Another day of feeling weak from hunger, feeling sick from anxiety, struggling to eat, no energy; another sleepless night racked with misery -- and Cam was officially fed up. I can't do this anymore. I need help. It was a declaration they'd made before in their life -- for the first time as a young teenager -- but this time it didn't mean another round of doctors and pills. This time it was a little more drastic.
Still, they knew they couldn't go on like this. They didn't seem to have a lot of other options. They'd been hemming and hawing for seasons, while their mental and physical health declined, and they couldn't take it anymore. It was time to commit -- before it was too late.
So early in the morning Cam crept out of the inn where they stayed and headed to the Temple. They knelt before the shrine, uncertain of the procedure for contacting a god -- last time Nate had helped them, for all the good that had done, but they'd woken up this morning unwilling to wait even as long as it would take to contact them. Now that they'd properly made their decision, they needed to follow through before they lost their nerve.
The people they lived with had long ago advised Cam that if you wanted to contact a god, you needed an offering. Cam didn't know if that applied to the Voice as well as the Old Gods -- it occurred to them in a macabre fashion that their offering today was their body -- but better safe than sorry, so they'd been working on a pencil drawing to offer, a landscape of the Hollowed Grounds. It wasn't quite finished, but it looked good enough, Cam hoped. They laid it on the altar and cleared their throat.
"Hello, um, Voice? I'd like to -- I need to Ascend." They swallowed, their mouth suddenly dry. "Nate said that it would help me with my, um, brain chemistry and stuff."
Still, they knew they couldn't go on like this. They didn't seem to have a lot of other options. They'd been hemming and hawing for seasons, while their mental and physical health declined, and they couldn't take it anymore. It was time to commit -- before it was too late.
So early in the morning Cam crept out of the inn where they stayed and headed to the Temple. They knelt before the shrine, uncertain of the procedure for contacting a god -- last time Nate had helped them, for all the good that had done, but they'd woken up this morning unwilling to wait even as long as it would take to contact them. Now that they'd properly made their decision, they needed to follow through before they lost their nerve.
The people they lived with had long ago advised Cam that if you wanted to contact a god, you needed an offering. Cam didn't know if that applied to the Voice as well as the Old Gods -- it occurred to them in a macabre fashion that their offering today was their body -- but better safe than sorry, so they'd been working on a pencil drawing to offer, a landscape of the Hollowed Grounds. It wasn't quite finished, but it looked good enough, Cam hoped. They laid it on the altar and cleared their throat.
"Hello, um, Voice? I'd like to -- I need to Ascend." They swallowed, their mouth suddenly dry. "Nate said that it would help me with my, um, brain chemistry and stuff."
cameron ?
"Cameras" by Ennev is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
