[CupcakeDolly]

(Tentatively rated [M] for language)

Welp, I'm trying my hand at writing again. Over the last year or so I've taken several of my smaller story ideas and mashed them all up together in my mind to fit into one neatly mashed-together plot. When they're finally excreted into intelligible sentences, they should (theoretically) form a glorious, epic tale. That's the goal anyway. Actually getting around to writing everything out is going to be an amazing challenge. This little piece for instance:

“They like to be controlled, don't they?”

The other two women sitting in the circle continued staring down at their hands as they worked. When there had been silence for several moments, Lyria's eyes flicked briefly upwards at the speaker.

“You've started talking mid-thought, sister. Nobody has any idea what you're referring to.”

“Humans! Of course!” Elysia rolled her large, red eyes while concentrating on the threads that were pulling themselves rapidly through her fingers “Hyoo-mens! What does anyone else speak of these days? They like being under someone's control. Taking orders from on high. It's the only thing that makes sense. Otherwise, why would we be sorting out their lives for them?”

“Hyooo-mans!” Dizia sang. She kept her threads flowing steadily as her head rocked from side to side in its own made-up rhythm.

Lyria shrugged skinny shoulders and her full ebony hair fell up and around the white horns that curled tightly at the sides of her face. The threads sifting through her fingers branched off at random, and she moved her hands outward and inward as needed, sorting through the long multi-colored veins with practiced ease. Though she was skilled enough at the fast-paced task that she could have looked the other woman in the eye as she spoke, she deliberately chose to concentrate on her work. “They didn't ask us to take their threads. They just got mixed up in our own - and what a fucking mess it is...” she sighed and pulled her fingers through several small tangles. The pink and brown threads were mostly human, and were responsible for nearly every delay and mishap in their skein. “The issue is that they fight any sort of control. From us, from each other. They all want to be in control. They refuse to accept things as they are.”

“Do they think themselves gods, then?”

“Yes.” Lyria frowned, the reconsidered. “No... they worship their own gods, I think.”

“I see. So, they do submit to someone other than themselves.” Elysia grabbed Lyria's threads from her hands, her own longer fingers pulling easily through the small tangles the other woman had been struggling with.

“You wouldn't think it, with how much they whine about superiority. It seems an important subject to them. Though... maybe we're not thinking broadly enough. Perhaps some are gods among them, and the rest are followers.” Lyria's eyes shined excitedly as she looked up and sat straight. “Yes! Maybe they're similar to us in that way!”

“No!” Elysia groaned. “Not like us! Shut your whore mouth!”
Dizia grabbed her threads to stop them from moving and perked her long ears up, staring into the distance. After a moment she chirped, “Afone!” then turned back to her work.

The other two ignored the small idiot's outburst. Lyria took her threads back from Elysia without thanks. “But couldn't it be true? Our structure has more facets than we realized, before it was pointed out to us-”

“Yes, they want to start organizing us. Organizing. Can you fucking believe it?”

“- and we've already seen their capacity for thought. It's... fascinating.”

“Stop!” Elysia shuddered. “That's such a... hyoo-men word.”

“Oh yes, my sister. I find humans fascinating and... and... perplexing.”

Elysia gagged and leaned away from the tall woman as though to prevent being infected by her words. Her long, straight black horns nearly became caught up in the glowing threads that hung neatly from the high, darkened ceiling.

“Afone! Afone!” Dizia rocked from side to side in her seat, humming random disjointed notes, her tiny body dangerously close to toppling over from the weight of the gigantic horns that curled down to her waist.

“I mean,” Lyria continued ponderously, “we have that same capacity, but never imagined using it... Never imagined imagining.”

“They do think themselves gods, then, for telling us how we ought to think,” Elysia huffed.

“No no. That can't be. They don't act godlike at all. They eat and fuck, and then fight and die and turn to ash. Just the same as us.”

“Not the same as us!”

“Yes!” Lyria laughed.

“Afone!”

“No!” Elysia groaned. She struggled to find the words to make the other woman understand. She found it a complex task, as she'd never used to require using so many words to convey a need. And then 'need' wasn't even the right way to describe what she felt she had to convey. 'Opinion,' she remembered was the right word, and the very thought of it made her shudder again. “They can't be the same as us! They simply can't, because we are we, and they are they!”

“We're not gods, and neither are they.”

“That doesn't make them us, though.”

“They could be both.”

“They're neither!”

They jumped. A sound had chimed sharply from nearby. While they looked around curiously for the source, Dizia was giggling and wagging her ears.

“Afone!”

Lyria and Elysia looked at her. Their faces reflected exhasperation and annoyance respectively as they came to the realization that the tiny idiot's outbursts hadn't just been nonsense.

“A phone,” Lyria sighed.

“Where is it though? What the fuck is one of those doing here?”

“Shush,” the taller woman held up a thread-wrapped hand, and the three of them waited in silence. A moment later another sharp ring made them jump again. Dizia laughed uncontrollably.

“We... never got any phones, did we? I mean, we don't need them-”

It rang again.

All three women gasped, one after the other. The thread thickened and caught up in their hands. They were wrenched from their seats. Dizia toppled to the floor, laughing and rolling in the unsorted mess. The other two planted their legs and caught their balance, and held tight to what they could only describe as a gigantic knot – something they had never before seen in their countless years of sorting. It was a fantastic tangle that stretched for several feet in every direction, and it glowed a brilliant white in the middle and faded into lighter blues at its edges. The women's hands were caught just where the blue edges began, their fingers too entwined to remove no matter how they struggled with it.

“A game!” Dizia giggled delightedly and stuck one foot into the tangle. Her long golden hair had become indiscernible from the clipped threads littering the floor.

“Well, look just how fantastic...” Elysia had become too breathless with struggling against the knot to continue speaking. The ringing kept sounding around them, echoing in the cavernous hall.

Lyria was staring at the glowing white center of the knot. It was a perfectly circular disk shape, and it latched on to every thread around it, bringing them in with some unseen gravity. While the threads usually were connected through random pathways that interlocked in intricate webs, the white disk sucked its threads in through straight lines, creating for itself the rays of a small but magnificently shining sun in the center of the dark room. Even as Lyria watched, the bluish threads on the outer edge began to slowly straighten against each other and snake their way toward the center of the disturbance.

“It's moving!”

“No,” Elysia had a clawed foot up and was attempting to use it to free her hands, “it's not. But I certainly wish it would.” The phone rang again. “Oh, fuck your noises already!”

“Sister,” Lyria hissed urgently and pointed at the white disk, and they both watched it intently. A moment later the ringing sounded again, and the disk pulsated with the noise.

“...Should we answer it?”

“How the Hell would you do that?”

Lyria's eyes were wide, and she was in the middle of a slow and helpless shrug of her shoulders when the ringing white disk took the liberty of answering itself for them.

“Hello?”

The voice was speaking a human language, and it was female. It resounded from the glowing thread sun and echoed around them in a way that transcended sound itself. It moved around them and through them like a completely new entity. Lyria and Elysia looked up from the disk at one another. Their gazes locked, both mouths hanging open slightly. When they finally spoke, it was in unison.

“A human!”

“A god!”

Dizia giggled and kicked her entangled feet. “A game!”

Though they wouldn't admit it, Lyria and Elysia could feel that the tiny girl's exclamation was likely the closest to being true. Nothing more was spoken for a while, save for the voice that continued to echo hauntingly through them. The two horned women stood in shocked reverence, with the idiot thrashing gleefully at their feet, and all of their hands trapped by the threads of the newly formed sun.

Took about a week to eke out. It may seem ambitious, but I'm aiming to get the finished product published, so I could really use whatever help anyone's willing to offer. What I've always been worried about (in everything, but in this piece as an example) is exposition, sentence structure, and pacing. My biggest issue is that I'll stare at a sentence or a word for long periods of time and think too deeply about what should be there, rather than just puking out words and then going back to edit later. I'm not sure how to overcome this. Advice would be useful and appreciated. Or painful critiquing. Or words of hope and encouragement. This is an important project for me, so really just anybody giving any kind of a shit would be a huge help.

Thanks!