Instruments: Tarot Deck, 2 Coins
Game Description
Solstalgia is a surrealist adventure as you travel through mirror dimensions looking for the origin of the "Old World" that you can destroy so you may flourish in the new one.
Game Content Warnings
These are content warnings that are from the game prompts and are present in all playthroughs.Playthrough Content Warnings
These are content warnings specific to this playthrough only.
Word Count: 1,365 Played: Nov 25, 2024
What seeps out of the Mirrors?
Small particles like snowflakes that buzz with electricity when you touch them.
The scent of mothballs and old perfume.
The feeling of a picnic ruined by finding ants in your food.
And in its presence your blood bleeds neon of any color with no rhyme or reason.
What do you bear from the Old World?
A scar that glows under black light and three bullets from a pistol that no longer works. They are starting to fester now and have begun moving of their own volition. Soon they will need to be crushed.
Why do you hate it?
It was the pulling of an old scab and the tearing of new flesh. It is your teeth biting into your teeth, crunching and breaking. It was the sense of shame and disgust after a moment of pleasure. I escaped and I will never return.
Why were you sent to shatter it?
It wants me back but I must never return. I don't belong in this world, but I do not care. I will not be brought back. I do not know how many others have escaped. I sometimes wonder if they are out there searching for the same thing I am. I have never seen them. I hope they are successful. I doubt they will be.
Heads
Mirrors upon mirrors upon mirrors twisting and winding down an endless maze, green with glass, green with grass, green with envy, green with frenzy. Long I stood there waiting, searching, eyeing what can not be seen, eyeing what should must be seen.
And then a crack in reason, and then a crack in delusion and then the cracks upon cracks as mirror hits mirror as becomes shards becomes mere glass. Its power has faded and carried through.
And I realize that no, it has not shattered. I have, and I clear the glass from my face and feel the skin beneath. New.
Tails, Heads
A man stands at an altar. A rope hangs from a beam. A crowd in silence waiting. And I, from above, see all.
He bows to the crowd who adores him, and steps up through the air like a stool. He slips the rope round his neck, still floating and the crowd gasps and applauds.
There will be no sacrifice today. But still I lose the rope and he falls, shattering down into the floor, breaking and splintering, turning world to mirror to glass and the shatter-pattern points to the next.
Heads, Heads
No gears, no pipes, no metal, but a factory all the same. Lines upon lines of workers shuffling, and bustling and moving. Unknowable parts moving and twisting and seeping.
The crack is easy to find. There is but one glowing part, conspicuous to the point where it feels like a trap. But still I shatter it, easily this time, and all the pieces, large and imposing fall together into a pile. No shards, no fragments, no mess. And in them a single small piece, completely round, beveled and smooth.
It feels like a flat marble in my hand as the light dances and reflects towards my destination. It wants to return home. It will lead me to where I can destroy it.
Heads, Tails
They move like they are people. They speak like they are people. They look like they are people. But their personhood has been rended from them and they are no longer us, and when they bleed it is the molten glass that falls from the skin into shards of the mirror.
It cascades down onto the floor, spilling across the tiles as they strike and I strike and in this brawl there is nothing to be heard but the shattering of the splinters as they fall one by one.
But they have a small victory tonight. The flat marble is taken from me, that guiding light had but for a brief moment, and when they have secured it all of them are gone. In an instant, in a blink, they simply do not exist.
This place then shatters too. And I continue.
Heads, Tails
High in a tall tower above the forest, above the ocean, above the frost and the flame and all the world itself the weavers weave their long glass spools out into the air.
The wind carries them down, wisp-like, hair-like, spider-like into the world. And as I fall I am caught in them, tangled and cut. Bleeding but alive.
Wire-glass surrounds me and I tug and pull and rip until I pull at the world and it begins to crumple in on itself. I pull and pull those glassen-wires until they shatter. And the world around them explodes. I am bleeding, but my way is clear.
Tails
There is nothing here but the mirror reflecting the darkness. I only know it is here because I see myself, bloodied and tired staring back at me.
And then "I" move. "I" smile, my body is healed and the world behind me is illuminated. "I" am surrounded by flowers, the sun, the breeze, the warmth of a world which I need.
And through that glass "I" reach out "my" hand through the mirror. An offer.
I slice that hand at the wrist and its glassen-blood falls into shards. The hand shatters and the world becomes dark and the pain and my own hand now glassen cracks and splinters to the floor. It shatters.
Heads
I am on a street, cobblestoned, wet, slick with grime and filth. The buildings around me have no doors, no windows, no faces. They reach higher than I can see into the darkness and clouds.
This is nothing more than a labyrinth, twisted in the semblance of humanity. I twist and wind my way through, following only the lampposts, lit by gas and bleeding from their necks until I realize that this is nothing but a circle.
There are no paths and there is but one light, one lamp, and one option.
I sever the head from the lamp and the blood douses the flame. All is dark and all begins to shatter.
Tails
Before me a throne, a skeleton, a rusty crown at its feet, and a rusted sword through its ribs.
It has been wired to the seat, like a teaching dummy, all floating bones attached, all fingers and teeth and mandible still where they ought be.
It taps its fingers at me, clicks its teeth, and points to its crown.
I crush it with my boot. The rust scratches and scrapes and whines, then, as I had expected, shatters.
But as does the floor, as does the world, and through it I fall, down and down and down, scraping and bumping through shattered glass, wounds reopening, flesh being ripped anew. And, for a moment, I imagine my own blood as glass, falling and turning into the shards.
But I will not go back. I have been made new. I must not go back.
Heads, Tails
There is so much and there is nothing and there is color and there is static and there is light and there is nothing and there is sound and there is nothing and I cannot… I cannot.. There is too much!
There is too much! Like looking through frosted glass. Like looking through a microscope. Like looking through finger-printed glasses. Like hearing underwater. Like swaying when drunk. The pain is there but I am so disillusioned that I cannot feel it.
And I am tired. I am tired. I am tired. I swing. I swing. I swing.
And finally it breaks. And I fall.
Face to Face.
Me and Me.
Break and Break again break and break.
Shatters what is left is what shatters.
New replaces what is old is what replaces new.
Insufficient are all endings are all insufficient.
Meetings again once again meetings.
The end is here is the end.
Next time I … will…. I next time