the_isle | Your Friends Have Turned To Stone

As usual, the horrible thing happened around midnight. There was a terrible noise like stone scraping on stone and the whole school shook briefly and then they appeared. Crudely hewn stone statues that still somehow managed to evoke the memory of who they were meant to represent to those who knew them.

The statues were of enemies, foes, rivals, anyone that one of the Misery-called might never want to see again. The statues look like rough hewn stone, but any attempts to deal with them the way one might a stone statue would fail. Even moving them would prove impossible, even with team work.

There is one blocking the doorway to every room used as a bedroom currently. A person could get in and out past them if they are small enough, nimble enough, or just don't mind losing a chunk of skin to the rough stone as they scrape past. Those ones would especially be targeted at whoever sleeps there.

But the rest of them will scatter the halls, making them hard to transverse. The majority of them were blocking what little light sources existed in the halls, making the passageways darker than usual. Much darker. Darker enough that it almost seems like a prime place for jump scares...

Blocking the doorway out of the school were three such statues. One was of a young man with short hair. One was of a young woman in a ballgown with a skirt that alone took up most of the doorway. And one was of a barefoot girl with impossibly long hair that snaked down the hallway, making a tripping hazard all the way between the door and the room Mother Gothel had claimed.

Getting in and out of the school until at least one of the statues was removed was going to be nearly impossible.

The statues in general couldn't be moved or broken in any conventional way, however. But some trial and error... or just happenstance might well provide the answer. If the Misery-called who knew the person the statue represented talked about the person to someone else in front of the statue... That would work. Though what they said would matter.

If they managed to dredge up something to say, some tale or anecdote or comment that was actually positive... the statue would vanish in a haze of black and silver glitter that would spread everywhere in easy reach and defy all attempts to clean it.

However, if the story or comments are negative, or give away some secret that the person the statue is of would not want shared the statue will explode in a shower of stone, one stone of which would hit the Misery-called hard enough to hurt but not to break skin. However where the stone struck the Misery-called would bear a new scar. A small pile of stone would remain where the statue had been, also resting all attempts to move or remove it, causing anyone walking past to have to carefully step over it so as to not trip. Which is not ideal if one is carrying something, or for example, running away from a crazed animatronic.

When The Mess Fades - A week later.

A week after they appeared any remaining statues would just vanish with another loud and horrifying noise. As would all the scars, all the rubble piles, and all the glitter. In their place where each statue had been would be a small bunch of grapes covered in rock dust. They are extraordinarily sour. In theory edible once the dust is washed off. In practice only the desperate would want to eat them. Whoever does eat them will be plagued by nightmares about whoever the statue had been of, even if they didn't know the person themselves. The nightmares will only happen for one night after eating the grapes, but if someone stretches out the grapes to eat a few every night for a week... that is a week of bad dreams. And also, again, they are sour. The sourest candy in the world isn't half as sour as these grapes.

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"I'm not human," they said in a raspy sob. "I'm not. I don't wanna be."

"You are what you choose to be," he said gently. "The Dreemurs accepted you as you are. As do I. And Sun. And Chell. They did not ask you to grow fur, or longer ears, or branches, or to make parts of yourself glow in order to have a place with them, and neither shall we. You are Chara, and that is enough. Whatever you look like, you will always have a place at my side, and I at yours."

"Then why does that stupid old rock hafta look human?" They asked in a broken sob.

"Because it is, as you said, a 'stupid old rock'," he said. "Stone is a thing very resistant to change. You are a living child and will grow and change over time, but even years from now, a stone will likely remain exactly as it is. Assuming, of course, it doesn't vanish in a seven-night like most of the strange occurrences here."

"I want it to vanish now... before anyone else sees it."

"I don't think that anyone who has seen you would find it a great revelation," he said. "But perhaps we could put it behind something at least." With the larger statues it would likely be impossible to hide them, but they might be able to manage it with one Chara's size.

"Tis almost a shame though. I've never had any great affinity with sculpture, but I wouldn't mind having one of you. Or perhaps Sun or Chell, though perhaps not one large enough to block the doorway. Or perhaps a painting. It's been some time since I had any place to display any sort of artwork that I've had little time to think about it." Maybe a slight shift in topic to something a bit lighter would ease Chara out of their distress?

"Not with me looking like that," Chara said, shaking their head wildly.

"I've actually become rather fond of seeing your face," he said gently. "Though less so when tis streaked with tears. So for your sake, if naught else I will try to find a way to hide it."

"That's not my face! I don't want it to be!"

"I wasn't speaking of the statue just then, child," he said gently, carefully shifting his hold so that he could bring a hand up to gently wipe away the tears on on of Chara's cheeks. "I was speaking of you. To wake each day and find you well and whole, sleeping peacefully or already awake and waiting to greet me, brings a warmth to my heart that I had long forgotten. I could never hate what you look like, even if you were the ugliest creature in the world."

"But I understand that the statue distresses you. So for your sake, I will try to find a way to hide it. Will that suffice for now?"

Chara hesitated then nodded and sniffed. "Okay. I love you," they said softly.

Still strange to hear it stated so directly, with the sincerity that only a child could have. Why couldn't he manage to speak the words himself, instead of finding rambling, poetic euphemisms to say it without saying it? Why did they always seem to catch in his throat, maddeningly close to being uttered yet impossibly far?

'Because you're a coward and a fool,' his mind said. 'A pathetic, broken man rightly left to lie among the other broken things on this Isle.'

But for the first time in many a year, he found himself able to answer it. 'Perhaps so. But if I'm a fool, I'm a fool who is loved by Chara. Called brother by them and Chell. Called hero by them and Sun. I may not deserve their kindness, but neither will I betray it.'

Outwardly this took the form of a small, and faintly shaky smile. "...You are a truly remarkable child," he said softly, brushing a lock of hair back from Chara's face. A deep breath, then he set Chara gently down on his own desk-come-bed.

"Best to get to it then, I suppose," he said. "Sooner begun, sooner done, as they say." He walked over to the small statue and tried to pick it up so that it could be moved to a more convenient corner. 'Tried' being the operative word; the statue didn't budge. He frowned. "Odd... It shouldn't be that heavy." He tried again, this time simply trying to slide the statue along the floor. Still it wouldn't move.

He stepped back a moment, frowning at all three statues. Not really trusting himself not to try to futilely strangle the one in the middle, he turned his attention to the statue of he unknown young man; being significantly taller, it was easier for him to get leverage. He tried both pushing and pulling the statue from a few different angles, putting much of his strength and body weight behind the effort, without any results. Crouching down, he examined the statues' feet; they didn't seem to be bolted to the floor.

"It seems," he said, getting up and stepping back slightly to frown at them further, "that these statues cannot be moved by force. The question left to us, then, is what will move them?"

Edited Date: 2025-05-26 06:49 pm (UTC)

"You can figure it out!" Chara said, still hiding under the blanket. "I believe in you! You just gotta stay determined." Like Mr. Dad Guy always said.

"Oh I'm quite determined to see these statuses cleared out of the way," he said. "I'm also open to suggestions, if you're any ideas on that front."

Chara pulled the blanket further up over their head. "Do we have a knife? We can lash and stab it..."

Technically he did, but... "No," Foulques said. "And even if that weren't the case, using a knife on stone is far more likely to damage the blade than it is the stone. Besides, we've established that force isn't like to work. We need to use our minds, not our muscles, to solve this problem."

"But I don't have a good mind..." Chara mumbled.

He could offer simple reassurance, but it might well ring hollow. Perhaps a less direct approach? "Is that so?", he said, moving to sit on the desk-come-bed next to their bundled form. "I know the story of another who was told that he didn't have a good mind. Would you like to hear it?"

Chara carefully lowered the blanket just enough to look at him. "Okay..."

He cleared his throat slightly and began. "Once, in a little farming village, there lived a man named Tothor," he began. "Though Tothor was hard-working and generally well thought of, he was regarded as a simple man with a simple mind. A man with no great ambition or ability beyond working his farm."

"Now, every harvest season, the villagers dreaded the inevitable plague of ravenous forest rats. Though they stood guard night and day, they could not keep the nimble vermin from their crops. When eventually it was hard-working Tothor's turn to keep watch, however, he did the unthinkable; he removed the fences from around his own well-tended field of beans, and even put out pails of fresh water."

"When the other villagers saw his ravaged field in the morning, they mocked him for his fool-headed actions, but their derisive laughter lasted only until the rats appeared. Sluggish and drowsey from their feast of beans, the bewhiskered pests were easily caught. Thus was the diligent Tothor praised for his sacrifice on behalf of the village and later raised up as a saint blessed of the goddess Nophica."

"Though mocked for his supposed lack of intelligence, Tother proved to be far cleverer than any had expected," he said. "And his solution- and the willingness to see it through- proved to be just what was required. Which goes to show that, as my mother was fond of saying, a sharp mind can often solve far more problems than a sharp blade. And unlike a blade, a mind only gets sharper the more it's used."

"I don't get it. Why did they get sleepy from eating beans? Doesn't that just make them stinky and noisy? And if they were sleepy, why'd they come out??"

He chuckled. "Yes, I imagine they were likely rather stinky as well," he said. "But they were sleepy because they'd just eaten such a large meal; they were intending to return to their dens where they could sleep, as they'd always done after pilfering from the villagers, but weighed down by their meal they were easily caught."

"Why didn't he just poison the water? Then they wouldn't have gotten to his plants at all."

"Poison, once introduced to an environment is very difficult to get rid of," he said. "If one of those pails had spiled it could have gotten into the crops or the village's water supply and harmed everyone. And the rats may well have avoided the water after the first few fell, or detected the scent of the poison and not drunk it at all. Thus was Tothor praised not only for his cleverness, but for his sacrifice for the greater good. He did what was right, even at great cost to himself."

"But the crops died anyway so he shoulda just used the poison. Besides, if a few died and it scared away the rest, then they all coulda put out poison and never had rats again."