config.style.dark.page.color: "gray-6 on cinnamon-3"
config.style.dark.page.link.color: "white"
config.style.dark.page.link.active.color: "yellow-2 on cinnamon-4"
config.style.dark.page.link.lineColor: "cinnamon-3"
--
**EMPTY POT**
You’ve been lying on the floor too long. The sun has crept down from the windowsill and curled up on the crown of your head. You feel that it’s there, feel the rumbling purr in its throat as it tries to rouse you but there’s six inches of glass between you and the world. It magnifies and warps the colors streaming through your window, making everything too bright, too loud, too close. Yet it’s all still so far away. You’re tired of reaching for it. Tired of grasping at nothing. Tired of pushing yourself so hard to touch a world that evaporates at your touch. You’re tired. Maybe the sun can leach back the energy you stole from it. It was never meant for you anyway.
> [[close your eyes and breathe->SEED]]
> [[look out the window->WITHER]]
config.style.dark.page.color: "white on indigo-6"
config.style.dark.page.link.color: "white"
config.style.dark.page.link.active.color: "purple-2 on violet-5"
config.style.dark.page.link.lineColor: "indigo-6"
--
**SEEDLING**
You’re awake. You don’t remember the exact moment it happened, but you’ve unfurled, staring at the scrunched-up collection of duvets still trapped between your arms. The grey light trickling through the window could either be dusk or dawn, but it’s filtered through its own quilts of shadow-filled clouds. A gust of wind slaps an extra flurry of raindrops onto the window, and slowly the steady drum of the storm on the roof becomes distinct from the heartbeat in your ears.
You slide your legs off your bed. The warmth of the balls of your feet hitting the cold linoleum is punctuated by a crack of thunder. Sparks prickle off your heels as you pad to the mirror.
Something must have broken while you slept. There are dried tear tracks on your darkened cheeks. Your eyes are puffy and green. The quiet is shattered again as lightning finds the rod on the building opposite, flooding the apartment in white light. The glass of the windows appears to be melting, torrents of the icy rain illuminated a web of streetlamps and buildings reflected from outside. The world trembles again, and a wave of vertigo crashes over you. Doused and shivering, you stumble back to bed. It’s too soon. You’re not ready. You crawl beneath the duvet and batten down the hatches.
> [[dream->SPROUT]]
> [[nightmare->SEED]]
config.style.dark.page.color: "gray-6 on sky-1"
config.style.dark.page.link.active.color: "gray-6 on sky-2"
config.style.dark.page.link.color: "gray"
config.style.dark.page.link.lineColor: "sky-1"
--
**SPROUT**
You breach the surface and the world is still.
Here.
Soft and quiet.
The blanket of snow has turned the world black and white and warm.
It feels like you’re not meant to be here. But not that you don’t deserve to be. You sit up, leaning on the windowsill, your breath fogging the glass.
You’re eavesdropping.
You’re witnessing a secret that you will have to hold close.
Outside the world is asleep. It is content and breathing softly. Everything is muffled. The snow is falling, gathering in fluffy piles around the trees below, capping the streetlamps, and growing fuzz around the outside of your window. A crow disturbs a clump from a nearby tree, and the drift collapses, blending effortlessly with the blanket enveloping the earth below.
You press a fingertip to the cold condensation.
you draw a:
> [[smiley face->PLANT]]
> [[thunder cloud->SEEDLING]]
config.style.dark.page.color: "white on chartreuse-4"
config.style.dark.page.link.active.color: "red-2 on chartreuse-3"
config.style.dark.page.link.color: "white"
config.style.dark.page.link.lineColor: "chartreuse-4"
--
**PLANT**
You tuck the vines behind your ear as you light the candle. Your room has begun to smell like you again, and for the first time in a long time you don’t hate it. Huckleberries and earth. In the dark, the room could have been a frost-covered morning walk through the forest.
The window is a pane of jet. The power went out two hours ago. The sun went down half an hour ago and the only light is the sporadic beams of flashlights flickering through the windows across the street. In the dark, with the candle, all you can see outside is your own reflection. Pale green skin. Vines with split ends spilling around your face. There’s a new rosebud on your nose you just can’t get rid of. You’ve started to notice bark along your limbs and that’s scary, but it’s normal. It’s stronger. You’re wiser. There are so many experiences woven into the rings of your body. A collection of beautiful things.
You set the candle on the windowsill. Someone across the street is flashing something in morse code. You don’t have a flashlight to answer, but you still sit there on the edge of your bed, in the dark, wondering what they’re saying.
> [[worry they're sad no one is responding->WITHER]]
> [[wave even though they can't see you->SPROUT]]
config.style.dark.page.color: "gray-6 on yellow-2"
config.style.dark.page.link.active.color: "gray-4 on yellow"
config.style.dark.page.link.color: "gray-6"
config.style.dark.page.link.lineColor: "yellow-2"
--
**WITHER**
There are flurries of leaves and blossoms instead of snow. They’re louder and more colorful. They bruise. They’re fragile. When you chase them down the street, they don’t always wait up.
Warm breezes have started rushing through your window. Ladybugs are making their nests in your hair. Leaves are rustling. Birds are chirping. There’s a rat in your wall.
Everything is so loud. You can’t hear yourself think. The world is outside and it’s inside as well and it’s pulling you in every direction. The air is thick with roses and rodents and feathers and chatting and freshly cut grass.
> [[shut the window->EMPTY POT]]
> [[leave the window open->PLANT]]
config.style.dark.page.color: "white on red-5"
config.style.dark.page.link.color: "white"
config.style.dark.page.link.active.color: "aquamarine on red-6"
config.style.dark.page.link.lineColor: "red-5"
--
**SEED**
The world is falling away. You can no longer tell if you’re rising, or the earth is shrinking. Everything is colored in a strange hue of vertigo and the smell of recycled air. But there’s a tug on your ankle. You glance down and see the thinnest red string. It burns like razor wire, and you reach down to see if it’s actually blood, but it tugs again. The void is yanked from your view and the stars spin out of sight as you are dragged back into the atmosphere. You’re immolating, solidifying into charcoal and you’re screaming but there’s something warm in your chest. The tiniest flicker of an ember and suddenly everything is sharper. You zip past the wing of a plane and wave to the child making a wish on their first shooting star. The world is hurtling toward you.
> [[look at where you're going->SEEDLING]]
> [[look at where you've come from->EMPTY POT]]