Song for the Day: People by Tree

So I've been trying to make time to introduce this one for MONTHS. I want to do an introduction but honestly the best way to just introduce you to this book is to give you the first chapter.

So here you go.

He had painted the storybooks on his walls, and the number of attempts it had taken was so high that his art had taken on a kind of three-dimensionality, seeming to swell and burst against the confines of its canvas. Short pink daubs ceased being the imitation of human skin and became almost soft to the touch, and the layered eyes were so intense in their sideways gaze that it was hard not to follow their gaze to the proceeding paintings. The other textures, be they hair, water, or feathers, were similarly rendered. However, what was most striking was not how he painted being, but the absence of it, and the wall itself was ripped asunder where the gray holes stood in the six bodies beneath the upwards facing human at the center of Laslow's first mural.

Santiago stood by the open chest of a demon, looking up at his life-sized forebear, who had his clawed hands close to the gaping hole. Santiago ran his hand close to his own chest and his face twitched, his sharp brow crunching where it began to narrow into the almost imperceptibly slight nose ridge of demons. "That can't be true."

"That's the way they've always told it," Laslow said, the usual note of chipper confusion in his voice, as if he was unsure if what he was saying was true, but was earnestly open to correction. "If you have any way to prove it's more true than the demon version, I'd be happy to hear it."

Santiago leered at Laslow as if he'd said something substantially ruder that he had made in actuality, and the human felt, not for the first time, mildly sheepish.

"Of course," followed Laslow, unreasonably hopeful, "You would have to tell me the demon version, first."

Santiago rolled his eyes. He leaned against one of the sparse patches of free wall in the circular hallway that surrounded the inner chamber that Laslow did most of his day-to-day living in. With another glance up at the demon, who was, unfortunately, just the barest bit taller than him (and with shorter horns, to boot, and such a long tail), Santiago shrugged and said merely, "It's a demon thing. You have no business knowing it."

"Then I take it," said Laslow, succeeded by a hem hem that could only be construed as parody of a tone the both of them had already mocked to death and back, "You have no business under my tutelage, knowing the noble secrets of Man."

"I don't see how I'd avoid it," Santiago said, gesturing down the hall to where it turned on either side, rendering the other semi-circle of drawings unviewable. He moved his fingers ominously close to the paint, his hand radiating back the grim colors of the demon's absence. "Consider them what you will, but Laslow, do you really think I'm lacking a heart?"

Laslow surveyed his work. There was a similar wound in the diamond chest of an angel, who looked at it in terror with all of the eyes on their wings, and a hole in the head of a massive orc and a general grayness about the translucent water body of a seakind as well as the empty suit of armor that a genasi would inhabit. Shoved into a corner, the kinfolk who quivered behind their mask in the back of the portrait, even the shadowy barbs of their body seeming to shrivel up, also had a third hole besides their eyeholes to symbolize the absence of the human faculty of reason. Six beasts born of man, each, so legend went, losing a part of what made them human and becoming monstrous in turn. "I think legend leaves things out."

"Seems fairly definitive to me," Santiago sighed.

"But whatever I think of you, I wouldn't know other demons. I wouldn't even know other humans. I haven't met many! Who am I to judge all their character? Don't forget that in all the books, Santiago, there is not one mention of the holes."

Santiago's hand went at once to they keyhole on his forehead, which was, on closer inspection, not a scar but a beckoning entrance, so perfect that only the unspeakable above could have drawn it on. Laslow's own keyhole was hidden beneath his clothing, dangerously close to his lower regions, which was why Santiago had not believed him for a long time, indeed, even after Laslow had offered to strip to demonstrate. "I suppose not," Santiago said. "They're ashamed of them, you know. Men most of all."

"And the extra teeth, too, my father has had his pulled," Laslow insisted. "No holes, and the teeth are all in perfect rows, none more, like my molars, your fangs. They lie, they really do, the stories. Am I supposed to believe the world is all like that, perfect rows and beings lacking in holes?"

Santiago's eyes rose in a perfect arc to the ceiling, which had not been spared from paint either. It was well utilized space, as it should have been, given how small it was. "Are you going to tell me the mouths of your storybook beings don't have nostrils? Nor earholes? Mouths? What about--"

Laslow, who had been gifted some more adult books by his father, wished very much that he had something to throw at Santiago at the moment. "You cease your evil words, demon."

Santiago pretended to be taken aback. "Your words bite my tail and shore my horns, human."

Laslow grinned. He knocked Santiago by the horns on the way out, which elicited a hissing "Ow," from the demon and caused his head to jerk much further to the side than it reasonably should have, as if it were leaning into it. Laslow noticed, not for the first time, a distinct lack in Santiago today, and compared him to the demon on the wall who he had once much more resembled. His face twitched nigh imperceptibly, but Santiago, who had righted himself, was paying careful attention.

"Your horns are looking shored. Feeling shored, too," Laslow said. "Thick."

"If you were a demon, I would have had to kill you for the insult," Santiago warned, his tyger eyes slit. It was easy to forget when the pair had spent so many evenings together, but the first night, when Laslow was little more than five, he had thought there was a tyger from one of his books waiting in the darkness, its reflective eyes glinting back as a warning to the poor being who was soon to be eaten. Laslow had drawn the blankets around him and screamed pitifully for a father who had no way of hearing him, and Santiago had laughed, gleefully, before eventually introducing himself and admitting he'd only come in because he had heard mouses, and where there was mouses, there was food. Santiago had eaten the mouses and an unreasonable amount of Laslow's food, and ever since more food had been bought up for Laslow's "growing imagination", which Laslow would leave out on the sill for Santiago to enjoy on the way in.

The two of them ended up on the sill, which overlooked a mile of trees before giving way to the city. Today, it was all beneath them, and the few black buildings hardly dented the rich pink of the sky. What was left of Santiago's once rich curls rustled in the wind, and the demon curled into a ball on the sill, staring down at creation. Laslow helped himself up onto the admittedly small remainder of sill, his own uncut hair trailing down past his shoulders and near to his ankles.

"You cut your hair," Laslow said. "To the scalp."

Santiago knocked his cloven foot against Laslow's, whose small pink pearls of toes were still incredibly fascinating. The two of them, as an eccentric and an artist, would often drink in such small details. They had respected each other's hair, at least, Laslow had thought. "It's one of those things you wouldn't get."

"Demon things?" asked Laslow.

Santiago shook his head. "Things. It's a big world, Laslow. You'd understand if you were part of it."

Laslow's expression shifted, mistifying. "I hear plenty from the books, and from father's visits. He says I might be allowed into the court within the next few months. He says something's come up, and that everything may change, and that, most of all, I am his fourteen year old son, and that is an auspicious number by all regards." He looked wistfully out towards the horizon, where stood his father's castle. It was, among the buildings making a dent in the worlds' ceiling, the biggest dent, because whenever other buildings began to crop up, the castle was made bigger. Laslow had told this to Santiago and had it explained to him by his father. His father had laughed, but Santiago hadn't understood the joke. He followed, quickly, "He's coming tomorrow."

"How noble of him," Santiago said. "To remind you he hadn't thrown you out in the woods by accident, for large birds to find and attempt to eat at their own leisure."

Laslow looked at the ground.

"I can't ask you to go with me first," Santiago said.

Laslow blinked. "Of course you can. I'll just say no."

The demon's teeth curled into a smile. "You've always a stronger will than what I give you credit for."

Laslow added, "And a faster mind. Don't pretend I can't see the way that expression traces your face, Santiago. You look like a horned horse."

"A kirin?" asked Santiago.

"A giraffe," corrected Laslow. "It's a long face, regardless. Can you please tell me what the matter is?"

The pink of the sky was being sullied by the approach of night, and the purple bruise that was sweeping the grand ceiling was beginning to encroach on that little area of resplendence the sun had laid her final claim to for so long. As the first stars began to bore their way in from the infinite brightness above through the thick black carapace of the atmosphere, Santiago, who had a head of hair in the darkness, said, "When demons are wronged, their horns grow. When a demon avenges themselves, their tail grows. The bravest among us have the longest tails. We shave down our horns to lessen the disparity, but it reeks of sulfur and blood, and is painful, and even the young eventually just have to thicken the tail."

Laslow leaned into the sill. This was the kind of story he received when the actual story would make Santiago skittish. "Continue," he insisted, "but honestly."

"There are some things that are done in demon culture that I figure might be alien to humans. It only serves that I occasionally reiterate them to preface my stories, so that you evaluate them with the correct amount of astonishment for how much it might actually garner around... the more cloven cohort."

"You're trying to soften the blow," Laslow guessed.

"No, yes, somewhat," said Santiago, in quick succession, and Laslow figured the answer wasn't of particular importance. By way of a mutual shrug, they both knew. Santiago cleared his throat, but it wasn't the same haughty hem hem, but a much sicker noise. He curled closer to himself. "I killed another man last night."

"Was he the one who took your hair?" asked Laslow, astounded. Regardless of pride, a head of hair scarcely seemed cause for taking a head.

Santiago shook his head, looking tired, or else mortally ill. "It was more that I cut my own hair off in regards to some comments he made about it, and my general person, demon, what have you, and I... should have felt worse about his passing, but I could feel it glutting my tail, and that night, no one stole anything from me, nor my land, and my stake felt claimed, my neck at peace when I slept. He had hurt others. Done bad things, snuck things from other demons' stakes, whatever you want. I was supposed to, I think. We had a personal grudge, and he said he was proud to have had an adversary. I think I would have been okay going, too. There was a mutual understanding." Each sentence seemed simultaneously less and more certain of itself, threading the entire speech into a kind of awkwardly woven shamble of meaning. Santiago at last returned his tyger eyes to Laslow.

Laslow had his hands folded over the sill, blocking out the sun as it finally receded from view. "How do you handle this?"

"Because that's what demons do. Demons kill their own, and humans kill everyone who isn't their own. We kill the guilty, and humans target solely the innocent," explained Santiago, with a practiced, childish chime to the words not at all befitting of the content.

Laslow was silent, and then he removed himself from the sill. "You've probably heard terrible things about my kind." His hair seemed to catch about the sill's bars, though it could have been the spring winds, the changeing winds, trade winds and winds that woke up the new livestock, breathed the air into them.

"Of course," Santiago said, crouching in the dusk, "But somehow every time we speak, you're the one who makes me feel like I should be doing better."

In previous years, they had words for when the conversation ended, but now, Santiago only drew himself up to his full height when Laslow's eyes indicated that they had reached a point of conclusion. The demon stood for a while in the shadow, earnest, and Laslow saw his tail flick about him. It disappeared last when he turned to shadow, and Laslow wanted every detail, the new curve of it, the point of its new scales, burned into the back of his mind. As he retreated from the sill and the growing chill to the interior of the towers' chambers, he passed several images of humans and demons.

There were quite a few figures there happy to have an adversary. His father would have said as much. There was a moment of understanding between two parties, a consent onto death, and Laslow fought this was boldly fictitious.

Right! So what was that? A Symphony for Gods is the story of  the Hyperdonts, a set of seven chosen ones (each of them in some way deformed in a way which separates them from their species, and each bearing a keyhole to which the key is unknown) who are supposed to determine the fate of the seven races of Myria. As their paths cross, entangling and disentangling, they find the truths behind many lies they were told as children and find lies where they thought the world was only stable truth. It's a seven-book series, although I'm going to be compiling it into what is essentially one book with 196 chapters, split into seven parts. 

I plan to start it in two years, maybe? It's going to be a huge undertaking.

So! Species lore! They're a little more alien than your usual fantasy "races" which means that there are stark differences in how they function that guide their actions, instead of competition moving towards mutually shared goals. It's... a dynamic.

Angels

I'll get to them.

Orcs

-Still designing them, but the orcs are essentially huge and somewhat but not entirely bipedal. They live in the forests and are staunchly isolationist.

-Orcs can change gender based off the braiding of hair, as gender is fully performed and is not physical within their society.

-Orcs are organized by families ("Ner ___") which stem from a single, generally female-presenting leader. The leader's job as the most powerful of the group is to provide children and blood, which enables the rest of the group to protect her. Society around this is essentially egalitarian.

-Orcs will care for small animals, generally birds or squirrels (birds being the favorites) which will nest inside of their hair.

-Orcs have paralyzing agents in their spit, which other orcs are entirely immune to. These are used to 'put down' animals (agriculture is a massive part of orc society) in a primarily painless manner, as well as other species, because it is seen as a kindness. This is to say, if an orc bit you, you would die. That said, if a human bit an orc, and somehow managed to pierce skin, the orc might also die from infection, because of bacterial transfer. 

-Orc society sees giving as strength, as giving freely is the ability to generate more than is necessary to survive, meaning you're either hardy enough to not survive on much or you are able to work hard enough to continuously generate strength. The young and old are well cared for, but most able-bodied, middle-aged orcs will refuse presents because it sets up a certain dynamic. The alternative is to try to outgive the other orc. This is somewhat akin to a romantic relationship-- endless mutual giving, so that all the items that belong to one essentially belong to the other. Sometimes this is done out of spite. It can be hard to tell what the intentions are between a giving pair. 

Seakind

-Seakind have two physical bodies, one of which is really a magical manifestation of collected water (it does have other trace elements but it is primarily water, and thus jiggles, like jello), and the other of which is a fish. As long as the fish lives, a seakind can not be hurt or killed, and thus seakind live for a very long time... the fish have a natural lifetime of a thousand years. 

-The seakind can live independently of their fish on land or water, but have a psychic link with the fish. They do not have dreams but rather dissolve when not in use, so they must maintain consciousness at all time or dissolve back into nothing, which would cause them to have to come back to their standing position from their fish, which takes a while. Some seakind travel with their fish for this reason, but this is dangerous for the fish and thusly too risky for most seakind.

-Seakind live around a massive coral formation which is the result of the intense sunlight and bounteous food provided by the edges of the angel ring.

Genasi

-Armored genasi are given the privilege of keeping an individual identity. Most genasi are pooled genasi, which means that they exist as one of many consciousnesses within a lava pit. Genasi can be forced to return to these, although powerful genasi do not fear them as their consciousness will 'swallow up' others. Genasi will eventually run out of fuel if left to their own devices, so it is critical that they recharge eventually.

-Genasi society is highly competitive, more so than even the humans, and fully centralized around the fight against oneself, against other genasi, and past that, against the entire world. 

That would be a better picture of an angel.

So...

Angels

-Angels do not have eyes on their face, however, they can grow them by consuming the eyes of other angels, and two eyes will spot around maturity (a few weeks is all it takes, angels mature rapidly through a metamorphosis-esque process). When an angel defeats another angel, they eat their topmost wings, which generally contain their eyes. The lower wings can also contain eyes amongst higher ranking angels. These eyes are fair game if they are stolen.

-Angels don't have names, but they do have jobs, which they are named after ("Soriel" is a certain position within the angel hierarchy). One can challenge others for positions above their own, and the winner gets to eat the wings of the loser, which gives them their knowledge.

-Angels take in the knowledge of any being who they eat. They only eat sentient beings for this reason. Angels can live for years without eating if they are being fed on other angels, but an angel only feeding on lower sentient beings will run out of food within a year.

-Angels of a higher rank will have more wings (up to six, but All has a seemingly infinite number), and those wings will have more eyes.

-Angel eyes are edible to any species, not just angels, and they are a notorious black market item, seeing as they are the most delicious thing in the whole world. However, those who eat angel eyes are said to slowly have their organs rearranged from the inside, and as they become angelic in nature, they will die craving more.

-Angels can not groom themselves, so hair cutting is one of the most intimate processes amongst them. Angels can not bear any kind of asymmetry so having a perfect cut is critical and most social maneuvering revolves around finding someone who will not attack you or cut your hair incorrectly. A mutual agreement to care for each other's necessities is the closest angels get to love.

-Angels' internal organs are completely symmetrical, as are their appearances.

-Angels of a very low rank are denounced 'fallen' and sent to Earth, where they die shortly thereafter. They often try to prolong their lives by eating human corpses, whereupon they will take on the characteristics of the people they have eaten (mentally, not physically). Peasants see this as a way of reuniting with fallen loved ones. Angels can not sustain themselves long if they are not in some way imbibing angel eyes (only attained by fighting and winning against other angels, whose wings are then eaten), so they will eventually die. Peasants place crosses over their graves (representing the intersection between the human and angel soul) and believe angels are watching over them, shepherding their loved ones along to the afterlife.

-Angel storytelling is highly dissected, so that most angel stories are less 'stories' and more explanations of various cultural symbols and why they have meanings behind them. ("A human, symbolizing the ideal male individual, goes off to slay a dragon, which represents human's old predators and hence absolute evil...") Since angels do not produce their own cultural meetings and nothing means anything besides what it physically is to them, these stories are taken from other cultures.

-Angels do not use sarcasm, similes, or metaphors. Most humor is lost on them, which is why they do not get along well with demons.

-Angels live in a massive skybound palace that does not change its location. Below it is a dead zone and a trench, but at the middle, in the eye of the storm, is the home of the seakind, full of coral and nurtured by the light of All and "angel residue".

(Can you tell I was really, really taken in with the idea of decomposer angels because I was)

And some genasi close-ups.

Demons

-Demons' horns grow when they are disrespected, when they take vengeance, their tail grows. They also reduce their horns if they kill the offender, which keeps the population down.

-Demons have the most human anatomy of the non-human species, but their faces are 'carved', narrowing down to a point like the face of a barn owl. Aside from the tails and horns (which can be in any pattern anyone so desires), demons exist in a variety of colors and have cloven hooves with three toes, although polydactyly is common.

-Older demons grow steadily less human in appearance, occasionally becoming quadrupedal, growing wings, or any other sort of change of appearance they desire.

-These demons are considered similar to gods amongst the demons, they are presided under by courts. This is the only organization of demons, at all, and it is because they are scared shitless of these older demons and covet their protection. They're known as Lords.

-Their culture is essentially anarchy, demons occasionally band together because it provides some benefit to them but they get furious about having to listen to each other. Even the humblest demon's horns will grow slightly at the indignity of having to be ordered around.

-Demons all live underground, although primarily in areas where large mangrove-like trees are, so that they're actually only a few meters from sunlight and they make their homes in accordance with the trees, symbiotically. (The trees are known as bloodeaters because they are primarily nurtured by the demons' kills. They need the iron and nitrogen content to stay alive in the poor soil. They literally can only live if the demons actually kill people.)

-Demon storytelling is often missing details and reads more like a joke than anything else, for example, demons would absolutely LOVE the 'pinkfeathers' joke and have their own version of it. They enjoy puzzles but also have stories that appear to be entirely lacking a point, for instance, the story about a demon who never shadowshifts-- he walks, on his feet, for miles and miles across the tunnels to speak with one of the Lords. What he wants is never announced, nor if he gets it, only that he makes it all the way to the Lord to speak with them. This style of storytelling was developed because it pisses angels off. 

Kinfolk

-Kinfolk are not acknowledged as a species by anyone else, save for the seakind, angels, and some demons, who don't form a consensus anyways.

-Kinfolk are especially not acknowledged because their dead bodies liquidate, forming an oily residue. This has been taken by every other species to mean they have no souls.

-Kinfolk travel in packs to protect themselves from other species as well as themselves. If a kinfolk becomes formbound and forgets their higher-functioning forms, another kinfolk can assist them.

-Kinfolk are able to change forms based on their masks. Kinfolk can mimic any species or even a variety of completely imaginary forms, which are usually their most personal and intimate, but they can not mimic individuals (except for Rufus). These masks can also grant the user any ability of the creature, so many have combat masks.

-A kinfolk is born from the shadows of the forest, parentless, and looks like a smudge of shadow with foxlike ears and tail. They are bipedal and possess only a blank mask with two eyes. 

Humans

-Same shit as always.