Sugarcane

[[Stones|grown]]. Of course.\n<<set $court = "stones">>

He asks where I've been. I want to scream, where could I have gone. Where.\n\nI say something correct and slide into bed. After some time he seems to be asleep. I test the cord under the blanket. It is strong and supple. I slowly make a noose with my fingers, disguising each movement as the natural shift of a body slumbering.

This doesn't look right at all.\n\nAcross the room you see the garden. Dead leaves are swirling but there is no wind on this still summer [[night]].

The hallways slam shut\n\nw a l l s [[b l o o m]]

Relates back to something about some goddess descending on a certain legendary night and drinking with mortals. In the morning those who spoke to her were granted wishes. Or did they die? Perhaps nothing happened.\n\n<<back>>

([[she|Sink into the lake of cushions]] has the blue pallor of the Clay Isles)

You're sitting at a fine table sipping tea.<html>The carnage continues at a muted volume, tanks flowing through you in ghostly procession.</html>Across from you a charming and influential [[socialite]] is fanning herself and begging you to try the biscuits.\n\n[[Try the biscuits.]]

And they are indefatigable in their bad work: They never are faint or weary. Indeed, it seems no spirits are capable of weariness but those that inhabit flesh and blood.\n-John Wesley\n\nThe Sibyl, with frenzied mouth uttering things not to be laughed at, unadorned and unperfumed, yet reaches to a thousand years with her voice...\n-Heraclitus\n\n[[{*}|terminus]]

Fortunately the saints died in an absurd number of ways.\n\nPenetrated by arrows, burnt to death, thousands of tiny cuts, beheaded, forced to fight wild animals, clubbed, dragged apart, crushed under slowly stacked heavy stones, dropped from cliffs, ridden over by horses (wild), ridden over by horses (domestic), buried alive, made to drink poison, dragged behind ships...\n\nYou have a lot of [[leeway|expressions]].

"Do you believe yourself a prophet?"\n\nWizened, waxy old men like pale leather idols grow from behind tables and speak to me through hunger's haze.\n\n"Do you believe yourself a prophet?"\n\nAnd surely we must speak, although words no longer come so quickly to the lips as in my days of certitude. And if the words no longer bubble up clear and high, but instead stutter,\n\n[[has not God departed from me, and perhaps has for a long while, and I have labored in heresy?]]\n\n[[has not man persecuted a body which is only flesh and bone?]]

We are lying in bed in the large rectangular brutalist structure on the moor and the quality of [[light]] is soft and blue. The sky through the window is obscured entirely by soft grey clouds shot here and there with silver. The moor is grey green.\n\nThe phone is [[vibrating]] under the blanket, muffled enough to [[ignore]] if you will keep holding me.

One morning at dawn the nurse shook him awake because his sobs were being heard in the next room. Once he was awake he could hear that not only was the patient next door but the two hundred dogs kept in the hospital courtyard for use in the laboratory had also been threatened by his sobbing and clearly were howling still; nonetheless, he thought to himself, I am only dreaming; besides, I'm already fully conscious of the significance of those howling dogs because I've written about them, this is no time for [[howling dogs|room]].\n-Oe Kenzaburo

A certain person was tasked with describing a garden for the records of an empire. To assure objectivity, they were shown this garden through a slit in a piece of opaque black paper.\n\nThrough the slit you see slender green trees flowering with tightly knotted purple flowers. A narrow stream winds through the garden. You feel certain that the garden permits a feeling of privacy and enclosure at regular intervals despite the relatively small size of the garden, due to the height and closeness of the trees, as well as the gentle canopy of long green leaves proliferating from the tip of each tree. You can smell the sweetness of the flowers and the freshness of the leaves and water--your nose scrapes against the slit as you press closer to inhale more deeply.\n\nDescribe aesthetically: [["This garden was certainly created by a soul in accord with Heaven. Surely spirits dwell in this verdant shrine, this majestic expanse of purple buds hanging with wind-wet leaves. I am overcome!"|aesthetically]]\n\nDescribe bureaucratically: [["This is a regulation garden in every aspect, save for the tallness of the trees. The trees extend at least 12 thumbs above standard."|bureaucratically]]\n\nDescribe horticulturally: [["The trees are in full health from leaf to flower. Water runs through in seemingly haphazard curves but closer observation reveals excellent coverage of the entire garden. Pruning and sweeping seems to be done in a timely manner."|horticulturally]]

Are you really seeing her?\n<html>Your gaze slides off the contours of her face.</html>A socialite abstracted, a form of beauty and wit absorbed like waves of heat. She just isn't all [[there|alternatives]].

Rapidly shifting dimensions of [[war haze|lid]]--sometimes the smoke is high enough to be mistaken for a grey sky, sometimes it collapses low as a mercurial cavern.

You hang your head and let their words destroy you.\n\nSome days later they come to your cell and take you to be [[burnt|joan]]. The stones wonder if it is interesting to suffer.

Something like alcohol fire smears itself across the window pane. You draw the blinds shut. The capacity of the room to be beheld fades until our forms on the bed are like a slit of white meat in the side of a black fish.\n\n[[Sleep.|ignore]] [[No.|piss]]

A hurtling mortar opines that it saves processing power to merge the death element.\n\nThe trenches ask whether you wish to continue.\n\n[["No."|comfortable]] [["Okay."|INTO BATTLE]]

As servants pour dreamliquid and musicians strum narcotic melodies, you fall to talking with a visiting [[ambassador]]. Her dress is luxurious but severe, gold buttons studding black fabric drawn tightly across her flat, androgynous frame. She wears a mask like a star framed in tendrils.\n\n"So tell me, mysterious one, do you believe in dreams."\n\n[["Dreams are nonsense. Fevered muddle of our past, smeared together with no mind."|sleep]]\n\n[["Some say truth is scattered through dreams, if you know where to look."|sleep]]\n\n[["Sometimes I feel as if dreams were my only refuge."|sleep]]

howling dogs

you leave a stiletto heel stuck in her [[shoulder]]

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She stabs the dagger into your leg. You slide to the floor.\n\na ringing sound\n\nThe woman in the sky mask is holding a bloody pipe smeared with writhing hair. The ambassador is clutching at her leaking head, collecting all her thoughts.\n\nAnd how didn't you notice all these days that the material of every surface in every world was black metal and every light was like something mosquitos [[kill]] themselves on.

Splinters in my feet, this cold morning, as they wrap the chains around me. Do they need all these chains, when my bones stick through my skin?<html>"was it whore fuck burn devils witch cunt i just broken diseased the heart i</html> The sun is behind dark clouds, so the [[torch|{*}]] that comes through the crowd is the brightest light.<html>no it was but i i just wanted thought did i god please worthy whore PLEASE</html>We do not live in a time of miracles.

They lower the hungry rock mask over your [[head|invincible]]. It has no smell, and perhaps less than a smell.\n<<set $mask = "rock">>

They lower the bat mask over your [[head|invincible]]. Bitter cinnamon, fur smell.\n<<set $mask = "bat">>

howling dogs by [[porpentine|http://aliendovecote.com/]]

ceilings fall\nThe hallways slam shut\nwalls [[a gap]] bloom

The bathroom is low lit by glazed lanterns and heavily fragrant with pots of spice. The woman is nowhere to be seen but on the mirror, in lipstick,\n\nRUN\n\nyou [[turn]] back to the bathroom entrance

If the assassin looks superstitious or basely spiritual, shame them with beatitude.\n\nIf they appear beyond all piety, shame them with glacial calm.\n\nIf they have no eyes (there are prophecies) then let no flinch pass your frame when they lower the wire around your neck or touch the dagger to your ribs.\n\n[[60 repetitions of cold needle jabs or until you stop trembling.|training]]\n<<set $lookEmpress = true>>

The [[shower]] is a peaceful time for you, a way of demarcating space within extremely limited space, moisture and temperature standing in for spatiality. This is wet space, warm space, flowing space.<<set $showerRation = true>>

They come to your cell that night to burn you quickly, without ceremony. But they could not stop the news, of that particular quality of light in your eyes, and in your words.\n\nThousands have gathered, crushing to brush the hem of your shift, to catch hold of your hand, and the noise of their longing draws ever more.\n\nFrom the stake you stare as they stack cord. You see through the crowd, through everything, at something they cannot [[imagine|{*}]]. At your smile the executioner begs forgiveness. He drops the torch twice.\n\nAnd it was later said they had burnt a saint.

A [[square]] of leaves dipped in silver, hissing with wind, bristling with night.

you leave a stiletto heel stuck in her shoulder\n\nthe bathroom window drops down to some interstitial area, an indoor garden of tiles and tall shrubs\n\nfrom here you see a gap of artificially illuminated green lawn, the [[palace lawn]], glimpsed through one of the open archways

Very well. But you must watch.\n\n[[Come.|come]]

A hallway parts the chaos of shifting architectural plates, tunneling fast as sight from here to the ambassador and she comes stomping down the passageway and each click of her heels shakes the whole palace,\n\nGADUNG\n\n[[GADUNG|SHAKING]]

Evening's crimson light is perfect for covering up blood.\n\nMid-day is unfortunate. Better to die in the interior of the palace by some inconstant candle than face the brutal light of the sun which seems to delight in raising up every wrinkle, every blemish.\n\nDying in the morning is second-best, resembling as it may certain scriptural descriptions of death, that "misted passage" or "foggy road". But perhaps such an allusion is lost on the masses.\n\nVarious aesthetic scenarios naturally assert themselves. Perhaps stumbling into the garden and coming to rest by the pond? I can see it now, arm flung out by the water but not so close you feed the fish, bare feet stained with dew and sticking with white petals, symbolizing that you remained [[pure]] unto death[[...|training]]\n<<set $lightEmpress = true>>

Immersed in a room where every surface is glowing screen.\n\n<<if $sanityType eq 0>>A meadow of green grass and breezy flowers. The wind rises and falls with your heartbeat. In the distance, a thin strip of forest.<<endif>><<if $sanityType eq 1>>Bamboo stalks bend in the breeze. Glimpses of the sea where they part. The floor is polished white riverbed stones.<<endif>><<if $sanityType eq 2>>A road winding through winter woods, aspen trees glazed with moonlight. Gentle flurries.<<endif>><<if $sanityType eq 3>>Mesa with purple-blue sky and plateaus on the horizon like shaved teeth.<<endif>><<if $sanityType eq 4>>Reeds along a misty river. Trees bend with the weight of their branches and dip their bedraggled leaves into the slowly moving waters. Red pixels are scattered here and there.<<endif>><<if $sanityType eq 5>>The panels are red with occasional dead pixels, surrounding you with walls|ceiling|floor of crimson. Low white noise.<<endif>>

They lower the petal mask over your [[head|invincible]]. The inside is lined with velvet and smells of citrus.\n<<set $mask = "petal">>

Tonight, the Festival of Sleep. They have brought the huge carafes full of dreamliquid, rich and purple, pouring with sensual thickness. The palace is full of recliners and cushions so guests may sleep where they fall.\n\nIt is [[customary]] for the empress to wear a [[mask|mask?]] so she may blend in with the others. <<display "mask">>\n\n<<if $mask neq "none">>\n[[Sink into the lake of cushions]]\n<<endif>>

A small [[panel]] that you [[drop|clean]] your trash through.\n\n<<back>>

(a spire of birdshit but a [[powerful|empress]] symbol)

The house is naked and nothing can be hidden in it, you had it built that way. And you let nothing in except for the few things we needed to live and their shapes were not for secrecy. Thoroughfare objects with high traffic--pans always messy and steaming with pasta (though I once fantasized about plucking a knife from the boiling water and slipping it into your heart) and clear pitchers full of water and the flatscreen television and a bed flush with the ground (no child or fully grown woman could hide herself or anything else beneath it).\n\nRegardless, I found the lone error the builders made and in that gap of misjudged proportions I hid my friend the coiled cord, a snake that rises at certain times, such odd times, it must be admitted, but those are the facts!\n\nWould you help me kill him?\n\n[[Yes.]] [[No.]]

A square of leaves dipped in silver, hissing with wind, bristling with night.\n\nThe bedroom window. You are awake. You consider going back to sleep, then remember:\n\nI am awake now because it would be most interesting to be awake now.\n\nSo you get [[up]].

Many years later you remember this garden as you travel to visit your dying mother.\n\nOn the way back from the funeral you take a detour, passing through sloping meadows speckled with white flowers. Yes, the garden is just as you remember, you think, as you observe from the top of a grassy hill. A wagon unloads shackled men who trudge into a tall, utilitarian structure behind the garden. Many small, tightly spaced windows line the face of the building, all facing the garden.\n\nThe warden approaches with a pair of shears and begins to slowly, carefully prune shoots that have overstrayed the bounds of the [[garden|{*}]].

It seems like you've never wanted anything more than to [[run]] to that wide open space.

My secret is that in these faint scratches on the [[wall|here]] I see the forest near my mother's home, I see the meadow where I walked and talked with spiritual advisors as a child--green grass and tall trees where voices may fall in a particular quality of sunlight and breeze to a certain child who thereafter spoke with unusual certitude for a great while after.

You charge over the ridge in deathly ulu-elation, brandishing a spine-furred slicer fit to drag the flesh from skinhavers.\n\n[[Flashes of buffering red and black]]

I've been [[cut off|we do not live]] from the passion of Joan of Arc.

The silence gathers around our bodies like fleece, like static. I wonder if you can hear it [[too]]?

The Empress gives special consideration to this garden, granting the owner an imperial stipend for maintenance and expansion.\n\nThe garden's special trees, bred by the owner herself, proliferate to fill the entirety of her grounds.\n\nho hum\n\nIt becomes known in later years of decadence that the purple flowers of this tree are an [[opiate]].\n\nor was it\n\nWhen the trees reach the soil of the surrounding countryside, their hidden quality is [[revealed]]:

Fortunately the saints died in an absurd number of ways.\n\nPenetrated by arrows, burnt to death, thousands of tiny cuts, beheaded, forced to fight wild [[animals]]

How interesting!\n\n<<back>>

<html>"Do you believe yourself a prophet?"</html><html>...</html><html>"Do you believe yourself a prophet?"</html>[[...|questions]]

You crawl through just as two surfaces snap shut, trapping your dress--sawing back and forth you tear the hem free with a horrendous [[rip]]\n\n

High above the martial vapors you know the Death Ship is rattling gantries and frames to release more invadorial cargo. You miss the bonesmell of the sepulchural bunks but this day was long coming.\n\nYour sisters and brothers in death crunch to the surface of this doomed planet.\n\n[["Don't you think this is a bit morbid?"|don't you think]]\n\n[[INTO BATTLE]]

I wander through certain unspecified identical floors and passages of thick concrete on the way to the bathroom, which despite being the only significant room in the house besides the kitchen and the bedroom, is nowhere near the others.\n\nOutside the bedroom I can think freely about the events of last year. More than three hundred days have elapsed, so how strange that only now would I be driven to [[kill you]].

The cord is so tiny in my palm that I am trembling by the time I reach the threshold of the bedroom. I feel as if I have deceived myself, that I have been clutching some rubbish the whole time, a bit of dust or delusory shoestring that is drowning in the sweat of my palm, and I will release it like a bird that tells the heavens to strike me.\n\nIt would be better to die than to think in such a way, all the time, don't you think, for over three hundred days, since the events of last year?\n\n[[Yes.|been]]

The silence gathers around our bodies like fleece, like static. I wonder if you can hear it too?\n\nBut I think the events of last year disproved anything so romantic as our bodies and minds being as one.\n\nYou are not my limb, though you writhe when I change position. You are not my hair, though you hang down past my shoulders and onto my breasts.\n\nYou are something I digest and shit out. Something warm I leave behind that becomes cold then disintegrates/fades into the ground/edge of my perception.\n\nI am the eternal forest, forever blossoming, forever rushing from the earth to drag sun into my branches. Beyond me are dead trees and mulch and further on, mere fog. You do not deserve to touch this body or occupy my [[thoughts]].

It seems like you've never wanted anything more than to run to that wide open space.\n\nThe palace is [[tightening]] around you.

Bread hard as [[stones|here]], half a cup of tepid water that only serves to grow my thirst.

Am I so weak that hunger and thirst will drive me from faith? Will I be broken by unmoving walls?\n\nI can only see the here, the now, and that is our mortal affliction, to see only with our eyes, which are two poor troubled spheres that can only grow blinder.\n\nThe [[here]] and now is cold, stinking, and dark.

This doesn't look right at all. Strum strum strum.\n\nA servant draws the curtain.\n\nThe ambassador eyes you, nursing her own cup. Her blue lips move slowly in the [[opiate haze]]. You can't hear what she's saying. She smiles.

I have been cut off from the passion of the saints.\n\nSometimes they slide in [[food and drink]]. I have scratched [[scenes]] in the walls with my fingernails. My filth lies in the corner. The door on the north wall opens only to offer me great pain, agitation, and ultimately, [[confusion]].\n\nBut they say my trial is coming [[soon|......]].

ceilings [[fall]]\n\nThe hallways slam shut\n\nwalls bloom\n\n

He inhales sharply in the way he does when he has woken up instantly. His testosteronated body rolls back against me.\n\n[[Pull.]]\n\n[[Hesitate.]]

T h e h a l l w a y s s l a m [[s h u t]]

Took a long time before you thought to put your arm down the disposal. You listened first. Listened to the glass rolling down, made sure nothing sharp and metal was whirring inside.\n\nJust a long chute and you can't hear the bottom. That is the news.\n\n<<back>>

Your shoulders hit the sides of a narrow space. You're in some kind of narrow wooden box. Grains of dirt grind at your back as you brace against the [[lid]].

They prepare you for the day you shall be assassinated by draping your body in red streamers and arranging you aesthetically across carpets and divans.\n\nYou are instructed in\n\n<<if $lightEmpress eq false>>[[the art of dying in the proper lighting]]<<else>>[[the art of dying in the proper lighting|morning]]<<endif>>\n\n<<if $lightEmpress eq true>><<if $lookEmpress eq false>>[[the art of shaming your assassin with your composure|assassins]]<<else>>[[the art of shaming your assassin with your composure]]<<endif>><<endif>>\n\n<<if $lookEmpress eq true>><<if $saintEmpress eq false>>[[the art of emulating the appropriate saint with your death pose|saint]]<<else>>[[the art of emulating the appropriate saint with your death pose|expressions]]<<endif>><<endif>>\n\n<<if ($lightEmpress eq true) and ($saintEmpress eq true) and ($lookEmpress eq true)>>You have learned from these repetitions.\n\nYou are [[grown]].<<endif>>

(for their species, [[anyway|empress]])

//Report: 3rd Patrol of the Illustrious Rim\n\nWe have burnt the city. During the fire it killed several soldiers. We tried to retrieve their bodies but they are lodged inside the city in a way that is not delicate to describe.\n\nThe city screamed for many days afterwards. To our relief, it stopped screaming when the ivy-encrusted observatory crumbled. I humbly suggest the pursuit of research regarding possible infection of observatories in nearby cities--ash winds may prove a vector.//\n\n[[Wisdom invincible.]]

<<if $court eq "lilac">>Was it not [[lilac]]?\n\n[[Jasmine]]...?\n\nOr perhaps you prefer not to sully your wisdom with cloying perfumes. Perhaps you prefer the solemnity of [[stones]].<<endif>><<if $court eq "jasmine">>Was it not [[jasmine|Jasmine]]?\n\n[[Lilac|lilac]], then?\n\nOr perhaps you prefer not to sully your wisdom with cloying perfumes. Perhaps you prefer the solemnity of [[stones]].<<endif>><<if $court eq "stones">>Was it not [[stones]]?\n\nYes, stones are harsh. [[Jasmine]], perhaps? Or sweet, sweet [[lilac]]?<<endif>>

The surrounding countryside becomes a place of paranoia and bloodshed as warlords fight for control of the garden. Shouts and sudden downswing of some sharp or heavy or sharp and heavy, wearisomely edged, grippable, heftable, you can hold it in two arms, or one, it can, at any rate, be lifted from the earth, thing\n\nthen the smell of sap and copper through channels of threshed [[stalks|{*}]].

I lie there as you answer the phone. After a few seconds you look out the [[window]].\n\nThe rest of the house is [[empty]].

<html>everything is melting back into you</html>\nyou curl up\n\nwonder what your dreams will be like\n<html>masked guests whirl past and collapse, lips stained purple</html>\nthe taste of purple and lids [[dropping|{*}]]\n<html>lifting your eyelids to read this feels like lifting stone</html>

<<display "court">>\n\nEvery day the reports grow and recede, blessed by your wisdom.\n\nReport--a strange [[city]] has been discovered to the north...

Porpentine

Then you are my ally, and my friend, and I embrace you.\n\n[[Come.]]

They lower the wasp mask over your [[head|invincible]]. Sweet metallic smell.\n<<set $mask = "wasp">>

"God does not waste.\n\nI say to you, a storm is coming, and the thunder is the breaking of men's bones and the rain is red.\n\nFree me with your fire."\n\nYour words are unbreakable. No one in the court will meet your gaze. You lift your face to the light that falls from the high window. The candles wonder if it is interesting to be [[victorious|burnt]].

You are the empress of the starry diadem, lordess of the sun-cursed towers, visionatrix of the inner sea, controller of foundries, trade routes, war zones, of anything laws may touch and everything susceptible to grace. Outside your domain are outlaws and damned things.\n\nFrom the highest [[tower]] of your palace your edicts soar on blemishless birds of a [[rare]] color, edicts to shatter borders or rise up empires.\n\n[[But...|child]]\n\n<<set $lightEmpress = false>>\n<<set $lookEmpress = false>>\n<<set $saintEmpress = false>>\n\n<<set $captured = false>>\n\n<<set $court = "lilac">>\n\n<<set $mask = "none">>

One morning at dawn the nurse shook him awake because his sobs were being heard in the next room. Once he was awake he could hear that not only was the patient next door but the two hundred dogs kept in the hospital courtyard for use in the laboratory had also been threatened by his sobbing and clearly were howling [[still]]\n\n<<set $showerWorks = true>>\n<<set $trashWorks = true>>\n<<set $sanityType = 0>>\n<<set $food = false>>\n<<set $water = false>>\n<<set $foodMess = 0>>\n<<set $waterMess = 0>>\n<<set $tepid = false>>\n<<set $days = 367>>\n<<set $showerRation = true>>\n<<set $sim = 1>>

Tiny metal toilet and shallow bowl of sink jutting from pipes. The [[shower]] is a vertical indentation in the wall separated by a clear plastic screen. Your [[room]] is outside.

The bathroom is low lit by glazed lanterns and heavily fragrant with pots of spice. The woman is nowhere to be seen but on the mirror, in lipstick,\n\n[[RUN]]

//Report: 3rd Patrol of the Illustrious Rim\n\nWe have discovered a city that grows itself--houses, pillars, and roads arising and roaring.//\n\n[[Set fire to this unwell place.]]\n\n[[Capture the city...alive.]]

The wall shatters like nothing and she pulls you through the [[hole]].\n\nTHE BANQUET IS OVER

Yes. It was [[lilac|grown]].\n<<set $court = "lilac">>

<<display "where i've been">>\n\n[[I slip the noose over his head.]]

<<if $water eq true>>A line of text lights up: "Preserving rations is vital for mission success."\n\n<<back>>\n<<endif>><<if ($water eq false) and ($tepid eq false)>>\nYou press the button. A bottle of ice cold water rolls down. You return to your [[bunk|room]] and drink it up.<<set $waterMess = $waterMess + 1>><<set $water = true>><<endif>><<if ($water eq false) and ($tepid eq true)>>\nYou press the button. A bottle of tepid water rolls down. You return to your [[bunk|room]] and drink it up.<<set $waterMess = $waterMess + 1>><<set $water = true>><<endif>>

The top of the garden is cut down with shears. The trees extend only to a certain height and no more. You pass by on chance in a later month. Now you can see beyond the garden, beyond the precisely terminating tips like bundles of vegetables in market rows. You see the walls behind the garden and beyond the walls\n\nroads, hills, cities\n\nfollowed by mountains, then, presumably, the black [[horizon|{*}]].\n

//Report: Irrigation Knights, Sun Emblem\n\nOh how your servants groaned and feared to desecrate such a holy creature. But we know the insight of the empress is above all things, and so we carried out your command.\n\nBeneath the gems was stinking meat like any other animal. The odd thing however is that clutching each gem was a tiny, delicate hand. Each hand held very hard to its gem and we had to break them all in the end to fulfill this task.\n\nWe are currently disposing of a giant, stripped bird covered in tiny, broken hands. We expect no further difficulties.//\n\n[[Wisdom invincible.|invincible]]

<<display "where i've been">>\n\n[[Slip the noose over his head.]]

<<if $food eq true>>A line of text lights up: "Preserving rations is vital for mission success."\n\n<<back>><<endif>><<if $food eq false>>You press the button. A sealed nutrient bar slides out. You sit down on the [[floor|room]] and peel the wrapper. Has a <<print $taste>>.<<set $foodMess = $foodMess + 1>>\n<<set $food = true>><<endif>>

If the assassin looks superstitious or basely spiritual, shame them with beatitude.\n\nIf they appear beyond all piety, shame them with glacial [[calm|eyeless]].

Fortunately the saints died in an absurd number of [[ways]].

I wander through certain unspecified identical floors and passages of thick concrete.\n\nOutside the bedroom I can think freely about the events of last year. More than three hundred days have elapsed, so how strange that only now, when you do a little thing like answer the phone when I am in bed with you, would I be driven to [[kill you]].

Sopping with blood, shouting, bellowing, ramming your weapon through rib cages, twisting, shredding hearts into flimsy strips that hang from chest-holes like tinsel wigs.\n\n[[You bring back a couple fingers for your bone-sparrow to nibble on.|{*}]]

The ambassador blocks the entrance. She smiles again and this time you can hear what she was saying earlier.\n\nI'm going to kill you.\n\nthe drums in the hall are deafening, vibrations pulsing through the wall like marble's [[heartbeat]]

The wall is fitted with a [[food dispenser]] and a [[hydration unit]].\n\n<<back>>

He inhales sharply in the way he does when he has woken up instantly. His testosteronated body rolls back against me.\n\n[[I pull with no hesitation.|Pull.]]

You're under the table rubbing your bone foot, waiting for something to happen. Your tutor sits by the window planning [[lessons|training]].

...but you are still a child.\n\nYou play with your bone foot, [[scraping]] out patterns in the dust under the table. Your tutor sits by the window planning lessons.

Running through the darkness, running through a library of hearts. You feel an aching hollow as your gaze twists across the [[beautiful|{*}]] hearts, the [[bold|{*}]] hearts, the [[true|{*}]] hearts.\n\ndon't stop, please\n\nthey're just showing you what you already have\n\nsky mask is kicking aside rubble and [[crawling]] up through the back of the library

The window is a high hole in the marble but your leap manages both hands on the sill. She grabs a leg with one hand and in the other, well, that's a dagger.\n\n[[kick]]\n\n

Every day you think of ways this photo could have been improved: better lighting, better surroundings, closer to see the subtleties in her expression, further back to see her form and better imagine embracing her...\n\n<<back>>

<<if ($food eq true) and ($water eq true)>>\nA reclining chair in a dark room with a visor hanging from the ceiling.\n\nYou sit down and pull the visor over your head. The visor interior is soft and enveloping. You squeeze the drip tube between your teeth and sickly sweet fluid floods your mouth. [[Pulses]] fire into your retinas.\n<<else>>\nA reclining chair in a dark room with a visor hanging from the ceiling.\n\nThe visor won't release if you don't eat and drink first.\n\n<<back>>\n<<endif>>

A room of dark metal. Flourescent lights embedded in the ceiling.\n\nThe [[activity room]] is in the north wall. The [[lavatory]] entrance, west, next to the [[trash disposal]] and the [[nutrient dispensers]]. The [[sanity room]] is in the east wall.\n\nHer [[photograph]] is pinned to the side of your bunk. A red LCD reads <<print $days>> a few inches over.\n\n<<display "mess">> <<if $days gt 369>>Your skin itches.<<endif>>\n\n<<set $random = Math.round(Math.random() * 4)>>\n<<if $random eq 0>>\n<<set $taste = "brothy umami flavor">>\n<<endif>>\n<<if $random eq 1>>\n<<set $taste = "sweet, honeyed meat flavor">>\n<<endif>>\n<<if $random eq 2>>\n<<set $taste = "mildly spiced vegetal flavor">>\n<<endif>>\n<<if $random eq 3>>\n<<set $taste = "citrusy fruitlike flavor">>\n<<endif>>\n<<if $random eq 4>>\n<<set $taste = "tart, vinegar flavor">>\n<<endif>>

She looks over [[sharply]].

<html>The patter of interesting things on the sill, on the threshold, at the door. Uncohered interesting things still forming at the corners of your eyes, latent fascinators prickling, swirling just out of sight.</html>Which life was this again?\n<html>The calendar has no days and the clock, no hours.</html>

<<if ($showerWorks eq true) and ($showerRation eq false)>>\nYou've already used your shower ration for the day.\n<<back>><<endif>><<if ($showerWorks eq true) and ($showerRation eq true)>>You step into the shower and let the 2-minute water ration wash away the faint film of sweat and dead skin cells. [[Ahhhh.]] When the timer runs out, hot air blows from a vent and dries you [[off|lavatory]].<<set $showerRation = false>><<endif>><<if ($showerWorks eq false)>>You turn the handle. Nothing happens. You scratch your unwashed skin.\n\n<<back>><<endif>>\n

<<if $days eq 367>>[img[http://aliendovecote.com/uploads/x/4/howling%20dogs/garden.png]]\n\n[[{*}|a certain person]]<<endif>><<if $days eq 368>>[img[http://aliendovecote.com/uploads/x/4/howling%20dogs/bedroom.png]]\n\n[[{*}|bedroom]]<<endif>><<if $days eq 369>>[img[http://aliendovecote.com/uploads/x/4/howling%20dogs/box.png]]\n\n[[{*}|box]]<<set $tepid = true>><<set $showerWorks = false>><<set $trashWorks = false>><<endif>><<if $days eq 370>>[img[http://aliendovecote.com/uploads/x/4/howling%20dogs/cut off.png]]\n\n[[{*}|cut off]]<<endif>><<if $days eq 371>>[img[http://aliendovecote.com/uploads/x/4/howling%20dogs/empress.png]]\n\n[[{*}|empress]]<<endif>><<if $days eq 372>>\n[img[http://aliendovecote.com/uploads/x/4/howling%20dogs/silver.png]]\n\n[[{*}|silver]]<<endif>>

But we do not hesitate.\n\n<<display "fell">>

Her smile is tearing her apart, teeth brimming off the edge of her face, and her eyes are multiplying and spilling free like fountaining marbles through the holes in her [[{*}]].\n\nI'm going to make you sleep [[forever]].

the [[bat]]\n\nthe [[hungry rock]]\n\nthe [[petals]]\n\nthe [[wasp]]

<<display "sanity">>\n\n<<back>>

<<if $mask eq "none">><<endif>><<if $mask eq "bat">>\nThe bat has a manic look. Rich brown fur streaked with black. Jet black eyes. Leathery nose.<<endif>><<if $mask eq "wasp">>The wasp mask has such queenly beauty, and such liquidly gleaming eyes. You play with your antennae, black coils of spun viscloth.<<endif>><<if $mask eq "petal">>Soft pastel petals (milk white, sherbert orange, sea green) stitched to moontree bark.<<endif>><<if $mask eq "rock">>The hungry rock. An odd choice.<<endif>>\n\nThe banquet is [[waiting|invincible]].

<<if $court eq "jasmine">>\nYou rule from a jasmine court.<<endif>><<if $court eq "lilac">>You rule from a lilac court.<<endif>><<if $court eq "stones">>You rule from a stone court.<<endif>>\n\nEvery day the reports grow and recede, blessed by your wisdom.\n\n<<if $captured eq false>>Report--the [[farmlands]] to the east are dying.<<else>>Report--a small [[note]] from the Ministers of Architecture and Horticulture\n\nReport--the [[farmlands]] to the east are dying.<<endif>>\n\n

You crawl through just as two surfaces snap shut, trapping your dress--sawing back and forth you tear the hem free with a horrendous rip.\n\nA hallway parts the chaos of shifting architectural plates, tunneling fast as sight from here to the ambassador and she comes stomping down the passageway and each click of her heels [[shakes]] the whole palace,\n\n

[[The mud is analyzing alternatives.|alternatives]]

"Can we not live in a time of miracles? Do we shut every book and sleep forever?\n\nI say to you, the book is unfinished and there are pages and pages unwritten.\n\nI say to you, we have not left the age of miracles. The greatest miracles are yet to come."\n\nYour words are unbreakable. No one in the court will meet your gaze. You lift your face to the light that falls from the high window. The candles wonder if it is interesting to be [[victorious|burnt]].

"You say, speak, but deny me drink. You say, stand, but I am hungry. You break the vessel and are surprised when water returns to the earth.\n\nAm I a prophet? I contain what has been put in me, and I will break or bear by my craft and dimensions."\n\nSilence in the court and the silence is shaped by your words and lies in the passage of your voice. The men stir uncomfortably and will not look at you or each other.\n\nOne man shuffles some papers and, looking past you, says, "Do you believe women can be prophets?"\n\n[["I believe anyone can be chosen by God to rise above their station, by the law of dispensation."|dispensation]]\n\n[["Women are half of humankind. Does God waste?"|Women are half of humankind.]]

The ambassador blocks the entrance. She smiles again and this time you can hear what she was saying earlier.\n\nI'm going to kill [[you]].

You can't see the sky, just a lot of [[smoke and fumes]] and searchlight beams.\n\nThings are whistling down. From far away they look like black seeds, then faster than reaction they slam with a howl into the dirt, spraying up splinters with a thunderslap of soil.\n\nThe drop-coffins are [[falling]].\n

<<display "fell">>

She stabs the dagger into your leg. You slide to the floor.\n\na ringing [[sound]]

Of course. [[Jasmine|grown]].\n<<set $court = "jasmine">>

//Report: Minister of Architecture, Minister of Horticulture\n\nWe have succeeded in making clippings from the church and are using them to grow new churches. It is heavily wounded from our excisions but little churches are sprouting up all around it like mushrooms. Some have died from over-worship but we are gradually finding the correct degree of attendance and hope to present you with a rich crop before long.//\n\n[[Wisdom invincible.]]

The empress has always saved herself for death, because death will only accept a maiden. If the empress is not pure in death, how can she birth the next empress?\n\nFor all know each empress is born of the union between woman and death, and they are known by the fleshless foot that tears their mother. These foot-boned children are found no later than a year after the death of each [[empress|morning]]. By this sign the circle is unbroken.

You charge over the ridge in deathly ulu-elation, brandishing a spine-furred slicer fit to drag the flesh from skinhavers.\n\nSkkkttts of blood and clouds of shadow and fume.\n\nThe colony of the living rises before you. They've dragged those living pillars they call trees and arranged them in walls. Reliquary tanks piloted by giant-skulled saints crash over the nearest hill and unload earth-shaking rounds into the settlement palisade, blowing apart their pathetic barriers.\n\n[[You climb through the wreckage and find some living souls to harvest.]]\n\n[["I don't feel comfortable with this."|comfortable]]

I have been cut off from the passion of religious women.\n\nThe grass outside is no different from the floor of this cell, since God is immanent, indwelling, all-pervading. But [[here]] I feel God less and less every day.

<<if $waterMess eq 1>>A bottle lies on the floor. <<endif>> <<if $waterMess eq 2>>Bottles litter the floor. <<endif>> <<if $waterMess gte 3>>The floor is covered in bottles and broken glass, glistening with droplets of moisture. <<endif>> <<if $foodMess eq 1>>A wrapper sticks to the floor.<<endif>><<if $foodMess eq 2>>Wrappers here and there.<<endif>><<if $foodMess gte 3>>Sour-smelling wrappers cling to the floor and stick to your feet.<<endif>>

She takes off her mask. You understand why the photograph was so frustrating.\n\nShe is real, trembling. Her body twists with the need to hold you and the need to keep moving through the darkness, past false catharsis.\n\n"The dream is weak.\n\nWe can cross here."\n\n[[*|weariness]]

<<if $sim eq 1>>[[Sleep.|room]]<<endif>>

She stabs the dagger into your leg. You slide to the floor.\n\na ringing sound\n\nThe woman in the sky mask is clutching a bloody length of pipe smeared with writhing hair. The ambassador is clutching at her leaking head, collecting all her thoughts.\n\nAnd how didn't you notice all these days that the material of every surface in every world was black metal and that every light was like something mosquitos kill themselves on.\n\nyou run with the sky mask woman. walls are rearing on every side with increasing speed and intelligence. she [[swings]] her pipe at the wall before her.

She stabs the dagger into your leg. You slide to the [[floor]].

They're [[delicious|{*}]].

We pull tight and form a tiny knot at the nape of his neck that no fingers can undo in the span of time that is a lung's air capacity. I am fascinated by the size of the knot--a speck to fell this hulking, muscular bull-man.\n\nI run from his death throes and open every window and door in the house. In floods the cold moor wind and the flap of curtains is fluttering applause.\n\nThe slap of my bare feet on the floor and I am passing through corridors braced with breeze and I am at the [[door|{*}]].

Evening's crimson light is perfect for covering up blood.\n\nMid-day is unfortunate. Better to [[die]] in the interior of the palace by some inconstant candle than face the brutal light of the sun which seems to delight in raising up every wrinkle, every blemish.

<<if $court eq "jasmine">>\nYou rule from a [[jasmine|oh]] court, hummingbirds darting swift as your judgments, edicts signed with the sweet, euphoric scent of your inner sanctum.<<endif>><<if $court eq "lilac">>You rule from a [[lilac|oh]] court, purple blossoms flowing past you like the flood of your wisdom made flower, and always the drone of bees.<<endif>><<if $court eq "stones">>You rule from a [[stone|oh]] court of pillars and gargoyles, edicts most austere.<<endif>>

they spread wild as weeds, shooting up like spikes to jab the pedestrian and ruin older trees, dislodge them with roots and break their branches with shoots. Removing them is onerous: their sap sticks to the hands, their hide is tough and resistant to tearing and chopping--instead of cleanly separating, the waxy green interior bends, wrinkles, stickily seeps across the blades of the shears--\n\n--[[thinks|{*}]] the frustrated worker.

If the assassin looks superstitious or basely spiritual, shame them with beatitude.\n\nIf they appear beyond all piety, shame them with glacial calm.\n\nIf they have no eyes (there are prophecies) then let no flinch pass your frame when they lower the wire around your neck or touch the dagger to your [[ribs|the art of shaming your assassin with your composure]].

If the assassin looks superstitious or basely spiritual, [[shame|calm]] them with beatitude.

Evening's crimson light is perfect for covering up [[blood]].

I say light, but a better phrase would be "capacity to behold irrespective of light". I cannot say whether the [[bedroom]] was lit at all, or merely seen, which is not the same.

<html>"Do you believe yourself a prophet?"</html>[[...|haze]]\n

<<if $mask eq "none">><<endif>><<if $mask eq "bat">>You wear the mask of the [[bat|ah]].<<endif>><<if $mask eq "wasp">>You wear the mask of the [[wasp|ah]].<<endif>><<if $mask eq "petal">>You wear the mask of the [[petal|ah]].<<endif>><<if $mask eq "rock">>You wear the mask of the [[hungry rock|ah]].<<endif>>

[[{*}|end sim]]\n<<set $days = $days + 1>>\n<<set $food = false>>\n<<set $water = false>>\n<<set $sanityType = $sanityType + 1>>\n<<set $showerRation = true>>

//Report: 3rd Patrol of the Illustrious Rim\n\nWe have captured the city, although many tall buildings committed suicide rather than be captured.\n\nWe bring back choice specimens, chained to elephants--a church, several fine houses, and a cafe. We have questioned them all closely but they will not reveal their origins. Perhaps the city is closer to a plant and simply grows where it will.//\n\n[[Wisdom invincible.]]\n<<set $captured = true>>

<<if ($trashWorks eq true) and ($foodMess eq 0) and ($waterMess eq 0)>>You have already cleaned up your trash.\n\n<<back>><<endif>><<if ($trashWorks eq true) and ($waterMess gt 0)>>[[You|room]] carry your trash over to the disposal chute, open the panel, and shove it inside.\n<<set $foodMess = 0>>\n<<set $waterMess = 0>><<endif>><<if ($trashWorks eq true) and ($foodMess gt 0)>>[[You|room]] carry your trash over to the disposal chute, open the panel, and shove it inside.\n<<set $foodMess = 0>>\n<<set $waterMess = 0>><<endif>><<if $trashWorks eq false>>You try to open the trash panel but it won't budge. A tiny red light blinks with each attempt.\n\n<<back>><<endif>>

//Report: Irrigation Knights, Sun Emblem\n\nWe buried the great bird in the plain of the gods, in an area where legends said gods were not already buried. We saw its spirit ascend with the morning light, and from its grave grew trees of dizzying height, and the fruit was birds, one of each kind of bird in the world.\n\nYour zoo now has one of each kind of bird in the world.//\n\n[[Wisdom invincible.|invincible]]

//Report: Irrigation Knights, Sun Emblem\n\nOur crops were dying because the river ran low and acrid. We said to ourselves, something must be stopping up the source, though what could block the mighty river that has fed our province since the dawn of the empress?--it is no brook to be dammed by a dead deer.\n\nWe set out in this spirit of great curiousity and consternation and what do we find but a giant bird lying deceased in the river's mouth. Surely it must have grown on some mountain of paradise, for no earthly air could sustain such enormous lungs. The plumage is made of gemstones and the beak is pure gold. Please advise your servants.//\n\n[[Give it a sacred burial with all the customs accorded divine things.]]\n\n[[Strip the gems and precious metals and deliver them to the treasury for the glory and enrichment of the empire!]]