this old place again

[sleaze]

I’ll worship like a dog at the shrine of your lies tell you my sins so you can sharpen your knife He is a man torn asunder. There was a world, he thinks. A strange and terrible world but it exists as ghosts do, shadows at the periphery of vision. He can’t look far, it’s too dark, a purple so dark it’s nearly black. (Just like him. He is the purple. The purple is him.) Those lives exist, perched; they skitter out in dreams and nightmares and parade the events that happened. (That could not possibly have happened. There was no girl.) There are multiple lives echoing like heartbeats through his body, and worse – worse is, he loses his mind. We mean this quite literally – it slips away, a new power, slips into trees and rocks and rivers and sometimes other animals. It touched a wolf, once; head thrown back mid-howl and the blood-hunger grew strong inside him, the air rich with meat-scents. It touched an old oak and he stretched his branches up to drink down the sun. Once there was a boy who prayed. Once there was a boy who knelt in the grass til his knees wore bare. Who let his father lay a forlorn head across his withers, thinking, this is love, this is love. But the father had left and while the boy had kept his prayers, it set in motion the return to Beqanna. It set in motion the toybox memories, the purpling of his thoughts, the mind that skitters from place to place and is no longer entirely his. He is a man torn asunder and he is not suitable for company but he sees her, the bay winged mare. His mind scampers out, touches her, but recoils as if slapped after a second. It returns to him with only a sense of years lived and he realizes she is old, though her body does not betray it. “Hello,” he ventures, unsure what to say next. He was never good at small talk even when he was not a man torn asunder, it’s a thousand times worse now, a million. “My name is Sleaze.” Like she cares, or needs to know. sleaze cancer x garbage

(so sleaze was in a quest where he basically was turned into a toy horse where he met all sorts of gruesome fates and his mind has mostly blocked it out but there's some major PTSD. also! from the quest he has possession but he has like zero control of it. i know i didn't mention him in plots but his trauma plus her mind reading seems like it could be hilarious)