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Shadow Milk Cookie can’t help telling stories… there’s a constant stream of narration running through him like humans have veins, like rivers of milk. For so long, the stories have wound bitterly, trying to understand why. Why the Witches disappeared; why he doesn’t truly have answers to everything, answers the way a vessel of Knowledge rightfully should. Stories with a theatrical, self-righteous punchline, always-always-always looking toward the end of the show, to the audience’s inevitable horror.
Look, Witches. Look, everyone. Clap or hiss or scream! Do something. A jester can’t just offer tricks into the void forever, can he? True living Cookie reactions feel as real as rustling paper, nowadays. What he wants is thunderous, is game-changing, is damnation or a universal standing ovation or catharsis. Catharsis never comes.
Which is why… it’s funny. After Shadow Milk Cookie falls… after he fails to become a god, fails to rewrite the universe’s story… he’s sealed away again. Not voiceless, scraping away at the roots of a silver tree this time. Quite the opposite. He’s sealed in a high-up scholar’s tower, where so many of the staircases lead to nothing. He’s given tomes and scrolls, all the scrap paper in Beast-Yeast. He’s instructed to tell stories, all the stories of the souls he swallowed when he tried to consume part of the Ultimate Cookie. As he writes them out… transforms them into sonnets and limericks and puppet shows… they’ll be released from him, back into the world. If he spills the ink right; if he imbues it with magic. At the end of the project, perhaps he’ll be just himself, again. Alone inside his furious head. And then, he can tell his own story.
What? Is this really meant to heal him? Like some kind of prescription, a treatment offered by the great Pure Vanilla Cookie himself? Shadow Milk laughs. He cackles and mocks and tries to escape again and again. But no matter how he disguises himself, no matter what lies he tells, Pure Vanilla Cookie firmly, carefully, brings him back to his tower. Sits him down with a pen in his hand again and a plate of nutritious jellies.
“I want to read your stories,” Pure Vanilla Cookie says. “It’s like I’ve told you before: even now, I want to understand. You deserve to have someone understand. I promise, you would not rather have one of the other Ancients decide your punishment.”
This is not — not — NOT — like the Witches themselves feeling remorse. This is not the satisfaction of a prison-set smashed apart, a tender tapestry re-woven into something wicked, a well-executed revenge. But after a while, Shadow Milk is bored enough… always full of stories enough… that he does start writing the dang things down. He sees Pure Vanilla chuckle gently at his jokes, and tear up at his tragedies. He finds himself starting to look forward to those reactions… look forward to seeing the faces of the souls he disentangles from himself, too. Like Pure Vanilla says: he’s setting them free. He’s telling them their truths, like the Fount of Knowledge always tried to… and then they can rest, remembering their names. Or, worst case scenario, renamed by him! You’re welcome, everybody.
The end. Good show.
The spirits are hanging on Shadow Milk’s words, hoping to be healed by them. He resists it, at first… it’s hateful! It’s too late! Goddammit!… but something within him stirs alive again, as he sees his words heal and guide and help. It shouldn’t be possible! Earthbread’s beloved jester isn’t really meant to be such a pushover! If he keeps trying like this, it’s gonna come back to bite him. If he lets himself relax, comfortable in knowing anything at all, doubts will squirm in again and he’ll be such a fool for letting it happen. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice…?
Together, Shadow Milk and Pure Vanilla write out the true gospel of the Beasts. How hard they fought, how deeply they loved, how painfully they fell. The Bringer of Happiness, the Herald of Change, the Master of the Ivory Pagoda. Shadow Milk Cookie can see them all, and mourn with them, and share their stories so they remember what they used to be. How they used to feel. The bright beginning and the brutal end of those stories, both equally true. Those souls pass on, dissolve back into milk and story. Perhaps they’ll snag another chance, someday. Pure Vanilla Cookie promises that when they do find the Witches, they’ll offer to share these histories. Shadow Milk suddenly isn’t sure that the Witches deserve them.
When did his audience become ordinary Cookies, after all? When did his audience become this gentle, warm-eyed Cookie before him? Pure Vanilla, who tentatively squeezes Shadow Milk’s hand and says, “I know you’re angry. It must hurt so terribly. But I’m proud of you.”
It hurts. It hurts! But would it really have hurt less, if he got a scandalized, heartbroken reaction from the Witches, after all?
Shadow Milk Cookie is going to make his personal story into a play, he decides, once he’s written out what he can for all the ghosts upon ghosts upon ghosts. For the tangled web that was the Ultimate Cookie. It’s gonna take him a long time to write that play, mind you… he isn’t sure anyone but Pure Vanilla Cookie and his ol’ faithful lackeys will want to see it performed, when it’s done. But he’s writing in his tower, even now, bent over a desk. His pen has a whimsical bobbing blue feather at the end of it. He writes hypotheticals, too, getting the ideas all together… and then, the Light of Deceit and the Light of Truth could rest, again, falling into each other at last. The quest for Knowledge was enough. It doesn’t matter that Solidarity got there first, because who really cares about that, anyway?
… and then, when Pure Vanilla Cookie took Shadow Milk Cookie’s hand, this time, the noble Shadow Milk finally resisted shoving him away. Pure Vanilla Cookie’s eyes went wide with understanding…
… and then…
And then…
… and then.