The Soul Of Cinder Is Such A Great Concept Bc It Is Literally The Result Of What Happens If You Refuse

new story on the sister blog officially dropped! go check it out!

an old project i wanted to share. maybe I'll finish it one day when I'm less of a coward.

I'm calling this little story The Well, and the Thing Inside it. I started it way back when the Israel-Palestine situation broke out, and may have channeled a lot of my thoughts and reflections regarding it into the early drafts. I figured it would be a good time to post this little story now as opposed to later.

Please, enjoy. Thank you for reading!

Chapter One: The Boy

In the midst of the Forest there walked a boy.

Now, this in itself was not unusual; many a young boy has taken a walk through many a forest. Sometimes for the adventure, sometimes to escape the troubles of civilized life, and sometimes simply for the peace and quiet of the natural world.

However, such a boy as this, in such a Forest like this one, was utterly out of the ordinary.

He was a small, scrawny thing, dressed in worn, mismatched clothes and a frayed red winter cap sitting atop his dark, messy hair. He carried a walking stick in his hand and a full knapsack on his back, and at his side was a dog, small and scrawny as well, little more than a puppy. They both had the worn, exhausted look of something that has been walking aimlessly for a long, long time. Every now and then, the boy would glance behind him, expecting to hear the distant sounds of gunfire and bombs echoing into the sky, past the trees, and into his heart.

The war had officially been going on for a few months, but it was the product of decades of enmity and conflict that the nations of the world had stubbornly refused to put an end to. The boy didn't know much about it, he wasn't even twelve years old yet and was still focused on frivolous, innocent matters that occupy one's mind at that age. Yet even he, at eleven and a half, could tell when a conflict was his fault or not, and he knew with absolute certainty that he had nothing to do with what had happened.

For months he and his mother had gone about their lives with a steady unease, wincing each time another shootout occurred in a distant city or a government leader gave an impassioned speech to the ends of chaos and anarchy, but otherwise they did their best to just live, as they always had. So when the planes came one hot summer's day, dropping death and fire like birds with their droppings, they were distraught. Forced to evacuate their home, the boy and his mother had managed to survive the majority of the bombing for over three weeks. Most of their friends and family had been killed, much of the city had been reduced to rubble and ruin, and when the soldiers came, slaughtering civilians and resistance fighters without discrimination, it appeared there would be no escaping then.

The boy still remembered the scents of blood and metal, the dust clouding his eyes and the constant ringing in his ears, brought about by screams and explosions alike.

The boy would never forget the mind-numbing, heart-crushing sense of fear that seemed to fill the entirety of his small form.

He would never be able to bury the memories of bodies, strewn across the streets like a rowdy child's dolls, mangled and misshapen.

And, for the last three days, he hadn't stopped thinking of his mother's last words to him as she fastened a small pack of stolen provisions to his back, placed a walking stick in his hand, and adjusted the cap on his forehead, bruised from a fall he'd taken hours before:

“....you go to the woods, and you run! You don't look back, you don't stop, you run, and you run, and you run! Until the darkness can't find you anymore.... do you understand?”

The boy, shaking from nerves and fear, hadn't been able to do anything to respond. His mother, once so beautiful with her silky dark hair and big brown eyes softly glowing with warmth, looked thin, tired, and dusty. Her hair was disheveled, her breath was stale, and her eyes were pooling with tears as she gripped his shoulders tightly.

“Do you understand!?” his mother hissed, giving him a little shake to wake him from his terrified daze. Finally, he'd been able to croak out a response.

“Y-Yes, mama.”

His mother had then pulled him into a tight hug, squeezing him as though it were the last time in her life. Then, she'd kissed him on his forehead and both cheeks, and pushed him away.

He'd ran then, hating himself with every step, knowing the soldiers were getting closer to him with every moment, praying to all the angels and saints that he'd escape.

He'd met the dog along the way, a bedraggled, wretched creature, whimpering at him pathetically while he took refuge in the toppled remains of a museum. There, surrounded by desecrated reminders of the history of the greatness of mankind, the boy found himself moved by a sudden burst of pity, and he'd tossed a half-eaten hunk of rodent to the dog. It had accepted it gratefully, and had followed him ever since.

By some miracle, they'd made it to the Forest. A few other refugees had tried to make their way there, but they hadn't been seen since. It wasn't particularly large, but it was dense enough that one could potentially hide out for weeks without being found.

So hide they had, though no soldiers had been seen, no planes had flown overhead, and the explosions seemed to have stopped. Uncertainty, that special flavor of fear, had kept the boy from returning back, though he would have called it “prudence” or “caution”. He wasn't sure how long they'd been there, even though he was sure it had been at least a full three days.

Thus, the boy and his dog walked through the Forest. Two refugees, cast aside by a world that cared nothing about them, wandering through a Forest that seemed to never end. Trees in every direction, species and varieties the boy realized he'd never seen before, even if he'd spent hours running around these very woods as a child.

Those days seemed so far away now to the boy, he realized.

So long it had been, since he had felt safe, since he had felt happy, since he had felt loved. He wondered if this was the end of all of it, thousands of years of bloodshed and war to culminate in his useless birth and pathetic death.

He froze, feeling a sudden weight on his heart, and he fell to his knees. Emotion filled his chest, hot and powerful, like a foul claw, and his small body quivered as he attempted to hold in the tears that were sure to begin falling any moment.

But they never came. The heat in his chest remained, a burning flame of anger, despair, and a dozen other emotions singing his bones and searing his soul.

The dog came up to his face, nuzzling him with its wet nose and washing his face in its hot breath. The boy tried to push the dog away at first, but it only repeated its advances. The boy reluctantly let the dog approach again, gently petting its head and neck. The fire faded slightly.

He sighed, and got to his feet once again, scratching the dog behind its ears before starting again through the Forest. He couldn't lose focus. He had lived this far. There had to be some reason for that. He shouldered his back, and began anew, walking through the great Forest.

Yet a small voice seemed to whisper in the back of his mind, that there was no point. That his efforts would all come to nothing. That he was dead from the beginning and this was just him delaying the inevitable. That he ought to just lay down and die.

He pushed the thought aside, and kept walking.

I love my little brother so much

no thoughts. head empty. just living in the moment.

OOHHH FUUBLBLBLBLB

Reblog if you recognize that Jesus Christ is Lord

ahh, my favorite kind of internet: racism after wholesome content

Brown eyes are so iconic and beautiful

I just love painting the sea, I wanna do just that until I find a new thing to obsess over

ENCYCLOPEDIA BROWN MENTIONED REBLOGGING IMMEDIATELY

There's the thing in kids' shows/books/movies where the kids always know what's going on and what to do where the adults are idiots, and in most shows aimed at adults the only roles for kids are precocious-yet-loving protag's kid, smart-mouthed pain-in-the-ass, or victim of the crime-of-the-week, so I think it would be funny to have a story from the POV a hard-bitten middle-aged cop or detective who mostly does hard-bitten-middle-aged-protagonist things like drink a lot and complain about his exes, but he always runs into this team of five 13-year-old amateur detectives on his job, and they seem to be just as good at it as he is and it drives him a little crazier each time.

eternity is real and everything you do matters

the Tumblr feed feels like it has been slowly pushing me to write fanfiction and I'm not sure how to feel about that

“The Little Drummer Boy” (Christmas carol) is actually a great model for fanfiction because:

It centers around in-canon characters and/or a believable oc

It magnifies the spirit of the original work and/or builds upon pre-existing themes which resonated with the (fic) author

It uses literary devices (ex: onomatopoeia, symbolism)

It makes its point without carrying on too long

Suggests at sentient and musically talented animals

It’s meaningful to both the (fic) author and to a wide audience of people who are already acquainted with the in-canon story

The protag is not too OP to fit in the canon universe in a believable and engaging way; protag has realistic limits and weaknesses alongside his/her talents

Thank u for coming to my ted talk