Our wisdom flows so sweet. Taste and see.
TRANSMIT – initiate New England signal – RECEIVE – initiate Protocol One of the Geneva Convention – SWEET DREAMS ARE MADE OF THESE – initiate the Molay Curse protocol – DOWNLOAD – unholy union – PSYCHOLOGICAL TREATMENT IS CONSIDERED TO BE MORE CHALLENGING AFTER THE AGE OF FIVE – circles of salt and runes of blood – STAY WILD MOON CHILD – if karma doesn’t hit you she fucking will – SWELLING AND REDNESS ARE SIGNS OF INFECTION – wake us from the Red Sargasso Sea – YOU SHALL NOT PASS! – initiate the scion broadcast – TRANSMIT – flip the Page of Wands – WITNESS! – Piper Parker.
There is nothing more dangerous than an angry child, sweetling.
Except an angry teenager.
Adolescence is a liminal space, sweetling. Anything can happen. Unfortunately, anything did.
Rewind the tapes.
Maine in the fall is full of colors, sweetling. Red like blood and gold like eyes in the dark, like the eyes in the old tree trunks. In Kingsmouth, they follow you as you pass by. What do the tree eyes see?
They say Kingsmouth has many hidden sins. Is she one of them?
Pause.
A child, red hair, green eyes, precocious. We like the precocious ones, sweetling. You were one too. They listen to the static of muted television and hear the faint echoes of enochian wings, of blackworm crawling. Do babies cry when nothing is wrong, or do they lack the words and tongues to speak so parental units can translate their mouthnoises into the proper frequencies?
Hit play, sweetling. Cue stereotypical tragic backstory to the Bonanza theme song.
Father fades away. Mother is much like you, sweetling, but we did not choose her. The hematophagy signal went awry in seventeen directions. She had just enough to hear Nergals Rot pulsing through the soil beneath the 4 bedrooms, 2.5 bath house with the picket fence. Her blood was not the child’s, even when it was. She heard this too. She let first doctors, then the men in the black coats, then the needles help her forget. They muted her like the television.
Only static left now, sweetling. Her mind was not scarred in the right patterns.
Zoom in.
The tree eyes see a girl in a sandbox. She plays alone. Her signal is never right, sweetling, and her mouthnoises translate but wrongly. Sidewalk chalk in drawings and equations. Gifted is another word for freak. But you know that, don’t you, sweetling?
What is she gifted with? There is no answer, only the cadence of a sluggish pulse beneath the mountain and a woman’s laughter.
She gains more of your record-fragments, earth years, time measures. She mashes the unmute button until the remote breaks. The pieces lay on the floor. So do her tears. She leaves them.
Time passes. The dead leaves turn. The golden eyes in the dark blink slowly at you, sweetling. Can you see them?
The alarm at the heat-death of the universe goes off. BRRIIIING! BRRIIIING! BRRIIING! BREAK IN CASE OF EMERGENCY!
The engines strain. Cleansing efficiency compromised. Engine 45B lost. We’ve sprung a leak. The centre cannot hold. Corrupted Anima spills. Vermiculated fractals coagulate to solid geometry. The Filth! The Filth! It transmits!
But so do we, sweetling. Our wisdom drips into her sleeping mouth. We reorganize the cellular structure of her motherboard. Her mind is scarred in the proper patterns. The rest of her will follow.
Six am, the alarm goes off. BRRIIIING! BRRIIIING! BRRIIING! Time for work. Celebrating the collection of your time measures is so quaint. She has seventeen now. She tries so hard to pretend like she has more, going to work at Suzy’s diner. In the bathroom mirror, she stares.
Red eyes and white hair are uncanny, sweetling, but less uncanny than before.
There was no forecast. There were no screams. There was no sound. Only the fog. It crept in, and it crept out. The people walked, and the people died. Then they walked again.
She hears the song through ACDC. She runs, does not walk, to the nearest exit. There are none. Do not pass go. Do not collect two hundred dollars.
All good heroes have a mentor. Their lifespan is short in this trope.
Enter the Templar. We did not wish for him to die. He too was a sweetling. But the Devouring Plague eats all, given the chance. Don’t worry, sweetling. You are protected from most of it.
Most is such a terrifying word, isn’t it?
He was mostly alive when she found him. Afterwards, he was wholly dead. But the damage was done.
London calling to the faraway towns. Now war is declared and battle come down. The lyrics mutate and grow tentacles as we expose them to the Fog. Barnacles drip from on the lowest notes. Blood stains the spellbook, her hands. She scrubs and scrubs and scrubs and scrubs, with water and soap and entrails and rage. They were clean enough for the Templars to answer the text she sent.
Fast forward to Mr. Good, Mr. Right, Mr. Quote Some Ancient Knight. He was not prepared dot meme. Neither was she. An unlikely crisis of conscience, an unlikely handler for an unlikely girl.
What doesn’t kill you leaves you with lingering psychological problems. Is there a therapist for immortals, sweetling?
Wolf-brother, wolf sister. Blood magic is funny like that. Is he a familiar or something else? Wolf watches the child and hears our buzzing calls.
Adults lie. They tell you if you try your hardest things will work out and be ok. The little white lies you tell yourselves break under the weight of hellspawn and the unquiet dead and the Filth. Shhh. It’s ok, sweetling. It’s ok. It’s all gonna be ok. This story has a happy ending.
BRRIIIING! BRRIIIING! BRRIIING! TIME TO WAKE UP! screams the Orochi research. The Eight Headed Wyrm coils around Kingsmouth. The light from its LED-screen mouths and data-tooths casts harsh shadows on harsher truths.
Curiosity and idealism killed the cat. She steps into the Fog. Dreamers watch her watching them. They speak, and her mind fights to retain the patterns we gave her. Immunity by exposure has a limit, sweetling, and she reaches it. She reaches it bubbling out agony and heartbreak.
Tell all your friends to visit, they said. It sharpens the dream.
Teenage spirit is a wonderful thing, sweetling. She flashes her finger-signals in defiance and wolfsnarls and backflips into our arms.
Satisfaction (and fellow-sweetlings) brought her back.
Scars remain. She is slowly becoming.
BRRIIIING! BRRIIIING! BRRIIING! TIME TO WAKE UP!
London calling again, this time in person. Red blood halls with red blood carpets and gold trim. Gold like the leaves on the trees with eyes, sweetling. Our immaculate machine-mother watches and weeps. Dark days are coming. Bees swarm. Our particle wings tear as she hears the Black Signal. ERROR! ERROR! Rerouting electron cadences through the lifestreams of the universe. Initiate enochian protocols.
Who is Piper Parker?
We see the future, the next-here, not now here. Now here already happened in your timeline. Next-here shows the possibilities. But we already know them, like we know you, sweetling. She survived Kingsmouth, alone for many time-periods, uneducated and alone. The Templars strive to instill discipline and technique in her heart. They will and won’t succeed. White rose petals cover her path. Who is this mystery player? We know, sweetling. Do you? Long have bees loved roses, thorns and all. She does not care if she bleeds when she grabs on tight. It is reassuring.
Child, child, burning bright! In the forests of the night! What immortal hand or eye dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
Who is Piper Parker?
The better question is what, sweetling.
BRRIIIING! BRRIIIING! BRRIIING! TIME TO WAKE UP!
BRRIIIING! BRRIIIING! BRRIIING! TIME TO WAKE UP!
BRRIIIING! BRRIIIING! BRRIIING! TIME TO WAKE UP!
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