Work Text:
You shouldn’t be here.
A distorted reality surrounds you,
Broken trees,
Wilted flowers,
All resembling broken dreams.
You shouldn’t be here.
You wander,
Hearing careless whispers.
They dance around you,
They haunt you.
You shouldn’t be here.
As you wander,
The ground changes.
The air grows cold,
Nature begins to rise.
You shouldn’t be here.
A figure is in the distance.
What shape are they?
You don't know,
And continue to wander.
You shouldn’t be here.
The figure distorts,
First one form,
Then another.
Colours you’ve never seen ooze from them.
You shouldn’t be here.
Wordlessly,
They beckon you forwards,
Towards the glassy grass
And luminescent flowers.
You ask the void what they are.
Who they are.
And the void answers back.
They say they are made of careless promises,
Outgrown daydreams,
Spoken-over words from the quiet kids,
And the nightmares you haven't thought of in years.
The void asks you why.
Why are you here?
Do you remember how?
Do you remember why?
Who are you?
What are you?
You don't know.
Yet the void does.
It tells you that your answer is fine.
There is no final version of yourself.
We never stop growing or changing,
Nor should we.
The void knows.
It tells you
All humans are inexplicably drawn to the abyss.
Sometimes, when the abyss likes you, it purrs.
Tis the nature, curse and cure of humanity to be forever attracted to the abyss.
The void knows things.
Things that the void shouldn’t know.
You ask where you are.
And the void answers.
It tells you
This is a world of dead Gods
And forgotten nightmares.
Of broken trees and careless whispers.
The void tells you to sit.
The void is safe.
The void is safer than the other world.
The waking world.
The void tells you
I want to be heard.
I want my voice to echo through the woods, haunting lost travellers.
I want to be an unseen tale of foreboding terror.
I want to haunt passing travellers with my menacing whispers carried in the wind.
And you know.
And you understand.
Shadows creep towards you.
Shadows are menacing.
Shadows are haunting.
They hunt you.
They want you dead.
You want you dead.
You ask the void
You ask why we pursue happiness
Even if it encourages suffering.
Even if you have suffered before.
And the void can’t answer.
Yet the void still does.
It tells you
I am clawing my way out of my own mind.
I am cracking myself as I crawl out.
People say there's no escaping yourself,
But have they tried dragging themself out of their own skin?
The void continues.
Because that is what the void does.
You deserve the world,
And the world deserves you, just as you are.
No ifs or buts, no stipulations.
And on the dark days,
You deserve to laugh and laugh,
And know there are people on your side.
There's a whole lifetime of people and promise for you around the corner.
You don't understand.
But you reply to the void.
You tell the void
Some God gave me these hands
And you have created Demons with them.
Once,
Your dreams were disturbed
And your grave ransacked.
Now you can never know peace.
Is that why the shadows haunt you?
Is that why you created demons?
Is that why you’re here?
The void interrupts.
Because the void cares.
The void has been there before.
The void knows.
And the void knows things it shouldn’t.
Because the void has been there before.
The void tells you
In a world like this one,
It cannot emphasise enough the importance of valuing silliness for silliness' sake.
Take joy where you can, be absurd and be kind.
Encourage joy and strangeness in others.
And the void continues.
The void tells you
Almost every interesting person has gone through damaging experiences.
Like disrupted vines, we grow around it.
Our shapes change, but we grow.
And you understand.
You know why you’re here.
You know who you are.
You are the void,
And the void is you.
The void knows the answer.
The void knows things it shouldn’t,
Because the void is you.
Still,
You shouldn’t be here.
So you wake.