#ekemon

Class: Warlock

Race: Tiefling

Gender: Male

Sexuality: bi

Alignment: Chaotic Neutral

Deity: Prince of frost

Mod Mom Friend, back with some more writing! We’re about a quarter of the way through! Today, the prompt was, “I can hear you crying, you know. At night. When you think no one is listening.” Source is this post by @serving-inspiration! And of course I borrowed Mod Snooth Snalking Snatan’s boy because we need more than one person for this prompt! Feel free to request anything, and I absolutely love feedback! Hope you enjoy!

“Hey Wix? Can I ask you a question?”

The gnome heard Ekemon’s voice, and some part of her immediately wanted to turn over and have a conversation. This lack of human contact, meaningful human contact, was grating on her; she’d been so incredibly used to living with others and telling them everything. And now that she’d shut herself off to protect them from her demon? Sure, she was traveling with three other people, but God, she’d never felt so alone. A huge part of her wanted to just sit next to him, just like she used to with her little brother, and spill her guts.

But she shoved that part of her down hard.

“Nope,” she responded coolly, her voice void of emotion.

“How can I get you to talk to me?” he asked.

“Can’t,” Wix replied, biting her lip to stop more words. There was a pause, and Wix was about to look and see if Ekemon had left, turned away, decided to do something else…but instead, he replied.

“You’re not a robot. You need someone. You’re not meant to be alone.” Wix took a deep, shaky breath, begging herself not to break at what she knew was the truth.

“And why do you say that?” she asked, not really wanting to know the answer but feeling like she had so say something. Her voice was still cool, detached, but her heart hurt, and she swore she could hear her demon laughing at her.

“I can hear you crying, you know. At night. When you think no one is listening.” Wix’s head snapped up. She always made sure everyone was asleep. Always. And she always wandered away. But maybe Ekemon was just bluffing, maybe he just was trying to get a rise out of her.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Thankfully, she’d started this conversation turned away from Ekemon, so he wouldn’t see the hot tears rolling down her cheeks. She wanted to tell him everything. She wanted to rip off her shirt and show him the scars that the men left her, tell him that this was why the demon was there. She wanted to tell him she never slept because she was afraid of what she might do when she wasn’t on her guard. And she wanted to tell him that she wanted, with all of herself, to just have a friend. The other things…they’d be bearable if she had someone around to help her through. But she hid the shuddering breaths, hid the tears.

“Wix, I want to help you,” he said, his voice soft. Gods, this absolute child was too pure, too naive. Helping people got you almost nowhere, Wix knew. Too often, other urchins didn’t show any gratitude for being helped out. You didn’t do selfless shit. It was stupid. Setting yourself on fire to keep other people warm was the dumbest thing anyone could do. And here’s this tiefling bard, just sitting here and wanting to help the broken little gnome next to him.

Despite herself, the tears came faster. So few people actually wanted to help, and sure it was naive, but it was just…it was a nice gesture. But he couldn’t know that. And she wasn’t allowed to feel that. When she let someone into her heart, she let the demon have stock in them too, and that absolutely couldn’t happen. “That’s stupid,” she spat back. “Won’t do you any good.”

“It’s not about doing me good. And it’d make you happy. I don’t think I’ve seen you smile since we met. Not once. Everyone smiles.”

“Not me.” God, it had been nice to have a reason to smile. Wix missed Erlin like crazy, her dumb baby brother who she loved more than anything else. She knew he was okay–she’d feel something if he wasn’t, and he was smart–but he’d been a big source of light in her life. He always knew how to make her smile, even when she was at her worst. But that was gone now. She’d been dumb and gotten herself caught…and then she’d been even dumber and called on this demon. Stupid things happened, and the days of smiling were over. “You don’t have to smile to survive.”

“Sure, you’re surviving. But you aren’t living,” Ekemon told her. “Just let me be your friend, okay? We’re more alike than you think.” The thought of someone being like her, of someone going through what she’d gone through, struck fear into Wix’s heart. She didn’t want that. She didn’t want it for anyone. No one should go through the shit she went through. And Ekemon didn’t know what the hell he was talking about. He just didn’t know.

“You aren’t like me. And if you have any sense of self preservation, you’ll never be.” Wix got up, glared at him. And then she walked away, so she’d have some space to cry. Tentatively, she climbed a tree, knowing that it’d be harder to see her, and curled up in on herself. She tucked her knees into her too-large shirt, and she wept silently into the fabric, taking extra care that Ekemon wouldn’t be able to hear this time.

You realize that if you embraced me, you wouldn’t feel like this, Wix heard in her demon’s trademark, gravelly voice. Rage shot through her, and Wix slammed her head against the tree, wincing and feeling dizzy.

“Get out of my head, you bastard!” she hissed.

Just kill them all, and I’ll make sure you don’t feel any pain. It’ll be easier that way.

“Shut up. Shut up.” Her voice shook as she chanted it like a mantra, curled up in the boughs of the tree. And that was where she slept, hoping that anything that she might do in the night would be mitigated by her actually having to get out of the tree. She’d never actually done anything in her sleep, but there was a first time for everything and she absolutely would not kill any of these people.

Because despite her best efforts, they’d managed to worm their way into her heart. And she wouldn’t let any harm come to them. She’d rather fall to her death trying to get out of a tree in the middle of the night than take that risk. She loved these people more than she loved herself.

Hi all, this is the part that this post referred to. I hope you all enjoy us being meme sluts!

Mod Mom Friend

Part One

As the party trekked through the forest, they noticed a distinct change in the environment. The trees were beginning to look wizened and dead, the branches appearing to reach out toward the adventurers with burnt, decaying hands. Eventually, a few miles away from the entrance, the branches became so dense that progress was impossible. They distinctly wove together in what almost looked like a wall. Experimentally, Brian swung his greatsword into the branches, but it bounced off, almost like the branches were repelling it. “Anyone have fire spells?”