bondsofsuffering | Imeeji IC Contact;

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?

What test?

I snagged a fruit from the fake garden they put us in before they made us burn flowers that were attached to everyone. Even after all this time, it hasn't rotted at all.

Same goes for the apple I took from the real heaven. I was kind of hoping to test and see if there's any notable differences between them if you do stuff like cut them open, or taste them.

But considering one's a fake from hell, I was hoping to get someone else in case it goes badly... it's hard to take notes if you're actively being poisoned.

...you think it's poisonous?

I don't necessarily expect it to be, but I also wouldn't put it past demon approximations of heaven fruit to have weird effects. Having one person describing the situation while someone else acts as a control and note-taker is just the best way to make sure the fake doesn't go to waste when we can't easily procure more.

I mean... I don't mind helping out. But if you get like for-real sick, I ain't just gonna take notes, I'm gonna get you help, too.

Please do, I'd prefer not to die to fake demon fruit.

For real, dude, bad end.

Don't worry, though, I got you covered.

I can buy an antidote kit just in case.

[Finishing his rice off for now though!]

They make those?

Yeah. We can't heal poison, after all.

Huh. Didn't know they had em in the point shop.

You can get all kinds of kits now. You could even get one for poisoning people, which is why an antidote kit is necessary in the first place.

Poison kit, huh? Yikes.

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