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baskettt · 27 days

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wc 1.0k; tw blood

xiao is on the roof. he finds himself on the roof a lot—inside the inn during quiet hours like this, the screams of his family echo, bouncing off wooden walls. up high, in the branches of the tree that cradles the inn, the wind tugs the voices out of his mind as if it was a river, and he was cleaning the blood from his body. he feels guilt about it when he thinks too hard about it, which he's rarely able to not do. it's late; then again, it always feels late, no matter where the sun or moon are in the sky. his meals are late, and his sleep comes even later, even if the inkeeper persuades him into a cup of tea.

he thinks a lot more than he'd like to when there's nothing left to kill. he thinks a lot, and it's difficult with each day that goes by without blood staining his hands, spattering against his skin. in a past so long ago it doesn't feel like his own, he remembers being disgusted by the sensation. if he was ever scared of it, though - the thing that he now lives for—it's too far away, separated by thousands of years.

the truth is, it seems that every day is quiet. at least, they're getting quieter. he still hears the voices and footsteps and clattering sounds of the inn during the daytime, but the thing that makes the sounds of the day and night so much more hollow is the sudden rarity of growls. the sound of claws against wood, of arcane chanting: these are the voices of the life he's thrown himself into every waking hour, ever since morax had given him the name he still carries. they are falling silent, one by one.

even when monsters do arise, they're taken care of quickly, leaving him only with the wind sighing through the grass. this time, the breeze isn't so quick to carry the voices of the vanquished away from him; if the pained gurgle of a beast gets on his nerves, it's up to him to stomp it out, and he never hesitates, though the crunch of bone brings him no relief.

the wind brings no sound with it. everything sleeps for once, except for him. the mourning doves will begin to sing in a few hours, but hopefully he'll have nodded off by then. it's rare that he actually seeks out sleep: he's been skirting around it for the past few days. sleeping means silence. it means stillness. and that's when everything is the worst. the night is cool, and so are the jade beads he rolls between his fingers. when the round beads warm over from the touch of his hand, he slips his fingers down to another cluster of beads.

being a permanent resident of the inn, he's seen all different manner of people. travelers, artists, researchers, children, mothers and fathers, and people so grayed with time that they can't even see the bright blue of the sky anymore. he's seen weathered, jaded sprouts, and old, strong oaks that retain a lust for life with nary a scratch to their bark. he's seen people so full of tenacity that it bubbles over, and, he swears, he's seen them glow as if their hair was woven from starlight… but the one person he's been thinking of recently is an all too common type. no starlight, and no sunlight—not even the scraps that the moon holds onto. no scorch of fire, and no bite of ice. he's seen people so set in their ways that it's almost as if they avoid introspection altogether; as if the last time they had reached inside themself, what they saw was something so awful that it burned them, and they'd never tried to look again.

it's chilly up on the roof, but he doesn't mind. there's no light either, though, not even from the moon—the sun having left it no warmth to cling to.

sometimes, he wishes he were so shallow as those sorts. alone on the roof in the dead of night, he allows himself to want something, even if it hurts, even if it'll always be just out of his reach. he wishes that the first time he'd looked into himself, the stabs and gushing of blood—his own, for once—had been enough to scare him off for good. with every demon subjugated, though, his fear would shrink until he found himself scared of nothing; panic a long-forgotten aftertaste.

he wishes he were that person. he wishes, so much, that he could have no mind. he wishes to never think again but to carry out his duty. he wishes he were somebody else, he wishes he were that person—no, he wishes that it hadn't been him in the first place, because the truth is, with every day that slips by him, his duty fades. it's a weight that he can feel falling from his shoulders as if it were a mantle, one that he desperately tries to pull back over his shoulders. on one warm autumn evening, he’d found that it was morax himself that has loosened the clasp, and there was nothing to do but let it fall, dead responsibility pooling around his feet alongside the blood of the damned.

and... without that shroud, what is he to do?

it shouldn't be him - should never have. he focused on protecting his world so long that he no longer knows what it is that he's standing in front of, having barely ever bothered glancing over his shoulder at the people he protects. starlight comes, and then it goes, as if all those glittering specks were practicing to be the next sun - practicing to leave him with nothing but the cold, silent world at night. bosacius would know how to live. bosacius would never have let himself forget. none of them would have. they would have accepted every sunrise with open arms and an easy sigh after another day alive. when xiao finally allows his eyes to fall shut, the doves have only just begun tuning up. their song never meets his ears.

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baskettt · 3 months

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baskettt · 3 months

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When I was a kid me and my friends liked to play this game we called “absurd cheatcodes” in which one of us would just start making up convoluted steps for a video game cheatcode on the spot. Like, one of us would say something like “how to unlock Luigi in Mario 64” and the other one would start going like “well first of all you have to beat the game exactly 1000 times in a row without killing a single goomba. Then you have to take your cartridge out, put on Mario Kart instead and beat it 1000 times without slipping on a single banana peel. And then you put in Mario 64 again and-“ Basically just improv when you think about it.

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baskettt · 3 months

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There’s nobody left at the dinner table.

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baskettt · 3 months

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baskettt · 3 months

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THE WORLD SHOULD BE HORRIFIED SCARED AND ASHAMED.

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baskettt · 3 months

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The Hydro Sovereign comes to Mondstadt

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baskettt · 3 months

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The last remaining hospital in Gaza is now under attack. Everyone is fleeing and nobody has anywhere else to go. Rafah was designated safe.

Posted 3 hours ago as of 2 am UTC January 17. She was recently live and it was cut off.

TikTok link

Free Palestine

🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸

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baskettt · 3 months

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SORRY FOR THE VERY PERSONAL COMIC!!

This is my half of “Unhealthy”, an essay comic double header with the lovely and talented Sarah Winifred Searle. She and I both wrote about our personal experiences as overweight ladies with eating disorders, and her story is breathtaking! You can buy a physical copy of the book here: https://topatoco.com/collections/abby-howard/products/ah-unhealthy

Or buy a digital PDF here: https://abbyhoward.itch.io/unhealthy

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baskettt · 3 months

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