Scribbles and Bits

Mori: our headspace has started having weather and seasons, but it’s not as marked in changes as out here. It gets cold enough to snow sometimes but rarely sticks, it gets up to maybe eighty, warm but not HOT, and while it rains more often than it snows, it’s pretty much never windy. Rawlin has slept outdoors here her entire life (a woman her size finds human-size dwellings claustrophobic) and is fine; between her fur coat, a poncho, and her winter den above the hot springs, she’s always been able to make herself comfortable.

But this summer has been hot, and she’s been fronting way more, leading us to learn that she overheats pretty quickly. Makes sense, since she barely sweats.

What’s more, she SHEDS. Still not as bad as our roomy cat, though.

Rawlin: This morning, I woke up to rain against the window pane, my symbiont in my arms, and her claim in oil stained on my skin. We were warm and safe, dry and content, and I was happy.

I never thought I could be happy like this, after everything we've been through, after everything I've done. I had resigned myself to a life of loneliness and lovelessness, given up hope for anything better... and now, without my having done anything to earn it, here I am, with everything I have ever wanted, fallen into my lap. Truly, life is beyond prediction.

We are no longer in danger, no longer being hurt. Yes, we are dealing with the scars and shrapnel of the past... but we are dealing with them, and I am coming to believe butch when she says that nothing is ever going to come between us ever again. Each time a memory she had lost came up, I was so sure that she would realize what she had gotten into and leave, and every time, it instead becomes something we can talk about, grieve, and move through. It becomes speakable, bearable, healable. As impossible as it sounds, we become closer through it, and the more times this happens, the less frightened I become of the next one.

We cannot pretend that there is an Eden to return to, a time before scarring, for we were forged in the molten heart of violence, and if it hadn't existed, then neither would we. We can also never become the people we were before the god devoured me. There is no undoing that history. But... as impossible as it seems to believe, I'm starting to think that maybe this here-and-now is better, for all the weight and scars of the past, for all the uncertainties and tyrannies of the future. Because there is rain against the windowpane, and a butch who loves me, and I am joyous.

Mori: There's a thing that some of us can do, with headmates we're on very close terms with, a sorta New Agey body scan where we can close our eyes and sorta see what's going on beneath each other's skins. Rogan can do it with Mac, Biff, Bob, and Grey--I expect he's better at it since he's blind in the first place and used to using other means of sensing. Rawlin's also good at it; she just closes her haws and sees things as glowing headspace threads.

I can do it with her. And where her chest scar is, I can feel abyssal water pumping away, taking over the functions her heart had.

It feels like good symmetry; she sacrificed her heart to revive and power the headspace, and now the abyssal water that makes UP headspace seems to power her. I would way rather her have the waters pumping away in her than the family god.

Anyway my girlfriend is cute and you should tell her she's cute.( Photographic evidence! )

Rawlin: Bob asked me to write this up, so I will.

Other people here have called me a "reality-warper" or a "super-wizard," but that's exaggeration. What I really am (for lack of a better metaphor) is a weaver.

( The metaphor is tortured, for which I apologize. )

This is a very silly chat conversation between our friend K and Mori and Rawlin.

Mori: Rawlin's appearance has changed pretty drastically in the past few years, so I figured I'd upload some art of him to show the difference!

( 2020 art and 2024 art for compare and contrast. )

Mori: I'm working on Madgic #3 again! I was stuck cooling my heels for months, waiting for my brain, and now I have the final six penciled comics pages I need to get it done. It's all Rawlin stuff, and we don't have a lot of art of him here, so I'm uploading some! (Sorry, y'all only get the non-spoilery stuff.)

( Rawlin art and talking about his artistic challenge behind the cut! )