This post has the following content warnings:
the Lamb in Fabulous
+ Show First Post
Total: 413
Posts Per Page:
Permalink

"Yeah. That's okay. Um - what's your name? I'm Maria."

Permalink

"...I forgot my name because of Fucked-Up Woods nonsense. They call me the Lamb. I guess I should think of a new name, probably. It's, um," she shuffles awkwardly, "...nice to meet you?"

Permalink

"It's nice to meet you too." Sigh. "What kinds of names do you like?"

Permalink

"Iiiii spent most of my life alone in the woods and I don't really have a good sense for what kinds of names there are either at home or here. Yours is nice but you're already using it, and I'm not sure it'd suit me, anyway. I guess... I don't know, something short and nice-sounding. Maybe a kind of plant, I like plants." A short pause. "I have now thought of way too many dumb-sounding plant names. I'm definitely not calling myself Carrot."

Permalink

"Zinnia? Rosa?"

Permalink

"Flowers, thank you, my brain was full of vegetables. Hmm... those are both nice, but I'm not sure... how about... Iris? Does Iris sound like a reasonable name?"

Permalink

"I've never met an Iris but it'd be... the least weird thing about you really."

Permalink

"Iris it is, then."

Permalink

Smile. "You really just want to live here all alone gardening? You don't have enough space for a person's worth of food, even."

Permalink

"I don't actually need to eat food anymore because of Fucked-Up Woods nonsense, the same reason I need magic to sleep. I am gardening recreationally. Though I used to feed a dozen people on a patch not that much bigger than this; I have some Fucked-Up Woods magic that makes plants grow much faster than they have any right to. And I fished in the ocean just about all night every night, that helped. Anyway, I'm... not sure what I want. I left because I—realized that I didn't have to stay and let people keep bothering me, and I was very bothered and just wanted to be alone and not have to deal with anyone else's opinions on my crazy life. But I also want... to stop the slug monsters from eating everything. And maybe also have some friends. I don't really know how to make friends. It did not come up much in the Fucked-Up Woods."

Permalink

"I don't think my family will take me back. I thought I'd give them a while to cool off and I'm still doing that but - I kind of think they won't. I've been living in a tree and it's surprisingly all right with the plant magic but not that comfortable."

Permalink

"I would say there's room on my island but there kind of objectively isn't. I guess... we could find a bigger island, and build a bigger house there. If you want."

Permalink

"I'm not asking to move in with you, I just - was thinking about what it'd take to make it work to live the way you do."

Permalink

"...I can teach you how to build a house, the long way, too. If you want. It takes a while if you can't cheat like I can, but then you'd have a roof and you could make another one wherever you went as long as it had trees." She eyes Maria, who is quite a bit taller than she is. "Then again maybe it'll take longer than I'm used to, to make a big enough house..."

Permalink

"I could get shorter but - you did mention the thing about making it hard to tell I used to be human -"

Permalink

"Yeah, it's a problem. I have some bad solutions to it, but they are bad. There's, um, there's a... person... wandering around who looks like me but much taller and sharper, because I accidentally did the thing to myself before I knew it was possible, and the only thing that saved me was... call it more Fucked-Up Woods magic... convincing the Pretty Person I turned into to sort of separate herself from me and go off and fight slug monsters and be pretty without me. I think regular people cannot count on that happening. Also it was really upsetting even though I'm fine now."

Permalink

"Do you - remember being -?"

Permalink

Unhappy nod. "I—she—didn't hardly care about anything except prettiness. Was the shade of red on her clothes right or should she change it, should she learn how to sing so she could have pretty music that went with her outfit, what should she smell like to make herself as pretty as possible... she thought about the kinds of things I like and she still liked some of them but only for how pretty they could be, nothing about how it's nice to grow a plant because then something's alive because of you, or nice to build a house because then you have a house and that's useful and satisfying, just 'ooh I could grow pretty flowers and make someone sleep and pile up pretty flowers around them so they have something pretty to wake up to'."

Permalink

"- weird -"

Permalink

"Yeah. And... unsettling, to remember being like that and feeling like it was obviously better than being like this, even though now that I'm me again I feel like being me is the obviously better idea."

Permalink

"I guess you - both exist now, so - at least she's happy, I guess? And can help with the monsters? I think I've seen her."

Permalink

"Yeah. But I really don't want to do it again even though I'm pretty sure the same things would happen." She thinks about it. "...I guess if the slug monster problem gets bad enough... then maybe it'd be worth it even though it'd be so upsetting."

Permalink

"Why can't other people do it?"

Permalink

"Well, anybody who feels like it could turn themselves into a Pretty Person, but I don't know how you'd convince the Pretty Person to separate themselves out once you'd turned into them. They might! They might not! It's kind of hard to be sure! But I can do it because of Fucked-Up Woods magic. Um, my crown is sort of a person and it can talk to me in my head and stuff, and it talked to the Pretty Person version of me and convinced her to bring me back."

Permalink

"Oh - huh, how is a crown a person -"

Total: 413
Posts Per Page: