Zero > Still exists! Original 12 > Some are dead, some still exist! Virals (descended from 12) > Spackle Virals (descended from Amy) > Possibly still around? Noise > Variation of the virus that jumped from the virals to another species and then back to male humans
[ Todd walks until his feet won't let him go no further and then he walks a little more. The orchard lands around Farbranch start to give way to dustier prairies and scragglier grass. He can tell that somewhere off to his left that river he and Viola saw earlier is running past, but he don't turn in that direction because he needs to get as far away from Farbranch and its people as he can before his legs give out. It's the only way to know for sure they'll take her, that she'll be safe.
Manchee yaps about his heels for the first little while, bouncing excitedly like this is all play, like he's forgotten why it is they're walking in the first place. And he probably has (Stupid effin' dog).
"Leaving, Todd. Todd? Todd? Todd? Leaving?" Manchee says over and over, and Todd just grits his teeth, and he don't say nothing back.
It's getting almost near dawn when Todd finally has to stop, dropping down in the shade of one of the thin, high-branched trees. Even Manchee is too tired to complain. And the Noise of Farbranch is far enough away now that Todd thinks, as he leans back against the bark, that they might be okay now. (She'll be okay now.). ]
[ She'll be okay now, is the last whisper of Noise to escape Todd Hewitt before he drops off to sleep. Beside him, he's aware of Manchee's back legs twitching against his hip (all animals dream, even horses, even dogs) and then he's out, the distant murmurs of Farbranch receding further as if pushed away to an even greater distance than his long retreat from the village and into the wild.
Now as most people know, there are two kinds of sleep — the sharp and the round — and it is the later which is the most restful (complete and still and black with quietness, not silent but unloud). It's the kind of sleep which presses into a person, which presses onto them down down down, like the familiar weight of a thick felt blanket tucked tight into the seams of the bed. This isn't the sleep that Todd drops into tonight, not tonight is a night for the sharp kind of sleep, where all the colors aren't colors but pinpricks upon the eyes and every sound is as much felt as it is heard — everything all around him sharp sharp sharp like a cool rush of river water flooding around him, threatening to flood through him, washing his senses clean with every new sensation.
When Todd opens his eyes, he's still sleeping, but he's standing in the swamp too. Around him is the chatter of animals here and there — on the ground, in the water, hidden away in the canopy up above — and just there, farther along the path, there is—
There is nothing.
An empty space where more Noise should be, a void in the world. A hollowness. And the longer Todd stands there, the longer the void persists in its silence, the more it seems to turn towards Todd (can an emptiness turn?). Turn and stare and listen. ]
Viola? [ Todd asks, and it echoes around in his noise, insistent and confused and uncertain: Viola? But it don't feel like Viola, this silence. It don't feel like a big hole someone carved in the world, hidden inside a little girl. There isn't that same hollow emptiness that made Todd feel like crying when he first found her and still does sometimes, when he thinks about it too closely (shut up shut yer mouth shut up).
Instead, it feels like something. Something which is still a hole but which ain't at the same time. Something that isn't full but not because it can't be. And Todd feels like it's reaching out for him, even if in the same breath he feels like there ain't no way a thing can do that and still be a silent, empty thing.
Manchee's around somewhere, but Todd ain't too concerned about that. And he's not paying much attention to the swamp sucking at his feet as he steps forward toward the place that seems like the source of the silence. ] Who's there?
[ No, Todd, not Viola; not something, not nothing, but both at the same time. Clever, Todd, clever, to have figured that all on your own, more clever than anyone else Amy's known and she — the one who walked in, the girl from nowhere, the architect of this dream and all dreams before and after — has known everyone. (Has been everyone. Has been no one.)
Overhead something chirps (several somethings, in fact) but then fall deathly quiet again as the nothingness moves between the trees up ahead — the groan of a trunk, the creak of a bough, but no wet footfall, no tiptoe through the marsh. ]
WHO'S THERE, WHO'S THERE? COME OUT, COME OUT.
[ The echo comes from within, not without, not from the silence or from Todd's own Noise but from a different place, a place within himself. (The part of him that dreams, that wants to cry whenever Viola's silence is near, that gave Manchee his name and a home, the part of him that is Todd Hewitt and nobody else.) A pale white hand appears from behind a nearby tree, attached to an equally pale arm, its owner hidden by the breadth of the trunk. It does not wave or beckon, just tiptoes across the rough surface of the bark before flickering away again. ]
[ It's like Noise, but it's not, and the reality of that -- something so familiar and so different, both at the same time -- makes it all the more unsettling. Todd whips around as the words sound in his head, not coming from anywhere particular but like they're coming from inside instead. 'Cept Todd knows he ain't the one who thought them.
A big part of him don't want to follow that hand. It ain't that he's scared (What's there to be scared of? It's just a hand.) ('Cept what the hand's attached to.) (Shut up, Todd.)
He whistles for Manchee but when he ain't fast about coming, Todd takes another step forward, shaking mud off his boots and pushing underbrush out of the way. ]
[ A breeze shivers through the trees, the sound too bright and too sharp for a place as heady as the swamps, an indication that this is not real, that this place is as much inside himself as the Noise, as the voice in his head that beckons.
A breeze shivers through the trees and it whispers Todd, Todd, Todd, as another voice whispers (without, within, everwhere): ]
HUSH. WALK. COME, TODD, COME.
[ The words perhaps serve as little comfort — their closeness, their distance, their inside-ness presses against him, against the inside of his mind, like water looking to fill a skin and bloat it with that fullness.
The hand reappears and then an arm. An elbow, a shoulder, the pale expanse of a throat. The girl from nowhere, tear upon the darkness, she is thirteen and sixteen and a hundred, a thousand. She is wearing a tattered dressed, mottled with ruddy stains and a hem that dances with the wind just above her knocky knees. Her lips do not move and yet she speaks (she is). ]
[ A girl. Todd's met enough girls and women-folk in the past day that he shouldn't be all that shocked to see one now. This one's got the same dress (even if it's dirtier) and the same hair (even if it ain't so tidy) as they do. But her eyes. Her eyes are big and knowing, and something about them makes that sadness Todd's been missing well up all suddenlike in his chest (shut up don't).
So maybe it's her eyes or maybe it's the fact that he still ain't as used to girls as he'd like to be but either way Todd Hewitt takes a startled step back, nearly finds himself tripping and toppling over thanks to a rough patch of ground beneath the muck of the swamp.
And then she says "Hello" in that voice-not voice, noise-not noise, of hers and Todd takes another abrupt step back, and his eyes get wide and large too. (You can't be doin' that.) And he asks the only question he can think to ask, ]
[ The girl asks without asking, says without saying, and the wind in the trees and the animals of the swamp and the stars in the sky which aren't stars at all but gnats and fireflies and things alive and dead — all of it echoes in drawn out chorus together and perhaps that echo, a question regiven, is the boy's answer. Nothing is one, save the One who Walked In, not even the Twelve and their Noah blood, not even the legion born of that blood, not even Zero himself. So this world, in its unity, with its single voice made of a chorus of voices, how could it possibly be real?
But what of the girl in it, the girl of it, who made it. The girl who smiles without moving her mouth in a way that maybe, just maybe, is kind?
Every time he steps backwards she moves forward in kind, the motion small and nearing imperceptible and yet she is closer and closer still. ]
[ Todd does trip finally, maybe it was inevitable, but the thing he trips on is a log and so instead of ending up shoulder-deep in swamp muck, he just ends up sitting down on an old, wet hunk of tree. He can feel the damp of it seeping into his pant leg, its rotting, mossy bark coming apart under his fingers. (If it feels this real, it has to be real, don't it?) (But how can it be?) ]
What're you talking about? [ How're you talking? You ain't moving your lips, but girls ain't got Noise. ] What sadness? [ Todd asks, even though he knows (shut up), and he has to scramble to hide it deep below other Noise, stuff that don't matter like how many steps he thinks he took today and what he's gonna do for food when he wakes up and, and...
But it's hard because there ain't a lot Todd can think about right now that don't make him sad somehow and thoughts of Viola and Ben and Cillian seem to well up the more he tries to shove them down. ]
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WORLDBUILD.
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Original 12 > Some are dead, some still exist!
Virals (descended from 12) > Spackle
Virals (descended from Amy) > Possibly still around?
Noise > Variation of the virus that jumped from the virals to another species and then back to male humans
a night escape.
Manchee yaps about his heels for the first little while, bouncing excitedly like this is all play, like he's forgotten why it is they're walking in the first place. And he probably has (Stupid effin' dog).
"Leaving, Todd. Todd? Todd? Todd? Leaving?" Manchee says over and over, and Todd just grits his teeth, and he don't say nothing back.
It's getting almost near dawn when Todd finally has to stop, dropping down in the shade of one of the thin, high-branched trees. Even Manchee is too tired to complain. And the Noise of Farbranch is far enough away now that Todd thinks, as he leans back against the bark, that they might be okay now. (She'll be okay now.). ]
no subject
Now as most people know, there are two kinds of sleep — the sharp and the round — and it is the later which is the most restful (complete and still and black with quietness, not silent but unloud). It's the kind of sleep which presses into a person, which presses onto them down down down, like the familiar weight of a thick felt blanket tucked tight into the seams of the bed. This isn't the sleep that Todd drops into tonight, not tonight is a night for the sharp kind of sleep, where all the colors aren't colors but pinpricks upon the eyes and every sound is as much felt as it is heard — everything all around him sharp sharp sharp like a cool rush of river water flooding around him, threatening to flood through him, washing his senses clean with every new sensation.
When Todd opens his eyes, he's still sleeping, but he's standing in the swamp too. Around him is the chatter of animals here and there — on the ground, in the water, hidden away in the canopy up above — and just there, farther along the path, there is—
There is nothing.
An empty space where more Noise should be, a void in the world. A hollowness. And the longer Todd stands there, the longer the void persists in its silence, the more it seems to turn towards Todd (can an emptiness turn?). Turn and stare and listen. ]
no subject
Instead, it feels like something. Something which is still a hole but which ain't at the same time. Something that isn't full but not because it can't be. And Todd feels like it's reaching out for him, even if in the same breath he feels like there ain't no way a thing can do that and still be a silent, empty thing.
Manchee's around somewhere, but Todd ain't too concerned about that. And he's not paying much attention to the swamp sucking at his feet as he steps forward toward the place that seems like the source of the silence. ] Who's there?
no subject
Overhead something chirps (several somethings, in fact) but then fall deathly quiet again as the nothingness moves between the trees up ahead — the groan of a trunk, the creak of a bough, but no wet footfall, no tiptoe through the marsh. ]
WHO'S THERE, WHO'S THERE? COME OUT, COME OUT.
[ The echo comes from within, not without, not from the silence or from Todd's own Noise but from a different place, a place within himself. (The part of him that dreams, that wants to cry whenever Viola's silence is near, that gave Manchee his name and a home, the part of him that is Todd Hewitt and nobody else.) A pale white hand appears from behind a nearby tree, attached to an equally pale arm, its owner hidden by the breadth of the trunk. It does not wave or beckon, just tiptoes across the rough surface of the bark before flickering away again. ]
no subject
A big part of him don't want to follow that hand. It ain't that he's scared (What's there to be scared of? It's just a hand.) ('Cept what the hand's attached to.) (Shut up, Todd.)
He whistles for Manchee but when he ain't fast about coming, Todd takes another step forward, shaking mud off his boots and pushing underbrush out of the way. ]
I know yer out there. Who are you?
no subject
A breeze shivers through the trees and it whispers Todd, Todd, Todd, as another voice whispers (without, within, everwhere): ]
HUSH. WALK. COME, TODD, COME.
[ The words perhaps serve as little comfort — their closeness, their distance, their inside-ness presses against him, against the inside of his mind, like water looking to fill a skin and bloat it with that fullness.
The hand reappears and then an arm. An elbow, a shoulder, the pale expanse of a throat. The girl from nowhere, tear upon the darkness, she is thirteen and sixteen and a hundred, a thousand. She is wearing a tattered dressed, mottled with ruddy stains and a hem that dances with the wind just above her knocky knees. Her lips do not move and yet she speaks (she is). ]
HELLO.
no subject
So maybe it's her eyes or maybe it's the fact that he still ain't as used to girls as he'd like to be but either way Todd Hewitt takes a startled step back, nearly finds himself tripping and toppling over thanks to a rough patch of ground beneath the muck of the swamp.
And then she says "Hello" in that voice-not voice, noise-not noise, of hers and Todd takes another abrupt step back, and his eyes get wide and large too. (You can't be doin' that.) And he asks the only question he can think to ask, ]
Is this real?
no subject
[ The girl asks without asking, says without saying, and the wind in the trees and the animals of the swamp and the stars in the sky which aren't stars at all but gnats and fireflies and things alive and dead — all of it echoes in drawn out chorus together and perhaps that echo, a question regiven, is the boy's answer. Nothing is one, save the One who Walked In, not even the Twelve and their Noah blood, not even the legion born of that blood, not even Zero himself. So this world, in its unity, with its single voice made of a chorus of voices, how could it possibly be real?
But what of the girl in it, the girl of it, who made it. The girl who smiles without moving her mouth in a way that maybe, just maybe, is kind?
Every time he steps backwards she moves forward in kind, the motion small and nearing imperceptible and yet she is closer and closer still. ]
WHAT IS YOUR SADNESS? HOW IS IT REAL?
no subject
What're you talking about? [ How're you talking? You ain't moving your lips, but girls ain't got Noise. ] What sadness? [ Todd asks, even though he knows (shut up), and he has to scramble to hide it deep below other Noise, stuff that don't matter like how many steps he thinks he took today and what he's gonna do for food when he wakes up and, and...
But it's hard because there ain't a lot Todd can think about right now that don't make him sad somehow and thoughts of Viola and Ben and Cillian seem to well up the more he tries to shove them down. ]