[SWP] ACT I: The Trembling of a Distant Land

[Only]

  

“ polarized, divisive drowning in strife ”

He arrives late to the party, no one is really looking at each other, they are all just looking outward, upward, and soon he does too.  Something inside Stephen stirs, it feels like he might be uneasy, but the snakeskin man does not show it.  Carefully he makes his way down, but stops when the grass starts swarming with crabs. Never mind the eruption, never mind the ash or the moist air threatening to bombard the beach with acid rain. 

"Oh .."  Stephen is unsettled by the decopods, that are now climbing over each other, claws, tails, feet.  The brachyuran stack themselves higher quite dutifully, like armies of ants.  They use each other as stair steps so that they may find safety above.  Hopefully just until the water has made up its mind on how it will address the natural disaster that rimples the perfectly ballasted levels.  Waves thrash from extra mass pushing the sea outward, a beautiful rhythm disturbed from its naturalness. 

At first, they come erratically, and then, they don't.   And it is the hitch in the pattern that causes Stephen to gaze up from the crab infested grass.  And that is when he sees that the sky has gone black and that the wind comes from behind him now - but only to bring more dark clouds.  Something akin to fear, but not quite the same -- anxiousness -- a result of fear (not his own, Only's) separates him from fully feeling the weight of the current horror in the horizon. 

"Hn."  A part of him feels like a too-familiar, too-real, god-awful rip in Space has opened up on them all at last, and soon, that rift will tear into all of this beautiful, stable earth.  Soon, it will fling everyone everywhere and into anytime it wants.  Gods?  They would never be able to keep up with the staunch reduction of a universe.

Nevermind the Gods, Stephen cannot possibly think to imagine they would do something absurd like this - even if they did, what business does he have judging them for it?  They are not his Gods.  It is too easy to think like one to be a subject for one.

Right now, Stephen feels like God in the hundreds of eyes of crabs trying to claim higher ground on him.  The rough, larger scales on his legs are easy for those needle tip toes to seek purchase on.  Soon, Stephen has become his own island.  The atheist steps backwards and flicks a crab off his foot, several more start scurrying to him, up him, past him, and Stephen is aggravated to the point of stomping one just because he can.  His savage cruelty is Godlike in its own way, but even still -- nothing stops them from weaving into his hair and tangling themselves quite thusly.  

Perhaps in justice and revenge for their fallen comrade.

O N L Y
technically I still exist, but not in my mind

 

@Random Events @Open thread to whoever would like to attach to this junction.

***STAFF EDIT
@Only has rolled a 2! He has been awarded +20 signos