OOM: Max Caulfield

[little_pieces_of_time]

(OOM: It is common for those who have glimpsed something beautiful to express regret at not having been able to photograph it. So successful has been the camera’s role in beautifying the world that photographs, rather than the world, have become the standard of the beautiful. House-proud hosts may well pull out photographs of the place to show visitors how really splendid it is. We learn to see ourselves photographically: to regard oneself as attractive is, precisely, to judge that one would look good in a photograph. Photographs create the beautiful and — over generations of picture taking — use it up.

-Susan Sontag, On Photography)

First Entrance

[lonesome_moonflower]

Wormwood barrels through the door of the Sterling Trough Deli and yanks it shut behind them, cutting off a chorus of screeching and flapping noises from outside. They lean heavily against the door for a long moment, collecting themself. Maybe if they just stay in here long enough, the city guards will take out the bats...? They have a machete in one hand that's certainly capable of slicing up one of the leathery monsters, but not without getting close enough for it to return the favour with its claws.

Eventually the plant-person looks up, and they see that while they've stepped into some kind of eatery it's not the cozy takeaway run by Ms. Melbourne and the porcine proprietor in question is nowhere to be found. In fact there's no one behind the counter at all.

This place looks a little bit familiar. Wormwood had thought it was a dream, how they walked into a Swinesbury shop and found a vast interior filled with creatures their own shape and size but made of flesh and blood like the pigs. (One of those creatures shouted in their face and thrust a weird box into their hands, but dreams are like that sometimes.) For that matter, maybe it was a dream then, but the kind of dream that comes true later. In any case, they're here now, and they might even be able to buy something to eat while they wait out the bats.