I Thought This Was About Worms For A Second

I thought this was about worms for a second

Imagine you're just some funky little dude living in your society deep underground, perhaps the place of your birth (from dust we come and to dust we shall return, right?), perhaps just a last refuge from the invaders above that come into your domain and slaughter your people and take your resources. Although, as you get older, you begin to realize that your people do an awful lot to encourage it and very little to actually stop it, and regardless of who started it--a childish line of reasoning given that the answer is lost to time--the fact of the matter is that they are scared of us, and we are scared of them. They can survive conditions we can't, and so can we. They are monsters to us, and we are monsters to them.

So your people creep out of what shadowy hiding places they have left and slaughter the Others from above and are slaughtered, and you....you are left curious...? You aren't a warrior, like so many of your people. You don't want to fight the Others. You don't really mind them, at all. You think they could be interesting, if they weren't so scary and/or scared of you. You are both the monsters under one another's beds. You don't get into magic either. Fighting the Other by those means appeals to you just as much as by brute strength. No, you get into collecting, and selling, and trading. Money has its uses, be it money from the Others, or money from your people. And maybe you're a bit more curious then you expected, because one day....oh, one day you don't just creep out of the shadowy hiding places like the rest of your people. One day, you leave the ground. It's rainy, or dark, or snowy, maybe. Humid enough for you to be comfortable, and in conditions that the Others don't seem to like at all.

You collect more of their things. A magnifying glass, maybe, or some of their money. You are religious, and maybe this came from the Others as much as it did your people, though your devotion is from yourself. You go out more and more often, braving the Others' domain just as they brave yours, sneaking around where they drive through throngs of your people in a violent effort to claim/conquer/escape. You never could tell. You still can't.

And one day you find a nice place very similar to where your people live, all humid air and dark corners, but lonely, deserted of both your people and the Others. You set up your shop here, amongst these abandoned tunnels. Sometimes your people come. Sometimes those that are neither your people nor the Others come. The world is full of mysteries and magic, and many of them visit you, and you are well on your way to becoming another spectacle too. It's lonely. Maybe. You never fit in with your people, though, and you'd much rather have this ease of exploring the Others' world at night without a brash of warriors yelling slurs at you as you go up, so you shoulder it when you can't relish in it.

And explore you do.

Up you go at night. In winter. During the rain. Anytime the Others have deserted their town, you'll be there, collecting, exploring, buying and selling.

Until one day, one of the Others finds you.

They startle you.

They take your magnifying glass.

It's your fault. You dropped it. But not just that! They take your privacy, as it turns out, because they find a way into your tunnels not long after they start peering into them and rattling the chains, and what's more, they want to do business with you as much as any of the other curiosities that frequent your shop. They're one too, you begin to realize. A curiosity.

They begin giving you gifts. They come to talk sometimes. Not to look at your wares. To talk. In a way, this is even more befuddling than the gifts. And oh, what gifts they are! They honor you. Pamper you, if you're allowed to say it, and you hope that you are. This Other is kind to you and swiftly becomes your friend. They protect you as a secret, hide you from their people.

And you know....

....you know somewhere, in the back of your soul, or more blatantly when it comes up in conversation, that this is an Other that goes Down and battles your people. Not just that. They slaughter your people. Hunt them for sport. Eradicate them for the safety and sake of their people.

But maybe you love them, in as much as you love anything, and in as much as your people love, which seems, from what you have seen on your hauntings, a very different thing than how Others love. But even so, you start to love them, and your Other starts to love you too, finds it in them to show it to you as you would one of your people, even if this is not what they feel or how they feel.

And one day they do you the greatest honor of all. It took them toiling. It took them time. It took them travels. It took them blood--theirs and that of your people. But they bring you this gift, a very precious gift, and ask you to live with them, up out of the tunnels you've dwelt in, ask you to live with them as a secret. One they want to keep as close as possible.

You have heard the Others chatter the word marriage to one another through the open windows of their shops and tavern at night, and you don't know what it means, or what your Other has to do with it--though when their name comes up in This Sort of Gossip you do not like it--but you think that maybe it means something like this. And you hope that your Other treats it as such. You will leave if they do this thing, this marrying, to someone else, and it might not break your heart because you are not an Other and you do not experience that way, but O, you would live with them no more.

But that hasn't come to pass yet, if it ever will. So you go to their lands. You build yourself a home. You see them work. They see you work.

And sometimes they gather food and potions and weapons and go down to your old home, to the mines, and you know they are slaughtering your people, and you know they must pass through where all the other Others live to get there, and you know your existence is their precious secret that guarantees your safety only so long as they keep it faithfully, and you stay. You stay there. Because this Other knows you better than your people and better than solitude, and because you want them there. And your Other stays with you, even as they face, each time, a cousin of yours, or an old neighbor, or a sibling, or a mentor, or a peer, or a stranger, and are attacked, each and every time, and see it in you that you could attack, could creep into their house easily at night and lay waste to them while they rest as Others must. And your Other stays.

Anyways, I think Krobus is a fuckin crazy character.