no matter the distance i want you to know that deep down inside of me you are my fire the one desire

[unvaryingshades]

There is a young girl skipping through Grant Park. She has a wireless PS3 controller in one hand. The other hand, she holds up close to her face, the distorted doll heads on her fingers letting off some pretty serious psychic disturbance. To some, it might seem like indistinct chattering. Others might hear distinct words, but the language is likely

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[bestoweduponus]

A clear understanding of reality. Pieces falling together and pulling apart. Reality distorted and re-synthesized. The buttons aren't needed but they're an extension, a piece of Something she can use to further manipulate. It's stiff, but malleable still. It's like a twig snapping here and there. And oh god, that retaliation hurts worse than the actually pressure on her. It's like her entire being is crammed into a box much too small, and it's only getting smaller. But even as it presses her closer she knows what it is and what it could be. She can touch all of those moments and existences and ideas and oh Denizen if it isn't overwhelming in a sense of over-stimulation. It's like her non-existent breath catches in her throat and her toes curl in the mere diversity of thing that are and could be.

And she wants them. She wants all of them. She wants to dominate, to snap, to rupture. It would flush her skin and make her sweat. It would allow her to actually feel more than the possibilities, the actualities, the memories of everything. She could play with the imprints and the externalities. It is so hard to put it in these dharbek words. Lust? Greed? Power? All of them lack the thrill of ashfel and flen.

She can feel the Wandering Star. She can feel the Wandering Star and what it is and what it is not and what it might be and how it could never, ever, ever. And all she can believe is that it should not. But it can't not be. That is too much, so far. If the other is here it means they are waiting. Lurking. Waiting for her to finish the job. How do they even know she's here? Does that mean the others are waiting? Does that mean Denizen are holding out for her?

Either way, the video game controller is discarded to the ground. Things flicker, slush, snow, grass, dead, cement, nothing, back to grass. It's hard to -- the recoil burns -- keep control when things, things are happening. It is easy to question reality when you have a business in it. When it is not just what it is but other things as well. She flexes her fingers, taking even steps towards Babel. She purposefully gets too close, her canvas shoes bumping up against the others. She looks defiant as she tilts her head up, steeling her jaw.

There is no need for spoken words here. Half of her wants to dispense with the moment, but no, other kinds need those. Dependent on time and linearity and dimension.

Why are you?

[allmydiredreams]

Babel turns to stare up at 040, her look as vague as our impression. "Yes," she says. "'Children' is the plural of 'child'." Because that is the important thing here, Babel. Totally.

She looks back to Mati when the girl's shoes bump hers. The invasion of her personal space doesn't bother her. The defiance doesn't either. It's the way reality flickers around Mati that reminds her...reminds her of...

The air thickening--flash of light or white or nothing or void--paralysis--pain--

There's a sick feeling rising in her throat.

"Nobody can get out," she deadpans, staring right back down into Mati's eyes, ignoring the question completely. She can feel it, poking and prodding at her walls, wanting them down, wanting to speak. She won't let it.

[bestoweduponus]

Of everything, right now, Mati wants a chance to have nothing. Let all of the possibilities, manifestations, and actualities fall apart. Snap the surrounding. Break the dimensions. Dismantle time. Just have a moment where she can breathe unlike this dharbek place. Everything is too tight, even now. But there's no time for childish whining. No. If there's anything Mati has compared to this universe's miserable paresh.

Words. There are words in response; the puny things that can only exist within other things that exist. Need for air and eardrums and lips and tongues. Alima dharbek.

She gives the elt partiality a stare that makes it clear enough: this is not something We Should Access. It is a dogged little thing anyway. A good pet. A good Pillar.

It has to crack, Mati points out, meeting Babel's stare. Then it will be free. Whether or not we all crack with it. It. Will.

[allmydiredreams]

For a moment the phrase feels like it echoes in Babel's bones, overtaking this one's beat, overtaking the shifting of the universe around her. It has to crack, it has to crack. Then she shakes herself, sharply, as if that will dispense with the feelings and the jarring and the phrase itself.

The shake turns into just a shake of the head. "Always cracks," she mutters, looking exasperated. "Cracks in good time, without you. Every little bird sings to be free."

It has to crack. But that's not right, not wrong but not right -- the universe will crack in time, they always do, but she has the distinct feeling that now is not the time.

Or maybe she can't tell anymore. That's almost as frightening as the sudden possibility of the End rushing right up on them. This isn't the right universe for her, or for this tiny thing that looks like a girl and most emphatically isn't. She doesn't know what she is, except the beat is familiar. But she would have remembered a beat like this, if she'd felt it before.

"You're not clouds," she finally says, clearer than before, though her hands are up to her head, poised as though they're about to tangle through her hair. "We don't eat our own." She's not entirely sure of what she means, but she knows they're the right words past the jarring in her bones.

[bestoweduponus]

The Wandering Star has a sick sense of something. Mati presses her unGifted hand to her forehead in exasperation. She can't have a conversation with this level of preal with the entire universe pressing in on her existence. She is not meant to exist within, and especially not within such a farkelt universe.

She drops her hand from her face and glares at Babel. The strings are like twigs and branches. She feels broken and scratched as she breaks through them, but the pain is welcome compared to the static and her inability to breathe. She can't properly exist here. She can't properly exist within any universe, but this one is one of the most farkelt she has ever been within.

So she takes away a dimension, strips time, and adds in a healthy sense of nothing. Sure, there will be repercussions. Sure, it hurts as the universe snaps back at her. But it's fine. She needs this now.

You don't wait for the animal to die to eat it, she hisses, the voice losing it's childlike manner, the song tones dropping entirely. You slaughter it in its prime, so it is the most succulent.

[allmydiredreams]

Babel doesn't entirely comprehend the words -- she hears them, but her world is breaking down, her perception of the other being forced into nothing and void and she isn't quite sure what--

--this is not what should be. This is not the end, this is something outside. This is something she hasn't felt before, but seems eminently familiar, and that scares her beyond the searing pain in her body, beyond the vibrations.

And then she realizes she cannot feel her own beat under everything. No--it's there, but something's missing. Something steady, something always there, something--there's no movement.

Babel twists her hands into her hair, doubling over, and screams. She can't do anything else for the time -- or no time -- it takes Mati to break reality. She's silent, after, but doesn't move, her face obviously pained.

"Slaughter takes nothing away, wait for it, wait for it--it's not," she mutters. "Tear apart, broken--breaking--break this. This is the worst--" She breaks off, shutting her eyes tight against she doesn't even know what; tears leak past her eyelids. She doesn't know what she's saying, or what she can do, or if there's anything. She wasn't built for this. This is not hers to own. That's all she knows, and she's not sure how she knows.

[bestoweduponus]

And then it's like a rubber band, snapping back on her. But it was worth the momentary distortion; it was worth being able to Exist and bleed beyond her shell for just a moment. Besides, she can't have this conversation strangled like that. It's so amusing, how things snap back. Order. Stability.

This town isn't stable at all. It's a little bundle of sticks, waiting for someone to light a fire under it. Of course, who's to say what a farkelt verse is like before it's opened? If order and reality can come from chaos, who's to say that chaos can't come from order and reality?

The worst?

Mati begs to differ. This is her arena. This is where there is a sense of accomplishment. Of power. Of Existing. There's no room here. Not in the least.

Doesn't matter, though. No one can stop me.

[allmydiredreams]

The words don't register with Babel. Nothing really does; she's still doubled over, though silent, and it's obvious that she's not really seeing anything in front of her. She's only feeling, only recording numbly, dumbly, memorizing Mati's bodybeats. They're so familiar, and yet she knows she's never felt them before, not the right way, only in faint bits and pieces as her memory breaks and her memory never breaks except--

except---

Except.

She remembers the clouds, but not enough of them.

So for the moment, she's going to be unresponsive in Grant Park. Sorry, Mati; you didn't break this toy completely, but for now, it's broken.