| I can not describe to you in words that you would understand, that you would believe, what happened there. The things that happened at that time — the era of the demon-king, the horrors that fell over us, it’s just… It’s too much. You had to be there. You had to see it. Otherwise, you’d just… you’d never believe it — the screaming, gnawing, and gnashing of teeth and bones. The way the air smelled of fire, carrying the ashy particulate of your loved ones into every breath you inhaled. The… meat… There was so much meat. It was everywhere. — Not everything burned. A lot of it boiled. A lot of them… they boiled. You just – you had to be there, okay? Leave me alone. |
~ Documented interview with a witness, from the era of the Demon-King.
| ~ [Isaiah] ~ |
| Dungeon Sub-Specialization chosen: [SEASONALITY] |
| Located between the elemental branches of TIME and NATURE, SEASONALITY is a branch of the magical tree that relates to the romanticized passing of the four seasons and the aspects of rebirth, growth, and death. It contains both TIME and NATURE spells and allows limited access to both domains. |
| NEW - (SEASONALITY) ABILITY - [Seasonal Shift](Active) |
| Allows the dungeon-core to modify any natural part of or immediately around its territory, altering the life of any plants or creatures there to shift them to a stage of any desired season. |
| NEW - (SEASONALITY) ABILITY - [Chronal Decay](Active) |
| Allows the dungeon-core to age any man-made material within its territory, at the cost of {03}% SOUL per applied year. |
| NEW - (SEASONALITY) ABILITY - [Unforeseeable Winter](Passive) |
| Will sometimes randomly subconsciously urge you to engage in extremely specific, seemingly inconsequential actions, in order to prepare for a positive future outcome that you are currently unaware of. |
Isaiah, in a moment of rare discomposure, sits down rather gracelessly, leaning against the very-big-tree. It had used up just about all of its soul-points, leaving it in a state of exhaustion.
This was a big effort. It had, in order to shift the appearance of all of the trees around the human’s camp and then to rot away many of their items, spent all of its soul-points. Even with Red essentially shoveling blue-colored berries into its face to restore the lost soul-points, it was just barely enough at the end.
— And apart from that, even with the restoration process of eating items such as these, it is still a very taxing experience for the body.
Red snaps back in next to it, using her warping ability to pop around the tower and the staircase, essentially instantly.
| ~ [Prayers] ~ |
| Prayers have reached the tower! |
| +566 EXP |
| EXP: 3483/4000 |
“Looking good, chief,” she says, putting a hand on its shoulder. Isaiah nods. “They’re freaking the fuck out! You should see it!” says the uthra, gleefully, stamping her feet in the air in a rare moment of free childishness that Isaiah takes notes of, but does not comment on.
Isaiah shakes its head, feeling very tired after all of these very recent efforts. “Will they leave?” it asks, looking her way.
Red shrugs. “I mean… I think we spooked ‘em bad, that’s for sure,” she says. “The trees and all of that was fine and all. But putting those shitty statues Crystal made in their tents?” Red wipes a tear from her eye. “- Beautiful. It was just… the most beautiful thing that I’ve ever seen.” The uthra had used their ability to teleport resources from the stockpile that they had gained at level two to do this, together with Red’s ability to warp to set locations. She kneels down, looking at Isaiah. “Listen. I take back everything bad that I’ve ever said about you,” says Red.
“- Excuse me?”
“You really do have a heart for terrifying humans!” exclaims Red, overjoyed, grabbing hold of Isaiah’s hand. “You’re my favorite dungeon-core of them all!”
Isaiah sighs, tilting its head. “I am always pleased to witness your unparalleled joy for life, Red,” it replies sarcastically. But, given that Red squeezes its hand, it can’t help but wonder if she really isn’t having a fantastic time, given the situation. “Is everyone alright?” asks Isaiah, looking around for the other uthra.
“Everywho?” asks Red, blinking. She looks around. “Oh. Them. Yeah, they’re fine,” says Red, sounding much more disinterested now as she gets back up and lets go of Isaiah. “Crystal is having a panic-attack about the whole ‘rope’ situation, so he took the others to secure all of that down.”
Isaiah nods. Then everything is… fine? Or? “Will they cease their efforts? The humans?” it asks.
Red looks back its way, the expression of confusion on her face much easier to distinguish now than it had been before, given that she’s become much larger. “Huh?” asks Red. She looks at Isaiah. “Did you spend so much time being a bird that you forgot how humans work?” she asks. The uthra shakes her head, holding a hand out to help Isaiah up, which it finds unusual, but it does not comment on her kindness for fear that she might lose the sprout of this newly developing habit.
“I am afraid it has been a while,” says Isaiah, taking her hand and rising back to its feet. “Thank you.”
“Of course they’re gonna keep coming,” says Red. She spins a finger. “They’re gonna freak out for the night, then they’ll get the same orders as before from the city to go in,” explains the uthra. “Some soldiers will desert or argue against it; they’ll get a new hair-cut, as one might say.” She runs a finger along her neck. “And then, just like that, as if by magic, everyone else is going to be back on their way to our door.”
Isaiah sighs. “You are a true optimist, Red.”
“Right?” she asks. “Listen, I know humans. They don’t stop. You need to understand — This is only going to end one way.” Red looks back at Isaiah. “It’s just like it was back then. Nothing has changed except that the tower is bigger now. It’s still them or us, as much as you want to be the nice guy.”
“I understand your point, Red,” says Isaiah, looking out over the landscape. “But I do disagree with it.”
“I’m sure,” remarks Red, her large wings buzzing. “When we all die because of that, I reserve the right to say ‘I told you so’ before it happens,” she says.
Isaiah nods, pleased. Red has, despite the sameness of her temper in regards to this issue of the humans, grown.
– After all, it was not long ago that she had made clear that she would be nowhere near the tower during its inevitable destruction, simply waiting for it to happen so that she could move on to the next stage of her life.
It appears that she really is invested now.
Isaiah rises into the air, still a little tired from its use of such powerful spells. There is, as always, work to do.
“Oh, and Red,” says Isaiah. Red looks back up its way. “I think it is time for you to deliver our message to the humans.”
She groans. “Do I have to?”
“Yes,” replies Isaiah, flying off. “Who else but you?”
| ~ [Gadrian] ~ |
| Human, Male, Swordsman |
| Location: The soldier's camp at the foot of the grand staircase |
The camp is in an uproar.
The soldiers all run around, not bothering to fix their tents or their broken equipment. Many men try to find their ranking officers, but those officers have left to find theirs, leaving everyone here in a state of headless disarray.
He doesn’t even have to ask to be sure that ‘desertion’ is the word on everyone’s mind right now. Hell, he’s ready to go himself, and he’s not even a spiritual person.
His eyes wander back over towards the impossibly detailed statue, that had been laid inside of his own tent, which is impossible, considering he and ten other people were right next to it. That’s not including the statues in everyone else’s tents.
There honestly couldn’t be a clearer omen or sign that their presence here will cause more trouble than it's worth. That’s ignoring the fact that a significant percentage of them have broken bones from the whole staircase incident, just before all of this.
This place…
– No dungeon acts like this. There’s no other dungeon that has ever done anything close to any of this, barring one that he won’t think of in this late hour. This can’t just be some weird dungeon. There’s more to it. There’s more than they can see and they’ve been told as much in the clearest words the heavens have spoken in generations.
He’s ready to leave.
But if he does so by himself, he’ll be captured by someone and handed in for desertion. That’s worth ten years in the best of circumstances. The only way out of this is if the officers order them all to pull back, but he doubts that they’ll do that, because then they’ll get charged with desertion instead of the rank and file. The orders to march here, to destroy this place, stem all the way from the very, very top.
He sucks his teeth, looking around himself as he stands there, a little lost and dazed.
There really isn’t a single good way out of this.
Come morning, they’ll get the same orders to march up to the tower somehow, despite everything, and if they don’t, well…
His best shot is if he takes a fall and breaks something big, like a leg. That way, he’ll have an excuse to stay behind. This… after the sign that they were given tonight, this whole operation is a death-trap.
He rubs his tired eyes, pretty sure that he won’t find any sleep tonight.
— A glow shines in past the gaps between his fingers and through his eyelids, filling the night with an aural radiance that is akin to a raging bonfire.
Gadrian looks, listening as people run around and cry in new panic as the sky above their heads erupts into ruby-light.
A deeply vivid, crimson orb, the size of a body, hovers in the air above the camp. Slowly, a corporeal form begins to materialize within it, taking the shape of a woman, wearing an elegant, perfectly woven gown of white and red threads.
The man’s eyes go wide as he stares up at the radiant blood-star that hangs down low above their heads, so very far from the distant sky. The entity, clearly a being of divine grace, lifts her arms out to the sides in a beckoning gesture, drawing in the stares and the bodies of all of the thousand men and women in the camp.
Whispers spread through the air and are then cut silent, as the thing, the woman, the crimson messenger of the heavens, lifts a hand to silence them all.
This new silence hangs heavy over the camp. All of them stand in perfect, tense wordlessness, as if either about to receive an executioner’s sentence or a stay of fate.
She clears her throat, and he finds himself standing up straight and tall, for fear of her looking down his way and finding him lacking in one of the many ways that he knows he himself is.
“— Okay. Listen up, you schmucks,” starts the being, hovering above their heads.
| ~ [Isaiah] ~ |
Isaiah floats there, with crossed arms.
Perhaps this plan, while well intentioned, was indeed poorly thought through?
Oh well.
It tilts its head, watching Red from a distance. She’s a little crude in her presentation, but it should be good enough.
The entity known as Isaiah looks down at the tower. Now that it has the proper sub-element, it can finally move on to achieving its grand vision for the structure. They are almost at floor one-hundred.
It is almost time.
| ~ [The Humming Man] ~ |
| ???, Male, Chronomancer |
| Location: The City - Streets |
Today was a big day. But he still has some time left before he has to get back to the tower. It’s getting there, but it isn’t ready just yet. He needs to wait for the right moment, if he wants to get what he’s after, and it simply isn’t here yet. But the core is getting closer and closer by the day.
The humming man walks outside through the city, past some children that are sitting in an alley, begging for money. Even now, at night, it is full of life and splendor as adventurers run around the area, busy at their work that never ends. Merchants then in turn tend to these nightly customers, keeping their businesses running non-stop day and night, as is the way of things in the large city down here in the south. In the other regions of the nation, it’s common for everything in the city to just… stop when the sun falls and the moon rises.
But this is not the case down here.
He stops in the middle of the street and pulls out a small, fabric tissue from his coat, unfolding it with a flap and then gently laying it down in the very middle of the street, between the boots of dozens of people who never quite seem to walk into him or onto the spot where he stands.
He looks down at the fabric square, nodding contently. It just lies there like a piece of trash in the middle of the road. Nobody pays it any mind or even bothers to pick it up. But also, nobody tramples on it. They all simply walk around it, not even aware that they’re doing so.
He hums, walking over and away and bending to the side to look over a merchant’s stall, full of freshly steaming baked goods, and then over his shoulder at a stand, full of mechanical clockwork, the likes of which is only common in the western city, which is weeks away from here by foot.
Someone walks up next to him, ordering from the baker, who hadn’t even seen the humming man standing there.
Leaning back, the humming man hums as he watches.
The stranger pays for his dinner, a large bread roll and turns around to leave.
“Hey!” yells a man from across the street, from the clockmaker’s stall.
– A thief runs off, holding a coat full of mechanical scrap in his arms. Looking back over his shoulder, he runs right into the man who bought the bread-roll. Metal flies everywhere, scattering around the road.
The bread roll, too, flies, shooting straight through the air.
The humming man whistles, emphasizing its drop as it bounces off of someone’s head and then lands perfectly in the center of the towelette that he had laid out before.
The thief gathers himself, picking up some scrap in his arms as he vanishes into the crowd.
The baker laughs, clapping the hungry adventurer on the shoulder for a job well done in helping his merchant colleague as he gets back up to his feet, and he gives him a new bread roll for free.
– A scurrying, small silhouette runs out from the alley that the humming man had passed by to get here, grabbing the old, fallen piece of bread from the middle of the street, before vanishing excitedly back to her clique, with whom she shares the bread.
The humming hums to himself, watching the world go by.
It’s fun, isn’t it?
His eyes wander along the thousands of faces that all belong to people who don’t even come close to understanding the true complexity of the world, being so lost in their lives.
It’s fun, being the man who has everything.
Because what do you give the man who has everything?
– Whatever else is left.
The humming man hums to himself.
And whatever could be left, after one has everything already?
Well, one of these things that is left is something that can never be hoarded, like material wealth can. It is something that can never be ‘had’. It is something that can only ever be held for a single, solitary moment.
He watches as the child, the girl in the alley, tears into her half of the hot bread and hums delightedly as she eats a rare treasure.
– It is the simple, clean sensation of a moment being experienced.
He likes the song that she’s humming, so he adjusts his tune to hers and hums along.
Razmatazz
- - - - - -
Apple, Kobo, Barnes and Nobles and other platforms here!
| I can not describe to you in words that you would understand, that you would believe, what happened there. The things that happened at that time — the era of the demon-king, the horrors that fell over us, it’s just… It’s too much. You had to be there. You had to see it. Otherwise, you’d just… you’d never believe it — the screaming, gnawing, and gnashing of teeth and bones. The way the air smelled of fire, carrying the ashy particulate of your loved ones into every breath you inhaled. The… meat… There was so much meat. It was everywhere. — Not everything burned. A lot of it boiled. A lot of them… they boiled. You just – you had to be there, okay? Leave me alone. |
~ Documented interview with a witness, from the era of the Demon-King.
| ~ [Isaiah] ~ |
| Dungeon Sub-Specialization chosen: [SEASONALITY] |
| Located between the elemental branches of TIME and NATURE, SEASONALITY is a branch of the magical tree that relates to the romanticized passing of the four seasons and the aspects of rebirth, growth, and death. It contains both TIME and NATURE spells and allows limited access to both domains. |
| NEW - (SEASONALITY) ABILITY - [Seasonal Shift](Active) |
| Allows the dungeon-core to modify any natural part of or immediately around its territory, altering the life of any plants or creatures there to shift them to a stage of any desired season. |
| NEW - (SEASONALITY) ABILITY - [Chronal Decay](Active) |
| Allows the dungeon-core to age any man-made material within its territory, at the cost of {03}% SOUL per applied year. |
| NEW - (SEASONALITY) ABILITY - [Unforeseeable Winter](Passive) |
| Will sometimes randomly subconsciously urge you to engage in extremely specific, seemingly inconsequential actions, in order to prepare for a positive future outcome that you are currently unaware of. |
Isaiah, in a moment of rare discomposure, sits down rather gracelessly, leaning against the very-big-tree. It had used up just about all of its soul-points, leaving it in a state of exhaustion.
This was a big effort. It had, in order to shift the appearance of all of the trees around the human’s camp and then to rot away many of their items, spent all of its soul-points. Even with Red essentially shoveling blue-colored berries into its face to restore the lost soul-points, it was just barely enough at the end.
— And apart from that, even with the restoration process of eating items such as these, it is still a very taxing experience for the body.
Red snaps back in next to it, using her warping ability to pop around the tower and the staircase, essentially instantly.
| ~ [Prayers] ~ |
| Prayers have reached the tower! |
| +566 EXP |
| EXP: 3483/4000 |
“Looking good, chief,” she says, putting a hand on its shoulder. Isaiah nods. “They’re freaking the fuck out! You should see it!” says the uthra, gleefully, stamping her feet in the air in a rare moment of free childishness that Isaiah takes notes of, but does not comment on.
Isaiah shakes its head, feeling very tired after all of these very recent efforts. “Will they leave?” it asks, looking her way.
Red shrugs. “I mean… I think we spooked ‘em bad, that’s for sure,” she says. “The trees and all of that was fine and all. But putting those shitty statues Crystal made in their tents?” Red wipes a tear from her eye. “- Beautiful. It was just… the most beautiful thing that I’ve ever seen.” The uthra had used their ability to teleport resources from the stockpile that they had gained at level two to do this, together with Red’s ability to warp to set locations. She kneels down, looking at Isaiah. “Listen. I take back everything bad that I’ve ever said about you,” says Red.
“- Excuse me?”
“You really do have a heart for terrifying humans!” exclaims Red, overjoyed, grabbing hold of Isaiah’s hand. “You’re my favorite dungeon-core of them all!”
Isaiah sighs, tilting its head. “I am always pleased to witness your unparalleled joy for life, Red,” it replies sarcastically. But, given that Red squeezes its hand, it can’t help but wonder if she really isn’t having a fantastic time, given the situation. “Is everyone alright?” asks Isaiah, looking around for the other uthra.
“Everywho?” asks Red, blinking. She looks around. “Oh. Them. Yeah, they’re fine,” says Red, sounding much more disinterested now as she gets back up and lets go of Isaiah. “Crystal is having a panic-attack about the whole ‘rope’ situation, so he took the others to secure all of that down.”
Isaiah nods. Then everything is… fine? Or? “Will they cease their efforts? The humans?” it asks.
Red looks back its way, the expression of confusion on her face much easier to distinguish now than it had been before, given that she’s become much larger. “Huh?” asks Red. She looks at Isaiah. “Did you spend so much time being a bird that you forgot how humans work?” she asks. The uthra shakes her head, holding a hand out to help Isaiah up, which it finds unusual, but it does not comment on her kindness for fear that she might lose the sprout of this newly developing habit.
“I am afraid it has been a while,” says Isaiah, taking her hand and rising back to its feet. “Thank you.”
“Of course they’re gonna keep coming,” says Red. She spins a finger. “They’re gonna freak out for the night, then they’ll get the same orders as before from the city to go in,” explains the uthra. “Some soldiers will desert or argue against it; they’ll get a new hair-cut, as one might say.” She runs a finger along her neck. “And then, just like that, as if by magic, everyone else is going to be back on their way to our door.”
Isaiah sighs. “You are a true optimist, Red.”
“Right?” she asks. “Listen, I know humans. They don’t stop. You need to understand — This is only going to end one way.” Red looks back at Isaiah. “It’s just like it was back then. Nothing has changed except that the tower is bigger now. It’s still them or us, as much as you want to be the nice guy.”
“I understand your point, Red,” says Isaiah, looking out over the landscape. “But I do disagree with it.”
“I’m sure,” remarks Red, her large wings buzzing. “When we all die because of that, I reserve the right to say ‘I told you so’ before it happens,” she says.
Isaiah nods, pleased. Red has, despite the sameness of her temper in regards to this issue of the humans, grown.
– After all, it was not long ago that she had made clear that she would be nowhere near the tower during its inevitable destruction, simply waiting for it to happen so that she could move on to the next stage of her life.
It appears that she really is invested now.
Isaiah rises into the air, still a little tired from its use of such powerful spells. There is, as always, work to do.
“Oh, and Red,” says Isaiah. Red looks back up its way. “I think it is time for you to deliver our message to the humans.”
She groans. “Do I have to?”
“Yes,” replies Isaiah, flying off. “Who else but you?”
| ~ [Gadrian] ~ |
| Human, Male, Swordsman |
| Location: The soldier's camp at the foot of the grand staircase |
The camp is in an uproar.
The soldiers all run around, not bothering to fix their tents or their broken equipment. Many men try to find their ranking officers, but those officers have left to find theirs, leaving everyone here in a state of headless disarray.
He doesn’t even have to ask to be sure that ‘desertion’ is the word on everyone’s mind right now. Hell, he’s ready to go himself, and he’s not even a spiritual person.
His eyes wander back over towards the impossibly detailed statue, that had been laid inside of his own tent, which is impossible, considering he and ten other people were right next to it. That’s not including the statues in everyone else’s tents.
There honestly couldn’t be a clearer omen or sign that their presence here will cause more trouble than it's worth. That’s ignoring the fact that a significant percentage of them have broken bones from the whole staircase incident, just before all of this.
This place…
– No dungeon acts like this. There’s no other dungeon that has ever done anything close to any of this, barring one that he won’t think of in this late hour. This can’t just be some weird dungeon. There’s more to it. There’s more than they can see and they’ve been told as much in the clearest words the heavens have spoken in generations.
He’s ready to leave.
But if he does so by himself, he’ll be captured by someone and handed in for desertion. That’s worth ten years in the best of circumstances. The only way out of this is if the officers order them all to pull back, but he doubts that they’ll do that, because then they’ll get charged with desertion instead of the rank and file. The orders to march here, to destroy this place, stem all the way from the very, very top.
He sucks his teeth, looking around himself as he stands there, a little lost and dazed.
There really isn’t a single good way out of this.
Come morning, they’ll get the same orders to march up to the tower somehow, despite everything, and if they don’t, well…
His best shot is if he takes a fall and breaks something big, like a leg. That way, he’ll have an excuse to stay behind. This… after the sign that they were given tonight, this whole operation is a death-trap.
He rubs his tired eyes, pretty sure that he won’t find any sleep tonight.
— A glow shines in past the gaps between his fingers and through his eyelids, filling the night with an aural radiance that is akin to a raging bonfire.
Gadrian looks, listening as people run around and cry in new panic as the sky above their heads erupts into ruby-light.
A deeply vivid, crimson orb, the size of a body, hovers in the air above the camp. Slowly, a corporeal form begins to materialize within it, taking the shape of a woman, wearing an elegant, perfectly woven gown of white and red threads.
The man’s eyes go wide as he stares up at the radiant blood-star that hangs down low above their heads, so very far from the distant sky. The entity, clearly a being of divine grace, lifts her arms out to the sides in a beckoning gesture, drawing in the stares and the bodies of all of the thousand men and women in the camp.
Whispers spread through the air and are then cut silent, as the thing, the woman, the crimson messenger of the heavens, lifts a hand to silence them all.
This new silence hangs heavy over the camp. All of them stand in perfect, tense wordlessness, as if either about to receive an executioner’s sentence or a stay of fate.
She clears her throat, and he finds himself standing up straight and tall, for fear of her looking down his way and finding him lacking in one of the many ways that he knows he himself is.
“— Okay. Listen up, you schmucks,” starts the being, hovering above their heads.
| ~ [Isaiah] ~ |
Isaiah floats there, with crossed arms.
Perhaps this plan, while well intentioned, was indeed poorly thought through?
Oh well.
It tilts its head, watching Red from a distance. She’s a little crude in her presentation, but it should be good enough.
The entity known as Isaiah looks down at the tower. Now that it has the proper sub-element, it can finally move on to achieving its grand vision for the structure. They are almost at floor one-hundred.
It is almost time.
| ~ [The Humming Man] ~ |
| ???, Male, Chronomancer |
| Location: The City - Streets |
Today was a big day. But he still has some time left before he has to get back to the tower. It’s getting there, but it isn’t ready just yet. He needs to wait for the right moment, if he wants to get what he’s after, and it simply isn’t here yet. But the core is getting closer and closer by the day.
The humming man walks outside through the city, past some children that are sitting in an alley, begging for money. Even now, at night, it is full of life and splendor as adventurers run around the area, busy at their work that never ends. Merchants then in turn tend to these nightly customers, keeping their businesses running non-stop day and night, as is the way of things in the large city down here in the south. In the other regions of the nation, it’s common for everything in the city to just… stop when the sun falls and the moon rises.
But this is not the case down here.
He stops in the middle of the street and pulls out a small, fabric tissue from his coat, unfolding it with a flap and then gently laying it down in the very middle of the street, between the boots of dozens of people who never quite seem to walk into him or onto the spot where he stands.
He looks down at the fabric square, nodding contently. It just lies there like a piece of trash in the middle of the road. Nobody pays it any mind or even bothers to pick it up. But also, nobody tramples on it. They all simply walk around it, not even aware that they’re doing so.
He hums, walking over and away and bending to the side to look over a merchant’s stall, full of freshly steaming baked goods, and then over his shoulder at a stand, full of mechanical clockwork, the likes of which is only common in the western city, which is weeks away from here by foot.
Someone walks up next to him, ordering from the baker, who hadn’t even seen the humming man standing there.
Leaning back, the humming man hums as he watches.
The stranger pays for his dinner, a large bread roll and turns around to leave.
“Hey!” yells a man from across the street, from the clockmaker’s stall.
– A thief runs off, holding a coat full of mechanical scrap in his arms. Looking back over his shoulder, he runs right into the man who bought the bread-roll. Metal flies everywhere, scattering around the road.
The bread roll, too, flies, shooting straight through the air.
The humming man whistles, emphasizing its drop as it bounces off of someone’s head and then lands perfectly in the center of the towelette that he had laid out before.
The thief gathers himself, picking up some scrap in his arms as he vanishes into the crowd.
The baker laughs, clapping the hungry adventurer on the shoulder for a job well done in helping his merchant colleague as he gets back up to his feet, and he gives him a new bread roll for free.
– A scurrying, small silhouette runs out from the alley that the humming man had passed by to get here, grabbing the old, fallen piece of bread from the middle of the street, before vanishing excitedly back to her clique, with whom she shares the bread.
The humming hums to himself, watching the world go by.
It’s fun, isn’t it?
His eyes wander along the thousands of faces that all belong to people who don’t even come close to understanding the true complexity of the world, being so lost in their lives.
It’s fun, being the man who has everything.
Because what do you give the man who has everything?
– Whatever else is left.
The humming man hums to himself.
And whatever could be left, after one has everything already?
Well, one of these things that is left is something that can never be hoarded, like material wealth can. It is something that can never be ‘had’. It is something that can only ever be held for a single, solitary moment.
He watches as the child, the girl in the alley, tears into her half of the hot bread and hums delightedly as she eats a rare treasure.
– It is the simple, clean sensation of a moment being experienced.
He likes the song that she’s humming, so he adjusts his tune to hers and hums along.
Razmatazz
- - - - - -
Apple, Kobo, Barnes and Nobles and other platforms here!
