TASK 001 ✣ ABILITIES
TELEPATHY » hears the thoughts of everyone around them. lack of control, cannot pinpoint whose thoughts they hear.
VISUALIZATION
a whisper, a shriek — it starts off as murmurings by your ear and fingertips pressed to eyelids before it turns into a howling, nails digging into sockets. a pleading.Â
it starts as all violences do: gently.
it always leaves an echo you can’t quite get rid of; a mother’s lullaby, a lover’s memory.Â
you are frozen, mid-breath with chest heavy.Â
you always return reeling.Â
SENSES
this is a gift of hearing that bleeds into everything.Â
the words come out clear, but you can feel the faintest touches, taste the bitterness of bladed thoughts quick, fleeting.Â
you see almost as clear as you hear; flashes of memories, almost, that feel more fiction, dream. you never know the difference between lie, wish, and history. you are a storyteller of in-betweens.Â
this always feels like a bloodletting.
so what if you taste copper in your throat? blood stains your teeth and still, you wear your grins all too easily.Â
STRENGTH
you only ever receive fragments — words, half-sentences, flashed glimpses —Â
you never know who it belongs to. you are never sure if it is your own or another’s; a snake devouring its own tail, how you become your own haunting.Â
if you tried enough, you could match the words to the moving lips; create a film reel with only the middles and the ends singed. choose whose mind you’d like to invade. choose which part of their life to be a voyeur to, quiet shadows with all their teeth showing.Â
you could be on the precipice of knowing just about anything. everything.Â
WEAKNESSES
your eyes turn bloodshot, lips cracked. it feels like something is eating away at you and you’re just grateful for the knowledge that you are not rotten enough to no longer be consumed just yet.Â
you spit our your blood and cry your tears of red like a messiah turned exile. you are told you are beautiful bleeding. greed is paid for in twofold and you never learn your lesson.Â
you’d give yourself up for just a fragment of another in casual passing — do you tire so much of being yourself, darling?
FUNCTION
you learn how to read others without shredding your mind in the process. it is half as fun but your odds are not too bad, given over a century of playing, of guessing. you fancy yourself a dollmaker to ignore your own marionette stitching.Â
your job with the fireflies is to tear people apart physically. to do so mentally is above your pay grade.
don’t take it too personally: this is strictly entertainment.Â
OTHER
only a few at the top of your house are aware of your ability. you’d like to keep it that way; makes it just a touch less fun when they know you’ve cheating.
it’s the easiest for you to manage when all the thoughts point towards one thing: ideally, you — you can see thoughts in suspension, palms outstretched gently before you tear it from minds like apples from trees. sometimes it is just too easy.Â
hokuei winters teach you all you need to know about newfound abilities. you make madness sweet, leaving behind hollows for bodies and running tongues over the carcasses in time for the spring.Â
you wish you could hear your own thoughts, wish someone could read it to you like a bedtime story. you ache for endings to be sweet.Â














