Laios's Heart Game

[myhungryass]

It's dark, and you are not quite conscious. You have the sense that you are climbing; that you have been climbing for a long time. You can feel the burn in your thighs, the ache in your calves. You're a little too hot, and what you're wearing is a little too heavy. You have the sense of taking a last weary, heaving step onto a plateau.



You find yourself in a dark, blank place, dominated by a huge, dead monster, building sized, as big as a tower. Each of its enormous heads that you can see laid out before you is easily the size of a ballroom. There is blood on its lips and nostrils, blood crusted around its empty eye-sockets, but there is a feeling of hollowness about it. On second thought, you're not quite sure if it's a corpse or a moult.

There is no sign of the stairs you vaguely remember climbing. You are standing on the surface of some opaque black liquid. It feels almost completely solid under your feet, springy, but your footsteps leave ripples spreading out in rings... all around you is a velvety, impenetrable darkness. The only thing you can see is the vast, lifeless beast in front of you, illuminated as if by spotlights, though no actual light-source can be found.

Its orifices are mostly clogged with blood, but somehow, as you stare at it, one vaulted nostril on the wolf's head begins to seem like an archway... the lolling tongue hanging out of the rhinoceros's head like an entry ramp... the exposed, hollow eye-socket on the eagle's head like a portal...

Of course, if you're not quite ready to step inside a monster, you could keep walking around its body and see what you find.

Comments

[myhungryass]

You're wonderful. ...want to do it again...?

[owlimony]

Yyyehhhhnnnnnnoooo . . . nnnoo, we can't—

[owlimony]

[okay one more time]

[owlimony]

[BUT THEN!!! we have to be good. sitting on top of Laios, leaning over him, breathing very hard now, feathers utterly askew]

We must focus up for a moment, darling. I do not know how long this will last, and we do have to talk.

[myhungryass]

Laios is still panting too. "Do... we have to...? This is so nice..."

[owlimony]

I am going to be—thinking about this for a while, yes.

But—oh. No. This place . . . do you know what this place is? All of this?

[myhungryass]

He nods. "It's... me, I think. And this is the heart of me."

[owlimony]

Are you . . . aware of what happens? Elsewhere. What exists—before I came here.

[myhungryass]

"Not... really." He frowns, thinking. "If I focus on it, I have kind of a vague idea... but it's more of a feeling than anything. You found my memories that I haven't taken yet...?"

[owlimony]

I did. And you needn't take them, I simply . . .

Part of you realized it was hurting you. So . . .

[myhungryass]

He looks a bit flustered. "It's not like I was trying to put them off. I got distracted by tortellini last night, that's all."

He nuzzles the crown of Stolas's head. "Would you mind sitting with me while I take them?"

[owlimony]

I won't leave your side.

[myhungryass]

"Thanks, Stolas." He sits up. They can probably... rearrange themselves a little...

Once they're settled comfortably, Laios will reach for the book first. It seems to be some kind of shitty geometry textbook. He opens it, and a memory washes over both of them.

It’s extensive, six years in one go, but a lot of it blurs into repetitive misery. The beginning stands out—Laios is twelve years old and leaving his home village for boarding school. It’s his own choice, born from outrage and disgust at how his sister is being treated… but also the desperate need to just get away from adults who would treat a child with such hostility and suspicion just because she has a talent for magic. She’s going to be sent away, too, to magic school… but as far as he knows, she doesn’t want to go. She cried about it so much! She’s basically being banished!! Sometimes he dreams about monsters swooping in and devouring everyone in the village except for the two of them.

He feels some guilt about leaving first, thus leaving her in their village alone with parents he doesn’t trust and neighbours who are malicious, but he comforts himself that by doing this, he’ll be able to find a way to make a living, so he can go get her, and the two of them can live in happiness.

It doesn’t work out that way, though…

School is awful. He can’t get along with the other students. He’s bullied, verbally and physically. He gets into fights. He exasperates the teachers by daydreaming and not paying attention. He’s trying. And then he’s trying to try—but it’s so hard to want to try when he feels set up for failure. Because of his interest in monsters, he produces some good scholarship in naturalism classes, and the teacher takes note. For awhile, there’s talk of how he could earn a chance to study in a university, and become a real researcher of monsters. But he falls too behind in his other classes, unable to make himself focus on the things that bore him and without support to help him through, and that talk dies down.

He writes to Falin faithfully. At first her life at magic school sounds as lonely as his own… but eventually she makes a friend, and then it begins to sound like she’s having fun every day. He’s so relieved for her…

…that’s the rhythm of his life until he finally scrapes through to graduate. He’s eighteen, now, but with a dismally undistinguished academic career behind him, there’s nothing left to do but join the army.

The memory fades…

[owlimony]

Oh—

[immediately putting his hand over Laios's. but just giving him a moment.]

[myhungryass]

[Laios turns his hand over and grips Stolas's]

...

...it's not like that's... a surprise...

[his voice is a little rough, though]

[owlimony]

[. . . leans against him. warm, soft, not going anywhere.]

Still painful to recall.

[myhungryass]

It's hard not to feel like a failure. Even though I know it's not like that was the end for me, at all.

[owlimony]

. . . I feel that way a lot.

[myhungryass]

Really...?

[owlimony]

Yes. I spent a very long time not being successful either at—the things others demanded of me, expected of me, but also—not . . . fulfilling the things I wanted to do or be or have, either.

So when I look back, so much time just seems . . . wasted.

[myhungryass]

Yeah.

That's exactly how it feels.

[owlimony]

. . .

[sighs quietly, then smiles at him, eyes glowing softly]

Well. As I said. I do understand, but.

Those paths—they eventually led us here. Right now. And I think . . . this moment. Is quite nice.

[myhungryass]

[Laios squeezes his hand.]

You're right. What are the odds of ending up here together?

[owlimony]

Every decision we make can have an effect on those that come after it. And so, I try to accept—the things that have come before as, well. Necessary components.

[myhungryass]

...

Like making pork broth.