Swishy had problems, multiple—as did everyone else, it seemed.
The little straw sprite observed it all from what he hoped was a safe distance away: the Ruby-Myst banter, the tortoise-like but troubling rise of the wishwillows, and the snitchtalons pulling the trees upward, flapping like ancient slaves at the behest of their wrathraven foremen.
And then there were the pulls of wind. Swishy could feel it from his so-determined ‘safe distance’, a turn of phrase he regretted as the first of his straw pittance lifted off what he had for a body. The five percent of him that dipped into the misery-loves-company mindset wanted to see what everyone else was losing from the start-up of Ruby’s spell. But so far it was nothing. A leaf rose, then landed back in its rightful place from a whistle of air. But that was it. Swishy was just a Swish-mini, gold and precious, but small and insignificant. Easily oppressed.
When the first of the Ruby-stoked winds arose from the [Clean Sweep], Swishy, from far below, from behind the cover of several layers of tree branches and airborne litter, was the first to feel it.
This is a little insulting. I’m not going to lie to myself about this…Trey would laugh at me.
But there came a time when everyone would lose a bit of something from the [Clean Sweep]. Swishy soon saw.
Ruby walked along a thick branch and cleaned, each motion producing small twisters that rolled through the wishwiillow, spinning tops that vacuumed and collected all dirt, all darkness. Her mallet of a broom proved mighty, dispersing the shadows at her feet, and chasing her targets away with rhythmic brushing. The cast shadows of the branches were also swept away.
She kept sweeping, brushing the ‘dust’ off the wishwilow’s surface. It took Swishy a second to figure out what exactly was being sent into the air. It was emotion. The negativity. The broom had a penchant for lifting hex fuel from the surfaces it touched and sending them into the air. And the wishwillow, gold as it was, now found itself fluttered with Ruby’s precious accursedness. Their everytree selves were still inside. And in their moment of capture and panic, of root displacement, the gold aesthetic and feelings were surface-level, a gilded coating that made Swishy’s so-called improvements seem like a farce.
Terror broke through the Wishwillow’s surface in black nodes, in cracks and knots that leaked shadowiness. The slime, the smoke, the shadows were all brushed away in Ruby’s [Clean Sweep]. The woman hit a real rhythm with the technique, flicking her wrists with delicacy and swiftness, pivoting off her toes in a pirouetting dance. She even spun the broom around, releasing it to tornado and sweep of its own accord, a blackwheat dance partner showing off before the lead came back to retrieve it.
All darkness, natural or alive, was banished from Ruby’s immediate space. The cleansing effect was significant, almost pleasing. The wishwillows looked their best, gleaming with polished gold.
Through the windy collection of curses, they now needed somewhere to go, somewhere that wouldn’t mar the now pristine points of contact. The atmosphere. The blackened energy was cast out as the tornados unraveled into ribboned streams of gusts, toxifying the skies.
Sweeping never clean-cleaned. It only moved the undesirable around. Having gathered the darkness from the wishwillows, Ruby’s broom had then evicted them.
And so followed the logic of Ruby’s brushing spell.
The banished shadows were sent into the air. They collected into little gems, flakes of moisture like morning dew, like black frost. Within these crystals of blackness were curse words, the letters aligning into order. DUST, DEBRIS, TRASH, GRIME.
Ruby leaned on her broom, playfully tottering.
The crystallized curses released static. Those cast-off auras clung to the air, drifting in weightlessness, which gave the hex dreadful access to the atmosphere. The particles even chipped off parts of Myst’s body, damaging her with its pebble-sized crackles before she immediately reconstructed.
“I’m not amused by your housekeeping,” Myst said, rubbing a finger over a healed part of her collarbone. “A little clutter never hurt any woman I know. Sweeping me away is a little bit rude, a smidgen.”
Ruby’s grin tightened in faux-peace and strained devilry.
The woman swept again.
Air cracked around Myst’s head, a harmless-seeming pop akin to carbonation.
“Spicy,” Myst laughed.
“Are you worried?” Ruby asked Myst.
“Just enjoying the night, patiently waiting to die. A girl’s night out like any other.”
“Patience has never been a virtue of yours.”
“I have virtues? You flatter me.”
Ruby closed her eyes as she resumed her brush strokes, knowing her choreography by heart. The dirt-stricken words disappeared but the skies were charged with energy, a cursed minefield of negativity. Thanks to the [Clean Sweep], full sections of the sky were cleared. The gusts were special. Soundless. The space within the arc of Ruby’s wide-brush broom was cleared—and not simply blown away, just moved. The smallest instances of golden sawdust and entire logs were transported at the same speed. Weight or mass didn’t matter. Everything was equal before her influence.
Ruby’s spell didn’t activate with force. The dimension belonged to her, a canvas made blank for her to rearrange to her liking.
Things were moved in proportional increments. As Swishy made sure to stay just outside the range of her spell, the affected world slid right passed him, psychic hands moving around the furniture with one clean shove.
The only thing contained within the swept-through spaces was Myst. She wouldn’t be moved, though that may have been by design.
The cast-aside debris created a wall around her.
Myst touched a passing leaf and it sparked in darkness, biting at her almost. “Angriest leaf I’ve ever seen, hehe…”
The game of it all, the corruption of the wishwillows, galled the scarecrow.
A stockpile of OFFENSE was felt by the Swish-mini, failing to reduce the gloom’s impact. He knew the main body would feel that one, bolstering the blackwheat. He heaved a soul sigh and moved past the moment, accepting that burden.
Once the witch declared a [Clean Sweep], Swishy knew that he’d have an even more challenging time trying to bring his golden trees back down to Cearth. He braced himself with each stroke of the blackwheat broom on the surface of the wishwillow. The boy expected there to be some reaction, a light-unraveling curse that’d revert them to their everytree state. Not that there was anything wrong with being an everytree—but they loved what they’d become. It was the first sign of nature’s progress in Ruby’s postcard world. And Swishy had done it. He’d fostered the first growth. Nothing in Ruby’s land grew. They simply came as pre-packaged visions of what she wanted things to be. The land became her showroom. The sights were stunning at first but now Swishy saw them for what they were. Inert. Otherwise, she wouldn’t be so over-eager to harvest what he had.
Hadn’t she fed her people on her own? The everytrees provided the exact thing that’d make everyone rich in nutrients and funds. There was something about the Swish-hearts that made her want them more. And he realized what that was. Life went without saying. Scale was the major one, though, the thing that had her curl her lip at his Goldies’ accomplishment.
All this strife over something he’d done as a doll. It only made him wonder how quickly he’d turn the land over to his favor once he restored his main body to gold.
If he would be allowed to do so.
Ruby’s tantrum was doubled as encouragement that Swishy was doing the right thing, that he’d actually generated value for the Cearth and its entities. He just needed to now control it. Giving his blessings away for free wasn’t the way. The hunting of Myst hammered this home for him. And as another round of Myst-chasing started up again, he thought back to the altar. He couldn’t help but think that Cearth had forsaken them. If the altar wouldn’t allow itself to give without receiving payment, then why should its precious miracles be abandoned for others to use? He wished Cearth did a little more to protect the blessed from the Ruby’s.
If this were a sensible planet, that’s exactly what would happen. But in the nonsense that was his life, he watched Ruby briskly sweep away the gold dust from the wishwillow, sending dark glimmers into the air. The corruption was small but it was there. And it was something that Myst cautiously eyed. She drifted laterally, keeping her full attention trained on Ruby.
“Prepare yourself, Myst. You’re going to be mine.”
“I’d rather not but I’m sure you’ll give it your very best shot.”
Myst floated but began to notice that a part of her shoulder disappeared. It flaked away as if they were like puzzle pieces ripped off a board. And that’s when the disappeared words recurred. As instances of GRIME fused with the DUST, and as TRASH dematerialized into the air itself, Swishy noticed that there was something tricky at play. A larger intent was hidden beneath layers of cloud and debris. Ruby’s surroundings were the cleanest ever, shining and luminous, but right outside the bubble of her aura was POLLUTION.
A corrosive pollution, one that ate away at Myst’s shoulder, then started to make progress through her collarbone, seeping ever closer to the left side of her chest. She covered it with her hand, healing herself, restructuring the fracturing darkness. But the corrosion continued.
Myst moved to a less DEBRIS-riddled spot and stopped the pernicious breakdown. She had an expression that Swishy had never seen before in her. Exposure was no laughing matter. It never was. He felt for her. She, like him, could be opened.
And so commended Ruby’s attempts at opening Myst up, a surgeon of avarice prying her open in whatever way she could.
Dark waves visibly curled in ways that Swishy recognized as “wind”, but Ruby’s spell proved to be so much more.
A breeze haloed through the area, a masquerade of wind carrying feathers and vegetation. It behaved like gusts blowing through everyone’s hair, benign enough. Swishy even felt a cooling effect on his soul. But he knew it was another con of nature much like the postcard atmosphere. And Ruby kept it up, sweeping in one direction, and then brushing in another, dragging her blackwheat broom over the wishwillow’s bark.
And the cleansing commenced with tremendous drama, the tree sparkling while the soul inside winced in agitation.
“I wish for cleanliness!” Ruby said.
Myst flinched, warily gazing at the darkness around her, hoping a portal wouldn’t open and force her to action. But no such effect came about. Ruby was just speaking rather than petitioning the Cearth.
When Myst realized that she wasn’t being called upon as a Straw City genie, Ruby flashed her a sadistic smile.
“I see you’re worried. But I’m just cleaning. I’m just speaking from the heart.”
“I expect no less from you Ruby, to speak from that emptiness inside.” Myst had a grin of her own.
Ruby’s lips flattened in offense. Swishy caught the atmosphere’s energy change from the moment Myst spoke about emptiness. He wondered what was behind it. If there was something in Ruby that was missing. He hadn’t considered that all along. He’d seen her past. He’d known of her come-up from a starved child in the Stormcellar and how she’d evolved through her altar cost dodging to the woman that stood before them now.
Everyone was empty, though. He’d noticed that most people were like this to a degree. Not so much like Swishy but close enough—enough to turn themselves into scarecrows or summon curses to the city to do their bidding.
The emptiness was a clue that Swishy filed away, though his attention turned full tilt to navigating the Ruby spell, its odd wind—or non-wind really.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
The night itself sharpened, a Myst construction this time, but before Swishy could get a better look at the shadow woman’s response he had himself to worry about.
The distortions, the cursed air, were coming his way.
(…)
Swishy tuned out of the battle upon the wishwillows to fly away from the pollution, its weight and scale bristling the straw sprite’s body. He migrated to the topmost part of an everytree and peeked between the leaves. Shielding himself within a knot in a thin branch—a certified cottage to him—he’d turned his temporary cover gold.
The tree spirit awakened with glee.
The boy touched the bark. “I’ll turn all of you wishwillow. Just when it’s safe.”
The nearest branches agreeably shifted. Swishy could even hear the wobbling of the everytree rubber.
He settled into his glowing hidey-hole and watched on.
As soon as the darkness was summoned to the surface, a dark syrup sap that bled through the tree’s bark, Ruby banished it away. The golds were preserved, though the wishwillow itself felt no better. The tree went through a cycle of blackness and cleansing, of corruption and luminosity, every other second.
We are all things. Trey’s words bloomed into Swishy’s mind then. But it wasn’t supposed to be like this. All beings, even the trees, weren’t toys. On-and-off switches were not how emotions were meant to be treated.
But right now he’d turned his hide-hollow into an on-switch. A very, very visible one.
There was no avoiding the inevitable. The beaks came for him faster than he could even react with the sliver of a thought.
“Of course, you came.”
He knew it was the same bird that he’d eye-gouged before. The one who’d just eaten him and healed from him. One of its eyes shined with mythic glossiness. The bird’s vengeance was far from done.
Bottom’s up, little straw bitch.
The boy was suctioned into the snitchtalon’s gullet, funneling down into the stomach acid. As his Swish-mini broke down, its gold energy floated up to the head again, wrapping around the bird’s brain and pleasure centers. While Swishy ‘died’, he watched his enemy get high off his victory.
Oh THAT’S good, the others need to feel this…
Then he was dead again, jettisoned back to his main body.
Outwardly, he was blacker than ever, unable to deny the disturbance of the Ruby-driven environment. Inside, he was strong. He was the sturdiest wishwillow he knew how to be. The gold up above inspired him. He set aside the darkness. The blackwheat feelings were more easily kept to the dark parts of him, while the light parts were segregated in a cluster within his heart. The boy made a hollow inside, a gold mine, small and armored against his blackwheat and the curses that lived within. Boundaries were the way—both within the curses and his body.
Gold was created in his heart chamber, then pushed out through a tunnel of weave, a cultivated path that stretched through the whole arm and out through his index finger.
A Goldie was born. Then another four right through the other fingertips.
He’d complete this recon if it killed him—it did, but he’d willingly suffer it. The sights were so interesting. And they were urgent.
He reminded himself to be small, to think small, and to build.
There were allies that Ruby didn’t know about, those unseen and unconsidered in the ecosystem.
Insects were everywhere. Bite-sized and content, their appreciation of the wishwillow was simple. It didn’t have sentience or a real thought process. They were animals. Programmed with freedom and instincts. Such a thing was refreshing to Swishy, a gold refinery of emotion he hadn’t expected to discover.
He was that at his core. The joy of flight surged through him. He wanted two wings. That dream’s resurgence was inopportune and uncomfortable. AMBITION crept through his weaves again, clamping around his tense little soul.
He ascended again. He used the same hiding spots. He avoided the [Clean Sweep] gusts, and this time moved along the path of the displaced objects and enemies, no longer caught by surprise. The rise became even easier because he remembered where his possible allies were—unexpected ones at that. A ladybug fluttered by and he attached himself to the underside of its wing, hiding, soothing his ride with the gold aura. He even flicked dust toward the insect’s mouth, the healing straw offered as payment. And as promised too.
The gusts continued on—stronger. The boy was on the surface of a branch now, and to avoid getting blown away—blown to bits, actually—he dove into a knot in the wood and found a marching line of ants, a selection of other giant rides. He picked one and grabbed onto its underside, using its armored carapace as a wind blocker. He was shocked by their sturdiness, by their ability to remain unhindered by Ruby’s black magic. And they were unbothered by the general chaos of the environment too, the noise, the wrathraven wingbeats, the whirling shadows. Their gait and speed were the same as ever.
STURDINESS came into the boy’s mind. He’d learned of stubbornness before, its benefits and pitfalls. And sturdiness was the evolution. The world passed over them while their solitary worlds were unfazed. The ants made his future feel much more promising than it had a minute ago when he’d last been eaten.
Then he was crushed. There wasn’t enough to straw to [Scarecrow] back together. His soul was squeezed underfoot by a snitchtalon claw, a bird landing and crunching the ant line. They didn’t even know that Swishy was there. Ruby’s presence triggered the parts of them that made them do such a thing for fun.
Crawling isn’t good enough! The bird said. You have legs so you can kneel. So kneel.
Its claw ground them down to the left, then to the right.
CACAW filled the air, the laughing variety, which sounded almost like a gurgle.
The boy left it with a parting gift, a token of SPITE darkly manifesting through the crushed gold, hardening into splinters.
Before that straw sprite died, he reveled from the piercing screeches of the bird.
Not laughing anymore, huh? Swishy gloated to himself as he funneled that lost consciousness back into a replacement doll.
This death made his decision for him then: he had to handle the forest floor snitchtalons to earn his passage to the skies, to Myst and Ruby.
Swishy made more gold. The blackwheat shifted from the effect of the cruelty. The dark straw reacted all over his main body. But the gold chamber was untouched.
A Goldie sprang forth from his index finger and it catapulted away from the body, shooting in a soul-rich direction.
And a patrolling bird ate that one before it’d passed the first treetop. It was perched and ready and came like a dart. When the boy melted from the stomach acid, it was surrounded by a deep and gloating HA! sound—before the pain, of course, before Swishy split apart into a bed of quills.
He’d hurt them from the inside. He’d give them fiber. And if he were truly lucky, he’d give them ulcers.
The scarecrow remade his minions again and again and again. He continued spreading the gold-straw out into the woods like pollen on the windiest of days. He looked like stars, a ground-level constellation that awed both curses and snitchtalons alike.
Either he’d run out of gold, or the snitches would run out of willingness to touch him.
Theirs was a battle of attrition and a game of chicken all in one.
Whoever lost heart—lost, simply put.
The straw sprites, small and vigorous, would never lose.
Swishy, having died five more times—and having five times torn into the birds' throats with [Barbs] and [Caltrops]—created his next basketball lineup of minions. They were no less gold, no less small. His health kept up, a good sign for his coming ascension. The boy sensed the souls of the woodland-level snitches waning. He overheard their soft croons as they whined about their destroyed throats and stomachs. He assumed no further trouble in his Swish-mini exploration.
The sprites were off, beelining for the everytrees. Swishy decided to go on a pollination mission. The sheer amount of shadows worked too strongly in Ruby’s favor and Swishy figured this was the best starting point for turning the tide. He flew through the woods, grazing everything, adding his glow touch to the leafage. The gold was something he could use—or if not him, then everybody else. It was time for the world to change. And he knew that the wishwillows weren’t being taken all at once. It would be a process, a lengthy one. Ruby couldn’t possibly rip all of the hope out of the land quickly. She could do it, she was doing it, but as long as there remained rooted gold, the morale of the straw-bound and his allies would be stoked.
As the pollination continued, Swishy remembered his birth. The time he stepped off the altar and ran through the plains. His barefoot feet, not even knowing what a Timb was, stomped through the lands and made love to the world with magic. He didn’t know the mythic tree growth that his touch inspired was a type of enchantment. Life blossomed around him as a basic fact of physics. His acts of creation were no different to him than when other beings drew breath. While the pulse of life flowed into others through air and water and nutrition, the miracles flowed out of him—and in endless, Cearth-shattering amounts.
The boy was just a boy, doing his thing, growing…everything. It felt good to get back to that.
He danced around the everytrees, turning them to wishwillows. And their gaseous fruits turned from those ruinous blacks into the solid gold of real foods. They fed off of Swishy’s energy—which had recently been inspired by the Sling meal. There were so many golden pumpkins hanging from the ends of the trees, and just as many gold vines that coiled around the branches and connected to the gourd stems, supporting their sustenance and heft.
It was a gold dance, a celebration, the forest turning into a day haven of light.
The skies…were darker, murderous. The hunt for Myst was underway.
All five Swish-minis weaved around the woods, dodging the leaves and twigs and giant feathers. The snitches attacked again. Their beaks glowed with wishwillow leafage. They’d healed themselves from the newest plant growth—which honestly was the intended use of the trees, if only these animals weren’t being so cruel to Swishy.
But the healing straw wouldn’t undo the memory of the pain its barbs had inflicted. When two of the Swish-minis were caught in the beak, there was hesitation before the swallow.
The boy got creative and turned himself into [Scissors], an inspiration from the E-squad’s snip spell.
Swishy got off several blade snaps before the digestive systems finished their work.
Then he made more of himself. He was a gold factory at this point and was convinced that his strategic revenge, his quilled get-back, had produced more gold-straw.
“You’re looking healthy,” Sling said when he’d returned to his main body for more puppet creation.
“Thank you, I’m winning.”
“That’ll do it.”
“It’s doing it, yes ma’am.”
And then he was back to five, sadistic little pioneers touching all the everytrees they could find. By this time, the soulscape was different. The birds were dejected while the woods cheered him on, emblazoned in wishwillow energy. Much of the trees in the area were fully transformed or halfway through. But even those with a fraction of Swishy’s touch were pleased. It wasn’t like being an everytree was a detestable state. Being a wishwillow was just better. There was a status quo in Ruby. But miracle-status in Swishy.
Avarice was the city’s element, and the woods themselves proved it.
Swishy tried different routes, using the positional information from the last eaten Goldie to ride behind the heads of the snitchtalons. The one clever thing that Swishy did was find a bird that was actually a bird and clung to its back. He burrowed deep into the feathers and buried the gold completely. The shadowclaw drew the eyes of the other birds but there was no visible glow emitted. There was just the vague sense that they were missing something.
Once far enough away from the enemies, the Goldie stopped its hitchhiking and flew low, camouflaged by the tall straw and bushes and flowers.
The boy was plagued with the question of how he’d handle their Ruby problem. He’d yet to see her, though she was felt in every part of the land.
The first answer he had was light.
He knew he was on the right track because Ruby’s portals had grown shadowy pupils, purple slits that now resembled eyes more than ever before. Every move Swishy made was trailed by these eyeballs. It creeped Swishy out to be watched like that. But Ruby was a watcher. That’s all she ever did. Swishy had no reason to feel nervous or ashamed. He’d made his choice to go against the current form of the city and to remake it. He was the enemy now.
Enemy…the word gave him a rush. The boy was on the right end of morality but the wrong end—the weaker end—of a war.
The birds hunted and gulped them all down—to which Swishy instantly reacted by molding himself with [Serration].
With every injury, Swishy made sure to hurt the birds double, triple, quadruple. He was really going for a high score. Training the birds took a lot of investment of himself, and the snitchtalon screams were worth everything he paid.
The boy felt himself being eaten, his consciousness broken down while the inner ailments of the birds—scratches and inflammation and scarred tissue—healed in slight increments.
But he’d left behind a leaden TRAUMA. He knew the flock was scared.
Swishy’s full consciousness had returned to his original body. It was dark. It was compromised. But it had much more resilience than his other forms. It was time for him to stop playing with the wings. He’d put who he was to good use.
“Sling, can you put me down?”
“Sure, my dear.”
“Thanks.”
“You’ve done lovely with the forest by the way.”
“There’s a lot I have to do but I’m glad you like it.”
“Celebrate our wins, young Straw.”
“I am, I promise I am.”
“Mm, I believe you. You’re healing.”
A shocker to hear. He looked at his hands and expected a sludge shade, the worst blackness ever, but he’d paled up. He wasn’t even slate or ash or cloud-gray. Brown, though, and even a little bit of yellow in some of the weaves. Throughout the duration of his battle, he’d turned back to normal. He figured the dying a thousand deaths thing would set his psyche into [Chasm] overload—but his secret sadism toward the birds brought him back to himself—the self that he wanted.
But there was darkness in him yet. He knew that the deaths had taken a doll. Death was death, after all, the most ancient harm that plagued everything in the cosmos. Now he was ready to expel it from himself. He’d use it. He’d shape it. In honor of Myst. For Myst.
He held an open palm over the ground and said one word: “Rake.”
Blackwheat spiraled from his palm. Dark straw also twisted upward through the ground and met Swishy’s blackwheat extension halfway.
As the boy pulled the shape up and examined its full length, both he and the villagers were amazed.
Even Sling looked a little bit scared.
“You mean Trident. Look there’s only three points.”
“Black Trident is catchy, I can go with that.”
“My dear, you are a branding machine.”
“I think so too!”
The rake was so tremendous. Blackwheat from hilt to tines. A smokiness ebbed from the weapon, dark dust flaking away within a shroud of white mist vapors.
It commanded all the presence of a legendary weapon from the Altruistic Altar series.
As a last touch, Sling held her open hands toward the rake and her scroll-like wraps bound around and around the handle’s length. The wrap also had the [Sanctuary] spell alight across its surface. Swishy wondered how it worked when applied in this way, but quickly found out when he grabbed onto the handle. The papers infused him with feelings. He could think only of the world he wanted to create. While gripping the blackness, his mind saw a Straw City that had so little of it.
The sun would come out again. He just had to beat the other elements down into submission.
The snitchtalons were coming, this time to his main body, to the straw-bound.
Their black feathers surged through the gold wishwillow valley, screaming in dark straw rage.
Swishy curled his hands around the trident, twisting it in his hands.
“[Wing Jump]”, the healed boy said.