She began to think that maybe she was less imaginative than she’d originally thought. Maybe her dreams were being guided or controlled by the Cearth?
Fortunately, she didn’t possess the physical or spiritual means to experience worry.
The woman watched the settlement develop in a slow, wretchedly human way.
They couldn’t even fly like the birds. What good were they?
Especially because the village had its own flock of shadowclaws. They were twice the size of the ones in Myst’s flock. Something wasn’t quite right about them because the souls in those bird vessels didn’t match the usual shape, movement, or frequency that she expected of a shadowclaw. Their breath and tempo and instincts matched more with the human villagers than they did with any bird Myst had ever known.
Something was amiss. She sensed the presence of magic throughout the village, though there were no active spells at play. She just had a funny feeling that magic had happened, that their jumbo shadowclaws had been tampered with.
Interesting, interesting, interesting…
And the village’s girl leader thought the same about Myst: interesting. She always tracked the entity with her eyes, never fixating on the altar. She appeared keener on the shadowdeep than any other surface creature that Myst had met before.
The girl came to the altar alone.
She walked with intensity and intention. The black pools of her eyes absorbed everything that dared gaze into them. Myst’s flock was scared of this young girl whom the villagers affectionately called Ruby.
With the flock dispersed, flying off toward their own ends.
“Where're you going?” Myst called after her friends.
Water break!
“There’s water in the stream right there, you know?” Myst teased. She was learning to play upon the small fears and weaknesses of her winged community.
There’s water here, yeah. But there’s other water too! So we’ll be drinking from, you know, the other water. Thank you, Myst!!!
“You’re welcome, hehe…”
Ruby stood before the altar. After the village had settled into its rhythm, work habits, and restful recovery of campfires and twice-daily meals, the girl gained a little weight from when Myst first noticed her across the plains. She wasn’t as pale. Still, small though. Still a bit dried-out as the shadowclaws insisted on calling it.
But the girl was a decent picture of health.
Those eyes, though—who told a young child to be so serious, so determined?
Confident eyes. A magical wind around her body. The shadow at her feet wavered as if it were alive. Perhaps, it was—just like Myst. But Myst hadn’t seen such a thing from a creature before so she dismissed it.
“Cearth will tell me how to handle this one…” she said under her breath. Ruby wouldn’t hear her but Myst developed the habit from the birds.
“I have a gift,” Ruby declared.
“Well, well, right down to business, huh?”
“I’ll give and you tell me what I get.”
“Hi, Hello, How are you are highly valued and honorable words, you know.”
But a power surged from the abyss in a geyser and poured into the scarecrow altar. A dark aura overflowed from the stone and flowered outward and upward, becoming a tree-shaped, tree-sized portal. Myst had never seen the Cearth open so enthusiastically.
The shadow girl stared at the child who upon a glance didn’t have anything to offer. But everybody had something to offer. If Cearth were taking feathers, what would they take from this much more prominent creature? Ruby produced a deck of cards from her dress pocket.
The girl drew a card and tossed it into the wind. As the card rode the current, it disintegrated into gold particles and revealed a glowing CURIOSITY. Myst noticed the strangeness of the peaceable zephyr and the souls inside, far more bird-like than Ruby’s actual birds. The ethereal arithmetic was slightly confusing but Myst was sure she’d figure it out. For now, she just loved the way the breezes curled blissfully through the sparkling letters.
Gradually, the curious dust drifted toward the altar, coaxing the breeze after it. And ever the obedient wind, it followed the CURIOSITY spell into the dark portal. The whistling winds were silenced as the realm drew shut.
Ruby waited, her abyssal eyes taking in every dull sight.
Myst wanted to know the result, too, ready to see what reward the Cearth doled out for this special, bird-infused breeze. The shadow girl didn’t wait—she didn’t have to.
Into the altar, she went.
Myst swam after the shadowclaw souls masquerading as wind element and studied their transformation. Something in her really wanted to see the moment the payment was subsumed into the dark. Would Myst be able to detect it? Could she access that dimensional trickery that stored away the items given to the altar?
This interaction told Myst that there was a lot she didn’t know about her own home, and her boundaries as an altar broker.
One soul disappeared—she watched its cyan outline flare and then vanish, darkness overtaking it. Here it is, it’s happening, the souls are going away! A flock member was taken every couple of seconds, the altar taking its sweet time in savoring the meal that Ruby had delivered.
Myst wound through the abyss in pursuit of those blue comet trails the souls left in their wake. The further they progressed, the faster they went—but Myst kept up, naturally, and past a certain point she was sure that she’d switched from swimming to outright teleportation. Nothing could keep away from her.
There was one soul left. It abandoned its wind-form and was purely a bird now. It flapped with the vigor of a prey animal, speeding after the CURIOSITY glitter. The glow of the spell was burning away, its golds dimming to mustard yellow and the mustard dimming to a burnt sienna. And the colors kept deepening into forms that were more readily obscured by the dark.
But the bird was determined. It’d sensed that it was all soul and no body, its instincts strong, its awareness keen on the fact that the standard trappings of muscle fatigue no longer bound it.
And Myst zoomed right after the curious little fellow.
The dying glitter, the persistent bird soul, and the enamored shadow girl had formed a chain of joy the likes of which the shadowdeep had ever seen.
And then the bird caught the glitter. It became apparent when the speckled dust integrated into the face and wings of the bird-shape. The blue avian soul flared in the loveliest brightness that Myst hadn’t even conceived in her vast and ceaseless imaginings.
The blue soul flamed out.
Bye-bye birdie, Myst smiled, stopping in her tracks, drifting in the remnant atoms of soul. She was a lone vapor submerged in the depths, catching her breath. She was consumed by the concept of feeling exhilaration in such a form. The girl took a moment to collect herself.
It should’ve been clear to Myst in that moment.
She should’ve known that she’d see Swishy again. Such a thing was destined. Exposure to his energy was something she craved. Now that Cearth had taken the boy—or rather, offered that brilliant bird refuge in the shadowdeep—she’d find him again.
Myst was gleeful, so gleeful. She laughed alone. She filled the silence with her rich cadence. The realm was emptier than usual. Even the resident curses had kept their usual whining to themselves. The girl hadn’t considered that was the original reason she rushed there in the first place: to watch Cearth fulfill its end of the contract.
A bright speck.
Then an orb.
And soon more.
Tan and gold light bloomed into an all-consuming flare, blasting the realm. Myst shrunk from its power and was pushed outward.
Oh wow, I’m being carried. I’ve never been…touched like this before. The Cearth is all-powerful, my oh my…
Myst relaxed in the luminous wave and accepted the path of the current which, through its various curves and loops, shot her outward from the portal entrance back into the surface world. She was indistinguishable from the rest of the arcane smoke effects that the altar exuded.
The tannish-gold light beam that blasted Myst had taken another form, solidifying into a rain of seeds.
Ruby was pelted within the downpour of wheat seeds. She held the hem of her dress upward, catching whatever she could—though no negligible amount landed within her bird’s nest of hair.
The child stared into the sky at Myst. “Nice wings,” she said.
Myst checked her own body—oh wow, I have a body—and noticed that she, indeed, was flapping. She’d taken the form of a shadowclaw, one of the flock, taking after her newfound shadowdeep friend.
Seeds were catching upon Myst’s wings. There was weight, feeling, and…itchiness. “Cheeky child,” was all Myst said.
“I’ll be back, pretty bird. I have to take these back.” Ruby took off into a jog, her bare feet kicking up seeds.
“Bye.” Myst perched atop the altar. The midday sun was the kind the shadowclaws liked best. She closed her eyes and rested in the heat. But after the excitement of the last moments wore off, the sun phased through her. Even the seeds upon her body just fell to the ground, nothing physical to hold them up.
The girl returned to her shadow form.
And how she felt about that, she didn’t know.
(…)
Myst missed the carefree days. They’d existed. She didn’t know how much of it she had—and that was the beauty of it.
She never considered time. She never considered length or perceived evanescence. She mostly missed her ignorance to the length of joy, to the inevitability of a decline.
Days, seconds, hours. Timeframes, generally, were an oppression to her. The one that most rankled her was the concept of now. In the altar-less world, she had no protection from the demands of the moment. And she sensed that the next ‘now’ moment was coming.
Emi-Emilio-Eren-Emily continued to unlock knowledge. Through [Brainstorm] they searched through all the information they had already known—or things that they’d seen but hadn’t devoted the energy to notice. [Brainstorm] was not a simple thinking spell, but a type of photographic recall technique where they now could stare at all their memory pages. Rewind, collect, examine, synthesize—each E-sibling chose a role and stuck to it.
Myst, Myst, Myst, Myst…
She could tell what they were looking at. They’d given up on examining the humans. They focused their search on power. All the E-squad now extracted her memory sheets containing spells, shadows, Ruby, and the altar.
Failing to pinpoint a single entity or location for Myst, they made the wise assumption when it came to all things powerful—that the power existed everywhere.
Myst was like them—but more.
More because they’d been defeated but Myst, as they were wise to assume, hadn’t tasted a defeat yet. She was unreachable, untouchable, undefeatable.
What could be so great that they were defeated? What could possibly threaten their queen Ruby?
Swishy’s shadows reached for the E-squad. The heart had a grip on the paper dolls, crumpling their bodies through a corrosive effect. The E-silhouettes were becoming smoke. They thinned into vapor. Soon, they’d become air, windswept by Swishy’s unique cardiac function.
It was over. Myst could breathe again—she noticed the breathlessness, the nervousness she’d learned from humans. Feelings. That dreadful curse. Even with the threat against her near squelched, she felt worse than ever.
A spell gathered in her hands as she envisioned the powerful dark heart inside of Swishy. A boost, a little one, that’s all she wanted to offer to the boy—and his curses. Just one kindness.
A tight feeling bound her spellcraft, a spiritual grip enforced upon her wrist that relaxed her phantom fingers.
Her collected hex was undone, the energy spiraling back into her essence.
Cearth had said No.
I’ve been naughty for all this time and this is where we’re drawing the line? I’m just trying to help Swishy. Please, Cearth, allow me to feed the birds. I’ve always fed the birds, a worthy, planet-approved hobby, yes?
Cearth tightened its grip, then patted her on the head, a light and loving scold.
Her heart raced.
The woman was frozen in fear, petrified in a state of stifled magic.
She thought of the possibilities, of all the ways her spirit hadn’t been tested—but now was. The way she’d been removed from the altar. Everyone’s access to her. Her near-constant state as a living being in the shadowdeep. The enormous drain of the land’s energy. The High Chasm drank. The E-squad drank. The wrathravens, too, drank from the shadows. And Myst had always done so as well. But now she had to share.
Now, there was a city of individuals that through roundabout means, diminished her. When she was confronted by the hammering panic, the heart inside squeezing and squeezing, becoming concave from an unseen force, a clear thought came to her:
None of that had to be good for me, not at all…It’s all quite unnatural—though I never thought of myself as natural. I suppose this is the price of being made of shadows.
She was wrong, though.
Myst, new to life on Cearth, a novice to this exposure thing, hadn’t arrived at the real truth: this was the price of being. It could happen to anybody. And today was her turn.
E-squad’s [Brainstorm] faded away.
A moment of silence.
Myst waited for their answer. Was she safe or…
The E-squad spoke then: Oh altar, dear altar, dear Myst, you have something that Ruby wants…
The clouds broke.
Myst was starkly exposed, more than she’d ever been before—and exposed before an enemy, her first threat. She drifted above in her genie form with that ghostly tail. Her luminous heart shone through her slender rib cage, nearly exactly as Swishy had left it. Quartered in different kinds of wheat. The orange-wheat, yellow-stalk, gold-straw, and blackwheat all gleamed in their unique sheen. Her experience was poured into that heart and she didn’t want to lose it. It was hers. Swishy’s first—but he’d shared. He’d allowed her to have this texture.
Feeling. Ah, feeling.
She’d encountered a milestone: it was this moment of realizing that feeling in its emotional and tactile scope meant something to her.
Myst, in her exposure, quite enjoyed herself. And now that vulnerability came back around and struck her with fear. True, genuine fear.
We have a wish! The E-squad declared—in their four main voices, plus countless resounding echos of the curses they led.
“What?” Swishy was startled, jarred by the dreadful echo within his chest.
Sling snapped her neck at Swishy, jarred by his outburst. “Child, are you okay?”
“No,” Myst said. “I refuse.”
Tremors. Soft at first—with stronger aftershocks.
Swishy and Sling fell to their knees, drained from their battle.
A wish is a wish. You know the rules!
The Cearth cracked throughout the immediate area…
One at a time, those cracks tore open into wrathful fissures.
“No!” Myst reaffirmed.
“Mysty!” Swishy cried.
Sling rubbed the boy’s back. There was nothing else she could do.
Emi-Emilio-Eren-Emily cackled.
“No, no, no,” Myst willed; Myst prayed; Myst wished.
The girl was subject to different rules, though, and she knew it.
I wish…the four voices said.
And then the Cearth roared.