Drawing them for the first time

“...So I dropped to my knees here, right … I scooped dirt into my mouth … ate until I vomited. I gathered up the bloody earth … I realised you were too much for me. This is the problem, the incorporation, this is the hardest part … It’s the human instinct, to take. When you burn your thumb, you stick it in your mouth, right? And there was still too much of me that was just a human being.”

- John 1:20, Nona the Ninth

Something something you come back wrong only to find out that the person you died for, your only true friend in the entire galaxy who lobotomized herself just for the slim chance it might preserve your soul, is changed beyond recognition by The Thing possessing her body. Does it pain you to see It grinning and laughing and loving in a body that should belong to Her and in ways she never could? To look in her eyes and see none of the hate/love/history/grief you once might've called home? To know that your allies chose to show It more love and care than She ever got?

then one day, a miracle occurred. an exhausted physics teacher, instead of punching in 12 for the number of copies she wanted of the 30-page booklet she had made for her A-level physics class, punched in 1200.

and that printer came to life. this print job was its moment, its magnum opus! it WOULD NOT be parted from it, no matter what we did, until we physically unplugged it from the wall.