private creep ryan

some years ago i had this story in mind about a group of immortal people facing up to the end of the world.

they would be born throughout human history to allow for the "processing" of human forms of cognition and communication by the universe at large, from oral tradition to public, and then mass, media. they would have no grasp on the particulars of this process, nor the nature of the coming end, or the rules of their own rebirths & assumed "domains" - because there would be nothing solid to grasp: only stories strung, shaping reality and caving under it.

every time one of them dies, others must bear the load of their share until resurrection. and the gap between new "processors" being born shortens as humanity exponentially grows along with its self-reproducing dam. but the first one was the loneliest, and before the others had no respite, getting dragged back into light the instant the last flicker of the mind-star gets snuffed out.

that's Ryo. probably.

she's stories told, her own having dragged on for so long it can no longer retain continuity; it began pre-language and had to spin itself as the tree got to branching. her sense of time has to be episodic to avoid turning entirely anachronistic: anything told is necessarily unwritten.

minding all that, it's her - ontologically? or just epistemologically? - unstable ass that informs others about the coming end & gets to supervise the fallout.

...and yeah, among other things I've drawn her in a 19 c. Ukrainian setting (having Polissya in mind) because I wanted to & it makes sense for her to prefer living near the steppe, yet within the reach of some proper woods to take cover in / escape through. дивна смуглява пані з ліплянки в лісі, що її вечорами бачать як ходить збирає каміння вздовж струмка, до якихось своїх міркувань придивляється, кладе принадні до кошика. показується мало, ба малі від неї завжди приносять якісь оповідки...

avoids living in densely populated areas and, for a long stretch of history, appearing in environments where her appearance gets heavily racialized. unless absolutely necessary - cue that last sketch of her greeting the new guy.

will for life