jesterlies | INBOX

[After the Barren had been ravaged, Silent Salt had been borne from grief immeasurable. Here and now, though, the Salt of Solidarity, long believed dead and dormant, feels a similar blade slip into his dough. Once, the Fount had been his friend. Time and arrogance had separated the two.

From Shadow Milk's corruption to the maiming he inflicts in the here and now, Silent Salt knows it to be his fault. Perhaps not the minute actions, the individual decisions, but it was by his absence, his abandonment of his own virtue, that Shadow Milk had been lost. And the rest naturally followed after.]

Indeed. By my hand was the spell cast, imprisoning you all as a result of my initial folly.

[Once more he advances, without a weapon. He submits himself to the blade of the executioner, the rack of the torturer, to the strings of fate.]

Whatever wrath you choose to invoke, do it and be done with it.

[Better to not drag it out, to not make others suffer overlong for their quarrel.]

[Like a wounded animal, the laughing becomes a howl of agony, of rage and sorrow, and he screams at Salt not unlike the way he did at Pure Vanilla back at his Spire. There is something unbelievably raw about his voice now.]

HOW DARE YOU MAKE DEMANDS OF ME AFTER WHAT YOU JUST SAID!

[But he gets his wish, the shadows surge forward, and if Salt does not fight it, he will feel himself be yanked back, over the table he was once sitting at. Shadow Milk is shortly upon him. His jam covered hands wrapping around his throat.]

I spent eons in that tower begging for reprieve from the torment of my divine mission! Abandoned by the creators! Rejected by Cookiekind for doing my sole purpose, I had nothing! Nothing but silence!

[He squeezes his grip and he is delighted for a moment, at the thought of choking him until he stopped breathing, until his treacherous lips spoke no more. Something mad and deranged bubbles up in his chest and he laughs again, but this time something hot runs down the side of his face.]

[The flash of Pure Vanilla with Shadow Milk's hands wrapped around his throat flashes into his mind, and like he'd been burned, Shadow milk screams and recoils away from him. Slams his back into the opposite wall as if he could move through it to escape from him. He screams and wails as milkcrown begin to bloom at his feet.]

Edited 2025-12-10 09:35 (UTC)

[Comparatively small though Shadow Milk is, between the magic he wields and the force of his attack, Silent Salt collides with the table. He does not fight the hands, reminding himself of his two-fold mission. Let the other cookie believe him to be the sole perpetrator of his sealing.

And let this be Silent Salt's penance for it all. For failing his kin. For abandoning those that he served, and the cookies that served with him. For condemning Elder Faerie to centuries of deceit, and for sealing them all for his sin.

But something shifts, something he does not understand. He watches as Shadow Milk shrinks away, as flowers bloom (familiar indeed), and as the other cookie writhes.

He knows not what to do. For as much as he blames himself for Shadow Milk's fall, it is still difficult to offer comfort. Lashing out at Silent Salt would have been one thing, but innocents had been crumbled on that quest. It is a difficult thought to reconcile.

In the end, he continues to offer truth. He rises from the table, fingers of one hand massaging at a spot that may well bruise. His steps feel more unsteady than ever, but he approaches Shadow Milk all the same.]

Indeed, you were alone. [There is a rasp now to Silent Salt's throat, courtesy of the pressure applied.] You were alone because Solidarity was the first to fall.

[Whether it is directly in front of Shadow Milk or held at bay, eventually, Silent Salt comes to a kneel. He bows his head, a silent admission through submission, even if he cannot yet stomach an apology.]

[And Shadow Milk all but coils in on himself, fighting off that horrid pounding in his chest, that way his throat closes up and the agony threatens to strangle him right there. He has to fight the urge to get sick.]

[Had this been many months ago, Shadow Milk might have gladly killed the other cookie, reveled in his jam on his hands. Roared with laughter as the curtain fell on this treacherous cookie. But that is not the case tonight, and instead Shadow Milk is left trembling with the knowledge he came close to doing what he had once almost done to Vanilla when he hadn't been in full control of his emotions.]

[No. He won't become a monster again, and he won't let Salt of all cookies be the one to bait him into that. To be what tempts him to throw out the work he's done in becoming something Vanilla could be proud of. That Lily could be proud of.]

[He bites down the urge to do it again as Salt comes before him. He laughs again, something hoarse and quiet. He can't even be happy that Salt's admitted to the thing he spent thousands of years being bitter about. It feels so unsatisfying, boring, flat, and he can't even enjoy his downfall anymore. What had it all been for in the end?]

[It sobers him considerably, as the jam continues streaming down his face, as the tears stain his skin.]

I won't give you what you want. You'll get no satisfaction from my retribution and I won't let you turn me back into what I used to be.

[The monster who killed without regard.]

Get out. I don't want to look at you anymore.

[It is a curious thing, what Shadow Milk says to him. Perhaps some part of him does want that. It's largely because he only seeks to absorb whatever wrath churns within the other cookie, to spare his co-conspirator from any blame. But then, he cannot deny that there is another, smaller part, that simply longs for that release.

Regardless, he is mildly surprised when it does not come. It would be Shadow Milk's right, and yet he pulls the punch all the same. Instead, as Silent Salt looks up, he stares upon a face that is the amalgamation of his failure. Torn and tear-stained, abandoned by solidarity in antiquity.

The regret fills him almost instantly. He rises as requested, but does not turn immediately.]

I did not intend to make you into a monster. [Here and now? Or back then. It's hard to say.] I only wished you to enact whatever justice you felt proper.

[Such is his way, thinking in terms of justice and what is right. He knows he has committed a grievous crime, after all.

But he does not press the matter. Shadow Milk has cast him out, and so he turns away. Some part of him feels guilty for leaving him alone in this state. It's the exact reason why he opens his soul jam, sealed off from Lily to prevent her from having to suffer through any of what Shadow Milk dished out, and sends a brief burst through it.

Tend to Shadow Milk.]

On the contrary-

[Shadow Milk leans against the wall, sliding down trying to catch his breath, trying to work through the grief of, sure, its fucked up and upsetting to find out Salt had been their warden all along, that the fool had twice damned them to isolation and misery.]

[But more than that, he has simply confirmed that the Witches had never returned. Everything he’d done, the horrors he’d wrought, the jam he spilled, it had been for nothing.]

[he laughs, but it is a bitter thing.]

I can think of no greater justice, than to force you to live with your crimes just as I have to. Death is a mercy neither of us deserve.

INBOX

CW: SELF HARM AND GENERAL MADNESS HERE (just delicately keepin' that)

cw: attempted strangulation

cw: attempted strangulation

cw: implied panic attack,

cw: mild ideation

cw: mild ideation