Work Text:
BSM: Date: X/XX/XXXX
I wish I labeled each of these journal entrees when I started so long ago. I don't even know the date anymore.
I suppose it doesn't really matter now, does it?
This transmission is nothing but a text file in what is left of my files, I'm not sure anyone other than myself is reading this. As usual I will leave a note so that I will not forget who I am and what has happened.
I am Looks To The Moon, I'm an iterator, the eldest of my local group. I had collapsed when, as No Significant Harassment would've put it, Five Pebbles stole my drink. I only pity him now, as he suffers as much as I have.
I'm uncertain if the others are still active or not, but I know Pebbles is still functional, but for how long? I do not know. The rot is a cancer that eats away at everything, it's hunger never truly sated.
His Overseer sometimes visits, but that's far and few between, as if he is awkward around me, wanting to speak but yet unwilling and unable to. That's fair considering all that has happened.
A sense of nostalgia for a time long since passed came to me recently, I'm uncertain as to how or why. I remember scolding of a young ancient who had snuck into my chambers to put cheap decals on my walls. The memory was only bittersweet now, I found myself morosely musing that I would not mind if someone defiled my ruined chamber with stickers.
It's quite lonely out here, unable to communicate with the outside world, stuck waiting for something to happen, for someone to visit me.
It's been a long time since I've seen one of those relatives of the Pipe Cleaners. I quite missed the feeling of their soft warm bodies resting against my side as I read them a pearl they had found.
The cycles seemed to blend like paint, mixing together into a dull grey.
I would boot up when the water drained from my systems enough and then I would do nothing. Just simply sit on my small island and wait. There was not much to do, I would be there until the rain started once more to flood my systems yet again. I had researched about drowning victims' experiences and strangely they were accurate, even to an iterator like myself. This would send me into shut down until I woke the next cycle, and it would all repeat ad nauseum.
However, something very peculiar happened a few cycles ago.
I had seen the moon.
No, the irony of my name is not lost on me. Through my ruined chambers I could see the sky up above, free as if taunting me while I was still trapped in this husk. Sometimes I could see the sun...but never the moon. The rain often came before the night.
I was alarmed when it didn't. The world had changed to dark, the sky a brilliant dark blue among the clouds above. I had gone from fear of not having enough water, to having too much and now back again to fear of never having another drop. The fear was unfounded as the rain started again late into the night.
Warnings and error screens popped up in my head as I cringed from the pain of my systems being flooded again. I could never get used to it, the feeling of every fiber of your being screaming that it wanted to live despite not being able to do a single thing about it.
But it only lasted for a moment, before the strange tranquility washed over me. Caught in the silent in-between of life and death.
It's through this haze that I noticed its light shining through my ruined interior and through the water's depths.
I gazed up and saw it...the moon.
The scene was clear, crisp, a beautifully morbid painting on a sliver border deep in my psyche. I couldn't stop thinking of its magnificence. I had seen my same sake many times before but never in person.
It brought back an ancient longing I had buried quite some time ago. I wanted to be free, to venture into the open world and leave the ruins of my dying body. Sometimes I find myself wishing I had been born as something else, perhaps a slugcat? A scavenger? Or even a lizard?
The world was dangerous, the fight for survival the only thing that kept them all running. I could take the risks and the numerous pains. I would take it all in stride. I would never take for granted the freedom I had then.
But alas it was only a dream, a mid-day musing on a lonely cycle.
I think I've wrote down all that needed to be mentioned. I've nothing else to add, should I need to I'll be back again, perhaps sooner than I thought.
-BSM