Chapter Text
We witnessed the dance of people coming through the shop. A parade of smiling faces, of bright laughter. Beings driven by meaning, by emotion, by love. To be monster, to be human, we wanted to know… what that meant.
Flowers have dreams too. The darkness let us fantasise a higher form of consciousness. But dreams… are dreams. It’s time this capricious reverie came to an end. Kris… the fountain is waiting for you.
Kris
Kris…
…
“Kris!”
They dramatically shot up from their bed, twitchy and dour. While it was unlikely they were actually asleep, trying to keep whatever scraps of dignity they had left in them was a full time job. “What do you want now, SOUL?”
The SOUL flipped around in its cage in a rather silly manner, laughing a bit. “Oh, was just thinking of how FUN that last chapter was!”
“I could tell that already, you reset and re-played it, like, 4 times!”
“Hey!” It grazed the edge of bars in a fake huff. “I play every chapter multiple times! It’s called experimenting for a reason. You’re just lucky I vowed never to do the Weird Route.”
“Urgh! Don’t remind me…” Kris flopped back onto their bed in frustration, clutching a pillow. “I swear, I’m dealing with enough existential nightmares as is, and I don’t need details on how a me from another dimension is torturing my old bestie.”
“Ah! Just what I wanted to talk about! I’ve told you about Frisk before, right?”
“You mean that kid who’s more of a ‘cooperative’ vessel for your shenanigans?”
“I prefer the term, ‘parallel universe little sibling’. Y’know, same developers and all.”
“Developers? Are you talking about that skeleton guy with the, quote, ‘double Ds’?” Kris motioned their hands around their chest to make a point.
The SOUL paused it’s speaking and rose up a bit, replicating a dramatic breath before a rebuttal (as if psychic brainwaves could even breathe), but then: “I honestly can’t tell at this point.” It then shook itself back to sensibility, or as close as a chaos-loving time god could. “Anyway, you know how I told you they weren’t the first human to climb the mountain, but in fact the eighth?”
“Yeah…” Kris nodded, starting to become just a bit more invested. “And that Chara kid had basically the same home life as me?”
“Right, but what I’m actually talking about is the 6 humans that came between them.”
Kris understood what the SOUL was talking about almost instantly, shooting up from their bed hard enough to flop their hair over. “Did those 6 rainbow flower guys remind you of them, or something?”
“Of course they would, the parallels are almost uncanny at this point. I mean, same style, same colours, same virtues, even Aqua was the first one we encountered in each game.”
“Guess that explains why she’s the only one I actually like that much.” They sarcastically crossed their legs over the bed, swinging them slowly. The SOUL was not very amused by this.
“Kris, have you liked any part of our last 3 adventures?”
“Susie, Ralsei, Pink was actually considerate on our last 2 runs, uh… the climbing?”
The SOUL just rolled its semi-existent eyes and kept speaking. “Still, while we probably have a good idea of how the other children acted and look like in general, we don’t really know any specific details on who they truly were, their names, their genders, their races, even their ages. So… I wonder if the 6 flowers here might give some kind of clue…”
“Snrk- ‘Hey Guys, I Think I Found A Glue!’” They flipped their head about mockingly, barely holding back laughter.
“You can just say you don’t want to talk about it.”
“As if you’d actually listen.” Sass laced Kris’ voice, annoying the SOUL even more. “Besides, do you really wanna know what I think?”
“Yes, actually.” Sincerity had appeared in this conversation for the very first time, the SOUL inching closer to the bars of the cage than before.
Kris mulled over whether they were going to respond or not for a few seconds, before finally caving. “I say it’s just impossible to tell who those other 6 kids were. They might’ve been just like each of the flowers, they might’ve been completely different, they might’ve only had a few small similarities to each of them. Heck, the most likely answer is a mix of all 3. But whoever they were, it’s not your right to know about it. You don’t need to know their lives, they don’t owe you their dreams, so just stay unsatisfied and deal with it.”
After their rant, Kris flopped back onto their bed and wrapped themselves in their blanket, curling up like a dog. The SOUL swore it could hear a rough sigh from their direction.
A dull silence filled the room for a few seconds, Kris just intending to get some actual shut-eye, while the SOUL was wondering what to say.
“…I think…” it began quietly, just enough for Kris to hear but not enough to drive them crazy. “…the humans that fell down before Frisk were all different people. Some were kind, some were scared, some were brave. Some tried to fight, some tried to run away. Some stayed with… Toriel, for a long, long time. Others were terrified of her, and ran away immediately. I always wondered what happened to everyone, but…” it paused for just a second too long. “The best we can get is just flowers wanting to be human. I guess those other humans might make good role models for them, but still, they might’ve had totally different lives, different hopes and dreams. I guess all we have left is our imagination. They’re probably nowhere close to ‘true’, yet…”
Kris was probably asleep by now, the SOUL assumed, it must be talking to itself.
“It’s at least something to care about.”