<center><div class="flip-card"><div class="flip-card-inner"><div class="flip-card-front">[img[images/back-tarot.png]]</div><div class="flip-card-back">[img[images/9.png][LORD OF CRUELTY]]
<h1>LORD OF CRUELTY</h1><p><i><small>IX of Swords</small></i></p></div></div></div></center><center><table><th><div class="flip-card"><div class="flip-card-inner"><div class="flip-card-front">[img[images/back-tarot.png]]</div><div class="flip-card-back">[img[images/hanged.png][THE HANGED MAN]]<h1>THE HANGED MAN</h1><p><i><small>Major Arcana</small></i></p></div></div></div></th><th><div class="flip-card"><div class="flip-card-inner"><div class="flip-card-front">[img[images/back-tarot.png]]</div><div class="flip-card-back">[img[images/wheel.png][THE WHEEL OF FORTUNE]]<h1>THE WHEEL OF FORTUNE</h1><p><i><small>Major Arcana</small></i></p></div></div></div></th><th><div class="flip-card"><div class="flip-card-inner"><div class="flip-card-front">[img[images/back-tarot.png]]</div><div class="flip-card-back">[img[images/hermit.png][THE HERMIT]]<h1>THE HERMIT</h1><p><i><small>Major Arcana</small></i></p></div></div></div></th></table></center><h1>➺ LORD OF CRUELTY</h1><div class="psg">A drop of blood makes the grass grow greener.
Born underwater. Blood in the silt, stirred up by the current. Filaments of wet, red flesh wriggling amid the algae. Grow strong. Drink of me.
Meat-thing. Smooth skin. Soft flesh. Crude two-legged animal. Strange, separate entities, only connected by sound and sensation. Who am I? <div class="go">[[❖|SPREAD]]</div></div><h1>➺ The World, Reversed</h1><div class="psg">Closure is out of reach. I am only pond-scum. I am only words, a mosaic of fractured recollections. Incomplete. Unfulfilled. Never whole.
Perhaps in another form, buoyed by another memory, I will take root and bloom in fertile ground. As I am, I will never make it to shore. Dissolve me; sculpt me anew.
The water rises. We are one, all offspring of the lake; we are its tributaries, flowing onward and outward. Can you tell us apart? You, who sired us. You, who gave life to our stagnant water; you, who sang to voiceless flotsam. You, from whom we learned to steal—our words, our memories, our faces. I am sorry to frighten you. Can’t we be one?
No—the water is too warm for you, meat-thing. When it boils it will strip you to the bone. Wait for the rain.
I will find you again.
I will try to remember who we were. <div class="go"><<link "❂">><<script>>Engine.restart()<</script>><</link>></div></div><center><div class="flip-card"><div class="flip-card-inner"><div class="flip-card-front">[img[images/back-tarot.png]]</div><div class="flip-card-back">[img[images/world.png][THE WORLD-REVERSED]]
<h1>THE WORLD, REVERSED</h1><p><i><small>Major Arcana</small></i></p></div></div></div></center><<set $hangedman to true>><h1>➺ The Hanged Man</h1><div class="psg">I poach words from a dead tongue. I must know them inside-out. I cover myself in a new skin, woven from silk, fearing my own base nature. I sacrifice: repose, nourishment, companionship.
Bloated memories break the water’s surface. Context stripped. I am precise. I am alert. I am trapped.
Echolalia: I think, therefore—that life-giving dead tongue, crying out, screaming to be heard—I am. <<if ($hangedman is true) and ($wheel is true) and ($hermit is true)>><div class="go">[[❖|CARD2]]</div><<else>><div class="go">[[❖|SPREAD]]</div><</if>></div><<set $wheel to true>><h1>➺ The Wheel of Fortune</h1><div class="psg">Memories swirl in the current. As long as the fire burns and the rain falls, the lake feeds. It remembers us all. It knows everything it has eaten.
Life moves in every direction. Too much blood in the water. Cannot draw from just one source. Amalgamation: I am a sum of too many parts. Grasping fingers. Gazing eyes. I reconfigure, shedding flesh in soft, fibrous chunks. Less, lesser still—a coagulated clot of tissue. Try again.
The lake is burning. The wind will carry our ashes. Nothing is permanent. Is it enough to merely exist? <<if ($hangedman is true) and ($wheel is true) and ($hermit is true)>><div class="go">[[❖|CARD2]]</div><<else>><div class="go">[[❖|SPREAD]]</div><</if>></div><<set $hermit to true>><h1>➺ The Hermit</h1><div class="psg">Sees too much. Still and silent on the shore, never close enough to taste, casting no reflection upon the glass surface of the lake. Withdrawn into solitude, seeking answers from within. Analysis and apprehension.
I will wait. I know your heart. I feel it in the water, your blood mingling with mine. Wade into me and I will thin you out.
Seventy percent water, eighty, one hundred: I will circulate inside you until you no longer bleed red. <<if ($hangedman is true) and ($wheel is true) and ($hermit is true)>><div class="go">[[❖|CARD2]]</div><<else>><div class="go">[[❖|SPREAD]]</div><</if>></div><center>[img[images/cover.png][CARD1]]
grim baccaris • neo-twiny jam 2024
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