I HAVE THE POWER!

A SERIOUSLY UNSERIOUS, MIXED CANON INTERPRETATION OF ADAM GLENN-GRAYSKULL, AKA HE-MAN. written by makwa    ...    2spirit, they / them, 27.    originally est. 2021. **not spoiler free for motu 2026. also @graveflwers.

RULES [ BELOW ].      DOSSIER.    DEVELOPMENT.    MEMES.

' i promise you, shadowheart. it’s no deception; this really is my face! ' he knew, of course, what @nightorne meant. perhaps more to the point: he knew what she didn't.

thorny, this one! but there was no point in resenting a plant its nature. when it came to gardening—that is, to cultivating flowers and friendships—it was really best to wear gloves or armour of some sort: an infuriatingly magnanimous smile, for example.

' —you, ' he countered, ' have a deceptively grouchy disposition. '

perhaps neither of them were quite what they seemed, or perhaps both of them were simply seeing whatsoever they wished to see: adam, in his light, saw the moon in shadowheart's darkness; shadowheart, in her darkness, saw the void in adam's light.

in either case, the polite thing would be to look away.

of course it would be easier to look away if their tents weren't staked side by side. also if adam could stop casting sidelong, doe-eyed glances at shadowheart whenever she did something even remotely interesting—which he considered to be often. he'd never met a sharran before; he didn't understand what it meant to worship a deity, to find divinity in anything other than oneself.

he'd gone off and found a gnarled tree to sit behind, as lame animals did when they wished to die or brood in peace, to spare their kindreds their grief. and @ineder, in turn, had found him—or else he too was a lame animal, and what they shared was not merely a journey but also an affinity for ugly stumps.

' a tell? ' he wondered out loud. his voice sounded impossibly far away, as though it had wandered out among the woods and could no longer find its way back. then he smiled, and it seemed to return to him forthwith. it was so clear now; it was almost as if it had never been lost at all. and that, perhaps, was the tell. ' why—who told you that? '

humour was an easy solution to many a difficult problem. it was pulp in the wound: a dressing that could staunch even what it could not heal.

it was also, as a rule, an effective deviator.

' you needn’t worry yourself, mr. baggins. ' adam was doing enough of that on his own, really. which was the trouble: it seemed terribly unfair to balk under the trappings of his mind when what frodo bore was the weight of their world. ' you’ve enough of a burden on your shoulders '    around his neck    ' without carrying mine along with it. '

he patted the ground beside him. shadowed by the moon and shrouded by his cloak, frodo looked every bit a wraith.

' me? oh, uh, well—i’m not lying. i really did go for a walk through the garden. '    amongst other things.

andromeda saw much and more. she was as peculiar in her keen perception as she was in her enduring kindness.

' i brought you something. '    he pulled out a handful of flowers. it was no use wondering where he’d been keeping them; it was another such secret that princes knew how to deal in. 

he held them out to her with an ingratiating smile.

' i didn’t realize you wanted to be found. '    he was smiling, but it was a sad thing, apologetic, and practically a grimace. ' you forgot to leave a note. '

sometimes when people went missing it was because of really terrible things, such as shadow beasts or flesh-eating plants or bouts of particularly inclement weather: gusts of wind that looked like old men and blew children over cliffs with a single breath. other times, people just wanted to be alone.

individual motivations were always a gamble. 

it was better to check on a friend than let them wander off on their own, in any case. it was better to be annoying than an abandoner.

' i’m sorry, '    said adam. he regretted not coming to see leera sooner.    ' really—i am. '

sneaking off was an occasionally troublesome endeavour. it required telling the royal guard that he simply had to go fishing. alone. and usually during times of political turmoil.

no, you can’t come, he’d say to them. you’ll scare away the fish. and then there’d be no point in me going at all.

he dipped his fingers into the lake. they seemed to disappear beneath the surface, as if they’d simply ceased to exist. in his peripheral, leera shifted with her shadow; it was as though she herself were part of the lake, or else the billowing reeds that grew around it.    ' what’s the water like? '

' oh—is it—is this because i said ‘alien planet’? '    totally his bad. to avoid confusion, he should have used the proper term: exoplanet.    ' eternia exists outside of your solar system. that’s what makes it alien, not the people who live there. quite a few of us are human, actually. my parents, for example: both of them. and me. human. '

he took a long, long sip of his drink. the straw was clear, which adam considered an unnecessary invasion of privacy. because of its transparency, mari could see when he stopped sipping but continued to sit there, straw in mouth, saying and drinking nothing. 

around them, glasses thumped on tables, silverware scraped against plates. it was the same sound fairies made whenever they rearranged their furniture.

adam smiled, the straw still pinned between his lips. the lighting was bad in here. whenever he wanted to get a good look at her, he had to squint. he thought she had the prettiest eyes on earth—literally—but it was sort of hard to tell.

' you pass for human, too. '    he said finally, pushing his drink—and the straw—away.    ' you look nice. '

adam inspected his training sword. there was a notch in the wood from where luke's last blow had landed. it wasn't the only one on there.

he exhaled, exhausted, in a way that could pass for a laugh.

' well, i mean—maybe a little. ' that was wrong. he had known as soon as he'd said it. possibly even before.

don't show weakness. it was the first rule of predator-prey relations. don't show fear. don't act sick. make yourself look as big as possible. that will deter the larger hunting animals.

and how do we avoid being prey? by not looking like prey. by not sounding like it, either.