Madison Rye Progress

Mark me for your gentle guesses,
touch my soul in perfect places.
Take my hand and lead me thither;
draw me after, guide my footsteps.
Tell me all your secret titles,
layer meaning all in sevens.
Let me go and set me dancing
'til the moon has risen lately.

All I saw were grassy fields,
dandelions, lazy bumblers.
Empty, flower ridden fields,
and an out of place delusion.
Barstools, Bar and bottles
sprouting dumbly from the grasses.
Running was my only option,
staying offered no distraction.
Language poured from me unbidden,
words that stained my clothing
sickly blacks and iridescent.

Why yes I would like to report a series of anomalous objects that...
Well...
They...
Well they make folks very happy actually.
I mean yes but they are also anomalous...
I...
You know what, never mind....

Hhhhhh

Eventually I'm going to do a more full review of how I feel about this series, but I just finished @Makyo's Post-Self cycle and to say it affected us deeply is the underselling of the century and we're getting it in early. This remapped our brain. From now on, we will refer to ourselves as a Clade instead of a plural system. It brought the raccoon back in from the cold.

Masterfully written, to say the least. Brilliant sci-fi. Deeply philosophical and yet incredibly empathetic. Quite furry.

But the most significant development, which we are still processing, is that these stories affected us so goddamn deeply, we have an Entirely New Headmate. to put it in post-self terms, all of us in the system/clade forked, merged downward, and from the merges a gestalt coalesced, forming an entirely new being—

—and fittingly, She's a skunk.

Meet the newest member of the CERES Clade. Yes I'm calling our system a clade now. No I won't stop. Suck it.

This is the first thing we've drawn in about 3 years, and I was never a good artist, but at the same time I am genuinely impressed how well things translated from our mind to our hand to the page. We have always struggled with that, and it's why I'm a writer, not a drawer. It's not great but it sure as hell is good enough to share.

Text from the picture, since I know my handwriting is terrible:

SERAS FRAME-GESTALT

• Horizon Collective Junkie (note not in image: reference to LancerRPG and NHPs)
• Post-Self Dispersionista
• Bubbly
• Scarred (left) eye "result of migraines"
• A weird gestalt of the CERES clade/system, hence the name
• she/her, for now
• tank tops, cargo pants, flight jacket, "Pilot Chic"
• Loves the Sky and the Ocean

Details that aren't in the drawing:

• always seen with blonde, scraggly hair, but there's black at the roots, so you know she bleaches or dyes it
• her fur is a deep dark green, with the stripes still in white.
• her good eye is brown, her bad eye almost completely clouded, claims she can still see out of it but it's sensitive to light, hence the sunglasses
• she has a bright orange flight jacket, and the sleeves and back are covered in patches
• she's intended to (besides being a skunk and the scarred eye) resemble our irl physical appearance as closely as possible. Uncontrollable hair, a bit heavyset, longer torso than legs, somewhere around 5'10" to 5'11"
• in some ways, she exists as an inversion of us. Orange and blue are her favorite colors, very fond of yellow, hyphenated her name because she knows I can't stand that.
• there's limits, both in that she is fundamentally a summation and distillation of us, and also she thinks even she can't stomach ranch or peanut butter.
• didn't give herself the capacity to spray people, but absolutely will do handstands and hiss at you if you piss her off enough
• still figuring herself out. Things may add to this
• 🧡🦨🛩

Look at this friend shaped skunk!

they

(art @cupsofjade)

Lizardfriend~