Chapter Text
Nothingness was an old friend. It had cradled his dough even as the last inkling of heat from the Holy Oven had left it, it was there before consciousness, and it was there before purpose. Nothingness, he soon concluded, was the first Witness to his Creation.
Before anything there was to know was Nothingness, an encompassing darkness that offered no knowledge, nor feeling. For nothingness was just that, ever vast, ever eternal, ever absent. He was but a fleeting creature before it, ever miniscule to its nature, unnoticed, unmoved, unimportant. But the fates did not narrate his life in continuous stagnation within it, for after nothingness came an echo, seeping, bursting, destructive in its wake; commanding, binding .
“. . .Harness the radiance bestowed upon you for the betterment of this world. . .” It had said, carrying radiance and fate so absolute, that the once fleeting thought in that vast blanket of nothingness, became the Fount of Knowledge.
The Fount of Knowledge was just that, a fountain of truths and lies so beautifully intertwined it bursted in heavenly light, encompassed the cosmos, and nourished the ground it traveled by—the Fount of Knowledge was colossal, no room nor structure created ever enough to engulf its frame. For its Virtue uttered truths of primordial existence, blessed by the grace of the Witches, the Fount of Knowledge lived with purpose greater than those created before it. He was cosmic, baked to last all that is, and all that was to be.
The Fount of Knowledge seldom let his dough touch the ground that all of Cookiekind lived on, if not for the few moments of humble service where that cosmic force descended from its heavenly perch among the clouds and kneeled—the ground shaking underneath its might—and with the outstretch of his pale-dough hand, would weave the world of all its knowledge, and present its brilliance in the form of a pearlescent, blinding light, gently cradled in his palm. And he would smile, ever beautiful, eyes closed since the day he was baked to be, and give wake to enlightenment for those who yearned for more.
The Fount of Knowledge was all knowing, ever present, baked in the image of the Witches and the likeness of that vast before what was now. The skies were his to see, the rivers his to hear, and everything there was to know submitted in kind—like a bird perching on a gentle hand that offered. And that existence was enough, for there was nothing more greater to be. The Fount of Knowledge was woven from the sky, his dough taken from the very earth, his soul whispered to existence by sprinkled powder so miniscule they shivered into air and created life. The Fount of Knowledge was carved from perfection.
Perfection existed in unkind persistence, a dreary cycle so monotonous, that the simple, ever small and buzzing flaw of the world gained change, a paradox even hope could not extinguish. It bore its ugly head within uttered whispers and wary glances, and soon gained form to pure wretched darkness. The Pathology of Virtue, the cancer that seeps without cure. A being born from will brought purpose. That liquid vile bleeding and weaving itself into crevices unknown—a locked treasure within the heart of perfection.
To be born with purpose was to live within the narrative, a woven fate so binding, that to unthread it meant to mutilate by extension the being that was made to live it.
Nothingness did not cradle his dough as gently as it did before birth. It had crept its way in silence, had created its presence in tiny crevices, and had pulled and reverted his body from the inside. The change was blinding, imminent, binding. Had pulled at his soul and sucked, had fought god and the heart that lived within its immortal existence. The change was a scary thing, change was betrayal, change was something not to be, for change was the very flaw of immortality.
Change was treachery. It was the translation of language derived from conquest, the erasure of origin and the alteration of culture, it was the murder of dawn and the rebirth of its frankensteined parts. The Fount of Knowledge was a god, a being baked from perfection and made within its narration, to change it was to make it imperfect. And imperfection was an ugly thing.
Change was ultimately destruction, The Fount found himself concluding. Drifting in the expanse of nothingness, he felt the tingling of his skin as they gathered and moved in tangent, a searing pain shooting from the tiniest of dough to the deepest of crust, they clustered in meaningless clumps, creating one faulty bump after the other, they looked like boulders, a clump of muddled dough that sucked at his insides and filled itself with jam. The pain was imminent, it felt like dying, it felt like breathing for the first time and having it clogged at the seams before exhaling. All of which are unnatural to his nature. The Fount of Knowledge did not feel pain, he did not need to breathe, he was not baked to feel or do all of which pertained life, he should never feel like dying, for he simply did not. But right here, in that moment, in that time where he desired to open his mouth and scream for the very first time in his immortal existence—to release even a fracture of the pain he felt till his vocals burned raw and till that new feeling of breathing felt cold down his throat—he found himself unable to. For Nothingness dictated no form or sound, to be able to was to violate this fundamental Truth. But Nothingness could not be what it was in his presence, utterly targeted, gripped, and changed.
Thinking would not serve him purpose, it only provided suffering, to know was to describe the agony inflicted to his dough, but the Fount of Knowledge was helpless to his nature, just as he was helpless to this torture. He felt it as every cluster reformed once more, moving in uneven treks around his body and overlapping one another as they traveled, his skin tightened and hollowed as they moved, it stretched on one side and emptied at the other, but they never ceased their movement, they just went faster and faster and faster until the pain seared itself on the inside, something unnatural began to form, like bleeding, as if the jam left within him had clustered to one another alike his skin, and formed something that was never supposed to be.
Organs, he thought, imitations of what he knew were baked into cookies for them to function. But these were not natural, they were never supposed to be, they did not function to help life, instead they were born from the faulty redistribution of his insides and imploded on themselves right after formation at incredible speed. A new form of pain washed over his entire body, he felt each clump imitate its function for a few beating moments—the pumping of the heart and the travel of jam before tightening and erupting, the exhale of lungs before shriveling up and rotting, the creation of the stomach and how it growled and gnawed underneath his skin, eating away on itself and releasing acid to the innards that he could not even name before they themselves gave way to destruction.
Indescribable pain engulfed him in waves as he felt the formation of bones overlap the emergence and demolition of his insides. It was a catharsis of blockage that shredded the imitations as they grew, it was not abashed in piercing his newly formed lungs and restricting his imitated breathing to punctured holes and jam filled coughs, it did not care for his visage as it formed an unnatural skull over his head and broke his jaw in multiple ways to seemingly find the perfect shape. Over and over and over he had felt the breakage of his own shoulder, the spasm of his dough as it grappled with the weight and the changes made, the ruination of his spine as it curled in on itself and battled the gravity that was pushing his body at all angles. There was a blistering pain that struck his head, distantly, he could feel the melting of his very dough, the cream of his once perfect hair—one carved from the very blanket of the universe—there was the feeling of otherworldly expansion, the tide of blistering cold washing over him and drowning out the searing pain that had tormented his whole being for who knows how long, and for the second time, he felt like dying, as if the very powder of his life was escaping through the cracks of his hands, panic invaded his senses as his body compressed and shrunk in size. His hair was melting, he thought, his hair was melting and it surrounded his cold body like an eternal candle wax burning, burning away at his dough, stuck to his eyes and restricted his voice, there was new found horror in the feeling of being rebaked by his own body.
What a wretched existence, he thought. What a wretched and miserable existence this was, he cried. But thinking burned, more scalding and searing than the first, he could not think, crying was continuous, the fire too, it targeted the center of his head and caved the skull in painful ways that pushed the jam out of his mouth and forced the eyes that never opened to do what it never did. Enlightenment, he concluded, was not as kind or gentle as he thought it was. There was a scream, he thinks, distantly. But he could not focus on who it was from when his eyes soon bulged and made its presence known to the world he had lived but never saw.
It was an ugly, wretched thing. More wretched than the torture he was in. “Witches,” he breathed in awe, “what ugly lie had I been living all this time?” daringly, and in helpless devastation, the first words of Shadow Milk Cookie.
Shadow Milk Cookie was not made with purpose, he was not made to be molded by beings of higher power, nor could he be touched by beings baked in homely stature. Shadow Milk Cookie was a being of his own, a creature born from the natural fibers of the world made inverted. Shadow Milk Cookie was lie incarnate, the vile veiled in beauty, the hurt disguised as care, and the selfishness born from every cookie’s fragile heart. He was Shadow Milk Cookie, the fool who once beheld the world without ever truly seeing it.
Shadow Milk’s birth did not garner the brilliance and festivity the Fount of Knowledge once experienced, but it had quaked the earth in its beginning, had bent the sky and made it kneel to touch the ground, rippled rivers into oceans so vast it swallowed mountains. Shadow Milk was not born from divinity that granted warmth and quarried devotion, instead he was born from blistering whispers that seared the skin and confused the mind from what was hot and which was cold, it did not ask to be followed, it demanded. Jovial laughter rang like incessant bells that shook the soul from contained dough, soft worship turned to cracked knees on stone and jam filled altars, blasphemy was uttered in mirth from eyes forcefully plastered on cookies’ faces, once varying hues now painted in striking blues and blacks.
Shadow Milk Cookie was simply different, he did not present himself to be humble, had stopped the pretense of giants being kind, he simply did not pretend to be what he was not. He was a God amongst the rest. He was the darkness that would engulf the dessert world into Deceit.
Once, in his present and infinite rule, the voice of his Virtue came alive. He had met it in darkness, had greeted it with disdain and a sneer to the face, “How utterly vile. How pathetically predictable.” he had said, he had remembered.
The Virtue of Truth was not born like the Fount of Knowledge, nor was it born like Shadow Milk Cookie himself. Instead, it was born in quiet whispers, much like the pathology of Deceit, but came with it were not of doubt and unkind treatment, it was of hopeful wishes and fragile compassion. The Light of Truth was born from the fleeting warmth in every friends’ heart, the longing gaze directed at a lover, and that loving smile directed at a parent. This Virtue, although made from the fragments of infinite fragile bonds, shone brightly and strongly against the expanse of darkness Shadow Milk himself created.
“What is your will?” it had asked, he had remembered.
He did not answer. And perhaps that was what doomed them all.
Nothingness did not greet Shadow Milk in kind, nor did he in turn. He did not let it take him for the third time as willingly as he had the second, and unknowingly as he had the first. He had clawed and gnawed and screamed in retaliation as silver veins that grew in outstanding proportions hastily chased and tried to reach him. He had willed the very earth to take the blow, commanded the skies to revert and expand, had twisted the very fiber of reality and shook the essence of time to break free, and yet, and yet. . .still so pathetically helpless against the hands that had baked him, he could not escape his fate.
Shadow Milk Cookie was not to be molded by beings higher than him, and was not to be bent by beings baked lower in stature. For Shadow Milk Cookie was Deceit incarnate, a ripple in the river that created destruction, he was a lie just as he was the truth, for in every lie told was a droplet of truth at its heart. Deceit was not real, it was not tangible, and by laughable extension, could not be touched, and Shadow Milk was everything that was not. Except his heart, that one truth that persisted since the day he was created, the Fount of Knowledge that had dutifully carried Truth and dwelled in that miniscule crevice of his soul lived on. The truth was just that, real and tangible; touchable.
To be reborn was painful, it was to be killed and remade over and over and over without the peace that death offered. It was destruction without reattachment, it was ugly outcomes made from ugly forces. It was to be forced awake by the cracking of your dough and the tightening of your jam. To be reborn was ugly, it was to lose everything you were and know nothing of what was to be. He had concluded that a very long time ago, even before he had given himself a name.
Shadow Milk Cookie had etched that truth since the first feeling of tingling on his dough, it had carved its existence through his bones and had made itself permanent through the rupture of his organs. To be reborn was ugly, that was truth, but it was not the ugliest nor the most painful experience to have, he soon found. Because helpless beneath the hands that baked him, Shadow Milk found himself being torn open, being made half.
. . .
There was no great revelation in its end, no feeling of betrayal in the wake of enlightenment, no eruption of passion and jovial destruction. There was just the rupture of flesh, the splitting of dough, the caking of jam, and the feeling of something important being stolen. There was no great finale to this ending, just that gnawing feeling of utter emptiness and loss. Truth he had found, came with all that he had loved and was to love. And it had just been ripped away from his body.
Nothingness was an old friend, it had witnessed him in his creation, had ripped him apart in his rebirth, and had held him tightly as he was torn apart. But it had always been a separate being, it was not something the Fount of Knowledge nor Shadow Milk Cookie had considered being a part of himself, he was just a thought, a creature, an opponent, in its ever vast existence. He was simply different from its absent nature. And yet, at this very moment, Shadow Milk Cookie was Nothingness. He did not feel, did not move, and did not care. He had floated and watched as his very heart was torn away and crushed over and over and over, again and again and again, until just the smallest of its most brilliant fragments remained, burned and molded, reattached in varying wrong places to create the smallest imitation of what it once was, polished to shine brighter than the earth’s sun.
“Rest now, thy weary heart, for your bearer shall meet you soon.”
The Light of Truth became a separate being from Deceit, and the Fount of Knowledge, once made to last all that was and is to be, colossal and cosmic in nature, became no more.
Now there was only Shadow Milk Cookie, locked within the Silver Tree. Unnoticed, unmoving, unimportant. Just as he was before creation. The rule of Deceit shall quake the earth no longer, and the sun will rise at the horizon, giving end to his infinite darkness.