Friend of the Dead

I got to paint Sten with sword lilies for @daflowerzine!

Fun fact #1: I modeled the sword and flowers in Blender and painted over them.

we play prophet, my brother and i, discussing the point endlessly. he says that if it happens at night, we probably won't hear for a few days while they scramble; a governmental weekend at bernie's. i say i want it to happen live on camera; my brother says, chuckling, that's dark. oh well, it's dark, then - suddenly now we have to believe in the sanctity of life, just because he's an old white man?

it's going to happen. i keep it like a lozenge or a warm cup of tea. i like to imagine where i'll be. will i be mid-dinner or on a walk with my dog or at work. i'll have to take a few sick days, immediately. maybe i'll be on a date with my pretty girl, and we'll have to pause the dinner to run to the car, consummate dessert. i imagine how i'll find out - some part of me kind of wants it to be through that one destiel meme, or thousands of crabs dancing. maybe i'll be in a crowded room: and for once, a newsreel push notification goes off, and every person starts laughing.

my friends and i invent possibilities. what will we do, in those blissful few hours after? surely we should get a tattoo of the day and the very minute, that's got to be a new kind of angel number. or maybe we should fill the house entirely with bubbles, walk around in lingerie; surely we should bring our instruments and voices onto the streets. in every version of the future, we all mention dancing, because yes, haphazard and wild and free, we are going to be dancing, kicking up our heels and howling. it will be beautiful, we keep saying, the joy will be so wild; the omnipresence of it almost cloying.

it's going to happen, i hold onto it like a stone fruit or a seedling. i make promises to those around me: if you ever get two calls in a row from me, it's because somebody is dying. or it's because the person that died is that somebody. we pinky-promise: as soon as you know, please tell me. call me at work. call me if it's 3 in the morning. i want to know as soon as you know. i don't even care if i'm told by my sleep paralysis demon or the spider that lives on my ceiling. tell me.

of course after it happens we'll need to do a bunch of other things. the work will not stop, it is unyielding.

*by random i mean non-scripted, not hunting for it actively, you're just wandering around in any game and you just found it somewhere