CIVILIZATION—it happened fast, nearly instantly.
The scarecrows flowered, their eyes angling into suspicious slants. The everytrees lifted their roots, creating decorative arches along the grooves that demarcated The High Chasm’s paths and streets.
Neighborhoods sprouted in continuous lines along the branches and tree trunk inclines, some progressing straight up while others wrapped around the tree. The buildings that sprouted to existence from the dropped Myst hearts had shingles, wind chimes, and welcome mats—many of these with stitched “R’s”, shadowclaw feathers, and wine-bottle-shaped shadows that of course represented the curvaceous Cearth emissary.
Villages were within the canopies. Neighborhoods lined the immense branches. There was a home for everybody here. And stores for them to go to, street-level bazaars, every amenity that Swishy had detected back in his first day in the town. Silhouettes were seen entering and exiting door-shaped hollows in the tree, woodsy apartment buildings of people nesting within the hollows.
Swishy traced the foundation for every building, every kiosk, every scarecrow to himself, their invisible signatures pulsing within his soul. Everything that grew was undeniably connected to him. He was awed at his capacity for vastness, for his ability to monitor his footprint upon the world.
Beneath his feet, the cobblestones populated, smoothing down the rotund roots that pushed the surface upward. Even the hilly incline of the roots that forged a path into the thick of the chasm, its ecosystem of a trunk, seemed to flatten out. The wildness of the raw nature before him was tamed into a township like any other.
Swishy’s soul stuttered as The High Chasm evolved into a metropolis.
Ruby flew around in a circle, twisting in a dragon-like pattern around her pet serpents, the two words that followed her around no matter what: TYRANNY and DEATH. Ruby collected more of the airborne hearts, sprinkling them throughout her territory.
The township had its finishing touches as well, the vibrant golden towers that signaled the centers of the residential areas. Homes and shops were clustered around a type of hearth, the stolen wishwillows. These transplanted trees served as landmarks, as totems that settled the bodiless and bark-bodied alike. Still, they trembled. The confusion of the trees was something that Swishy detected within his soul.
As the moments ticked by, Swishy knew the wishwillow plight was contributing to his blackwheat in no small way.
Wrathravens guarded these wishwillows, ever the faithful hoarders. The beasts lounged atop the treetops, admiring the golden foliage, nibbling off more than their fair share.
“I’ll save you,” Swishy breathlessly declared.
Trey patted his back, smoothing his wings.
Sling’s wrathravens were brushing the boy’s gourd, shedding feathers all over his face, an attempt to tickle him, his soul, anything.
Myst just stared on with abyss in her eyes. Her heart had gone to seed—and to waste. Swishy, too, felt the phantom throbs layered upon his chest. He’d never forget the time when the heart was his.
At this moment, he felt that twin beat everywhere.
The chaos in the shadow siblings were aligned, cycling through the same feelings and shared violations.
Especially now that the soulscape had grown an army of eyes.
Near, far, everywhere—even from the ones barely sprouting underground—Swishy sensed the gazes.
The boy was a target, a treasure, a prize.
Two hearts, two wings, and endless straw. Everything he was, they were set on taking.
Swishy flew as fast as he could, accompanied by Trey whom the Sling-ravens carried. He didn’t know where he was going. He only dreaded the moment that something reached out to snatch him.
The scarecrows half-heartedly reached out to Swishy, not yet used to life.
His blackwheat responded throughout his body. His RESOLVE kept the darkness under wraps, a sub-dermal layer beneath his autumn-tinged hay, but that secondary skin was no doubt fortified by the RESENTMENT, ENNUI, and INDIGNITY that swept through him. Within his heart chamber, the chasm beat more than the hay, the emptiness outperformed the stability, and that even began to affect his golden rake which—while still luminous—released a black static at the tips.
He glided; he groaned; he trembled. He and Myst and Trey were unified in their grimaces, in their textured and thorough disgust of this new world’s fertilization.
Meanwhile, the winged hearts drifted downward, tossed aside by Ruby.
The scarecrows stared up at the Ruby rain while she led them all in a prayer. “Everybody eats, everybody eats!”
She maintained the same rhythm, increasing in fervor. Ruby’s was a forceful hypnosis, one that the newborn scarecrows were wrapped up in.
And so the sprouted scarecrows were triggered, their roots coiling around their stomachs, squeezing, constricting, binding the intent of HUNGER that lived in them all. These golems of wanting weren’t exempt from the city’s perpetual sense of lack.
They turned their heads toward Swishy, inspecting him like a prize. But by now Swishy could tell when he was being looked through instead of looked at. When all the gazes met his face, he knew that they were staring at Myst instead. There were two hearts in his body and the scarecrows instinctively targeted the more vulnerable one.
Arachnid Myst continued to siphon shadows from Swishy’s chasm, thickening her body all over. She’d only been in Swishy for ten minutes tops. Swishy turned his attentions inwardly to Myst, asserting unconscious pressure on her.
“My dear, I’m making this as fast as I can.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to pressure you.”
“No problem, young one. These beasts are pressuring me enough. What an urgent bind we’re in.”
“I know…”
“Will you be okay, battling your likenesses?”
Swishy gazed at the scarecrows and was properly disturbed by their jagged mouths. “I think I’m okay with fighting these guys. They’re…I don’t know, Myst. Not every scarecrow can be my cousin.”
“I feel the same about Claybornes,” Trey mentioned.
“And the curses,” Myst wryly smirked.
Before their eyes, the darkness swelled, seeming to mock their thoughts. But nothing more than that. There was a lull in the aggression. Snitchtalons and Ruby flew around the hearts in the sky, focused on their harvest. No speech. Barely a sound. Only collection, a modest display of farming, of focused Stormcellar effort.
Then came the rain. The wings were plucked from the hearts before being discarded from the sky.
Ruby held a handful of plucked feathers and spread them outward, fanning herself.
“Hot, isn’t it?”
Her snitchtalons nodded their heads, then flapped in her face, cooling down their ambitious and hard-working witch.
(…)
All around, Swishy watched the hearts fall—
Or rather, as was the more clinical, true-to-life version—Ruby flew from flying heart to flying heart, crushing them in her hands, then sprinkling the remains.
Ruby was upset about it, too, sighing and sneering and digging the pieces from beneath her fingernails. The woman didn’t strike Swishy as the type that was too good to clean, too good for manual labor, but she radiated disgust as she ripped the shadowy constellations from out the sky. He wanted to know what her attitude was about but knew that he’d regret that knowledge. He figured it was something stupid. Something distasteful.
But then she began to strain into her smile. Her facial muscles were so, so stressed, but she did her delight-portraying duty to the scarecrows that burst from the ground, seeking guidance and a warm welcome. Once the newest scarecrows came into being, she did the bare minimum by acting as their sun.
“Welcome, welcome! I’m happy that you’re here. It’s a beautiful thing, to be born, yes?”
Her aura blackened. Who knew one could be so sickened by a retail spiel—both Swishy and Ruby alike?
“What’s wrong with her?” Swishy asked.
Myst only shrugged inside her head. “If I have henchbirds, I wouldn’t lift a finger.”
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“That’s the problem,” Trey offered. “She has them. They’re all around. Being evil ass dapper-wings (man, I want to choke them with their bow ties…). But she knows the PR move is to sow the scarecrows herself, birth them, and take all the credit. Politics as usual.”
“Politics? I never got that flashcard.”
“You don’t want it.”
“I don’t?”
“It’s complicated and stupid at the same time.”
“Like a heart, I see.”
“Heartless, actually.”
Swishy was confused.
Myst only laughed.
Trey, who was briefly satisfied by his wit, returned to casual terror.
The ground broke all around in the spots affected by Ruby’s heart shower, cracking in spots while the shadows gurgled from underneath. One had no way of knowing whether a scarecrow or a building was coming out of that hole. Only that Ruby’s IMAGINATION produced the most visceral [Postcard] variant yet.
The scarecrow births, the property construction, were all real—though knowing Ruby, it was all property to her.
Ruby was flying through the clouds overhead, sprinkling her palm-crushed seed. With her pet winds, she cleaned the newly birthed followers. Zephyrs blew through the woods, brushing them off, clearing the sheddings around their stems.
The pieces fell around Swishy, and right on his tail, new scarecrows were born. The root-like stakes, the vine-cluster arms, the gasping expressions on their faces. And their first act as a being of Cearth? Stretching their vines toward Swishy. The speed was comparable to arrows. Swishy pivoted from the first barrage, watching the thorny vines shoot past him.
The vines then changed forms, balling themselves up into a flurry of spiked flails.
As the scarecrows were born, they immediately sprang from their roots to swing at Swishy. They smashed the newly grown cobblestones. They swung and missed—tearing chunks into their housing. Some of them, failing to hit Swishy, viciously struck the everytrees. But the rubbery texture of these shadow trees simply bounced around, vibrating cartoonishly before settling back into place.
The boy soared and soared, outspeeding the violent births that pursued him.
Ruby, seemingly ignorant of her procession of enforcers, continued to sprinkle the heart ash upon the township tree.
The scarecrows were born, pushing themselves from the surface, stretching their pliable roots to their full potential. Even before some of them sprouted eyes, they reached for Swishy. Their vines extended toward the boy, grazing his wings, landing upon his gourd, and wriggling toward his eyeholes.
Myst backed away from her windows, shooing the vines away.
“Spiral!” Swishy called as he flew in a drill maneuver, spinning and spinning until the vines were loosened from his head and body.
“Thank you,” Myst demurely said.
“No problem.”
The boy’s RESOLVE crawled over his torso like armor. He wouldn’t let the others have either of their hearts. It grossed him out that the scarecrows’ first actions constituted a robbery attempt.
But Ruby had another perspective on that instance.
“See? I’ve made you family members. Will you behave now?” Ruby held the broom in her hands while standing atop a twister. Her joke came off flatly. And the bluntness was especially evident by the threatening grip of her held weapon.
“I’ve been behaved my whole life. People like me. I’m popular. You seem to be the only one with a problem.” Swishy, of course, dodged and dodged, the birthed scarecrows showing off for Ruby.
“Mother-son relationships are strained sometimes, especially when the kid gets mouthy.”
“Funny, I don’t see a mother here at all.” Swishy dodged vine after vine, reinforcing his point.
“I see…”
“I’m not taking that back.”
“There’s nothing to take back.”
Silence. It was felt by everything, everybody.
The scarecrows birthed in silence, their chipped wood somehow muted. Their facial expressions were frozen. Flying snitchtalons found the nearest perch and pretended to mind their own business. Buildings paused mid-construction. Underground, the energy flowed without its watery audio, the currents pushing through The High Chasm in uniform increments, gelatinous and slow.
“Nothing,” Ruby declared. “Take nothing back.”
Was she hurt? Was she angry? The tone was strange. Swishy sensed a shift in everything. Even the scarecrows that were just born paused in their sprouting.
A stillness took over that Swishy couldn’t read.
He flew onward. Trey and the Sling-ravens taxis were right beneath him. Even Myst joined in their silence. Nothing seemed to move for several seconds. And then after that brief eternity, nature started to shift again. Buildings that started from nothing were erected. Sprouted scarecrows came to life and regained their expressiveness, their eyes, alive once more, beamed at Swishy.
Then came the vines, thorny lassos shooting at Swishy.
With that, the whipped was henceforth cracked. Civilization resumed with full steam, now bolstered by other new intents that conjured around the trees.
HONOR, HONESTY, HUMBLENESS.
They were dark, though, tinged in Ruby’s blackness—in everybody’s, really.
“I thought these were good things?” Swishy called down to Trey.
“There’s a lot that’s supposed to be good that turns out to be hellish.”
A fourth word appeared.
HARVEST.
“Ah…there it is.”
“Careful,” Myst said.
“I shall.”
“Okay.”
Still, Swishy worried that Myst was the one who issued the warning.
The air became leaden with the pulse of magic.
More scarecrows sprouted in Swishy’s path, their jagged mouths opening, their many-vined hands creating webs and nets throughout the empty air space. Directly above, the scarecrow hands turned into a netted ceiling. The weaves crisscrossed in layers, closing off the sky. Swishy gazed through the gaps, catching a glimpse of the broom-riding witch.
As the world changed and sealed him to the below floors, he glided and dodged and twisted through the loop traps and vine clusters. None of the traps could catch him but they whittled him down inside.
The blackwheat populated his body. The boy hadn’t felt the sprouting of it this strongly in a while. He knew that beneath his first layer, there was an entirely dark scarecrow inside, one he wanted to forget existed. For now, his light armor was intact, keeping the worst parts of him sealed. But the locked-away parts were strengthening without a doubt.
HOLLOW and COLD stacked within the chasm. DULLNESS and APATHY crept along the edges of his aching abyss. But he cared. He was fighting. The scarecrow identified the sneaky feeling then. A new deadness, the most dreadful one yet.
In that bottomless chasm, his joy of flight was lost.
He flew; he dodged; he survived. And in the moments in between, he lamented.
(…)
Vines, thorns, flails.
The boy spiraled away, compelled to reform his pursuers.
Positive energy and positive thoughts were what kept him afloat because he knew that he was lying to himself. He absolutely did. But before the brunt of his error came to him, he decided to do The High Chasm, its new residents, a bit of a solid.
The boy twirled in rake like a circus performer. The light radiated from it, and so too did the cast-off straw bits. It didn’t matter where the gold-straw landed because everything was alive. Someone, somewhere, would come to collect it.
And collect it, they did.
Shadows rose from the ground and swallowed the straw. Everything Swishy dropped ended up within dark puddles, abyssal pits that opened for consumption, then instantly closed as bark knots.
Within seconds, the sprouts rose as bright yellow bulbs with a faint golden aura.
He touched everything. He knew that if he were to claim this place, he had to put himself into it.
Now that the scarecrows stole the sky, creating a ceiling of vines, a cage of spiked darkness, Swishy’s golden rake was more luminous than ever—and it drew every eye.
The seed rain continued and scarecrows sprouted all around Swishy. There were no attacks, though. Instead, they shot their vines skyward, contributing to the boy’s encasement. The positive was that he didn’t have to dodge. But he glided with wariness, careful not to drift too closely to any surface.
He saw that Trey and the Sling-ravens had taken the same tact. For good measure, Trey covered his hands in [Zzt] orbs, grazing the woods, preemptively electrifying any suspicious fold of darkness.
Thankfully, the light calmed the curses, the scarecrows, everybody.
And the more Swishy spread himself through to the cursed flowers, giving these dark creatures a taste of light, he felt the beat of a third heart—the connection to The High Chasm. His very first heartbeat pulsed faster and faster. Then disappeared as the frenzy of everything else he felt drowned it out.
But the brief connection to his lost heart made him proud of it. The corruption it’d endured had to have been profound, yet it hadn’t changed or soured. He knew it to be strong. He knew it to still be its original self. As Swishy did good to the High Chasm, he did good for his heart.
The vines overhead receded, revealing the sky again.
The scarecrows eased into a stupor.
Nothing jumped at them, at least for now, but Swishy shrank from the eyes. His connection to the scarecrow’s hearts, his creation of it, had turned him into a mind reader, a soul reader. But he was uncomfortable with his findings. He wished, at least during this moment, that he was a little less godly.
“Is this thing really so great?” Swishy said to himself, but Myst had an answer.
“It’s a little bright for me but it certainly does something for everybody, don’t you think?” She pointed upward to the wishwillows. The surveillance wrathravens were nesting, not even posturing as the brutes that they were. They seemed to enjoy sinking into the golden canopies, using patches of leaves as blankets.
And then the scarecrow ceiling closed the patches that they gazed through, crisscrossing, tightening around each other with an iron grip. The boy looked through another patch of sky—and that section was immediately sealed.
But the light ebbed through the vines, such was the brightness of the wishwillows.
“I know it’s pretty, it’s magic, but I thought this light existed without me. I mean, they can just fly into the sun.”
“They’ll die!” Trey called.
“Why? Is the sun is like a stove?”
“Enough for a scarecrow to disintegrate.”
Swishy shuddered.
“Sizzle, sizzle, little homie.”
“I need you to be nicer.”
Trey laughed, then nervously looked around. No ease lasted long here.
The boy studied his rake, his emotions switching from thankful to confused to worried.
Myst offered more shadowdeep wisdom.
“It’s a big world, Swishy. I’m sure there’s another Swishy, another form of magic for the other parts of Cearth. But we’re not there. We’re here. Everyone’s decided to make a home in this lovely but misused darkness. You have as well. I believe that the answer to your question is, yes, this light is great. It strikes a chord. It gives the heartless heart. And it makes those with heart live harder.”
“I like that you think so highly of me.”
“You’re a little cutey at the very least.”
“I hate you,” he laughed.
“Is that how you talk to girls you ask to move in?”
“I can’t have a homeless sibling.”
“My, my, harsh words. But that’s not what your wish said.” Myst rubbed the inside of his head and Swishy kind of leaned into it—even though she was inside him and that made no sense. Nuzzle energy soothed him enough for the obstacles that soon came.
Calmed scarecrows, a reopened sky, and frowning clouds that depicted Ruby’s expression of ire and betrayal.
Even the beauty mark on her right cheek was rendered in those mean nimbuses.
“I’ve had enough,” Ruby’s voice said all around them.
More and more, she was using Myst’s powers, replicating them to the best of her ability.
The [Midnight] had made its presence known again. The stored souls that’d migrated from outside of the city pulsed beneath. Underfoot, Swishy sensed an ocean, schools of souls waiting either to be drained or born. All around, the roots loudly gulped from the stocked energy below, adding stories to the buildings and limbs to the scarecrows. The civilization rose above the woods, one that wasn’t built on bones—but ether.
Swishy levitated but accidentally let his feet skim the surface—roots instantly reacted and shot a bark loop toward his ankle.
He dodged but bristled from the chasm’s sensitivity. Within that lasso trap, the HUNGER dripped from it in sticky shadows. The gooeyness of the darkness was a type of lava, bubbling and sizzling. He wondered if there was even a true tree beneath the layers and layers of curses, or if they were all corroded down to nothingness while all that remained was an essence-siphoning cast.
The shape of life was erected but nothing more. A postcard—but fancier. A puppet show but of souls.
Yet his gold reacted anyway, flaring inside, knowing he was closer to what the world was meant to be. He was proud to not have given in to the blackwheat. Gold first—that was his way.
I need you.
Swishy heard these three words in his head. But his soul received it, too, as another of his heartbeats.
Ruby raised her broom.
Swishy pointed at her with his rake.