Chapter I : Waking

When they first gain consciousness, they find their only working sense is hearing. There isn’t much sound, and they can’t properly think, so they spend most of their time swimming in the vast silence. It’s sublime, serene, simple.They have no comparison to negate that judgement. They’re not even sure what judgement is, not yet.Eventually they begin to think, their cognition catching up to their sentience. It’s a strange feeling, like wading through syrup with a blindfold on. They know they should push for something, but they can’t quite remember what it is. All they can seem to think about is how sweet it would be to sink down and let themself be held, suspended in the sticky liquid of their early thoughts.They lead themself forward in a quest with no direction and no map to point the way. They think direction can’t exist without— something they can’t name.Their sense of smell comes next, the scent of old paper and melting wax slowly seeping in. They don’t recall ever smelling either of those things, but they know instantly what they are nonetheless. It makes them feel safe and warm in the newly familiar smells.They wonder if that’s a purposeful distraction, keeping them from the goal they still can’t discern. They’re getting better at wondering as they breathe in the scent of brittle paper.Feeling comes soon after, although soon is a relative term they can’t make heads or tails of. They sense that they are laying on something hard, though their head is cradled in what they assume is a pillow. Their limbs feel long and their heart beat is slow. They know they could move in theory, but they’re not ready for that.They’re waiting for something they feel will come soon. They’ll get very good at waiting in the days to come.A soft light meets their eyelids after an endless stretch of time. They think finally, finally, they can feel time for what it is. It wasn’t real until they could see its repercussions. They blink their eyes open slowly, adjusting slowly to the dim light of three candles and some strange green overcast.They’ll spend more time with the green later, entranced. They’re green around the ears, but now is not the time to be idle.They set about moving slowly, controlling their breathing and wiggling their fingers until they’re finally able to will their body into submission to some degree. Their mind informs them that their muscles have atrophied. They know what that means momentarily, but they don’t think they could explain how they know or what it is. The point is, they’re weak, barely mobile. It’s a wonder they’re able to push themself upright.There is no hunger within them, no thirst or need for sustenance. They don’t remember feeling hunger before, they only know that it is a regular thing people feel. Thought and existence drifts in and out of their reach, at one moment filling their head with knowledge they probably should know, before it slips out again like water held in cupped hands.

Chapter II : Learning

Coming into this world, if the small room they find themself in could be called a world, is a slow process. Their mind swirls in a universe of things they do know, pointedly devoid of their past and, well, themselves. They know not their name, nor why they are where they are. They can’t even seem to recall what they look like—or perhaps they should say looked like, The jury is still out on whether or not they are different than they were. And if they ever were something before.Overwhelmed by the unknowns, they focus on what they can comprehend. They’re in a small booth, no longer than a decently sized closet (the kind with sliding doors), though it is deeper. There’s a shelf in front of them at around waist height which wraps around part of the adjacent left wall. There’s a small, cracked smart-phone on and an ornate wooden box perched side by side upon the shelf. Behind them, taking up the upper portion of the wall, is a vague grated pattern they can scarcely make out in the low light.To your left, they observe the rest of the shelf holding a small flickering candle and a mug of what smells, from the wafting steam, like floral tea. There is no tea bag inside, so it must already be steeped. They don’t feel thirsty enough for tea. The far side of the wall, towards the back of the room, holds what looks like a knob sticking out at around the height of a door handle. They don’t see the indent on the wall that would indicate a door.They face the right next, taking in another shelf which holds two candles of differing heights, a notebook, and a quill dipped in ink. They think it feels vintage, especially when they recall the phone on the other side. Above the shelf is a cork board. There are pins of various shapes, styles, and colors stuck together haphazardly towards the top left corner. A single piece of paper hangs in the center of the board, held up by a red pin. They can’t read the looping script, though they don’t doubt they will soon grasp the concept of reading and cursive.Turning to the back of the room, they find the source of the green light. There is a large stained-glass window residing there, the image of the sun and moon intertwined at its center in shades of yellow and blue. The bottom is a twisting mess of dark green vines, interwoven with dots of yellow flowers. The top of the window features a dove, a crow, and an owl flying together. They think they represent the cycle of morning, day, and night. The main window is a lighter green color, bordering on yellow. In any other context, they might describe it on putrid. Here, though, it is mesmerizingly gorgeous. They think they could spend hours tracing the delicate detail work of the window with their eyes, afraid to ruin it with their touch but enraptured nonetheless.After an indeterminate amount of time, they shake their head and lower it to gaze at the floor. It’s not very interesting. Hardwood. There’s some pillows pressed against the back wall underneath the window, the very ones they had slept on earlier. The dreamless sleep of someone lacking consciousness and thought.The ceiling yields even less of interest, seeming to stretch up beyond where the candle light and distant lighting of the window can reach. They debate momentarily whether it is more comforting or fear-striking. They conclude simply that it is dark. Simple concepts like darkness are easier to comprehend than things they don’t yet understand like comfort, a word which swelled up in their mind but seems impossible to define. They’ve never been uncomfortable, so how do they know whether they are comfortable?Words continue to come to them and they eventually decide to turn back to the corkboard in an attempt to read the note. They assume it was left for them. There is no one else around whom it could be for instead. Unless a mistake was made, but they doubt they would have been accidentally… placed here. They’re still unsure how they got here and hope the note may hold at least some semblance of an answer. They remove the pin from it, bringing it down so the candles below can better reveal the swirling letters.

Hello, You.
I’m sure you have many questions. I have a few answers, but I don’t give them away for free. If you want to know anything beyond what you do now, I recommend spending some time doing a little task for me. You see, You, there are thousands of messages written to you every day. Well, most of them are written to other people, but they are innocuously addressed to You. Given that your name is You, they are yours to read.As you read, you may find you identify with some of the events and feelings. It’s beyond me how you would manage that, given you are—Well, as you do, I will slowly tell you things about yourself. You, You, are a very interesting person. That is, perhaps, a fact of its own. In the future, you will do your reading before I reward you. There are apps full of messages on the cell phone and the box contains its fair share of letters. Choose some. Read them. Do your job, for you’ll find it gives you purpose.If you need to contact me, write something in the notebook, tear it out, and burn the page over the candles. Don’t worry about starting fires, you’ll find you can’t.Best of luck and with the kindest regards,
Welcome to the Confessional.
- Prometheus.

They mull over the information in your mind, combing through the letter a few times to make sure you didn’t miss anything important. With a sigh, they decide to list everything they’ve learned thus far in the first page of the notebook. Their handwriting isn’t as neat as Prometheus’, but they get the feeling it could be far worse.

Things I know:

The list is far too short for their liking. You feels a little stupid, like they’re missing something glaring. They consider listing questions as well, tearing the page out, and letting the flame lick at the inked paper. They don’t think there are enough pages for all the questions they have.Instead, they decide to do what they were instructed to do by Prometheus and make their way over to the desk. They need to, after all, considering Prometheus does not seem to be forthcoming with his facts. It’s a wonder they learned so much from him in the first place.

note: this chapter is much more legible on gdocs because most of my fonts don't transfer over unfortunately

Chapter III : Reading

Words, as it turns out, are still slippery, and technology is far worse. You had a vague muscle memory that let them navigate opening the phone, but they didn’t know what different apps do or what any of the buttons mean. Overwhelmed by a plethora of red circles with numbers that seemed to grow every few seconds, they quickly set the phone down so that the screen was against the counter. It was an easier solution than messing with buttons.They reached instead for the box, a detailed thing that simultaneously feels fragile enough that rash movements would destroy the design carved into it, while also feeling solid and palpably old enough to have withstood time. The top of the box resembled, vaguely, the scene in the window. The sun and moon were present on opposite sides of the latch, the top of the box featured the same birds as the window, and the sides were adorned with vines that give it a texture You found themselves running their fingers along for reassurance. Sliding the hook out of the eye to undo the latch, they were able to lift the lid.The contents were, as promised, a stack of letters. The sizes were varied, some decorated with stickers, others with stamps, and some still with drawings. The ones that made them the most nervous were the blank envelopes. They thumbed through the stack, flipping a few of them over to see both sides, before they finally settled on one with an apple stamp in one corner and a collection of swirls doodled on the other. There is no name on the envelope, though they suppose that’s the point of all of this. They are not the “you” it was written to, but they are, according to Prometheus, You, which entitles them to reading it.A small degree of guilt crept through them at the thought of dissecting the private thoughts of a person they’ve never met, and likely would never meet. More overpoweringly, the questions of who they were swelled up, and they found within themself the courage to open the letter.Which is how they found out not all handwriting is as easy to read as Prometheus’. This handwriting in particular was overly loopy, as if its goal was to be hard to distinguish. And it was effective. Squinting at the page, You’s mind supplied that the words were like a wet bar of soap; somehow, the harder they squeezed and tried to understand it, the more it wanted to shoot out of their grasp.Sighing, they took a few breaths before they were able to finally determine the first few sentences. From there, it seemed to be easier to read. They brushed through it with some haste, missing some of the points in the excitement of understanding at last. Later, they would comb through it more finely, pulling apart the threads of the words to find what had tied them together in the first place. For now, though, You was content to read the first letter bearing their name, which they felt had been waiting for them for quite some time.

Letter I : Am I Still a Part of You?

I wonder a lot about your room.
Sometimes, settings are characters in their own right.
I don’t think anyone’s room could be more personalized than mine and yours.
Mine, because I adopt pieces of everyone I’ve ever cared about into it.
Like a room of amber, each treasure is a frozen memory embedded into me.
And yours, because no room has ever so succinctly captured the essence of a person like yours does.
Did.
How did you do that?
How did you create a solid version of yourself when you flow like a river, when you change every day?
How do you know who you are?
Can you teach me?
Can you talk to me without starting a fight?
Can you—I heard you painted your walls recently.
I wonder, did you cover them again with tapestries?
Are they adorned with posters, like patches in a quilt of your favorite things?
There’s some foolish, hopeless part of me that thinks:
If I walked into your room again I’d understand why we were so bad for each other.
And, I’d remember why I was friends with you in the first place.
But I can’t walk into your room because we don’t even talk.
And I can’t read you like a book because you’ve changed.
And you never were that open to begin with.I wonder, did you clean out the boxes from under your bed?
Do you dust off all the things we got together?
Or do you store them with all the other forgotten possessions of your past?
Can you bear to look at them?
I can’t.
But I also can’t take them down, it would be like losing that part of myself.
Like losing you for good.
I think about you all the time.
Do you still think about me?
Do you still watch our favorite shows?
Do you still decorate with our memories?Am I still a part of you?
- Syv

^{Authors note: This is "written by" one of my very very cool OCs about her ex best friend. They're very dramatic I love and hate them.}

Letter II : Tip

Are we naturally inclined to lean towards each other—
Like trees tilting together, their branches intertwined—
Or do I just follow after you like a sunflower following its beloved sun?
Was I always bound to fall in love with you?I don’t think you know how powerful your presence is,
How you flood my body warmth and cause my mouth to pull into a smile,
How you consume every thought aside from you,
How I’ve slowly tip, tip, tipped.
I’m moments away from falling down the well of loving you,
And I doubt it will ever run dry.
- Bea

^{Authors note: This is "written by" Sister Beatrice from Warrior Nun. I recommend it but I despise the ending.}

Letter III : Heart

I think I’m trying to eat you before you can eat me.Ideally I’d swallow you whole,
One bite, both body and soul.
But my jaw doesn’t stretch that wide,
And I’d hate to feel you squirming inside.I should start off easy with your hands,
So they would stop leaving clawing demands.
“Let me go” they scratch into my arm,
Though I assure you I mean no harm.
I like the press of your warm hands with mine,
Surely I can leave them for a later time.To chew on your mind must be divine,
Squishy and pink with a cerebrospinal fluid shine.
I could crack your skull open with a mallet,
And find the newest treat for my refined pallet.
Hold all your knowledge between my teeth,
A parting gift you would bequeath.But neither of those are what I want the most,
For in the department of you they are a low dose.
It’s your beating heart I want most of all,
To see it gushing and disappointingly small.
“You love me,” I’d whisper as it hit my tongue,
And it would sink to its place beside my lung.They’d pulse in sweet harmony finally free.
I will eat you before you can eat me.

^{Authors note: Inspired by the “I would eat a/your heart to prove myself” trope, as found in Travis Martinex eating Javi Martinez’s heart to prove he would not be forgotten; and Taissa Turner eating Vanessa Palmer’s heart to prove she was her real love; and Daenerys Targaryen eating the horses heart to prove herself worthy of Khal Drogo and bearing his son. Overall, we should eat hearts more and that’s how Sue C’s it. Also this isn't written by or for any character.}

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