bondsofsuffering | Imeeji IC Contact;

Figured as much. What's the update?

Me and Nem talked to some mushroom demon lady.

...Huh. Where at?

We went out to one of them islands in the bay that no one uses, to try and keep stuff separate in case things went sideways.

[Serving up the rice as he talks]

Oooh, secret hideaway. Smart.

So what was the demon lady like?

She was like... picture one of them mushroom people from Mario brothers, but taller, and real creepy.

[Hands over a bowl]

[Nice.]

Thanks for the food!

[Time to dig in.]

What did she have to say?

Mo problem, dude.

She, uh. She talked a lot of riddles. But me and Nem remembered some of it verbatim, and we tracked down, like - I guess part of it was lines of the poem.

[Munching his rice, as well]

Were the riddles clues to find something?

I asked her about the angel.

About where he was.

...

Was the info any good?

S'why I wanna ask about the poem.

I asked where, and well - seems like it's talking about Eden. So I figured... maybe the garden up in heaven? But I don't know where to go from there.

Hmm...

Can you recite some of the lines for me?

I can do one better. I copied the whole thing down.

Nice! Lay it on me!

[Hands over his notebook. This is carefully copied down:]

Quattrocento by Margaret Atwood

The snake enters your dreams through paintings:
this one, of a formal garden
in which there are always three:

the thin man with the green-white skin
that marks him vegetarian
and the woman with a swayback and hard breasts
that look stuck on

and the snake, vertical and with a head
that’s face-coloured and haired like a woman’s.

Everyone looks unhappy,
even the few zoo animals, stippled with sun,
even the angel who’s like a slab
of flaming laundry, hovering
up there with his sword of fire,
unable as yet to strike.

There’s no love here.
Maybe it’s the boredom.

And that’s no apple but a heart
torn out of someone
in this myth gone suddenly Aztec.

This is the possibility of death
the snake is offering:
death upon death squeezed together,
a blood snowball.

To devour it is to fall out
of the still unending noon
to a hard ground with a straight horizon

and you are no longer the
idea of a body but a body,
you slide down into your body as into hot mud.

You feel the membranes of disease
close over your head, and history
occurs to you and space enfolds
you in its armies, in its nights, and you
must learn to see in darkness.

Here you can praise the light,
having so little of it:

it’s the death you carry in you
red and captured, that makes the world
shine for you
as it never did before.

This is how you learn prayer.

Love is choosing, the snake said.
The kingdom of god is within you
because you ate it.

[Eating as he reads, though he's careful not to spill.]

The garden of Eden is a good bet, if it really is indicating a location. Although...

"and the snake, vertical and with a head
that’s face-coloured and haired like a woman’s."

I wonder if that's the lily that handles the dead. Not only that, but people who found that garden in the heavens... Mm, some of us had those cases where people explored our hearts, right? And all of us were ones marked by flowers after going up to that piece of heaven.

I wonder if it could be connected.

[Reciting again:]

"And that’s no apple but a heart
torn out of someone" and-

"The kingdom of god is within you
because you ate it."

What, so - so start with the place where people got nabbed that one time?

That's what I'm thinking, anyway.

What were your ideas?

[Monch.]

I dunno.

The garden's about as far as I got.

It's probably a good starting place. We only have a limited area we have access to, after all.

What do you think?

It's worth checking out.

Yeah... yeah.

I figure, like. Start by exploring the garden real good, check for gates, eat an apple.

...Man, with all the crap going on lately, I never did get around to running that test. Want to drop by sIV after this and get it over with?

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