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One cannot snuff out the soul of Knowledge as easily as a normal cookie’s.
Shadow Milk relearns this once every few decades. He goes through phases, he knows that, he’s not so stupid as to not realize when he’s spiraling into thoughts of hopelessness, thoughts of his former glory and how it haunts him, thoughts of the scornful glares the Fount received and the efforts to hold himself together under the weight of the truth, the truth of the existence of all Cookiekind, thoughts of how he finds a sick delight in those same looks now, seeks them out when he’s bored.
The Fount went through these same phases, though they were tinged with a distinct lack of outward lashing. Shadow Milk does not hold himself back now, does not feel a need to. There are only a few cookies whom he does not wish to harm when he starts to see himself getting like this, and they are all-too aware of his patterns, definitely enough so to know to stay far away from him when they recognize it. They’re smart for it, thinks Shadow Milk, smart to want to stay away from him when he starts to exude shadows without realizing it, starts to fall into his obsessions doubly more than normal, starts to forget to eat, forget to leave his quarters, forget that there’s a world beyond his own mind, forgets that he needs such a world to keep his sanity intact.
The Fount of Knowledge’s soul could not be snuffed out so easily, not for lack of trying, of course. Rare as it was, some nights felt worthy of another futile attempt to rid himself of the pressure, the excruciating weight of all of shouldering his burden alone. He knew it would be fruitless to try, to do anything that would relieve him of such a thing, he’d been designed in a way to withstand the most brutal ways crumbling found normal cookies, whether it be infection or a stab wound. No such thing would be enough to relieve the Fount of his burden.
The Beast of Deceit, locked in a silver cage, went through these phases too, its own tinted a deep, feral teal. The beast would claw at the bars of his enclosure, the walls of that damn tree, at anything he could get his claws on to try to escape that pristine room– barely a room, something akin to a prison, though such a thing could not contain a beast the likes of Shadow Milk Cookie.
The beast claws at the walls of his cage, at his own body, in a desperate attempt to free himself because a cornered beast is nothing more than a wounded animal, after all. He’d chew his own leg off if it would give him any advantage, dig out his heart if the act had any chance of promising him relief, of freedom from this silver cage, of freedom from the burning-cold bars of his own consciousness, he needs to get out.
It is never to any avail, never offers Shadow Milk anything but an annoyed tsk-tsk and a dully mortified feeling once the phase passes.
He sees this, recognizes it in himself, knows it’s something he does and knows it will do nothing good, but he allows it anyway, because sometimes it’s the only thing he can allow himself to do, to feel, it’s the only thing that he’s able to see as an option– an option for what, Shadow Milk has absolutely no idea, but that doesn’t change anything.
He knows that no matter from how far he allows himself to fall, his body will not let him hit the ground.
A shock the first time, almost relieving in itself. The second time, an annoyance. The third time, an experiment, the fourth a desperate grasping-at-straws for something, anything, to feel like he’s completed something in his all-too-infinite life.
He watches the fog swirl and cluster around the ground far beneath him. There are no clouds out tonight, but a bitter chill creeps into his bones.
It would do nothing to fall, it never has and it never will, he knows this. He knows it would provide a moment of adrenaline, something akin to finality, something scarcely tinted with hope, and he’d be promptly met with far more dull disappointment than is logical.
Such is the course of his life, it seems.
The Fount had phases like this, and in the beginning, the Fount learned to separate this side of himself from his peers.
The beast had phases like this, and the beast was oh-so desperate, pleading, to have someone to maul with the bleedover, someone to massacre other than himself.
It’s horrible, completely draining, to live and try to pull himself out of such feelings, so Shadow Milk sits in the worst of them instead. It’s familiar. Almost normal, if he lies to himself enough, almost tolerable. Such a state is not new to Shadow Milk, and he should be completely used to the wrenching hole in his chest, the unease in his joints, the restlessness that makes him want to escape his own mind, want to simultaneously drown out his thoughts and rid himself of every sensation altogether.
Instead, he mopes, thinks about the Fount. No, actually, he doesn’t want to think about the Fount, it’s making the momentary hope of relief from falling seem tempting. The beast is not better, though, instead preferring to claw at his upper arms until jam spills out, a reminder that though he cannot escape himself, he’s meant to resemble a normal cookie. A mockery, a sham, and that’s how he likes it, that’s how it’s supposed to be. He will never be a normal cookie, and he will never escape from himself.
Pure Vanilla Cookie, he thinks suddenly, fervently manic, running his hands through his hair and pulling at the strands, he wonders if that annoying gnat of a cookie had seen this part of him, the part he so rarely gives into, the part that demands he feed it and let it grow and fester until it consumes him.
Lonely– lonely– that’s what he’d said, oh, he doesn’t know the half of it, he has not felt even a fraction of Shadow Milk’s soul, has not felt the horrid, mortifying truth that is knowing you cannot die yet trying anyway.
That cookie, so infuriatingly kind that Shadow Milk can feel his hair swirl around him, rising and dripping with shadows in his anger, his embarrassment, his–
Not loneliness. Never loneliness, that cookie is not going to be proven right about a single thing, not about Shadow Milk.
The Fount weighs heavy on his mind, and Shadow Milk turns look at the ground so far below him, filled suddenly with a nauseating disgust.
He doesn’t know what he is doing. He hasn’t, really, for ages. He has no one. His two minions he had left in the wreckage after they had saved his life, he’s sure they wouldn’t like to see the face that had abandoned them so. He has no real aspirations, no goals, and honestly– he laughs at the idea, a bitter, sharp thing– he has no desire to live the life he’s given himself.
Because it’s all his fault, isn’t it. Everything is, in the end. He’s alone because of his own action, his own inaction, his own fear. The Fount is the one who could not handle the truth that was literally baked into him, the beast is the one who could not escape the cage, and Shadow Milk is the one who bears it all, because it’s his fault.
He could drop himself to the ground this moment, give himself that flicker of momentary hope. A drop from this height would crumble any normal cookie instantly, leave nothing but crumbs to be spread by the wind. Unrecognizable. Painful, but quick. But the wave of anger, despair, embarrassment that would follow such an act are never worth it in the end– his heart picks up pace at the thought anyhow, breath catching in his lungs before he forces it out with a sharp exhale. He calms himself with a swift crushing of such thoughts, such sickly bittersweet hopes of release from an existence he does not know how to handle.
When the Fount was young, cookies could not swim for a prolonged time without getting soggy. This was a design flaw quickly corrected by the Witches, but the fact of the matter was, the Fount did not have such a design flaw. The Fount did not have design flaws like crumbly joints, easy burning, the ability to stop floating when he wanted to fall. These things, time and time again, frustrated the Fount, doubly so when he found a new one in another one of these phases.
The beast stalks the corners of his mind. He feels stuck. Feels trapped, caged, needs to be let out. Ironic, considering he’s floating in the vast sky in the middle of a clear night, but the beast is not one to listen to logic. Of course not. A wounded beast is but a cornered animal, focused on nothing but desperate moves to get out, attacking anything it sees. Something Shadow Milk is all-too familiar with, but then again, he’s currently feeling all-to familiar with everything, so.
The beast had attacked the Fount, first. Stalked its prey, reared its head to scare off the rest of the herd, cornered the Fount and poisoned him, turned him, made him unlovable– Shadow Milk doesn’t know if he is the beast or the Fount, sometimes, which one he resembles more, which one he killed to become the other, to become himself, a horrid amalgamation of an ugly battle with nothing to show for it.
Maybe, he is neither.
Maybe, Shadow Milk is a cage in his own right, his own little silver prison from which he can never truly escape.