Hello, Wanderer.

<div class="passage"> (live: 1s)[(stop:)(transition: "dissolve")+(transition-time: 4s)[<div class="header" style="background-image: url(https://64.media.tumblr.com/7d5454ebc3e42baa3c2b25fa4bdab777/3404be3f637c2841-c0/s1280x1920/4aec7a68048d9b976f11aa4508b44920c5c90bb1.pnj)"> </div>]] (live: 5s)[(stop:)(transition: "dissolve")+(transition-time: 3s)[<div class="content"> (live: 1s)[(stop:)(transition: "dissolve")+(transition-time: 3s)[Hello, wanderer. Can I have your name?]] (live: 2s)[(t8n-arrive: "instant")[[>>->input]]] </div>]] </div>

<div class="passage"> <div class="header" style="background-image: url(https://64.media.tumblr.com/7d5454ebc3e42baa3c2b25fa4bdab777/3404be3f637c2841-c0/s1280x1920/4aec7a68048d9b976f11aa4508b44920c5c90bb1.pnj)"> </div> <div class="content"> (live: 0.1s)[(stop:)(transition: "dissolve")+(transition-time: 2s)[A child and a fox are not that much different from one another. A child and a hare, however, are beasts unto their own, as a child has a soul, and a hare has eyes. Thus, hares and foxes — stop patting your pockets, you’re rather distracting — this is why hares and foxes hunt each other, see.]] (live: 3s)[(stop:)(transition: "dissolve")+(transition-time: 1.5s)[There was once a child who wanted to be someone else. They wanted to understand everything, and every book in the city they lived in was not enough to sate them. The child grew desperate, and dug so deep into the library that they found the libraries beneath, tunnels and pages of knowledge that they could read, but not understand.]] (live: 9s)[(stop:)(transition: "dissolve")+(transition-time: 1.5s)[The bookkeeper, a fox from the time the desert was verdant, made this child a deal: find me the names of the desert gods, deep within the library, and I will make these passages known unto you.]] (live: 14s)[(stop:)(transition: "dissolve")+(transition-time: 1.5s)[How could they refuse? A game is a game, and a challenge is a challenge, and the promise of knowledge revealed was too beautiful to turn down. Days, weeks, years passed, and eventually, the child brought the four glittering, incomprehensible names before the bookkeeper, caught around the ears like four kicking hares.]] (live: 19s)[(stop:)(transition: "dissolve")+(transition-time: 1.5s)[The child had neglected to find the fox's name, however. If they had asked, the trick would have fallen apart. The ancient fox's name became theirs, and the hares went down the hungry young fox's gullet.]] (live: 24s)[(stop:)(transition: "dissolve")+(transition-time: 1.5s)[Knowledge is, indeed, power. They were not wrong, though They may have understated how virulent it can be. A game, a gamble, a stranger in the distance -- the lack of knowledge makes them fearsome, the abundance of it makes them quivering mice to chase. A snake relies on surprise for a meal, just as a wanted man covers his face in public. There is only so much one can handle before knowledge becomes divine.]] (live: 30s)[(stop:)(transition: "dissolve")+(transition-time: 1.5s)[You remind me of this child, you know.]] (live: 32s)[(t8n-arrive: "instant")[[>>->End Blaine story]]] </div> </div>

<div class="passage"> <div class="header" style="background-image: url(https://64.media.tumblr.com/7d5454ebc3e42baa3c2b25fa4bdab777/3404be3f637c2841-c0/s1280x1920/4aec7a68048d9b976f11aa4508b44920c5c90bb1.pnj)"> </div> <div class="content"> (set: $ldone to 1) (live: 0.1s)[(stop:)(transition: "dissolve")+(transition-time: 3s)[There is something about the cover of night that scares humans into submission. ]] (live: 4s)[(stop:)(transition: "dissolve")+(transition-time: 2s)[Ghost stories, murders, robberies, truth-or-dare, a frigid desert chill — all blanketed in heavy, woven darkness. As the day breaks, however, so does the spell. Though sadness and fear may remain, the glow of daylight softens their glass edges like a furnace.]] (live: 9s)[(stop:)(transition: "dissolve")+(transition-time: 2s)[Death is ancient. The boy in this story is not. ]] (live: 13s)[(stop:)(transition: "dissolve")+(transition-time: 2s)[A boy and his sister are lost in the canyon. The scrub brush and rock all look the same, as if the desert is leading them around and around in circles. Over and over, like a cycle, flourish and rot, muscle and bone. Centuries, or weeks, into this quiet circling the boy wakes up to find the ring cracked in half. Blood trails where footsteps should be, and his share suddenly overwhelms him.]] (live: 20s)[(stop:)(transition: "dissolve")+(transition-time: 2s)[Both cycles become his, in order to keep the balance from collapsing. He becomes both the day and the night, the gentle ticking of the clock forwards and the creaking as its old wood collapses. Flowers sprout where he steps, and wither as his presence recedes. At the same time, lizards dry and crackle and twitch at a touch, and return to the sand as he leaves. He becomes — and I hope you understand that I’m speaking metaphorically, though metaphors are like lies, and every lie contains a truth — a sleeping dragon, surrounded by souls, spoken of in awe, dangerous to speak with. If grief could push back the heat with tears, they would have already.]] (live: 27s)[(stop:)(transition: "dissolve")+(transition-time: 2s)[You already have the name for Death. It is a simple process, and a simple god. But pain could drive anyone to madness, not in the least a harvester such as this boy. We have been searching for Life in the desert for centuries, and have not yet succeeded.]] (live: 30s)[(stop:)(transition: "dissolve")+(transition-time: 2s)[Don't go looking for them.]] (live: 32s)[(t8n-arrive: "instant")[[>>->End lauri story]]] </div> </div>

<div class="passage"> <div class="header" style="background-image: url(https://64.media.tumblr.com/7d5454ebc3e42baa3c2b25fa4bdab777/3404be3f637c2841-c0/s1280x1920/4aec7a68048d9b976f11aa4508b44920c5c90bb1.pnj)"> </div> <div class="content"> (set: $sdone to 1) (live: 0.1s)[(stop:)(transition: "dissolve")+(transition-time: 3s)[It amuses me that you call her bell-ringer. The title is better suited for absence.]] (live: 4s)[(stop:)(transition: "dissolve")+(transition-time: 2s)[If you can call the shriek and clash of metal a bell, however, you would be correct. Her toll is vast, but it is always just. Vengeance and retaliation are two different things — you would be wise to remember that. ]] (live: 9s)[(stop:)(transition: "dissolve")+(transition-time: 1.5s)[A young girl inherits a family debt that she cannot pay. She is alone, in this story. The rock and iron she is bound with begins as a formality, and then escalates — something only isolated, fascinated cruelty can accomplish. In the end she breaks, her palms cracked and claws torn as she tears through bars and chains and captors. She walks until the wild dogs that guarded her recognize their alpha, and walks until her creditor cannot walk any longer. She walks with fury boiling under her skin and the fur of her pack and the hair of the herd, swearing that none again will feel this tarlike choking aloneness. It will be replaced with howling vindication. ]] (live: 20s)[(stop:)(transition: "dissolve")+(transition-time: 1.5s)[A coyote could be as fearsome as a wolf if it joined together with more of its kind. A stallion that runs through the desert for miles feels more free than any of us could ever imagine, for it does not fear. Chains can be used as weapons. A broken man can use the shards of himself as armor. The vastness of the canyon sings to the ocean, and He sings back.]] (live: 26s)[(stop:)(transition: "dissolve")+(transition-time: 1.5s)[Her name is not bell-ringer. But a clocktower struck by an old miner’s hammer at the dusk of a dying day is close.]] (live: 30s)[(t8n-arrive: "instant")[[>>->End skuld story]]] </div> </div>

<div class="passage"> <div class="header" style="background-image: url(https://64.media.tumblr.com/7d5454ebc3e42baa3c2b25fa4bdab777/3404be3f637c2841-c0/s1280x1920/4aec7a68048d9b976f11aa4508b44920c5c90bb1.pnj)"> </div> <div class="content"> (set: $vdone to 1) (live: 0.1s)[(stop:)(transition: "dissolve")+(transition-time: 3s)[There is a reason the center of a tornado is called the eye. ]] (live: 4s)[(stop:)(transition: "dissolve")+(transition-time: 2s)[There, in the middle of chaos, surrounded by calm, there the fabric of reality starts to dance in the wind. A brief, horrible certainty that you are in control of nothing gives way to a cackling mania that clouds the senses in a last ditch effort to bring you some notion of peace. The human mind is not meant to witness this much violence.]] (live: 9s)[(stop:)(transition: "dissolve")+(transition-time: 1.5s)[A young boy is abandoned at a house that no longer exists. In this place, there are no second chances. In this place, the word humanity loses its meaning, and in retaliation, so does he. ]] (live: 15s)[(stop:)(transition: "dissolve")+(transition-time: 1.5s)[Shrieking, broken voice gives way to splintered wood, deafening thunder, the bloodrush of fire in dying ears. Destruction is not without casualty, not without pain, as holding one’s head to the fire of rebirth forces your own hand into the flames. The boy, trapped beneath the wreckage of his recognition, grits his teeth and cries to the waiting vultures, and their desire to clean a corpse to its beautiful bones extends to the house that no longer exists. ]] (live: 21s)[(stop:)(transition: "dissolve")+(transition-time: 1.5s)[And thus, something new steps out of the ashes, an omen personified, refusing to die. A bloodied child on fragile legs, snapped thoroughly from neck to heel, the desire to burn it down and start again held tightly beneath one talon like it is a fish self-aware enough to know its stomach is to be torn into to feed some crying young. It would do the same if it were an eagle.]] (live: 27s)[(stop:)(transition: "dissolve")+(transition-time: 1.5s)[The fissure in the earth is a sweet kid. I wouldn’t recommend you meet him.]] (live: 30s)[(t8n-arrive: "instant")[[>>->End ven story]]] </div> </div>

<div class="passage"> <div class="header" style="background-image: url(https://64.media.tumblr.com/7d5454ebc3e42baa3c2b25fa4bdab777/3404be3f637c2841-c0/s1280x1920/4aec7a68048d9b976f11aa4508b44920c5c90bb1.pnj)"> </div> <div class="content"> (set: $edone to 1) (live: 0.1s)[(stop:)(transition: "dissolve")+(transition-time: 3s)[If I told you the nothingness had no name, I think you would have no choice but to believe me. However, the desert loves. The desert cares. And so, the absence of being is named, and loved, thus creating a paradox that both is and isn't.]] (live: 6s)[(stop:)(transition: "dissolve")+(transition-time: 2s)[He and I were the first. We brought the three others, those burdened by rage, into being. So you can blame us for them if you want someone to curse when your calves are attacked by a coyote. That fence will never be enough, you know.]] (live: 12s)[(stop:)(transition: "dissolve")+(transition-time: 2s)[The desert is cold, and vast, and empty. It craves a companion, it craves life, and so there was. He does not know of his existence before, just as the Earth knows not of the exact point at which it was born, philosophically speaking. However, he knows as much about being as he does about unbeing. About dreams as much as waking, and vastness as much as singularity.]] (live: 16s)[(stop:)(transition: "dissolve")+(transition-time: 2s)[He used to know of the ocean, and all its creatures. The canyon and the ocean are far more similar than you’d think. The nothingness’ name is protection, mind-wandering, stumbling onto the secret of the universe while stargazing and realizing that you are nothing and everything at the same time. You will always find nothing in the everything, and vice versa. ]] (live: 23s)[(stop:)(transition: "dissolve")+(transition-time: 2s)[He gets lonely. If you talk to him, make polite conversation, will you?]] (live: 30s)[(t8n-arrive: "instant")[[>>->End ephy story]]] </div> </div>

<div class="passage"> <div class="header"> </div> <div class="content"> (live: 0.1s)[(stop:)(transition: "dissolve")+(transition-time: 1.5s)[(... He's gone.)]] </div> </div>