non-slip solipsism
i told my friends that i took my [[stupid oc]] out back and abandoned them on the side of the road and they told me i was self-flagellating due to ocd. well
the star of cartoon points, at points, is made of nothing at all but gaseous fire.
the star is not red, but burning bright white, blue glinting to green and phasing out, out, out.
cyan, like the color on a printer cartidge. black like the ink of deepest space.
but sirius, dog star, faithful and obedient servant to the milky way, is not and never so far gone as all that.
seren, couched in clouds of white. seren, pure as an angel and buried knee-deep in the snow.
seren, floating, falling, failing, fading, because the problem with being a star really is just that you aren't anyone or anything at all.
don't you miss being a part of something, seren thinks they ask phasma, boredly, tiredly, too dripped-out to even be desperate at this point. don't you miss...don't you know...aren't you scared that you know things you're not really supposed to know? aren't you scared, aren't you tired and bored and aren't you supposed to be grumpier than you are, or am i just imagining things? am i confusing you, incuriously, with someone else?
smiles shrinking, slipping, ossifying. somehow.
seren's not stupid. they know they're not, swear they're not. but how could they just...misplace phasma, just like that?
neilnail is chipper, scarcely above the same brand of perpetual optimism that phasma holds (seren muses, in the back of their hollowed-out mind, that once upon a time they were like this, too. then something happened. something...snapped).
probing into any scintillating topic that presents itself - themself - is certainly, absolutely neil's cup of tea. but he doesn't pry, when he probes. they're so good at being academic, respectful, multi-tracked and mutuality-minded. so selfless and yet so wonderfully self-possessed.
must be a thought borrowed, for seren to think so positive; they're hardly at-all in-touch with their own gauge of goodness, anymore.
but to speak of reality, and the thrall of transport...
it is prince who has come from the farthest away. of course. lightyears are not very much. not very much at all.
seren's basically an earthling, by that token, but so is prince, a naturalized citizen of sorts. perhaps the only person who purposely chose a mim, who closed her eyes and woke up in a form-fashioned body knowing it was to come, looking forward to it. bound to it by her own completely unique destiny.
...and dreams of destruction. of course. doesn't everyone dream of planets and stars exploding?
elma does. elma, whose home was stored in the same sector of space as prince's, and in that way was irrevocably bound to her. obviously.
seren's own occasional share of annoyance for the highly-lauded colonel now irritates them more in concept that it does by simple way of being, y'know, irritation. how could they ever dislike elma? how could they have the nerve?
elma, whose strength lay not in having no observable or remarkable weaknesses, like seren, but in biting down on those flaws she had, and binding them back to her soul. from strength to strength. from pure embodiment.
all these brave women, who have such a right and render to be haunted by ghosts, of planets and packs and parts of their own selves.
then there's mimi, who's more frustrated by her total lack of anything to miss. seren, so undirected, so unreal, just tumbling the days away, while mimi made the most of them. made more than the most of them, and never felt unsustainably maximal about it.
mimi who always, always, always has another trick of depth coming. who hides her every thought and still has more to show and tell.
wait, you guys are thinking?
even guys like yelv and frye, though they might never seem it (and there's some stiff competition, in the ranks of the ever-overthought phog), are thinking. have reasons, ways, means, personas, possibilities if nothing else. they're people. at least, they pretend to be. yelv, who doesn't know he's a freakin' facsimile!
seren doesn't remember the last time they pretended. the last time they were even conscious.
imagine that - more depth in a beer bottle than in an ice cream float. infinitely more raison et droit d'être.
seren's vitiligo seizes with brain freeze. the barstool brothers just keep pounding 'em back.
and speaking of the most important individuals in (on) all of mira, ares has never been alone. beyond the psychic connection whatnot, the ties back through endless rifts to the mystery of void, seer's omnipresence guarantees him love and light reflected back in every face he beams upon. xe's just that irrepressible, non-stop wins and a turnabout for every ironic scenario.
seren chews their tongue, even without sharp and sarcastic fangs, to keep from thinking about how seer's double-layered robot reality keeps it from ever wondering about what's to come.
they've never cared. never bothered. so why're they starting now?
really not good at hiding themselves. maybe because they've never really been much of a cogent, all-apparent self to appear, or not.
like a miran mirage, of sorts. a fake-out. a bluster buster.
a stroke of seren-dipity, as doug would say. with what little will they have left, seren really wishes he wouldn't. he's easier about it than al is, because al can never be convinced to dial it down, but it's that buzz-cut sincerity that leaves seren listing, because doug is just a guy, just a nice guy, and he really doesn't care.
that's not...it doesn't...
they're nobody.
how did they get here? what bizarre portal of god's time opened its maw to spit out a blue-haired pipsqueak with no sense of proportion and zero combat capabilities?
razor might be the same shade of blue, but that's the only part of that description he answers to. instead, they're bold, thorough, deep-voiced and cautious. caring, without a doubt, but specific in their care. not just willy-nilly like seren.
it should be aspirational. it should be an opportunity for growth. in another world, another life, maybe it could be. maybe razor was a misfit wherever he'd originally come from (wings? subtler than a halo...) or maybe seren's entire picture of past incarnation was a hallucination.
it's too easy to just shill for love and left-handedness, is the point. if either of seren's hands even really work, among the malaise of off-ended sighs.
seren doesn't know how to grow, to learn. seren doesn't know how to be a wanderer of any worth. seren doesn't know how to actually adventure until they're blue in the face and wear their spurious specialness on their skin-armed sleeve, as something more than a fashion accessory.
pretending to be l's partner and equal. get ridiculously real.