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draino2026-03-07 10:30 am
saltburntmods) wrote in draino2026-03-07 10:30 am
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ππ πππ ππππ πππ πππ π ππ β£ MARCH TDM
MARCH 2026 TDM: FLORESCENCE
Welcome to SALTBURNT, a panfandom smut/thriller game based off the film Saltburn, where characters are encouraged to indulge their deepest desires. The money never runs out and the liquor never stops pouring, so you may as well indulge from the bounty. Of course, things are rarely what they seem, and the manor itself seems to have a consciousness of its own. Throw parties, trash the house, engage in youthful merriment, but remember β dangers come out at night, and no one, no matter how rich you are, is safe from demons lurking in the shadows.
Threads can be considered game canon, provided the players agree. Players can also start fresh upon acceptance into the game. In game characters can post to the TDM directly, using Β« NEW CHARACTER/IN GAMEΒ» in the header. There will be a spot below for new characters to link their toplevels for easy access. Alternatively, prompts on the Test Drive can be used for in game logs.
WELCOME TO SALTBURNT
CONTENT WARNINGS: n/a.
It's the hangover more than the light streaming in through half drawn curtains that wakes you up, your brain rattling in your skull, your mouth dry and cottony, your stomach churning with whatever it is you drank last night. If self preservation is your strong suit, you might turn over in bed and see a few painkillers laid out for you on a silver dish, accompanied by a glass of water. If it isnβt, stay in bed and wallow β eventually a maid will be in to tear your curtains open, saying, "Breakfast is served," and scurrying out quietly, invisibly. Breakfast? Maybe itβs normal for you. Maybe it isnβt.
You're drawn from the room, either by the mystery, or an undefinable urge that could be supernatural in origin, or could be your hunger catching up to you. It's almost nostalgic, the walk to the dining room β have you been here before? Were you drawn up to this estate in a car? Havenβt you done all this already? Maybe you mosey around a library, maybe you run into your suite mate in your adjoining bathroom. Regardless, seemingly all hallways, covered in priceless artworks and ancient relics from times long past, lead to the dining room, where a comically long table houses the Balfours and their many guests, who seem just as disgruntled and confused as you. No matter. "The breakfast is self-serve," they say. But not the eggs.
If you want to leave, youβll have to tell Giles, the housekeeper, who will arrange a car for you that mysteriously, or perhaps suspiciously, never arrives. Unfortunately, confronting Giles about it is near impossible, as heβs as good at being invisible as the rest of the house staff. Of course, thereβs no reason why you canβt just walk out. The front gates are easy enough to jump over, even if the walk towards them gives you a strange sense of foreboding, or just outright discomfort, as if the ground itself doesnβt want you to leave. Those more sensitive or fragile might find they canβt make the jump, no matter how physically able, or desperately wanting. Still, a strong person could continue on, over the fence and into the lush English countryside. The feeling doesnβt dissipate, though β this sense of wrongness, almost sickness, like a weight on your back. Walk into the evergreen, carry on, but the strongest will make it perhaps a mile or so before the weight of dread and paranoia brings you to your knees, and then to your face, flat in the middle of a dirt road. What were you thinking? Is this really better?
Wake up with a hangover, in a bed, the curtains drawn, the maid saying, "Breakfast is served," before scurrying out. The painkillers are there, just like you remember. In fact, itβs all exactly how you remember, as if you never left an imprint the first time, or any mess you made was cleared away while your back was turned. Walk to the dining room, find everyone there eating away at their breakfast. Itβs self serve, naturally. Just not the eggs.
"We dress for dinner," says Portia, with a kind, if discerning smile. "Black tie."
With the finale of Surviving Saltburnt airing and one Tim Laughlin crowned the winner, the general hubbub of the manor seems to have quieted down, particularly following a social media leak of some problematic Facebook screenshots taken of Vivant Vodka's private page. The host leaves without a word and the crew files out shortly after that, leaving a kind of vacancy where all the noise and nonsense used to be. Unfortunately, viewership plummets with the controversy β those keeping track will notice their requests on VOYEUR dwindle by the hour, until eventually the app itself crashes and deletes itself (temporarily π) from your phone. Yes, it's true β Voyeur is gone and so are all the rankings, guests gradually returned to their own quarters and business, normalcy settling into the rhythm of things.
Your original room is returned to you the same day β unlocked, freshly made, as though nothing happened and certainly not as though you spent a month in circumstances that were, depending on your tier, anywhere from merely humiliating to genuinely grim. The bronze guests find their rooms in particular order: new linens, a small arrangement of flowers, every surface dusted. On the bed are two gifts presented without explanation, wrapped in tissue paper. The gift is, in every case, something that could be described as generous if you are being very charitable about it. A hamper of things you didn't ask for and aren't entirely sure what to do with. An oversized, impractical item β a taxidermied swan, a rocking horse, a stuffed peacock of considerable size β something that retails for a significant amount and is completely useless.
The second thing is worse. It is something from home β your home, the life you had before the manor, the world you came from β and it has no business being here. A photograph. A childhood toy. A book with your annotations still in the margins. You can pick it up or you can leave it on the bed and not touch it. Either way it will still be there in the morning.
A few hours later, there is a knock at the door. A staff member, expressionless, holds a package: your Voyeur boxset, early 2000s production values in their full glory. Slightly blurry cover photo, your name printed on the spine in a font that has no business being that small, a flimsy amaray case with the manor's crest embossed on the front like this is a prestige release and not documentation of the worst or best or most complicated month of your life, depending on how you look at it. The problem: the delivery is not entirely correct. Yours may have gone to your roommate first. Your enemy. Your boyfriend or girlfriend, who now knows exactly what you got up to when they weren't watching, which is either fine or catastrophic depending entirely on what's on the disc. Someone you have a complicated history with who now knows things about you that cannot be unknowed. Two people who matched during Voyeur may find they've each received the other's set. Someone gets a stranger's set entirely. Someone receives theirs at breakfast, in the communal dining room, handed to them in front of everyone by a staff member who does not read the room.
Beneath the disc, tucked separately, a note from your top benefactor β the one who spent the most, requested the most, watched the most. They have written to you personally. They have opinions about your work. The note is specific in ways that make clear they were paying very close attention, and sincere in ways that make that somehow worse. They do not include a name. They do include a return sentiment that you will be thinking about for longer than you'd probably like. Either way, the debt is cleared, the tiers are gone, and the month is over. What you do with the rest of it is entirely up to you.
Let's celebrate equality and friendship and love! Surely it will last.
It's the hangover more than the light streaming in through half drawn curtains that wakes you up, your brain rattling in your skull, your mouth dry and cottony, your stomach churning with whatever it is you drank last night. If self preservation is your strong suit, you might turn over in bed and see a few painkillers laid out for you on a silver dish, accompanied by a glass of water. If it isnβt, stay in bed and wallow β eventually a maid will be in to tear your curtains open, saying, "Breakfast is served," and scurrying out quietly, invisibly. Breakfast? Maybe itβs normal for you. Maybe it isnβt.
You're drawn from the room, either by the mystery, or an undefinable urge that could be supernatural in origin, or could be your hunger catching up to you. It's almost nostalgic, the walk to the dining room β have you been here before? Were you drawn up to this estate in a car? Havenβt you done all this already? Maybe you mosey around a library, maybe you run into your suite mate in your adjoining bathroom. Regardless, seemingly all hallways, covered in priceless artworks and ancient relics from times long past, lead to the dining room, where a comically long table houses the Balfours and their many guests, who seem just as disgruntled and confused as you. No matter. "The breakfast is self-serve," they say. But not the eggs.
If you want to leave, youβll have to tell Giles, the housekeeper, who will arrange a car for you that mysteriously, or perhaps suspiciously, never arrives. Unfortunately, confronting Giles about it is near impossible, as heβs as good at being invisible as the rest of the house staff. Of course, thereβs no reason why you canβt just walk out. The front gates are easy enough to jump over, even if the walk towards them gives you a strange sense of foreboding, or just outright discomfort, as if the ground itself doesnβt want you to leave. Those more sensitive or fragile might find they canβt make the jump, no matter how physically able, or desperately wanting. Still, a strong person could continue on, over the fence and into the lush English countryside. The feeling doesnβt dissipate, though β this sense of wrongness, almost sickness, like a weight on your back. Walk into the evergreen, carry on, but the strongest will make it perhaps a mile or so before the weight of dread and paranoia brings you to your knees, and then to your face, flat in the middle of a dirt road. What were you thinking? Is this really better?
Wake up with a hangover, in a bed, the curtains drawn, the maid saying, "Breakfast is served," before scurrying out. The painkillers are there, just like you remember. In fact, itβs all exactly how you remember, as if you never left an imprint the first time, or any mess you made was cleared away while your back was turned. Walk to the dining room, find everyone there eating away at their breakfast. Itβs self serve, naturally. Just not the eggs.
"We dress for dinner," says Portia, with a kind, if discerning smile. "Black tie."
SECRET STARTER FOR THOSE IN GAME
With the finale of Surviving Saltburnt airing and one Tim Laughlin crowned the winner, the general hubbub of the manor seems to have quieted down, particularly following a social media leak of some problematic Facebook screenshots taken of Vivant Vodka's private page. The host leaves without a word and the crew files out shortly after that, leaving a kind of vacancy where all the noise and nonsense used to be. Unfortunately, viewership plummets with the controversy β those keeping track will notice their requests on VOYEUR dwindle by the hour, until eventually the app itself crashes and deletes itself (temporarily π) from your phone. Yes, it's true β Voyeur is gone and so are all the rankings, guests gradually returned to their own quarters and business, normalcy settling into the rhythm of things.
Your original room is returned to you the same day β unlocked, freshly made, as though nothing happened and certainly not as though you spent a month in circumstances that were, depending on your tier, anywhere from merely humiliating to genuinely grim. The bronze guests find their rooms in particular order: new linens, a small arrangement of flowers, every surface dusted. On the bed are two gifts presented without explanation, wrapped in tissue paper. The gift is, in every case, something that could be described as generous if you are being very charitable about it. A hamper of things you didn't ask for and aren't entirely sure what to do with. An oversized, impractical item β a taxidermied swan, a rocking horse, a stuffed peacock of considerable size β something that retails for a significant amount and is completely useless.
The second thing is worse. It is something from home β your home, the life you had before the manor, the world you came from β and it has no business being here. A photograph. A childhood toy. A book with your annotations still in the margins. You can pick it up or you can leave it on the bed and not touch it. Either way it will still be there in the morning.
A few hours later, there is a knock at the door. A staff member, expressionless, holds a package: your Voyeur boxset, early 2000s production values in their full glory. Slightly blurry cover photo, your name printed on the spine in a font that has no business being that small, a flimsy amaray case with the manor's crest embossed on the front like this is a prestige release and not documentation of the worst or best or most complicated month of your life, depending on how you look at it. The problem: the delivery is not entirely correct. Yours may have gone to your roommate first. Your enemy. Your boyfriend or girlfriend, who now knows exactly what you got up to when they weren't watching, which is either fine or catastrophic depending entirely on what's on the disc. Someone you have a complicated history with who now knows things about you that cannot be unknowed. Two people who matched during Voyeur may find they've each received the other's set. Someone gets a stranger's set entirely. Someone receives theirs at breakfast, in the communal dining room, handed to them in front of everyone by a staff member who does not read the room.
Beneath the disc, tucked separately, a note from your top benefactor β the one who spent the most, requested the most, watched the most. They have written to you personally. They have opinions about your work. The note is specific in ways that make clear they were paying very close attention, and sincere in ways that make that somehow worse. They do not include a name. They do include a return sentiment that you will be thinking about for longer than you'd probably like. Either way, the debt is cleared, the tiers are gone, and the month is over. What you do with the rest of it is entirely up to you.
Let's celebrate equality and friendship and love! Surely it will last.
A DREAM IS NOT REALITY
CONTENT WARNINGS: plant/fungi body horror, aphrodisiacs, hanahaki disease, psychosis.
With the relief of your free room and board returned to you, it seems like the House itself wants to make up for your month of grueling toil with bursts of spring blooming everywhere you look. Handpicked flowers in stunning arrangements are delivered to every suite, and any complaints of allergies are met with an extra box of Kleenex and an off-brand allergy pill (one size fits all). If you thought that removing your bouquet would help, you're sorely mistaken β one fine day you enter the dining room to find a brand new addition to the place: an indoor garden, courtesy of none other than Zephir, bright with all sorts of plantlife and wondrous joy. Just gazing upon it fills you with a sense of ease, melting away some of the stresses built up from your time here, and throughout the month, many of the guests pluck the prettiest blooms to present to friends and loved ones, shy blushes heating their cheeks as their fingers brush in the exchange.
During daily games of croquet, tennis, golf, and polo, it becomes apparent that Zephir's garden has spread out into the lawns and along the high walls of the house, creeping over the architecture until the place is truly in full bloom. It's a lovely though somewhat unnerving sight, giving off the sense that the whole house is made up of flora, a giant countryside bouquet. As if this wasn't enough, fungi start to crop up around the manor courtesy of Sully, in a strange show of competitive communication that seems to only be understood by the two of them.
As the days go on, however, many of the guests will start to feel certain effects as they come in contact with the new blooms and even simply share the air. If you were given, received, touched, or lingered close to the pink bleeding hearts, your throat grows increasingly scratchy and chest increasingly tight, until you're plagued with a bloody cough that worsens into Hanahaki disease β confess or consummate your feelings, or the flower petals you're coughing up will soon turn into whole flowers and thorns. The disease is not subtle. It has opinions about your love life. It will make this everyone's problem, especially yours.
Whatever direction the person you're pining for happens to be standing, your chest aches toward them β you'll find yourself drifting without meaning to, turning your head mid-conversation, touching something they've recently touched and producing an involuntary full-body shudder that is very difficult to explain to bystanders. If they leave the room, you'll know. If they come back, you'll know that too, before you even see them. The further you are from the person(s) you're pining for, the worse it gets. Step outside for air? Coughing fit. Retire early to your room? The flowers come up thick and fragrant and humiliatingly pink all over your pillow. Try to dance with someone else to prove a point? Your lungs stage a protest mid-spin. The disease has no interest in your coping mechanisms and even less interest in your dignity. It escalates with proximity too. When they laugh, you feel it in your sternum. When they look at you β really look at you β the coughing stops entirely, replaced by a warmth that starts in your chest and moves somewhere considerably less dignified. When they touch someone else, even innocently, the petals come up darker and thornier. Being near your person(s) while symptomatic is genuinely, involuntarily arousing in a way you cannot hide and cannot explain without revealing everything. If they touch you β even casually, even accidentally β the relief is so acute and so physical that you will need to sit down.
The disease has a temper, too. It revolts at the wrong person's hands β a well-meaning friend's arm around your shoulder, someone trying to soothe the coughing with a rub of your back. The bloom spikes immediately, flowers coming up fast and furious, thorns catching on the way out, and you will be on your knees producing an entire intact stem in front of whoever had the misfortune of trying to help. It is not interested in substitutes or stand-ins or people who are perfectly lovely but simply aren't them. It wants the real thing, from the real person, and it will make this position known as loudly and as dramatically often as necessary.
There are other potential effects for those more adventurous with your plantlife. Bright red cockscombs warps your thoughts, giving you an undeniable urge to serve the first person you see. This person is now all you can think about, and you won't be cured until the one you're serving orders you to do something you never normally do. Dark belladonna causes psychosis: You hallucinate, you convince yourself you have abilities you've never possessed, your ego inflates to an unbearable degree β you're convinced of your own allure and the attraction others hold toward you. You are, in your own assessment, the most interesting person in any room you enter, and you will make this known. These thoughts won't subside until someone makes you bleed. Creamy white doll's eye not only increases your energy, but multiplies the toxic positivity in one's behavior. You feel the urge to get others to consume the altered plants no matter what β using persuasion first, then pressure, then whatever comes after pressure if it comes to that. You won't feel satisfied until you get a number of people to consume one of the plants and experience their effects.
Mushrooms more your style? An innocent looking red cap with white spots gives you an intense high if the spots are even, and a "spotty" non-contagious rash that only goes away at the taste of someone else's cum and/or bodily fluids if the spots are odd. (Your own will only provide mild relief.) The bitter, black cap mushrooms make you violently ill by consumption or inhalation β leaking black, oily fluid from your orifices, weakness, heart palpitations, nightmares, and the immediate attention of Sullivan. Full removal of spores required (by any means) or else the infection can prove to be fatal.
Quickly, the plants make themselves an issue, and quickly action is taken. Early enough into the bloom, Giles makes a decision and the staff begin the fumigation. Notices are slipped under doors in the morning: PLEASE REMAIN IN YOUR ROOMS UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE. Refreshments will be provided. Do not open your windows. Let the green night pass in whatever escalation of the effects already in place in the privacy of closed (see: locked) doors.
Fair enough by morning, the effects of the greenery are nullified. Maids and butlers can we see around the house taking trimmings from plants, cleaning up the interior vines and slicing off mushrooms sprouting from cracked plaster in the corners of walls. There's no helping what's already inside you, so best just ride the effects out as best you can β worsening, probably, before they get better.
Still. They're lovely flowers, right? It would be a shame to let the sprouts go to waste.
With the relief of your free room and board returned to you, it seems like the House itself wants to make up for your month of grueling toil with bursts of spring blooming everywhere you look. Handpicked flowers in stunning arrangements are delivered to every suite, and any complaints of allergies are met with an extra box of Kleenex and an off-brand allergy pill (one size fits all). If you thought that removing your bouquet would help, you're sorely mistaken β one fine day you enter the dining room to find a brand new addition to the place: an indoor garden, courtesy of none other than Zephir, bright with all sorts of plantlife and wondrous joy. Just gazing upon it fills you with a sense of ease, melting away some of the stresses built up from your time here, and throughout the month, many of the guests pluck the prettiest blooms to present to friends and loved ones, shy blushes heating their cheeks as their fingers brush in the exchange.
During daily games of croquet, tennis, golf, and polo, it becomes apparent that Zephir's garden has spread out into the lawns and along the high walls of the house, creeping over the architecture until the place is truly in full bloom. It's a lovely though somewhat unnerving sight, giving off the sense that the whole house is made up of flora, a giant countryside bouquet. As if this wasn't enough, fungi start to crop up around the manor courtesy of Sully, in a strange show of competitive communication that seems to only be understood by the two of them.
As the days go on, however, many of the guests will start to feel certain effects as they come in contact with the new blooms and even simply share the air. If you were given, received, touched, or lingered close to the pink bleeding hearts, your throat grows increasingly scratchy and chest increasingly tight, until you're plagued with a bloody cough that worsens into Hanahaki disease β confess or consummate your feelings, or the flower petals you're coughing up will soon turn into whole flowers and thorns. The disease is not subtle. It has opinions about your love life. It will make this everyone's problem, especially yours.
Whatever direction the person you're pining for happens to be standing, your chest aches toward them β you'll find yourself drifting without meaning to, turning your head mid-conversation, touching something they've recently touched and producing an involuntary full-body shudder that is very difficult to explain to bystanders. If they leave the room, you'll know. If they come back, you'll know that too, before you even see them. The further you are from the person(s) you're pining for, the worse it gets. Step outside for air? Coughing fit. Retire early to your room? The flowers come up thick and fragrant and humiliatingly pink all over your pillow. Try to dance with someone else to prove a point? Your lungs stage a protest mid-spin. The disease has no interest in your coping mechanisms and even less interest in your dignity. It escalates with proximity too. When they laugh, you feel it in your sternum. When they look at you β really look at you β the coughing stops entirely, replaced by a warmth that starts in your chest and moves somewhere considerably less dignified. When they touch someone else, even innocently, the petals come up darker and thornier. Being near your person(s) while symptomatic is genuinely, involuntarily arousing in a way you cannot hide and cannot explain without revealing everything. If they touch you β even casually, even accidentally β the relief is so acute and so physical that you will need to sit down.
The disease has a temper, too. It revolts at the wrong person's hands β a well-meaning friend's arm around your shoulder, someone trying to soothe the coughing with a rub of your back. The bloom spikes immediately, flowers coming up fast and furious, thorns catching on the way out, and you will be on your knees producing an entire intact stem in front of whoever had the misfortune of trying to help. It is not interested in substitutes or stand-ins or people who are perfectly lovely but simply aren't them. It wants the real thing, from the real person, and it will make this position known as loudly and as dramatically often as necessary.
There are other potential effects for those more adventurous with your plantlife. Bright red cockscombs warps your thoughts, giving you an undeniable urge to serve the first person you see. This person is now all you can think about, and you won't be cured until the one you're serving orders you to do something you never normally do. Dark belladonna causes psychosis: You hallucinate, you convince yourself you have abilities you've never possessed, your ego inflates to an unbearable degree β you're convinced of your own allure and the attraction others hold toward you. You are, in your own assessment, the most interesting person in any room you enter, and you will make this known. These thoughts won't subside until someone makes you bleed. Creamy white doll's eye not only increases your energy, but multiplies the toxic positivity in one's behavior. You feel the urge to get others to consume the altered plants no matter what β using persuasion first, then pressure, then whatever comes after pressure if it comes to that. You won't feel satisfied until you get a number of people to consume one of the plants and experience their effects.
Mushrooms more your style? An innocent looking red cap with white spots gives you an intense high if the spots are even, and a "spotty" non-contagious rash that only goes away at the taste of someone else's cum and/or bodily fluids if the spots are odd. (Your own will only provide mild relief.) The bitter, black cap mushrooms make you violently ill by consumption or inhalation β leaking black, oily fluid from your orifices, weakness, heart palpitations, nightmares, and the immediate attention of Sullivan. Full removal of spores required (by any means) or else the infection can prove to be fatal.
Quickly, the plants make themselves an issue, and quickly action is taken. Early enough into the bloom, Giles makes a decision and the staff begin the fumigation. Notices are slipped under doors in the morning: PLEASE REMAIN IN YOUR ROOMS UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE. Refreshments will be provided. Do not open your windows. Let the green night pass in whatever escalation of the effects already in place in the privacy of closed (see: locked) doors.
Fair enough by morning, the effects of the greenery are nullified. Maids and butlers can we see around the house taking trimmings from plants, cleaning up the interior vines and slicing off mushrooms sprouting from cracked plaster in the corners of walls. There's no helping what's already inside you, so best just ride the effects out as best you can β worsening, probably, before they get better.
Still. They're lovely flowers, right? It would be a shame to let the sprouts go to waste.
CURIOUSER AND CURIOUSER
CONTENT WARNINGS: somnophilia, cannibalism.
The invitation waits on your pillow when you wake — heavy cream cardstock, with two gnomes illustrated in the corner, doing things frankly not appropriate for gnomes to be doing in public. THE MΓRCHENSCHLOSS MASKENFEST, it says, in the gardens. COME AS A CHARACTER FROM A STORY. ANY STORY.
The gardens, when you arrive, are not quite the gardens you remember β the same sprawling hedgerows, the same long gravel paths β but someone has decorated them with an unlimited budget and an invested interest in Disneyβs early cinema. Paper lanterns, hand-painted with scenes from Grimm and Bechstein, hang in long strings between the topiaries. Torches line every path. The rosebeds have been cleared to make room for long tables draped in white linen, laden with food and drink that seems to replenish itself when you're not looking directly at it. Someone has been at the hedges with extraordinary ambition: a wolf lunging, a tower with no doors, and near the south wall, an impeccably accurate rendering of a cat in tall boots that Jonty finds within thirty seconds of stepping outside, happy to point out the hilarity to anyone walking by.
At the center of it all is Portiaβs latest design choice: the MΓRCHENSCHLOSS. It rises two stories, a silhouette of pale stone and painted canvas stretched over wooden frames with a trompe l'oeil that looks so real you have to press your palm flat against the wall to confirm it isn't. It has towers. Battlements. Narrow oriels and an actual working drawbridge lowered over a shallow moat filled with floating candles and one enormous, disinterested-looking swan. A string quartet plays somewhere inside, classical tunes such as Nellyβs Hot in Herre in their full symphonic beauty. Throughout the garden, tucked behind hedgerows and down paths marked with white ribbons, are six small BEDCHAMBERS β crimson tented enclosures hung with gauze and lit with warm light, each furnished with a wide, deep bed. They are for whatever you decide they're for, though the ambiance of rose petals and candlelight inside seems to have its own suggestions.
The party proper is under the wisteria canopy: four long tables, white linen, china that doesn't match in a way that feels intentional, flowers in the teapots, bunting hung between the branches. Those with perceptive eyes will notice the tables of been decorated generously with clippings from the overgrowth the night before βΒ belladonna, bleeding hearts, cockscomb dressed in exotic bundles of bouquets, occupying the center piece of every dressed table. It is aggressively, almost combatively charming. Sit down. Someone in white gloves is already pouring your tea. The cakes are extraordinary, the sandwiches are tiny and perfect, and the charcuterie board is doing more than a charcuterie board has any right to do. At the head of the longest table, crowned and seated, are Zephir and Sullivan β the guests of honour, the kings of the evening. Act accordingly.
You donβt notice the enchantment slip over you, at first. But by the second hour, your costume begins to feel more and more right, like it has always been waiting for you. The character's nature and yours become one and the same, their roles now yours to fulfill, their stories now yours to shape. Those who came dressed as something with fur or feathers run warm, tracking movement without meaning to, aware of smell in ways that are very difficult to explain politely. Those who came as royalty find the world rearranging itself around them, helpfully, the way it does for people the story has decided are important. Those who came as witches find small magics happening in their periphery, little helpful mischievous things their hands do without consulting them. Beauties begin finding beasts less intimidating, and more ... intimately intriguing. Whatever your costume, the archetype has laid a claim to you β and the story demands you play your part fittingly, toward your happy or tragic ending.
Around the gardens, various games are set up as though theyβre exhibits from another world.
Near the wisteria arch there is a little velvet table with a golden spindle on a stand, and beside it a card that reads one prick, one wish in handwriting that seems to be smiling. The spindle is warm to the touch. Prick your finger, make your wish, and the wish will come true in the way all good fairy tale wishes do β thoroughly, accurately, and with complete creative disregard for what you actually meant. Those who wish to be irresistible will spend the remainder of the party unable to achieve five consecutive minutes of solitude. Those who wish to know what someone is thinking receive the information in full, broadcasted telepathically throughout the night without redaction, including every part they were not prepared for. It is, in essence, the very storybook picture of a never-forgotten tale: be careful what you wish for, it might just come true!
On a velvet table beside it, as if snack and drink have been left scattered for those getting a bit peckish, is a small spread that could only be Zephir and Sully's β three things, botanical and beautiful, presented on a dark cloth. A goblet of something dark and fragrant, crushed purple cap dissolved into it like wine. A shallow dish of candied venus flytrap, glistening. The card says only eat, or drink, with no further instructions. Both options are available all evening.
The pale mushrooms are for those who want to go further than the wine can take you under β a deeper sleep, total and immediate, within five minutes of biting into its core. While you're under its spell, you dream, and the dreams are explicit and erotic and extremely specific, featuring someone from the party in considerable detail that the enchantment has sourced from vivid memories or your wildest imagination: what their hands feel like, what they sound like underneath you, what their skin feels like beneath yours. The dream is vivid enough to be indistinguishable from happening. Your body responds to it visibly β flushed, wet or hard, hips moving slightly against nothing but air. If someone finds you like that, the dream and the waking blur together seamlessly; you incorporate them into what's already happening without surfacing, and when you finally come up it's because they've thoroughly fucked you back into the waking world, their face above you continuous with the face you've been dreaming about for the last hour.
The goblet keeps you conscious and takes everything else. Every point of contact on your body doubles β a hand on your arm registers as a full embrace, fingers in your hair stop your thoughts mid-sentence, a mouth anywhere makes you audible to whoever's nearby whether you intended to be or not. What it removes is your ability to initiate and control: the instinct to reach, to pull closer, to take what you want, suspended entirely for the duration. You have to be found. Approached, handled, touched and touched and touched at double intensity, with no outlet except what comes out of your mouth. Those who've taken the vial are not difficult to identify. Find someone at the party reacting to a hand on their shoulder like it's something considerably more significant, or slumping drowsily into the nearest warm cushion β the grass, someoneβs available lap, or the lush rosebushes softening their landing. That's them.
The candied flytrap on the table beside it is warm, smells extraordinary, and looks, in every possible way, like candy. Upon eating it, you feel no immediate effect other than satisfaction β it is, beyond all appearances, the most perfectly edible piece of dessert you've ever tasted. However, the fullness in your stomach empties within the hour, and the hunger that takes its place isn't like any need you've experienced before. The pit in your stomach only grows, the more you try to fill it with the expected: tea cakes, fresh cups of Earl Grey, the whole works. What it wants, specifically and horrifically, is meat. To put it in simpler terms: it craves human meat. It wants to consume, to take in, to keep. When someone you're fond of stands close enough, your mouth waters. When you catch someone's wrist by accident your grip tightens before you make yourself let go, and you are aware that some part of you was not in control of yourself.
There are releases and relief, of course. Biting quiets it for a while. Being bitten works too, if you can find someone willing, which requires a conversation that is either very short or very long depending on the person. The hunger doesn't lift entirely until morning. You will spend the rest of the evening navigating the specific push-pull of wanting to devour someone you genuinely like, which is either the worst or the best problem the night has produced, depending entirely on how you look at it and who's standing nearest.
The invitation waits on your pillow when you wake — heavy cream cardstock, with two gnomes illustrated in the corner, doing things frankly not appropriate for gnomes to be doing in public. THE MΓRCHENSCHLOSS MASKENFEST, it says, in the gardens. COME AS A CHARACTER FROM A STORY. ANY STORY.
The gardens, when you arrive, are not quite the gardens you remember β the same sprawling hedgerows, the same long gravel paths β but someone has decorated them with an unlimited budget and an invested interest in Disneyβs early cinema. Paper lanterns, hand-painted with scenes from Grimm and Bechstein, hang in long strings between the topiaries. Torches line every path. The rosebeds have been cleared to make room for long tables draped in white linen, laden with food and drink that seems to replenish itself when you're not looking directly at it. Someone has been at the hedges with extraordinary ambition: a wolf lunging, a tower with no doors, and near the south wall, an impeccably accurate rendering of a cat in tall boots that Jonty finds within thirty seconds of stepping outside, happy to point out the hilarity to anyone walking by.
At the center of it all is Portiaβs latest design choice: the MΓRCHENSCHLOSS. It rises two stories, a silhouette of pale stone and painted canvas stretched over wooden frames with a trompe l'oeil that looks so real you have to press your palm flat against the wall to confirm it isn't. It has towers. Battlements. Narrow oriels and an actual working drawbridge lowered over a shallow moat filled with floating candles and one enormous, disinterested-looking swan. A string quartet plays somewhere inside, classical tunes such as Nellyβs Hot in Herre in their full symphonic beauty. Throughout the garden, tucked behind hedgerows and down paths marked with white ribbons, are six small BEDCHAMBERS β crimson tented enclosures hung with gauze and lit with warm light, each furnished with a wide, deep bed. They are for whatever you decide they're for, though the ambiance of rose petals and candlelight inside seems to have its own suggestions.
The party proper is under the wisteria canopy: four long tables, white linen, china that doesn't match in a way that feels intentional, flowers in the teapots, bunting hung between the branches. Those with perceptive eyes will notice the tables of been decorated generously with clippings from the overgrowth the night before βΒ belladonna, bleeding hearts, cockscomb dressed in exotic bundles of bouquets, occupying the center piece of every dressed table. It is aggressively, almost combatively charming. Sit down. Someone in white gloves is already pouring your tea. The cakes are extraordinary, the sandwiches are tiny and perfect, and the charcuterie board is doing more than a charcuterie board has any right to do. At the head of the longest table, crowned and seated, are Zephir and Sullivan β the guests of honour, the kings of the evening. Act accordingly.
You donβt notice the enchantment slip over you, at first. But by the second hour, your costume begins to feel more and more right, like it has always been waiting for you. The character's nature and yours become one and the same, their roles now yours to fulfill, their stories now yours to shape. Those who came dressed as something with fur or feathers run warm, tracking movement without meaning to, aware of smell in ways that are very difficult to explain politely. Those who came as royalty find the world rearranging itself around them, helpfully, the way it does for people the story has decided are important. Those who came as witches find small magics happening in their periphery, little helpful mischievous things their hands do without consulting them. Beauties begin finding beasts less intimidating, and more ... intimately intriguing. Whatever your costume, the archetype has laid a claim to you β and the story demands you play your part fittingly, toward your happy or tragic ending.
Around the gardens, various games are set up as though theyβre exhibits from another world.
Near the wisteria arch there is a little velvet table with a golden spindle on a stand, and beside it a card that reads one prick, one wish in handwriting that seems to be smiling. The spindle is warm to the touch. Prick your finger, make your wish, and the wish will come true in the way all good fairy tale wishes do β thoroughly, accurately, and with complete creative disregard for what you actually meant. Those who wish to be irresistible will spend the remainder of the party unable to achieve five consecutive minutes of solitude. Those who wish to know what someone is thinking receive the information in full, broadcasted telepathically throughout the night without redaction, including every part they were not prepared for. It is, in essence, the very storybook picture of a never-forgotten tale: be careful what you wish for, it might just come true!
On a velvet table beside it, as if snack and drink have been left scattered for those getting a bit peckish, is a small spread that could only be Zephir and Sully's β three things, botanical and beautiful, presented on a dark cloth. A goblet of something dark and fragrant, crushed purple cap dissolved into it like wine. A shallow dish of candied venus flytrap, glistening. The card says only eat, or drink, with no further instructions. Both options are available all evening.
The pale mushrooms are for those who want to go further than the wine can take you under β a deeper sleep, total and immediate, within five minutes of biting into its core. While you're under its spell, you dream, and the dreams are explicit and erotic and extremely specific, featuring someone from the party in considerable detail that the enchantment has sourced from vivid memories or your wildest imagination: what their hands feel like, what they sound like underneath you, what their skin feels like beneath yours. The dream is vivid enough to be indistinguishable from happening. Your body responds to it visibly β flushed, wet or hard, hips moving slightly against nothing but air. If someone finds you like that, the dream and the waking blur together seamlessly; you incorporate them into what's already happening without surfacing, and when you finally come up it's because they've thoroughly fucked you back into the waking world, their face above you continuous with the face you've been dreaming about for the last hour.
The goblet keeps you conscious and takes everything else. Every point of contact on your body doubles β a hand on your arm registers as a full embrace, fingers in your hair stop your thoughts mid-sentence, a mouth anywhere makes you audible to whoever's nearby whether you intended to be or not. What it removes is your ability to initiate and control: the instinct to reach, to pull closer, to take what you want, suspended entirely for the duration. You have to be found. Approached, handled, touched and touched and touched at double intensity, with no outlet except what comes out of your mouth. Those who've taken the vial are not difficult to identify. Find someone at the party reacting to a hand on their shoulder like it's something considerably more significant, or slumping drowsily into the nearest warm cushion β the grass, someoneβs available lap, or the lush rosebushes softening their landing. That's them.
The candied flytrap on the table beside it is warm, smells extraordinary, and looks, in every possible way, like candy. Upon eating it, you feel no immediate effect other than satisfaction β it is, beyond all appearances, the most perfectly edible piece of dessert you've ever tasted. However, the fullness in your stomach empties within the hour, and the hunger that takes its place isn't like any need you've experienced before. The pit in your stomach only grows, the more you try to fill it with the expected: tea cakes, fresh cups of Earl Grey, the whole works. What it wants, specifically and horrifically, is meat. To put it in simpler terms: it craves human meat. It wants to consume, to take in, to keep. When someone you're fond of stands close enough, your mouth waters. When you catch someone's wrist by accident your grip tightens before you make yourself let go, and you are aware that some part of you was not in control of yourself.
There are releases and relief, of course. Biting quiets it for a while. Being bitten works too, if you can find someone willing, which requires a conversation that is either very short or very long depending on the person. The hunger doesn't lift entirely until morning. You will spend the rest of the evening navigating the specific push-pull of wanting to devour someone you genuinely like, which is either the worst or the best problem the night has produced, depending entirely on how you look at it and who's standing nearest.
WE'RE ALL MAD HERE
CONTENT WARNINGS: potential character death, hanahaki disease cont.
For many of the party-goers, the night begins to blend into a dreamlike state of pleasure and confusion. Some of you are compelled to move away from the wisteria canopy, dancing in bare feet upon the lush grass while you drink mushroom and dandelion wine, linking hands as you roam the grounds in a near stupor. You donβt realize how far youβve gone until the twinkling lights of the party are long out of sight, dapples of moonlight filtering through the treetops in the gloaming. Surely you can find your way back to the gardens, but the more you walk, the deeper into the woods you seem to go. The comforting hand in yours has long slipped away. Youβre alone, left with the feeling that something vital has been ripped from you β companionship, maybe, all the world darkened in your isolation. You wonβt be whole until you find it, and so you go stumbling through the dark, growing more desperate and empty by the moment, a sickness gnawing at your insides, stealing away your spirit. Your effervescence wanes, your strength languishing.
For those of you who manage to remain conscious, you eventually come upon a juniper tree, out of place for its otherworldly silvery-blue, an aroma of peppery citrus and sweet earth filling your senses. The dense needles prick your fingertips when you reach out to them, tiny droplets of blood pattering to the ground below. An uncontrollable urge seizes you, and you begin to dig with your bare hands, shoving your fingers into the dirt and yanking up fistfuls of moss and earth, digging and digging until you touch something brittle and dry. The moonlight catches bleached bone, a stark white against the dark earth β fingers, ribs, a broken pelvis, pieces of shattered skull. Longing crests over you with the brush of each fragment, the emptiness within you pushing you to your breaking point. With dirty hands, you grip a bone, and memory floods you β one of the person you're pining for, something intimate and private, something you were never supposed to know, viewed in their moments of pain or intimacy. You come back to the party with dirt under your fingernails and something new sitting heavy in your chest alongside the flowers you'll cough up for the night.
For the ones that aren't lucky enough to stay conscious, you might wake on a paltry bed in a dusty cabin, the old walls warped and broken with age, the thicket visible through the battered roof. Your hands move over threadbare sheets, and as you sit up with a dry mouth and a sharp headache, you realize your clothes are dusty and worn too, only they aren't what you came dressed in for the party. You're now wearing traditional wedding clothes, however that might look to you β beaded white dresses, creamy lace slips, corseted gowns, tousled tuxedos. If you're lucky, you're part of a matched set, another warm body dressed in finery rousing beside you. Your strength has been cut in half, bleeding out of you with every movement from the moment you rise from the bed and begin trying the doors and windows, all of which remain locked to you. All but one, which you don't dare touch, your hand freezing inches from the doorknob as an icy fear grips you, your senses on high alert. The terrible thudding of footsteps sound behind the door, and you whirl away as the door flies open and a grip as powerful as tree roots finds you, trying to drag you into the dark. Hold tight onto anything you can find, although the key to getting free lies in the heart of whoever else is stuck in there with you. How bad do they want to save you? The more they want it, the more they care for you, the stronger they become to pull you to safety. If they want to see you devoured by the dark? Your bridegroom awaits on the other side of the door, where he will oh-so-lovingly dismember your body in the purest form of marital love. (Yes, you'll die.)
The last of you that wake from your fainting spell find yourselves in perhaps the unluckiest situation of all, depending on who you ask. You're blindfolded at the edge of the woods, standing but with your ankles and wrists bound, unable to move from your position. Phantom touches brush your skin, less like a lover and more like a mocking hand or the crawl of insects. Similarly, your mind crawls, splintering into your most dreadful and distressing insecurities and fears. You can hardly be reasoned with, any touch making you flinch, any voice sounding like a threat. You're in the dark for what feels like hours, the turmoil building inside you to an unbearable crescendo, until you lay yourself bare and weep β not a good little cry before bed, but the kind of soul-shattering, gut-wrenching sobs that show how broken you truly are and always will be. Only then does your soaked blindfold fall away, your binds loosening so you can stumble to the forest floor, catch your breath, and hope that everyone can see past your wretchedness enough to comfort you. It's all fun and party games until you remember to look inward, isn't it?
By the time the string quartet has looped through Hot in Herre a third time and the swan in the moat still hasn't moved, the party begins its slow unwinding β guests warm and wine-drunk, costumes askew. For those still carrying the bleeding hearts in their lungs, the night makes one final declaration. A card appears β on your chair, tucked into your costume β in decorative handwriting: One of them is the one. You'll know when you find them. The mechanic is simple: you have to kiss people until you find the right one. The enchantment knows the difference between a real kiss and a diplomatic one. It is, unfortunately, extremely sophisticated for a floral lung disease.
Kiss the wrong person β and there are many wrong ones, the night is long and the disease is vindictive β and the coughing gets briefly, spectacularly worse, flowers blooming outward in an embarrassing rush, possibly onto whoever you just kissed, who is now standing there covered in pink petals quietly reconsidering the evening. The harder you were trying to make it work with that person, the more devastating the reaction. The flowers come up all at once, a full violent bloom, thorns and all, and they keep coming until you stop. Your chest seizes. Your eyes water. You are on your knees on the garden path bringing up an entire bouquet. The flowers pile up around you, beautiful and merciless and deeply, deeply embarrassing, and they will not stop until you let go of the idea entirely β admit it isn't them, even just to yourself, even just quietly in the part of your chest the disease has been living in β and only then does the bloom slow, and stop, and leave you gasping in a pile of your own romantic self-deception in the middle of an otherwise lovely party.
Sleeping with the wrong person β really committing β does something else entirely. The disease, disturbed at its roots, secretes. Something botanical and poisonous moves through you the way the disease has always moved β through the mouth. Your saliva, your sweat, now laced with something that tastes faintly of flowers and does not belong in another person's bloodstream. They won't notice at first. Neither will you. But it passes between you with every kiss, every exchange of fluid, until you're both experiencing the symptoms. Feverish. Confused. Lungs suffocated with blooms that won't stop growing. Unbearably, miserably drawn together even as the symptoms worsen β the disease dragging you toward the wrong person with one hand and poisoning you both with the other, until someone intervenes or you find the sense to separate. Left untreated, it will kill you both.
The cure doesn't fully take on a kiss alone, with the right person β the flowers recede, enough to breathe, enough to think, but the roots don't release until the feelings between you have been said. If you don't β if you let the silence stretch too long, if you reach for something wry or in denial β the bloom starts again. Gently at first. A single petal, like a soft warning. Say it, though β say the true thing, however small, however terrifying, I think I love you or I don't want to stop or even just I've been trying very hard not to feel this way about you and I have failed completely β and the last root releases. What comes up from your throat is a single intact bloom, perfect in a way the others weren't. What you do with it β press it into their hand, tuck it behind their ear, let it fall to the grass between you β is entirely yours.
At midnight, the enchantment breaks fully β costumes becoming just costumes again, leaving everyone blinking at each other in the suddenly very ordinary dark. The MΓ€rchenschloss stands until morning and then doesn't, the garden returned to itself without comment or ceremony.
The swan is still there. The swan was always just a swan. Probably.
For many of the party-goers, the night begins to blend into a dreamlike state of pleasure and confusion. Some of you are compelled to move away from the wisteria canopy, dancing in bare feet upon the lush grass while you drink mushroom and dandelion wine, linking hands as you roam the grounds in a near stupor. You donβt realize how far youβve gone until the twinkling lights of the party are long out of sight, dapples of moonlight filtering through the treetops in the gloaming. Surely you can find your way back to the gardens, but the more you walk, the deeper into the woods you seem to go. The comforting hand in yours has long slipped away. Youβre alone, left with the feeling that something vital has been ripped from you β companionship, maybe, all the world darkened in your isolation. You wonβt be whole until you find it, and so you go stumbling through the dark, growing more desperate and empty by the moment, a sickness gnawing at your insides, stealing away your spirit. Your effervescence wanes, your strength languishing.
For those of you who manage to remain conscious, you eventually come upon a juniper tree, out of place for its otherworldly silvery-blue, an aroma of peppery citrus and sweet earth filling your senses. The dense needles prick your fingertips when you reach out to them, tiny droplets of blood pattering to the ground below. An uncontrollable urge seizes you, and you begin to dig with your bare hands, shoving your fingers into the dirt and yanking up fistfuls of moss and earth, digging and digging until you touch something brittle and dry. The moonlight catches bleached bone, a stark white against the dark earth β fingers, ribs, a broken pelvis, pieces of shattered skull. Longing crests over you with the brush of each fragment, the emptiness within you pushing you to your breaking point. With dirty hands, you grip a bone, and memory floods you β one of the person you're pining for, something intimate and private, something you were never supposed to know, viewed in their moments of pain or intimacy. You come back to the party with dirt under your fingernails and something new sitting heavy in your chest alongside the flowers you'll cough up for the night.
For the ones that aren't lucky enough to stay conscious, you might wake on a paltry bed in a dusty cabin, the old walls warped and broken with age, the thicket visible through the battered roof. Your hands move over threadbare sheets, and as you sit up with a dry mouth and a sharp headache, you realize your clothes are dusty and worn too, only they aren't what you came dressed in for the party. You're now wearing traditional wedding clothes, however that might look to you β beaded white dresses, creamy lace slips, corseted gowns, tousled tuxedos. If you're lucky, you're part of a matched set, another warm body dressed in finery rousing beside you. Your strength has been cut in half, bleeding out of you with every movement from the moment you rise from the bed and begin trying the doors and windows, all of which remain locked to you. All but one, which you don't dare touch, your hand freezing inches from the doorknob as an icy fear grips you, your senses on high alert. The terrible thudding of footsteps sound behind the door, and you whirl away as the door flies open and a grip as powerful as tree roots finds you, trying to drag you into the dark. Hold tight onto anything you can find, although the key to getting free lies in the heart of whoever else is stuck in there with you. How bad do they want to save you? The more they want it, the more they care for you, the stronger they become to pull you to safety. If they want to see you devoured by the dark? Your bridegroom awaits on the other side of the door, where he will oh-so-lovingly dismember your body in the purest form of marital love. (Yes, you'll die.)
The last of you that wake from your fainting spell find yourselves in perhaps the unluckiest situation of all, depending on who you ask. You're blindfolded at the edge of the woods, standing but with your ankles and wrists bound, unable to move from your position. Phantom touches brush your skin, less like a lover and more like a mocking hand or the crawl of insects. Similarly, your mind crawls, splintering into your most dreadful and distressing insecurities and fears. You can hardly be reasoned with, any touch making you flinch, any voice sounding like a threat. You're in the dark for what feels like hours, the turmoil building inside you to an unbearable crescendo, until you lay yourself bare and weep β not a good little cry before bed, but the kind of soul-shattering, gut-wrenching sobs that show how broken you truly are and always will be. Only then does your soaked blindfold fall away, your binds loosening so you can stumble to the forest floor, catch your breath, and hope that everyone can see past your wretchedness enough to comfort you. It's all fun and party games until you remember to look inward, isn't it?
By the time the string quartet has looped through Hot in Herre a third time and the swan in the moat still hasn't moved, the party begins its slow unwinding β guests warm and wine-drunk, costumes askew. For those still carrying the bleeding hearts in their lungs, the night makes one final declaration. A card appears β on your chair, tucked into your costume β in decorative handwriting: One of them is the one. You'll know when you find them. The mechanic is simple: you have to kiss people until you find the right one. The enchantment knows the difference between a real kiss and a diplomatic one. It is, unfortunately, extremely sophisticated for a floral lung disease.
Kiss the wrong person β and there are many wrong ones, the night is long and the disease is vindictive β and the coughing gets briefly, spectacularly worse, flowers blooming outward in an embarrassing rush, possibly onto whoever you just kissed, who is now standing there covered in pink petals quietly reconsidering the evening. The harder you were trying to make it work with that person, the more devastating the reaction. The flowers come up all at once, a full violent bloom, thorns and all, and they keep coming until you stop. Your chest seizes. Your eyes water. You are on your knees on the garden path bringing up an entire bouquet. The flowers pile up around you, beautiful and merciless and deeply, deeply embarrassing, and they will not stop until you let go of the idea entirely β admit it isn't them, even just to yourself, even just quietly in the part of your chest the disease has been living in β and only then does the bloom slow, and stop, and leave you gasping in a pile of your own romantic self-deception in the middle of an otherwise lovely party.
Sleeping with the wrong person β really committing β does something else entirely. The disease, disturbed at its roots, secretes. Something botanical and poisonous moves through you the way the disease has always moved β through the mouth. Your saliva, your sweat, now laced with something that tastes faintly of flowers and does not belong in another person's bloodstream. They won't notice at first. Neither will you. But it passes between you with every kiss, every exchange of fluid, until you're both experiencing the symptoms. Feverish. Confused. Lungs suffocated with blooms that won't stop growing. Unbearably, miserably drawn together even as the symptoms worsen β the disease dragging you toward the wrong person with one hand and poisoning you both with the other, until someone intervenes or you find the sense to separate. Left untreated, it will kill you both.
The cure doesn't fully take on a kiss alone, with the right person β the flowers recede, enough to breathe, enough to think, but the roots don't release until the feelings between you have been said. If you don't β if you let the silence stretch too long, if you reach for something wry or in denial β the bloom starts again. Gently at first. A single petal, like a soft warning. Say it, though β say the true thing, however small, however terrifying, I think I love you or I don't want to stop or even just I've been trying very hard not to feel this way about you and I have failed completely β and the last root releases. What comes up from your throat is a single intact bloom, perfect in a way the others weren't. What you do with it β press it into their hand, tuck it behind their ear, let it fall to the grass between you β is entirely yours.
At midnight, the enchantment breaks fully β costumes becoming just costumes again, leaving everyone blinking at each other in the suddenly very ordinary dark. The MΓ€rchenschloss stands until morning and then doesn't, the garden returned to itself without comment or ceremony.
The swan is still there. The swan was always just a swan. Probably.
DIRECTORY
no subject
I can't say enough what a relief it is to have you here.
Is virtual confession common in the 2020s?