Please put me in contact with your wife. you are fine and all, but what I really want is your wife

- @HalimedeMF September 7 2025, replying to a happier version of her

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I’m flicking through my messages now, Lisa sent me a video of a weird croissant looking thing she says I should try that’s sold at a restaurant vaguely near where I was a few days ago, my mom asked me when I’m coming over since dad and me are on vacation anyway, and Aliyah sent me a picture of my sleeping face from a few minutes ago (guess she did check up on me), nothing too interesting, nothing that would explain where the golden circlet in my sachel came from. 

Doesn’t help that I can’t just go out and find her either, it’s all a mess right now, I thought the whole thing would be over after the feast I slept through but I guess they didn’t set up this whole festival just to pack it all up this early. Lots of people drinking and laughing and talking and flirting all around the place, no one I recognize of course.

God I’m really just not cut out for big parties like these, never really had the time for them either but it’s just… when we used to live together Aliyah or one of the other people living in the house would throw one every other week, and all that meant is needing to shrug through a couple dozen comments about my tits or whatever on the way to the dispenser and back whenever I have to leave our room.

I’m just sort of walking now I think, she hasn’t told me where she’s at yet, the car’s just fully out there in the open sun, and all of the little museums and merch booths are packed enough already that I’d just feel kind of awkward walking in there alone. The crowd’s thinning where I’m going, all the way to the back of the whole place to I guess look for her? Find a cool place somewhere quiet to sit down? It isn’t until I brush past another group that I finally catch another glimpse of it looming over me, its metal jaw and crystal eyes almost too big to really perceive as what it is from anywhere but this far out, and I realize that yeah, that’s where I’m heading. Another text to let her know where I’m at, and I’m off and a bit clearer than before.

When I get there the first thing I notice is that there are seats arranged around it of course, and then I look further down and I think about the little bricks that were laid down in a sort of circle outlining it, and how they’re impermanent enough to make me wonder what the plan is after all this is over. Fake or not it really doesn’t look like something they could just wheel into a crate and ship out of here, but I mean is the quarry just closed for good now? Even if the CEO’s an MS type now I kind of dou-wait do I know that woman?

Brown haired sleeveless turtlene-oh it’s the professor from before, not sure what she’s doing out here but I guess she might be wondering that too huh, looking up at this in all of its glory for the last time before whatever happens tomorrow. I figure that I should probably leave her alone and just head to the other side of this thing, but she of course breaks the silence first with.

“She’s beautiful isn’t she?”

She? I look up at the head again, struggling to look past my close proximity and the sheer size of any individual thing on it’s ‘face’ in relation to me and hum, I guess there’s something almost feminine about it, but maybe that’s just wishful thinking, it’s got an easy confidence to its expression that’s almost mocking me with its smug aura. “Oh you mean the statue, I uh, yeah I think so too.”

“We left it as it is you know? There wasn’t a hint of rust or tarnish on this thing when we found it, just dirt and a whole lot of rock to mine through, pain in the ass but it was all worth it… wasn’t it?” I’m honestly not sure if she was asking me that, she’s closer now but I still can’t really get a read on her. Feels kind of weird not to say anything though.

“It’s supposed to be the find of the century isn’t it? Just designing this alone’s probably going to get your name on an art history book somewhere,” I venture to say, only to be struck in place when she spun around to face me.

“Design? Design? Do you seriously think that we made any of this?”

“Uh, yeah? I mean I’m impressed but it can’t be real right? The implications of it existing alone woul-”

“Completely overturn our unearned sense of uniqueness within the universe? Put my name in the history books? Keep the hungry dogs at bay for good? Yes! Which is what we’re hoping fo-wait I know you, you’re that camerawoman aren’t you? The one with the whiny journalist lady!” She’s pointing a cigarette at me, waggling it at the general direction of my face.

“Aliyah isn’t whiny! She just had very legitimate concerns about all of this, I mean you’re with the MS movement, she says you people make shit up all the time for your art, she thinks it’s great!”

“For the last time I am not affiliated with the MS movement, they’re just weird hanger-ons the company made us work with! If I had known that just having them around would have caused this much trouble I’d have… well it wasn’t like I had much of a choice,” she looked more thoughtful than angry again.

“Well what is it really then?” I blurt out, snapping her back into exasperated alertness.

“I gave a whole presentation on this already, were you even paying attention? It’-”

I shake my head and cut her off, “I don’t care about any of that! I just want to know what you think all this means without the Visionary’s pageantry obscuring it, or the pressing need to have something confident and official feeling you can retreat to stifling you.”

She takes in a deep breath of something I assume is nicotine, and sighs it out probably a bit too close to my face, “I don’t know, I just do not know. The temple complex thing, it’s a bit of a historical in joke okay? Apparently archeologists used to say that such and such is a ritual object or was used for ritual purposes if there’s no context or anything that could tell us what it is and this thing is just.” 

She pauses for breath again but cuts me off before I can speak, “It’s massive, the GPR cuts off way before whatever this thing does, if the scans are accurate okay? Way before this thing ends. And I don’t, whatever this is, the other artifacts we dug up alongside it they’re the same age and make but not in the same layer somehow, like it was all intentionally buried here and the ground around it petrified, and believe me, if the MS movement had something that could do all that to something as massive as this thing is, I doubt we’d be here talking about it.”

Well that’s certainly something, “Huh that’s… wow, okay”

“Yeah it’s just, fuck you know? Biggest discovery of our lives and it’s just going to sit there until someone figures out how to take it apart from scrap. You know I tried to convince them to keep this place closed and just keep digging but there’s just no money in it you know? Just digging down for years and years with no end in sight,” she sighs, “Gods, maybe they’ll dig up some of its neck one of these days, best I can hope for really.”

“Sorry…” is about all I can manage to say.

“What are you apologizing for? I mean you’re immortalizing my work aren’t you? You and that journalist friend of yours, it’s not much but it’s something,” she’s smiling a little at me, which just makes me feel worse to be honest.

“Um, she was livestreaming that for her Concord channel actually, we’re not real journalists…”

She takes in another deep puff of her cigarette, and lets out a simple, and tired sounding “Fuck.”

We eventually remember to swap names and phone numbers.

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I’m alone again when it happens. Just sitting there rolling the circlet around in my hands when I hear loud screaming from the tents and people below me and look up and behold the sky is falling. And I’m stuck in place for a bit as I just try to wrap my head around what I’m actually seeing and whether the heat made me pass out again because it’s dreamlike almost? 

It has horns! A sort of face that looks mad almost on an identifiable head separated from a cleanly differentiated torso with limbs! It’s so much like a person that I just can’t believe that it’s real, and painted mostly in a vivid shade of red, and made wholly out of what is probably metal, and also plummeting down from the heavens right towards where we all are, and also probably large enough to crush my entire body with their feet and not even notice my existence. 

But then it yanks its head back and skims and hops on the air like it’s a solid bouncy surface before floating along and splitting into three smaller flying vehicles of some sort and I’m yanked out of my daze if only to look around the quarry with wild eyes in search of something, anything that could obscure a projector big and overpowering enough to produce what is obviously a preplanned lights show, presenting some sort of vehicle of the future or an imagined counterpart of the forever buried statue.

I laugh! I stand up and cheer and put the golden circlet on my head and get ready to find Aliyah and party! And I look up and follow one along and see something twice my height fall towards the distant edge of the quarry where we entered and with a loud TENGAU! I am sent sprawling down to the ground deafened and bruised and shuddering when the ground shakes and the people scream and the air reaches out to punch me square in the back.

I am left sprawling out onto the hard ground with my face down and I think ‘Oh God is this really happening? Are any of us going to make it out of here’ and more to the point ‘AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA’ as soon as the pain rushes back into my system. I try to push myself back onto my feet, but my arms vaguely buckle under my own weight and I just know that I'm completely screwed. I'm too exposed, too vulnerable, and too far away from anyone who could save me.

I was just about ready to give up then and there, just sink down into the bloody mud as the sound of distant screaming and explosions rocks me to sleep, but for some reason my arms keeps moving, pulling me forward bit by bit towards the giant metal head, and the circlet my half awake mind reasoned was born from dream. It felt like it was judging me somehow, looking on with the lightless crystal of its eyes at every gasp, every time I fade in and out of conciousness, every person I could hear driven further and further away from me by unseen horrors. Until I could feel my fingers wrap around the warm metal once more, and with a pained grunt I slide it onto my head and twist it around to face what I instinctively knew was the right way.

For a second it felt like the head was craning down to face me and before I could say or do anything to respond I felt somethings long and sharp pierce through my skull before a great yellow light from above washed over where I was to take me to where I soon will be.