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The Voice of the Curious was born out of questions. Why are they here? Who are they? What is this place?
He never had the chance to have those questions answered, not before the world faded out of focus, the Princess taken by something Other, the mirror standing alone in the void, wordlessly demanding to be looked into.
The Curious was afraid. The mirror reeked of death and dread. But, still, he wanted to see what was in it. After all, who is he, if not his namesake?
He was torn away from Them when They looked into it, and he felt very, very cold. A numbing frost too fridged to ache, just quiet and all-consuming.
Then he was back. Thrown back into a head a little more crowded.
“What? What happened? Where are we?”
And nobody understood.
And the world ended again.
And the Decider remembered everything.
“Of course you’re afraid. This is the end for you. But it’s not the end for me.”
“What? Why would you say that?”
And he was torn away from Them again.
And then there was someone else. A deity, a tapestry of choice and chance, the personification of everything that could possibly exist.
She was beautiful.
They killed Her.
And then the world ended again.
And They were right back where They started.
The Curious kept asking questions.
“Don’t you remember what happened? What the Princess became? How we got here?”
The Narrator attempted to interrupt, but He failed. The Princess becomes what she is perceived to be, and the Curious knew what she was meant to exist as.
And the world ended again.
And again.
And again.
The Curious managed to scrape together clues, tiny pieces of the truth, and figure out how this place worked. He learned how to stop the rapid-fire ending of worlds, just by focusing on the fact that the Narrator tore them apart. The Princess wasn’t whole. She wasn’t everything, at least not yet.
Worlds kept ending.
The Curious eventually convinced Them to spare Her. Maybe peace between the opposites would end the loop?
And the world ended again.
The Curious didn’t know what to do, what would end the loops, but he did know that he was made of questions.
“What happens if we give her the knife?”
“What if we unscrew the chain from the wall?”
“What would she do if we did something really random?”
More worlds end, but they stopped mattering to him a long time ago.
……
The Voice of the Careless wanted nothing except, occasionally, to see what would happen next.
He was content to allow the other Voices to guide the Decider’s choices and provide ideas, only really contributing when prompted.
He watched, vaguely detached, as the Princess changed over and over again, as They died over and over again, as worlds ended over and over again.
Then, suddenly, something new.
The Careless stared down at his body in shock for several minutes when a new loop was opened.
He felt cold.
He felt warm.
He felt wind in his feathers, felt his heart beat wildly, felt everything that he had never felt with the Decider.
He wasn’t alone, the other Voices also given bodies, but some were missing. He’d asked them if they remembered the absent Voices, and, of course, they didn’t.
One day, a few weeks into their freedom, something shattered in the distance. It echoed throughout their new world, and cracks appeared across the ground, the sky, his hands.
It was fake. It fell apart.
Everything went dark. Everything was cold.
Then they were back with the Decider.
Then, hundreds of loops later, it happened again — new bodies, new freedoms, a new, painful end.
This time, the Careless was with the others. They were terrified, but the Careless felt… disappointed. Empty. Resigned. He’d been more careful — ironically — to not get attached, but he still felt awful when he was ripped away from the others.
……
The Voice of the Cynical and the Voice of the Optimistic were about as different as a pair of Voices could get.
So, when they got another loop with the fake freedom, the Cynical was reasonably confused when the Optimistic went out of his way to interact with him.
That first night with their new bodies, they made a huge bonfire to keep them warm and light the darkness, and the Cynical sat alone, staring into the flames, wondering idly when this loop would close. The Optimistic, once he was presumably done talking with the others, sat down next to him.
They were both quiet for a while, although the Cynical wasn’t entirely sure if that silence was comfortable or awkward.
Eventually, the Optimistic turned to him, smiling, and said, “How are you doing?”
The Cynical shrugged, “Fine.”
He didn’t care to echo the question back to him, but the taller Voice didn’t seem to mind.
“I feel…” the Optimistic hesitated, stared at the crackling flames as he searched for words, “… a lot. This-this is a lot, y’know?”
“Overwhelmed?”
“Maybe? I just… I don’t know. I just would like a break to… process everything?”
“You’re overwhelmed.”
“Maybe,” he repeated, “My heart can’t stop racing.”
“You sound like you’re about to have a panic attack.”
The Optimistic laughed at that, looked a little calmer, “Probably, yeah, but I’m alright for now. But other than that, I’m excited! A whole new world, freedom we never could’ve dreamed of! Isn’t it amazing?”
“It’s not going to last.”
“Says who?”
“Says me.”
“Well,” the Optimistic shrugged playfully, “even if this doesn’t last, it’s still worth savouring, this freedom.”
“Then it’ll hurt more when it ends.”
“Maybe, but I don’t think things start just to end. Everyone dies eventually, but that doesn’t mean that life isn’t worth living.”
The Cynical didn’t respond to that, his thoughts having wandered a little.
Death was never the end to them, not really. An end was just a pause, a meaningless breath taken between one loop and the next.
Is life worth living if there isn’t an end to it? If existence is just endless torture, endless loops?
The Cynical would have given anything to finally stop it. Not that he had anything to give.
He was pulled out of his thoughts when he felt something touch his headwing. He glanced over at the Optimistic, who smiled as he put something on the Cynical’s head.
He took it off, stared at the white flower now in his hand.
He glanced up at the other, and the taller Voice just shrugged playfully, “I think white suits you,” he half-explained, grin unwavering.
The Cynical didn’t respond, but still wordlessly put the flower back on his headwing, ignoring how the Optimistic grinned wider at the action.
They went quiet again, staring into the fire, half-listening to the others talking or arguing.
“What are you thinking about?”
The Cynical rolled his eyes, “Finally getting some peace and quiet.”
The Optimistic chuckled, “No, really. What’s on your mind?”
“How stupid this is. Chances are, we either kill each other or die some other way.”
“I don’t think we’re going to kill each other.”
“We did back then. They say old habits die hard.”
“We weren’t there long enough to form habits.”
The Cynical gestured over to the Obsessed and the Doubting arguing about something, the Hero and the Healer attempting to mediate. The Skeptic and the Calm stood nearby, and the latter watched them with an expression akin to boredom. Practically a mirror of how they acted in the Construct.
“We were stressed,” the Optimistic said as he looked over at the group, “We still are. We’ll calm down eventually, then we’ll finally be able to just… live.”
“And then what? It’s not like we know how to live in the first place.”
“It’s never too late to learn.”
“But it is. Our existence was… backwards. We died and killed each other over and over again long before we began to live.”
“That doesn’t mean it’s too late. It just means…” he trailed off, stared into the bonfire for a moment, “It just means that we have a unique perspective. That’s not a bad thing.”
They were quiet again. The Cynical occasionally glanced over at the others, the Doubting and the Obsessed no longer arguing, but glaring at one another. Suddenly, the Doubting threw his hands up, said something sharply, then stalked off. The Calm followed, maybe to ensure that the Doubting wouldn’t get lost.
“Why are you here?” The Cynical eventually muttered.
“You looked lonely. I figured you might need a friend.”
“A friend.”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“Everybody needs a friend.”
“Then go befriend the others.”
“I have,” the Optimistic said, but there was something… pained about it. Like he didn’t really mean it.
“Do they not like you?”
“I’d say I’m pretty likable.”
The Cynical glared at him, “That’s not an answer.”
“They… They’ll warm up eventually.”
“What happened?”
“It doesn’t matter, really! He didn’t mean it—”
“Mean what?”
The Optimistic hesitated, glanced around. The Cynical moved closer, gripping his shoulder and forcing him to make eye contact.
“What happened?”
The Optimistic opened and closed his mouth for a moment before eventually sighing.
“It-it doesn’t matter, really, but… Doubting and I found each other pretty quickly, right? So, while we were looking for everyone else, we started talking, and…”
“And?”
The Optimistic swallowed, nervous, then, “He… well, uh, again, I know he didn’t really mean it, he was just stressed out—”
“And?”
“He… said that my… ‘antics’… back then were a waste. That trying to see the bright side of things was… useless. That I was useless. But-but again, I mean, it’s really fine—”
“Do you believe him? Do you think you’re a waste?”
“I— well, it really doesn’t matter, I’m sure he’s already forgotten about it by now—”
“Stop avoiding my questions. Do you think he was in the right?”
“I’m-I’m sorry for bringing it up, now you just look angry and I shouldn’t even dwell on it anyway—”
“I’m not mad at you, I’m mad at him. Would it really kill you to give me a straight answer—”
“YES!”
The Optimistic’s shout was loud enough that, even over the roar of the bonfire, the Hero and the Obsessed glanced over at them. The Cynical flipped them off, wanting them to mind their own business. The motion was awkward with six fingers, but the two of them got the message and looked away.
He turned back to the Optimistic, who was covering his mouth with his hands. He looked just as startled as the Cynical, his feathers puffed up in embarrassment. They stared at each other for a moment before the taller Voice nervously smiled at him.
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be. What were you saying ‘yes’ about?”
“I… all of it. I believed him. Maybe… it would kill me to be honest with you on that. I’m supposed to be Optimistic. If I don’t have that, then…”
He looked away, one hand subconsciously drifting up to hold the Cynical’s, still gripping his shoulder.
He must have been close to a name change. The Cynical had seen it before, of course, even experienced it himself. He was mostly just surprised that he hadn’t noticed it before, but once he was aware of it, it seemed so obvious. That strain in his eyes, his smile, his posture.
What would he become? When would he change?
How long did he have left with him?
“What’s something that you really want to do?” He blurted out.
The Optimistic looked surprised at the sudden change of topic, but his eyes softened as he considered. After a few moments, the spark in his eyes reignited, now almost playful.
“I want… to dance with you.”
The Cynical blinked, surprised, “You… what? Why?”
The taller Voice shrugged, grinning, “Why not? I like being around you. I want to learn how to dance. If I could do anything in the world, I would want to dance with you.”
The Cynical stared at him, his mind both racing and oddly silent.
This isn’t going to last.
“Fine. It’ll be awful, but I’ll dance with you if you really want to.”
The Optimistic grinned wider, and the Cynical swore that the lights in his eyes twirled in time with the flickering of the fire.
“Your turn, now. What do you want to do?”
The Cynical hesitated, thinking. He was certain that any attempt to do just about anything would inevitably end horribly, but he was even more certain that, if he didn’t take this chance, he’d regret it for the rest of his miserable existence.
“To fly.”
He regretted it the second he said it — he can’t fly. He learned that way back when he was still the Careless — his wings are mismatched, lopsided. He would tip over in flight, then plummet to the ground. The Careless had gotten several broken bones for his efforts, and the state of his wings hadn’t changed.
The Optimistic, of course, didn’t know any of that. He nodded, clearly immediately determined to make the Cynical’s desire come true.
“But—” The Cynical started before the other could get any ideas, “— I can’t fly. And don’t just say something about ‘the power of belief’ or whatever — my wings are mismatched.”
The Optimistic looked over at the smaller Voice’s wings, and the latter spread them to give the former a better view.
True to his word, the Cynical’s wings were different from one another. One was larger, with feathers suited for slow, long-distance flights. The other was shorter, built for quick flights and high maneuverability. The weight difference even affected the Cynical’s posture, making him lean to one side to avoid falling over.
Still, the Optimistic was undeterred.
“I’ll help you. It’ll be harder, sure, but it’s just a matter of keeping yourself stable in the air. If you fall, I’ll catch you.”
“And if you can’t? If you miss?”
“We’ll start small,” the Optimistic grinned at him, the light in his eyes growing brighter, “We have all the time in the world!”
Except they don’t. They never do.
……
The Cynical stared at the ground a few dozen meters away from the edge of the cliff. He’d never been afraid of heights, but the thought of slipping and plummeting to the ground at the slightest misstep made him dizzy.
The Optimistic, of course, was uncaring of his nerves.
“It’ll be alright! I believe in you!” He shouted from his spot on the ground below.
The two of them had been training, helping the Cynical to develop the muscle memory required to make his lopsided wings stay in the air. The practice had been mostly on the ground, sometimes on a large rock, and focused on getting in the air and staying in one spot for extended periods of time.
This was the first real test.
It was cloudy. The Optimistic didn’t want the sun in the Cynical’s eyes. The sky was a mottled mess of greys, and the wind was more unpredictable than the two of them had anticipated. Not that either of them cared enough to change plans.
The Cynical forced himself to breathe slowly, willing his hands to stop shaking.
He knew that, if he hesitated, he wouldn’t be able to do it — to fly.
He jumped, spreading his wings.
Flight, for several seconds. The wind in his feathers. He circled in the air, wide-eyed.
Wind, harder than before. It knocked him out of the precarious balance of his crooked center of gravity.
A shout, as the Optimistic flew up to catch him.
They spun in the air for a moment, the harsher winds all but throwing them around.
The Cynical would find out later that the spiral of air and dust and debris in the distance was called a ‘tornado’. All he knew at that moment was that it was getting closer.
It was pulling them in. It was about to tug them out of the sky and spit them out. It was going to make them hurtle to the ground, too quickly to save themselves.
The Optimistic said something, but his voice was lost beneath the howling winds. His eyes sparked with fear, but that ever-present glimmer of hope still danced despite the terror.
The trees below them swayed dangerously, but the largest ones remained rooted to the soil.
The Cynical didn’t think. All he could process was the Optimistic’s eyes.
He leaned in, screamed over the deafening wind, “Hold on to the trees!”
The Optimistic’s eyes widened, but he couldn’t stop the Cynical from twisting them in the air and kicking him towards the biggest tree he could find.
They were separated.
The center of a tornado is called the ‘eye’. It felt like a fitting name, the sky above a sickly yellow, staring at him unblinkingly.
The Cynical would never find out if the Optimistic survived.
But it didn’t matter.
Death was never the end.
……
The Voice of the Chaotic was generally disliked by the others. All he cared about was seeing something new, something to prove to himself that this repetitive hell could have any type of reprieve.
Because of that, the Chaotic thrived on randomness. An odd suggestion, a sudden outburst, the rapid switching of goals and ideas and thoughts.
That instability made him off-putting, so he wasn’t surprised when, during a fake-freedom loop, everybody avoided him when possible. He didn’t mind — he didn’t want to find them too predictable, and the mild isolation led to testable questions about them, things he could find out eventually.
Except, oddly, the Opportunist would occasionally go out of his way to interact with him.
The Opportunist was new to his name, and it also made him a little off-putting to the others. He wore the name awkwardly, like new clothes that he hadn’t quite grown into yet.
Maybe he subconsciously thought that they could be weird together, a sentiment that the Chaotic had mixed feelings about. He found the ache in his chest interesting, so he never refused when the Opportunist wanted to hang out with him.
Which was how he got into this situation.
They were walking in the woods, the Opportunist leading the way. The Chaotic had asked several times where they were going, but the taller Voice must’ve known that he didn’t actually want him to answer, because he just said ‘you’ll see’ whenever asked.
Eventually, they reached a place where willow trees grew bigger and closer to one another, forming a kind of wall. The Opportunist pushed the branches aside, walking past the trees, and the Chaotic followed him.
The shade beneath the willow trees had made him used to the dimness, and he blinked a few times when they walked into a bright clearing. Once his eyes adjusted, he froze.
The clearing was filled with what looked like a million flowers in full bloom. The slowly waning sunshine seemed to make them glow brighter, thousands of colours swaying gently in the soft breeze.
The Opportunist gestured to the scene, “What do you think?”
The Chaotic hesitated, forced his thoughts into something vaguely coherent, “It’s beautiful, and I’m glad you showed me this. It’s a waste, and I regret coming here. Why did you want me to see this?”
His conflicting answers usually confused and frustrated the others, but the Opportunist seemed to understand him, at least a little.
“Well, I didn’t want to keep this to myself, and I figured that you may have some slightly positive feelings about it,” he started to move to the center of the clearing, held his arm out for the Chaotic to take.
He refused wordlessly, still followed him.
“I’d like to dance with you.”
The Chaotic froze, surprised.
“What?”
The Opportunist grinned, now held both of his arms out for him, “I’d like to dance with you. I think it’d be fun!”
At the Chaotic’s continued hesitance, the Opportunist said, “If nothing else, I’m sure it’d be something new, right? I doubt you’ve ever danced before.”
He had danced before, a million lifetimes ago.
He took his hands, allowed him to pull him closer.
It was clumsy at first, the both of them stepping on the other’s feet, but they eventually settled into a dance almost similar to a waltz, swaying and occasionally spinning slowly.
The Chaotic swore he could feel the other’s heartbeat, and wondered if its quick pace matched his own.
“You didn’t just want to dance, did you?” the Chaotic eventually asked, because he loved and hated the gentle silence interrupted only the Opportunist’s quiet humming.
“Hmm… I suppose not,” the Opportunist started, “I wanted to talk to you.”
“That’s stupid. That’s fun. What do you want to talk about that you couldn’t say with the others around?”
“What do you think of them?”
“The others? Depends. I think different things of different people. Did you just want to gossip, or will this conversation be more interesting?”
The Opportunist chuckled, then, “Okay, I’ll just ask about… Hero. What do you think of him?”
The Hero. He’s always there, somehow the most and least flexible of all of them. Throughout the countless loops, he’d never changed his name, never shifted his role. He was always the one most connected with the Decider, and the Chaotic, throughout his many lives, had been constantly disappointed that he still didn’t remember the loops. Labeled “Love” the same way that the Chaotic was labeled “Impatience” or the Opportunist was labeled “Betrayal.”
The Chaotic couldn’t bring himself to say all of that, though, so he simply muttered, “The Hero is perfect. Flawed. Everyone loves him, and for good reason. I hate him, the way I hate everything, and I love who he is, because he is Love. Does that answer your question?”
The Opportunist hummed, considering, but they fell back into that almost-silence.
Eventually, as the sun was falling behind the trees and the moon was about to bask the clearing in reflected light, the Opportunist said, “Why do you call us that? You add ‘the’ at the beginning of our names, like they’re titles. Why?”
He’d always done that, always acted like they were titles, because they were, at least at first. But, now that he thought about it, everyone else had always simply called each other the unique part of their titles, dropping the ‘the’ as early as the time of the Careless.
“Is that a bad thing?”
“It isn’t,” the Opportunist said lightly, “but it must be tiring, if nothing else, right?”
“So?”
“Sooo… Have you thought about… nicknames?”
“Like what?”
“Like… Well, ‘the Opportunist’ is something of a mouthful, isn’t it? What if you called me… ‘Oppy’?”
“Oppy?”
“Yeah! It has a certain ring to it. What do you think?”
“… It’s dumb. It’s silly. Like you’re trying not to seem like ‘the Opportunist’, because that tends to be more negative sounding. Like you want to seem more approachable.”
It sounds like it could be short for ‘the Optimistic’.
He refused to say that part aloud. It didn’t stop him from thinking it.
“Fine. I’ll call you ‘Oppy’ for as long as this freedom lasts.”
The Op— Oppy grinned at that. The spark in his eyes, half-dulled leftovers from the Optimistic, made the Chaotic’s stomach turn and flutter in odd ways.
Oppy opened his mouth to say something else, but any words he said were lost beneath the sudden sounds of an overheating computer, the sky and ground melting and fracturing, echoing throughout the fake existence.
They didn’t let go of one another, even as the burning world consumed them.
……
He’s not sure if there was a time where he didn’t have a name. A gap in his personality, his unending existence.
He just knows that he got tired.
Tired of putting effort into randomness.
Tired of seeing only the worst in things.
Tired of being distant.
Tired of asking endless questions.
He put less effort into things. Stopped trying to say something new. Stopped trying to see something new.
He made a new, simple persona.
Whatever he did, he would simply contradict the Narrator. It was easy. The Narrator was consistent, so his lines were simple.
“If he wants us to take it, maybe we should just leave it to collect dust, or, better yet, grab it, and throw it out the window!”
It wasn’t a conscious memorization of lines. It just happened, really.
"I didn’t sign up for passive existence when we faked our own death!”
But once he realized it, everything felt easier. It stopped being purgatory and started being a play.
"No. Don’t do that.”
The end of a loop was the closing of a curtain. A new act came with a title card. He had lines and cues, and was just one actor, just one supporting role in a larger cast.
So, the others must have been the same.
Committed to the bit. The play. The act.
When he was given the role of ‘The Contrarian’, he leaned into it.
For who is he, if not his performance?
……
Contrarian stares up at the clear sky, lying on his back in the snow. He’s bundled up in coats and scarves, and had been hanging out with Cold that winter day.
Contrarian gets tired faster in the shorter, cooler days, and was taking a break from snowman building to see if the ice could soak through his clothes, freeze his feathers despite all the layers between him and the frost.
He smiles as Cold sits down next to him.
“Having fun?” the fridged Voice asks.
“Loads. You?”
Cold hums, staring at Contrarian with an almost unreadable expression.
“I suppose. What were you thinking about?”
What would happen if everything just stopped.
How little this moment matters.
What he should have done differently.
Nothing. Everything.
Contrarian grins.
“How we’re gonna make an even bigger snowman.”