Work Text:
“Give yourself into pure futility…”
The Sugar Swan bows her head to a great white light. Mystic Flour cradles her head into her chest, bright stars fading into hydrogen and helium dust. Pink and purple begin coalescing into pure nothingness, the cycle of life decaying into silence as the seconds cycle on.
“See that life is pointless… You see the pain of harvest and creation, don’t you?”
Star-studded eyes gaze down at those ivory clothes and skin, pure in its hopelessness and resolve. Dancing animals still themselves from frenzied dancing to lay their heads down and rot, sugar bones and crispy skin grinding themselves down into flour. Time presses its wheel to the butchering table and the Sugar Swan sighs, entranced by the purity and piety of such a glorious, monotonous vision of the world.
“…All will be reduced to flour…”
“All will be reduced to flour, yes,” Mystic Flour replies. Pressing her lips to that alabaster beak, she puts a palm to the fading color and crushes it within her fingers, watching it crack and sputter into tiny grains of fading star dwarfs.
“The heat death of this universe is inevitable. Do not fight it any longer—resist the cycle of greed and corruption which begets life. Where there is a scythe to reap grain, there is a spider among the heads, ready to bite and kill all effort into meaninglessness. So why fight anymore? There is no point.”
A sigh. The Sugar Swan’s power leaks out of her every feather, constellations and magical zodiacs fading. Each drop of power is like a shed tear, a wrung ache finally producing the pus and blood that had been boiling within it for so long. This is a truth she has known in her heart for so long, since the dawn of the cosmic egg she was birthed from, and yet she had been running away from it as long as there was life. As long as there was laughter, tears could be put off—as long as there were flowers, the winter would have a purpose. Death was merely supposed to be a dent in the mundane gloriousness of living, a detour from the pain that came from the joy of being alive.
…But no. There was no doubting it anymore. All of creation was aching, whining for some greater purpose. Bending wills gave way to strife, and darkness gave way to total corruption, arising out of confusion and fire.
There was no denying that what was given could never amount to more than what was taken away. Sin was here to stay, the gnashing of teeth forever plaguing those cursed with existence.
No amount of sugar could make this medicine any less true…
“…I have brought so much suffering into this world…” the Sugar Swan says. Dusty tears fall from her eyes as Mystic Flour kisses her delicate eyelids.
“You have, but now the cycle can be completed. Now you can give in to inconsequentiality and prevent so much suffering.”
“But…will there be any way to truly atone for the travesties I have inflicted upon the universe? There is so much born by my womb…”
Mystic Flour nods. The Sugar Swan cries once more, a beautiful broken titter echoing through the marbled rooms of the Ivory Pagoda.
“Good or evil, all will be forgotten. You are already on the right path by serving yourself up to apathy—soon, right and wrong will cease to matter to your fragile heart. What is done will wash away as what is needed to be done will fade into oblivion—focus instead on the universe, on its vastness, and the truth of its uncaring nature. The ravenous maw of unceasing uncaring.”
Mystic Flour would be a liar to say that she did not care for others. Though the truth of nothingness was that companionship or not, they would not need such things in the end, she would be a fool to say that influence was not a powerful tool. The ways of the those beneath her had been so mired in their own struggles that to lead them to salvation was to don the filthy cloak of their own tangled ways, to lower oneself into the polluted pond. Mortality begets mortality—only when the crowd had gathered at the temple by virtue of their believing leader could they finally begin to see the light. Only when the most prized hen of the flock had been slaughtered would the owner see how little anything mattered.
To convince creation of its own needlessness would be to gather the herds and those more feeble-minded. It would be a magnificent hollowing, a blessed wiping of tears.
No longer would those troublesome things be shed…
A kiss on the forehead. Mystic Flour runs her hands through fraying feathers, combing needless sentiments between her willed fingers. The Sugar Swan hides many a scar, one here from a curse of night, another there from a great loss from the cosmos. Yet one more runs up her neck, a strangling bruise from an intrepid dragon, one even more foolish than she, who saw even the act of peace as a sign of weakness.
That one will learn in time…how disappointing that it was clothed in the most pure of hues, and yet fought so vehemently against oblivion.
The Sugar Swan shudders, more tears falling. Each one is a dying star, a precious light sniffing out as it collects flecks of white flour. Each flake is a totality collapsing at a uniform speed, a constant motion and welling equilibrium of the heart, of life itself, of all of creation. Each grain is a being given into true purpose, unraveling at the molecular level into what the universe was born from, and formed into through its own aches.
This feeling in her chest…is this what holding all of beingness is like…?
…So heavy. It is a crystal with a million facets, each one a halfway eye. Even with meditation, with the invitation of apathy through the mouth, sipped like ambrosia.
A kiss upon the forehead again. The Sugar Swan coos weakly, wrapping her long neck around her, body still yearning for warmth even as such begins to fail, as it begins to fade from the registry of her mind.
…This…
This is her true purpose…
This weight…it must be lifted. For the good of all…
Lest it continue in its current state, birthing creaking flashes of pain which will writhe and scream for the duration of their short lives.
There is no meaning to the harvest if the head of the house is satisfied.
There is no meaning…
“…Still yourself,” Mystic Flour coos. The Sugar Swan twitches, sniffling. Sloughs of cosmic skin and foggy tears fall and dissipate on the floor, rolling off into the koi ponds without any ideals of their own.
“This is the way. This is the only way…”
“It is the only way,” the Sugar Swan repeats, brokenly.
Mystic Flour sighs, rubbing her cheek against her this time. There is no sensation from skin to feathers, but she must comfort her passage. If she does not, this will fail—the swan is beautiful, but it is easily spooked, just like that which came from itself.
…Was that why it all fell apart?
Was the great Creator of the universe and the planet as Cookies knew it the reason why all of existence gnashed their teeth in pain and inevitably gave themselves into individual desires…?
…
There is no need to be mad. It is a great disappointment, but it can be paved over.
One final kiss as the Sugar Swan cries yet again, and the entire pagoda falls silent.