[Perma-Shelf] The World

[AlphaMoist 1707]

good stuff

[Zarsies 6024]

The molten glass bled with a white-mauve incandescence, its scolding heat causing the gaffer’s brow to profusely sweat. With elongated shears and sturdy tongs he worked the glass, repeatedly pulling away with an alien structure of glistening, carapace-bearing limbs akin to a lobster legs or spider mandibles. The many arms aided in his sculpting, each exoskeletal branch finely tuning the burning material, manipulating its curves and pinching at its malleable mass. Flipped, pivoted, cleaved, molded, and so on, the gaffer stuck the shaped piece on the end of a hot pole and scorched it over a softer open flame in a heap of strange teal powder and mottled blue grains. As the fire licked at the glass it became speckled, bubbled, and with keen precision his many limbs rotated and hoisted the piece to detail its many faces before finally he detached it and set it in an oven to very slowly cool.

 

The following night he returned to the oven and carefully withdrew it with his bare hands, chitinous arms gone. He sat at his workbench and marveled at his work before preparing his set of powdered paints and a watery clay which he mixed with tiny brushes and carefully and deliberately accented the glass statue with small strokes. He blew on it for a long while to dry it once he set it upon a small altar in a dim, slightly cluttered room on a red cloth beside a candle, a gear, a diminutive censer, and a small collection of coins. Slightly winded and wordless, he knelt down before the small altar and stuffed his hands between his thighs and took in the sight of his finished creation twinkling in the firelight. He sat and pondered with his eyes tracing the many edges of the statue, the figure recognizable as a man of many names, someone very important to him. He pursed his lips and felt his eyes well with a heaviness as a hole opened in his stomach and a lump slowly formed in his throat.

 

The hearty stink of salty sea foam and the clatter of horseshoes on flat-beat dirt took him, the good cheer and mirth had around a long table at the end of a Mechinalia festival’s feast, the grueling work of toiling at a forge to shape metal and yield just-right parts, the sound of a clockwork heart’s first ticks, the wretched and wriggling sensation of imbibing a symbiote brew, the acute pain of his first transformations, the long loneliness, the confusion and silence, the sudden reunion. The memories flooded in and the dam of his eyes gave way to a sudden, choking sob. He hung his head before the statue and wept, his face contorted into an ugly cringe as he wrenched his sweaty hands from between his legs and wiped away the accumulating spittle and snot, holding to his head. He took many rushed and sudden breaths, feeling his head tingle and his tongue go numb as he cried and struggled for any composure. He dwelled on his face, once Kato Heldenicus, then the stranger Zadrik, the sharp Avenel, but finally the fulfilled Gereon. The gaffer laid himself forward and pressed his forehead into the ground, fists clenched as his cries trailed off and his sorrow made way for weak sniffling and a throbbing emptiness. He knew he would have to make peace one day but he had not the strength today. Eventually he settled himself and sat before the statue, his stare digging into the stone below. There he remained and pondered and sighed but finally whispered a prayer to Aelius, hailed Ilia and Oersus, and drank wine from a ritual cup and with grave, burdened steps trudged to bed where he laid fully dressed. The gaffer turned on his side and laid his face mostly into his new, uncommonly pleasant pillow and mourned in silence when his tears ran dry and his body ached.

 

He passed into a dreamless sleep where, for many nights to come, he would return for the safety of quiet solace.
 

[Gustando 1453]

Never really knew you a lot bar from short small-talks. Have a good one, dude.

[Abyssus 486]

you’ll be back phil