Chapter Text
You turn your head at an abrupt gasp.
…Is. Is that stardust? And his entire party?! You knew you shouldn’t have picked this direction! You should have checked a map first and made sure you weren’t heading anywhere towards Bambouche!
“...Nope.”
Stuffing your sweet roll in your mouth, you break into a dead sprint. A couple of them yelp behind you, and you can hear a set of heeled boots giving chase.
Oh starfallen-
Come on, you can outlast, just keep running.
You hit the edge of town, and run right up a tree, before continuing to head away in the branches. There’s a crash as stardust fails, not practiced in this skill whatsoever.
You don’t stop, picking this as your direction and fleeing.
Hopefully you hit another town fairly soon, you’d been looking forward to a proper bed and food, and now all you have is your sweetroll.
You slow to perch on a branch, catching your breath and wits, and getting your food out of your mouth so you can more effectively breathe.
“Why do you do this to yourself, Set?” You mutter, looking down at your roll. It won’t keep, it’s too sugary and light. You’ve already squished it. You should enjoy it while you can, and find something else to eat later.
Oh well.
You at least know how to sleep in trees comfortably.
There’s still ripe berries this season, aren’t there?
-
You finish doing an odd repair job, tucking your pay away, and go off to give yourself a treat. If only you can find where the Boulangerie is. Is it ironic you’re completely incapable of navigation?
Eventually, you do find it, and they sell pan au chocolate! Nostalgic. You don’t remember the last time you’ve allowed yourself to have one of these. You get more than one, devouring the first and keeping the other two for later.
Deeming this all for today, you find something to climb so you can relax. People sometimes get mad if they notice you using their roofs for quick naps, so you decide on a tree.
Roosting, you close your eyes, and doze.
…For all of five minutes.
There’s a scuff, making you glance down, and meet eyes with stardust.
After a frozen second, you bunch up to jump away, then realize their party has literally surrounded your tree. You circle the trunk a couple times instead, looking for an escape route, then settle on a higher branch, resigned and glaring.
“Who are you?” He calls up.
“Who does it look like I am?” I snapped back. “Blaze off!”
“Rude.” You hear them mutter.
“Yeah, go away!” You double down. “Shoo! Get! I can be much more blinding rude!”
“We just want to know why you look like Sif!” The Fighter called up.
“Surely you can figure it out!” You snarl, unhappy. “You have- clues?”
You count them, then re-count them, moving down a few branches and circling the trunk again to look around.
“What are you-?”
“Where’s Loop?” You demand.
“You know Loop?”
You crouch on the branch, glowering down. “Where. Is. Loop.”
Stardust takes a step back. “I- I don’t know. They disappeared-”
“Oooooh, that blinder- if I have to deal with this, so do they!”
So saying, you give up on realistic escape routes, and go for an unrealistic one.
You bolt out of the tree, somehow making it far enough to bounce off a lightpost, do a somersault to get over a banner, then land on and run down an especially tight string of decorations, somehow not breaking or even putting indents in the cord.
The last of your somehows used up for the moment, you hit the ground in a roll and dart away.
Any more of that and you’ll break into the territory of inhuman.
You reach the town’s Favor Tree and bounce up into the branches to pick a good leaf. One that’s dead and rotting but too stubborn to fall. Too stubborn for its own good.
You breathe your wish into it, folding it softly, and let it get whisked away into sweet oblivion by a passing breeze. Then you sit down and wait.
It takes a while.
Eventually, light coalesces, and fades into a form.
Loop finishes manifesting, and sways, dizzy.
“This is your mess, too.”
“Wh-?”
You hop out of the tree and plummet straight down to land in front of them. They jolt back, startled. You jab at them with a gloved digit, furious.
“If I have to keep existing, you don’t get to blaze off into the void! That’s favoritism, and I won’t stand for it!”
“What- star-?”
“No!” You wave your finger in their face. “Absolutely not! Oblivion for both of us, or not at all! Now deal with this mess however you see fit, like everyone else that was involved!”
“...What in the Universe am I looking at.”
Loop jumps, looking around you. “-Stardust?!”
Stardust looked equally taken aback. “Loop?!”
You decide that’s it, and bolt.
You are then clotheslined, because Loop grabbed your collar. You let out a startled wheeze, and land flat and painfully on your back. Blinding comedy hour. Stardust steps forward, but seems confused as to what to do.
This is about the point when the rest of the party arrived. You’re pretty sure you’re the only one that noticed, though.
“Loop, why do you look like me?!”
“Wait, what?” Loop looked down at themself, lifting their arms to look at their cloak incredulously. “What in stars’ names-”
You let out a slightly painful wheeze, still trying to catch your breath, and try to skitter away.
Loop immediately draws their knife and pins your cloak to the ground. “Oh, no you don’t.”
“Who are you?” Stardust demands of you.
“I’m Set.” You manage. “And I want nothing to do with either of you after that disaster you had me manage.”
“-What were you managing???”
“Do you think your blinding weapons and fashion accessories stayed equipped without effort?!” You demanded back, managing to sit up. “And those stupid Nostalgies had to be herded out of the halls and into their rooms every time, and don’t get me started on all those blinding times you managed to get frozen and your entire party went down, who do you think had to set all that back into place?! Overworked little Reset, that’s blinding who!”
“You were there the whole time?” Loop said faintly.
“I. Saw. Everything.” You hiss. “Stage crew and audience and standby! I would have liked to at least have been assigned a part, but nooooo. Blind you lot, I’m out.”
You manage to get the knife out of your cloak, and toss it to the ground in front of the party. The other two twist to track it, and freeze.
Scrambling to your feet again, you bolt.
“LEAVE ME ALONE!” You yell over your shoulder, before abandoning all pretenses and spreading the limbs on your back that had gotten bruised.
You launch in a blur, and wing away as fast as you can before someone starts freaking out about winged Sadnesses. You’ve long learned your lesson on that front.
…
Safely away from civilization, you let yourself take off your hat and cloak.
With it off, it’s very obvious you were spared the Universe’s creative liberties even less than Loop had been. The loop ending had at least helped you restore your face and size, so you aren’t going to complain. You’re the one that let your face dissolve last-minute after managing to hold onto it for so long.
Around the star in your chest, limbs swirl, amorphous. Anything of any type, usually paws or claws or wings. Your ‘arms’ don’t really have elbows unless you enforce it, only stable because you practiced having something of the right size and number of digits. Your sleeves and gloves do a lot of heavy lifting there.
Your legs at least are somewhat consistent at joints, but again, it’s your clothes that save you a lot of trouble. Sometimes they end in hooves, sometimes talons, sometimes paws. But your boots are already heeled, so all you needed was a soft pad in the heel and your poor mutant feet are perfectly supported.
In any case, you’re tired. You don’t want to focus on staying human-shaped right now.
Your sleeves deflate, gloves falling in your lap. You use a claw to wrap the bright sleeves around your neck like a scarf. You’d long since removed the torso of this shirt. You pull off your boots and stuff your gloves in them, tying the laces so you can hang them up and not have to worry about losing them.
Your large, sore wings cup around you, the one other set of limbs that stay pretty stable. The shape of them can change depending on what you’re doing, but they stay wings, and roughly symmetrical.
Ruffling, You pull your soft outerwear back on, and relax, roosting. The majority of your limbs turn feathery for comfort. You brush against a lump in your pocket.
Oh, right, you got yourself extra pan au chocolate!
Pulling one out with a talon and a paw, you duck through your cloak’s neckhole and nibble without changing position.
Aw, it’s squished. You must’ve fallen on it. You probably need to wash your pockets again.