My first moments were snapshots littered with terror and pain. Being held, cradled, by love, acceptance, and deep, unending joy. She smelled like exhaustion, pride, blood, and ramen noodles. Then handed to wonder, distant worry, and instant, unending love and happiness. He smelled like faded worry and sun-dried wind, with a hint of ozone.
Then- a burst of movement. Being held by hatred-anxiety-fear-blood. Back into the arms of sun-dried-wind, who radiated fierce protectiveness. Movement that wasn’t so much moving as it was shifting, sliding through a shortcut in reality.
Soft. I was laid against something, with the covers pulled up to my chin by sun-wind. Then, sun-wind was gone. I scrunched up my face and sniffed, trying not to make too much noise. Sun-wind was safety from hatred-madness.
Something was laid next to me. Blood-seasalt-ramen, tinged with exhaustion and black despair. She rubbed her face against mine. Sunlight-wind smelled like sadness, then, and she whispered to me.
“Thank you, Minato.” I heard her whisper, before sunshine-wind left. Then- movement, blood, despair growing stronger on blood-seasalt, and- distant, seething hatred chained by unseeing, gluttonous madness. Chains that sang of rebellious love, and tasted of seasalt.
A single claw, to split my tiny world in two.
Boiling hatred, anger, rage, sucked into the spot of blood on my stomach. Agony.
I blacked out.
Different hands, more weathered, feeling like loss and smelling like sadness, ozone, and dogs. Distantly, I could smell sunshine-wind on him, though it was faded. I snuggled deeper. Sunshine-wind, Minato, was safety-calm-protection. He had Minato’s seal of approval caked into his scent, and a little on the edges of his self. This meant ozone-dog was safe.
I could physically feel his hackles raise, the movement echoing through his body against where I was pressed against his heart. I perked into awareness, casting my senses further outward. Next to ozone-dog there was the sense of deep, old, growth, like mushrooms or moss dug deep into a water-cave. Then, to the side, there was the sense of distant smoke and charred earth, and, next to that, madness-infection.
Madness-infection was coming closer, motioning for me. I burrowed deeper into ozone-dog’s arms, despite how the movement ached, trying to get my stubby little fingers in a tight grip on his rough jacket. No.
A soft growl rumbled through his chest, protectiveness and anxiety and you-will-not-touch-this as his thick arms clenched around me, not squashing me but as a warning. His self stretched around me protectively, shielding me beneath the force of storm-beast, a hurricane's eye curled around me in defiance. I rumbled awkwardly back, a soft chuff-purr, curling my self- a tiny whirlpool- into it. Yes. I was safe under the storm’s gace, under the wolf’s shadow, in the space between lightning strikes.
I was stretched like a water balloon over the ancient betrayal, hurt, and deep, unending rage, but I was enough. I was a water bottle spun in circles, the swirling pocket of air dancing around a drain, leaning every which way and nothing but myself. Whirlpool might be pushing it; I was a swirly little air tornado in a spinning cup of seawater.
Smoke-earth clashed, and for an instant I could feel the impression of a volcano, mid-eruption, before it was sucked back into the impression of charred earth and smoke. I whimpered and curled further into myself, against storm-wolf, and away from the anger anger anger.
Storm-wolf was Minato’s. Storm-wolf was safe.
Storm wolf moved me from his chest- no don’t how can I hear your heart if you’re away- and old-growth-forest scooped me gently into his arms. Storm wolf stepped in front of the two of us protectively, and I sniffed the chest I was pressed up against. He smelled like trees, like exhaustion cradled in hope, and a little like love.
Oh, I thought, a breath of wonder in the hazy space of my mind. Old-Growth and Storm-Wolfare together. Together like the impression of licking a battery curled up in the hollows of Old-Growth's roots. Together like the impression of a charred tree, old and thunderstruck, where the lightning-hounds could rest on. Together like the places where their selfs seemed to melt into each other, together. If they were together, then it was good that I was being held by him.
I wiggled closer to Old Growth’s chest, pressing my ear to his heartbeat. He was leaning forwards around me, and I got the impression of redwood bark curling around my weak points, like his bones were what godwood forests were made of. I could still feel the feral snarl around the air, the heavy feeling of lightning about to strike, and I swished my tiny pool at his massive forest. The storm wasn’t angry at me, but at volcano-ash and Malignance-infection.
I was safe, tucked into his chest, in the cover of the branches creeping over me, in the grasp of the distant storm. I faded, asleep.
What a gods-damned mess.
“I’m sorry, you know.” I looked up into the red, slitted eyes of a force of nature older than I would ever be. “I was called Anasi.”
It wasn't hard to figure out where I was, when I was asleep. The distant waves, the subtle glowing of thousands of stars. The creaking metal catwalk beneath my feet.
A lifetime ago, I was frightened of the possibility of someone creeping into my mind. Frightened, fuck I was full-force terrified. This place, which I called the sea of stars, was my answer.
Imagine a TARDIS console room. The cylindrical column in the middle, the screens shifted off to the side, the buttons and levers. Now, imagine a TARDIS console room with a water theme. Imagine four metal catwalks branching from that one circular dias, with four metal roofs covering only the four bridges and the dias. The walls are metal, the room is a circle, and in the four places between the catwalks water drops through the force field keeping the sea at bay. The TARDIS is the centerpiece.
Outside of the TARDIS is an ocean planet, covered in flora and fauna beyond any wildest dreams. Snippets of quotes sang from the mouths of barracudas, ancient megalodons spouting warsong, sea puppies singing shanties. It gave them substance and form. Buried beneath the shells and rocks and sands there were mighty constellations, strings of memories that I had burned into my mind. When I was awake, the stars rose to take their place in the water, the constellations stringing into entire scenes.
Above the water was the desert. Sand-wyrms traveled the desert, and there was no respite, no warning, no hope. In the air there were cranes, paper and otherwise, set to watch for unwanted visitors. The Sun was another defence, the distant, chained form of my own anger that I could not express baking the sand beyond glass and into pure heat. But the sun, too, was a star, and so anger was not all it was.
The final defence was the Moon, white and blood red, when I was swamped with depression and spiraling self-loathing and the easiest way to reignite me was to get angry.
It sounded like something amazing when I put it like that, but really it started as a room, then a planet, then an organized defence. Years of effort were put into my mind-palace. And I mean, waking up and visualizing the room in my mind until it became a habit, adding the water and sand and memorizing it until it was there, until I didn’t need to even think about it. The animals were the hardest part, and I’m saying that as someone who added sound effects to her mental palace because the sound of waves is soothing and it made it “more realistic”.
There was a fox in my mind palace.
I didn’t put them there, and they did not want to be there whatsoever, but there they were.
They were not a regular fox, because regular foxes don’t have nine tails or vibrant red fur. Normal foxes also don’t feel like ancient wrongs never healed and hatred draped over anger over betrayal because it was easier to be angry than to cry and be mocked.
Chained- Chained! In my actual mind palace, in the heart of the TARDIS, in the world I’d made my own.
Chains, I decreed, because this was my world and I was its god, are forbidden. Because my greatest fear was being trapped, and chains not of my own making in my world were an insult, a mockery. And, because this was my mind, it was so.
And these chains were literally bolted in, like, through their skin. That’s violation on a level I wouldn’t wish on anyone for fear of karma smacking me in the face with it.
And then, when the fox was free from the chains, I introduced myself. Politely, because while I’m not the kind of pagan to deal with the fae, I’m a writer and a reader and not stupid.
The fox roared, like the howling, thundering snarl of a firestorm, and I was not moved. The sweltering heat blew through me like I was air.
"It should not have been like this." I said, because I could feel the fox, and they felt like a star, so ancient and burning and constant, and. Spirits of air hate to be chained, don't they? Spirits of fire even more so. Spirits of air were freedom flight choice chaos happiness and spirits of fire were loyalty honor strength willpower chaos and this nine tailed fox was both.
It should be known that I'm not human in my mind-palace. Humans are constrained by society and expectations and gender and sometimes I wanted to rip off my outer skin and just go through life as a golem of bones. I'm so exhausted by the idea of wearing a mask in my mental spaces that I refuse to on principle.
No, I am a dragon. I am a snake colored pearlescent white. A wyrm, Rayquaza's whitewashed and glitter-covered clone. I was lord and king and God to my castle, and I always felt more comfortable in cold scales than warm skin. What is skin but simply the next iteration of scales? And in the cold I felt safe. Heat felt like anger and hatred and bitterness- which is why those things were the sun- and cold felt like smiling, like snowballs, like jack frost. Fun times. The seawater under my desert was ice cold.
"So you are the host those fools sealed me in." The fox bared their teeth at me, studying my scaly form, coiled in front of them. "Smarter than the last, at least." They eyed the not-holes in their fur where I banished their chains to the sun-forge to burn. Because anger and hatred are only useful as a focus, and thus a forge.
"They sealed you." I raised an eyebrow ridge at them, because that was not a compliment. Not really. "It is not hard to be smarter than that."
Half of that is guesswork, but I remember bloodred-ramen containing hatred-rage before, and the blood smell getting stronger when hatred-rage was gone. I had more than two brain cells to rub together; I could do the math.
The afformented being who felt like ancient wounds covered in anger bandages cackled, and I could feel their surprise.
I preened, poofing my scales up like a happy bird, and the cackling might have been cruel but I made an angry elemental laugh.
I waited until he was done before I spoke again. "I'll break them. You know." They looked uncomprehending. "The chains that bind us together." I motioned to the squiggly runes on the walls with my head. "Freedom is the right of all sentient beings." The quote just felt right in that moment.
Even though hatred-rage killed Minato? An intrusive thought bubbled up, and I popped it.
The first kind of freedom is the freedom to take the consequences of your actions, and is in fact the freedom that all others are based upon. I reminded myself, because even if the massive beast did kill so very many people, they could not be tried or punished in a court of peers (peers for a nine-tails, a thought for later) while chained by my soul's grasp on this body.
The nine-tails saw and knew this, of course. They were in the heart of me, the core of who I was. They couldn't not.
They settled down, laying on the cold metal and radiating the sun's heat.
"This," they decided, with the force of a cat eyeing prey, "Will be interesting."
That's a curse. I blinked at them, and then-
There was a stranger’s arms holding me, holding me away from their heart, smelling like other children and a sweet-smelling powder and not like safety. What if fastfast hatred-oldpain-rageragerage tries to get me again? Speed-sunwind Minato and injured blood-saltramen aren’t here to save me!
I whimpered, and the arms that held me jolted. I cried louder- holding me wrong going to fall- and burst out into fat, ugly tears. Which just made her hold me further away. I’m going to fall!
I swished my little swirly left and right, lashing out in search of Old-growth and Lightning-wolf. Old-growth and Lightning-wolf were safe, they held me right and kept me safe! They protected me under their selfs! This woman was insane!
Forget them, literally anyone other than this woman would be better!
There! Someone who felt like air-shadows and fire’s shadow! I swished at them insistantly, trying to catch some of their energy in my whirlpool and bring it over to me.
Fuck she dropped me! I curled into myself, trying to stretch my ribcage and spine over the softer parts of my body, and-
Was in the arms of fire’s shadow. Correctly. Against his heart.
I snuffled at his jacket, wiping my face on the smell of ozone lingering on the smoky scent. Another partner? No, this one felt like air-shadow more than lightning-wolf. Air-shadow and the impression of distant wings. A spirit-born? Is that what they are? Born from the spirits? They felt like birds, but which kind?
Kenku? Of Yatagarasu’s brood? No, kind of more like... Phoenixes painted black in mourning, maybe. Huh... They reminded me of owls, actually. Fire-owls. No wonder all these people- including me- felt so weird. We’re spirit-borns.
The last time I lived-and-breathed-and-felt, people just felt like people. And colors.
This one didn’t have ozone-wolf’s seal of approval, and by extension Minato’s. But they were holding me correctly and- they pressed something against my lips? I nibbled my lips at it.
Food! Pats! Yesyesyesyes. Air-shadow (a raven silhouette against the moon?) was bringing the food to my lips and patting my hair.
He poked my eyelid? Nononono! He peeled my eyelid away from my eye and I! Blinked at him. No no! Too bright! The world was blurry still, covered in milky film. And! ! Toobright toobright toobright! I shut it! No! He won’t let me!
Fire-shadow smacked air-shadow’s hand away from my face. Thank you. I kept my eyes shut for a reason. Fire-shadow’s hand lingered just above my face, blocking the light from reaching my eyes, and I blinked at him cautiously.
I couldn’t really see, and my eyes kind of hurt just moving them around, trying to get them to focus, but I blinked at him. I think that’s what he wanted me to do, anyways.
Then I closed my eyes again.
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