HEARTGAME DRESS REHEARSAL

[finalbows]

thank u rah u hero

tracking sheet
 

[ ..somewhere in the pasture, Angel Devil falls down.
His clothes have twisted away into bone-white rags, leaving a body covered over with only thick swathes of red fur, and downy feathers. His long tail is curled into a tense arc, banded fur standing on end.

The air wavers like he’s a heat mirage, not a man. He’s boiling away with absolutely stupid amounts of arcane power… and, most frighteningly, he does not seem in control of the fact that it is there and being brought to bear. It’s impossible to get any closer to him.


When he speaks, it’s quite timid. ]

Ah,
I thought… I had a little more time.

[ (and in a blinding flash of light, there is the sound of something breaking.) ]

~KRRSHHK~

[any observers will see, strangely see-through and superimposed on the scene, some kind of vast tree, illusionary roots twisting over and around to frame a door.  the door itself is wrought of opaque stained glass in blacks and whites and greys; a stylized rendition of Angie in that strangely ragged, feathered form, curled in on himself, eyes closed.  Angie himself is nowhere to be seen. ]

instead, a shadow . . . steps into view from behind the door.  for a moment it looks like nothing so much as a second genome – then it turns, gaining features and definition with the movement.  The monkey tail separates into three plumes; a ponytail unfurls into wings that lift up from the sides of the head.  

Teleute(?) is here, dressed in her customary black, but there is colour in her skin, and her hair and eyes are blue.  she’s frowning.]

. . . well.  This is the least I can do before I go, in exchange for the safe harbor.

[she lifts her head, nodding to any observers, and gestures at the door.]

You’ll want to head in there now if you don’t wish to lose your flockmate, I think.  Even the false-death of this place won’t be much help to him, if his soul is left to finish pulling itself apart.

My sisters and I can maintain the way into and out of it for you, but we were not made to knit such wounds by ourselves.  Have a care.

Comments

4/4

[wants_the_phd]

So.

Take that grief you have. Gather up that lifetime of hurt, and hold it in your arms.

And acknowledge: yes. Those things happened. They cannot be undone. You can't change the past.

Acknowledge: there was a reason why things went the way they did. There was a sequence of events that led to those decisions and those events.

Acknowledge: it hurts. It is okay that it hurts. Pain is an inevitable part of life. Notice how it feels in your body. Maybe it's a tightness in your throat. Maybe it's a burning in your eyes. Maybe it's an ache in your heart. This is what grief feels like. It's natural, normal, and okay to feel it when grief hits you.

So feel it. Let it in. It's only once you let it in that it can pass through you and start to heal.

1/2

[finalbows]

[ ... ]

[ he thinks of a cat,

dying for the sons of the wound, the very literal magic pain-fang he'd carefully held for literal millenia in his heart, who had died bitterly wishing he'd still lived some more. ]

2/2

[finalbows]

"..."

"It really hurts."

"..."

"When does it stop doing that."

1/2

[wants_the_phd]

When you have fully processed it. It's something you will need to practice and work on to see results.

[She casts Cure on him.]

Like many wounds, it may continue aching even after it heals. But this is how you keep your injuries from crippling you.

[wants_the_phd]

[She lifts her voice to address Keith David]

Excuse me, Narrator: a Mask of Tenderness, if you please.

[Holds out hands for a mask to materialize in]

[finalbows]

[ ... ]


MASK OF TENDERNESS
"A wound can only be treated and dressed when exposed; when you take your hand away from it."

1/2

[wants_the_phd]

[She holds it gently in her hands, looking it over.]

[She removes her own Mask of The End she's still wearing.]

[She presses the two masks together, one inside the other, and they begin to change into something else.]

MASK OF RADICAL ACCEPTANCE
"It's only by acknowledging the present that we can heal from our past and welcome the future."

[wants_the_phd]

[She smooths her fingers over the mask's cheek, looking at it like an old friend. As if this is something that's been an important part of her own heart for a very long time.]


[She's not going to force this onto
his face like she did with Rebellion.]

[Instead, she offers it to him as a gift, for him to take if he feels ready to heal.]

1/2

[finalbows]

[ he
takes it.

the blue blends perfectly with that of the mask already on his face.


as the wings begin to shudder, to lower, the environment around them changes again. Azdaja finds herself on the weird, fibrous floor.

Angel Devil just kinda has a whole vibe like (' _ ' ) because

why
is he covered with rainbow duct tape and yarn-- ]

2/2

[finalbows]

[ CLOWN JUMPSCARE RIGHT IN HER FACE ]

"Uhh-uhhhh, not YET, you don't!"

[ DOI-OI-OINNNG!

azdaja feels a tug from the seat of her pants, and abruptly bounces back through soul-space to get flung out of the hole on the rotten tree she'd found Angie's Ending in.


it's dried out like the rest of the Sunset Coast's landscape now, at least. that's something she'll know once she's done doing a cool roll through the dirt. ]

1/3

[wants_the_phd]

!!!

2/5 actually

[wants_the_phd]

[The fuck was that?? Where the fuck was she? Where the fuck is she now??]

[wants_the_phd]

[Wait, that was the room of the Final Angie, wasn't it?? The place where she was gonna go back to in the end?]

[wants_the_phd]

[WELL NOW SHE'S GOTTA WALK ALL THE WAY BACK THERE, GOD DAMMIT]

[wants_the_phd]

[At least she knows her way around by now. She dusts herself off and starts making her way downtown, walking fast, this one's last and she's clown-bound.]

[Oh, but first a quick detour back to the barn because she forgot something.]

[finalbows]

[ pretty harp strumming noises of a song she's heard already 🎵 🎵 🎵

after all this healing that's been done, the barn's looking even better than it did before. there's a fire lit in the firepit. did you remember we have a really nice firepit? sometimes i forget. anyway, someone's put some apples to bake by the side of it. ]

[wants_the_phd]

[Cute. She's not into apples but maybe Muffin will enjoy them when he gets here. The real muffin, not the cube asleep on Angie's bed.]

[Speaking of Angie's room, that's where she's heading now.]

[finalbows]

[ the rain's stopped, so the vibe is subtly different. the muffin cube seems like he's been tossing and turning a bit on the bed; there's a bit more disarray around him. ]

1/2

[wants_the_phd]

[Huh. Who knows what that could mean. Maybe Real Muffin will figure it out.]

[Azdaja is going through his notebooks again, but this time she's opening to a blank page. On it she writes:]

Okay but consider:

[A sketch of angie with a huge dick. There's an arrow pointing to it that says "limbus"]

Re: 1/2

[finalbows]

[wants_the_phd]

[Her work here is done. Bye Muffincube.]

[She is going back to the theater now.]

[finalbows]

[ the exterior of the theatre wasn't much notice to her before because there was cooler shit to go do. now i get to describe it.

a view right up on the eternal midnight of the Treno waterfront... dark, dirty city waters, threateningly close to spilling out over intricate bricks. A beautiful facade, with intricate, twining details, and a Rose vine-lock that has replaced the immovable stone thorns of Iifa that had repelled her before.

Flower beds.

Those are new.
There weren't any of these sparse twin pairs of flowers, before.]

[wants_the_phd]

[Did you know the scientific name of twinflower is Linnaea borealis?]

[She pauses to smile at them for a moment.]

[The rose-vine lock is a good reminder to put something on her face before proceeding. So she once again dons the Mask of the Rose and wills the vines to part for her.]

im really enjoying getting to bring back some songs from earlier on The Return

[finalbows]

[ :3 ]

[ the theatre opens up before her.
the interior, too, has changed a bit.

the curtains are open. the show has came and went. on the back wall, there's a mural: Cosmos and Chaos, two sides standing in conflict. blood runs from Cosmos' eyes like tears. blood runs from Chaos' hands like an offering.

the nautilus-casket audience has all been cracked open, each and every crushed of any future, like so many of the Nova Dragon's eggs. ]

[wants_the_phd]

[She has FINISHED!!! the TUTORIAL LEVELS!!! and is now back in the theater at last.]

Oho! So you really did it!

Your days of performing roles that have been written for you are behind you, aren't they. Now's your turn to be the playwright. Good for you!

[She's retracing her steps back to the weird throne room, unless there's something different along the way that she should inspect.]