Title: Forever's gonna start tonight
Fandom: Homestuck
Rating: G
Length: 400 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Roxy has to like Bonnie Tyler, right?

Summary: Kanaya knows all about developmental stages - of trolls, of frogs, even humans (a little) - but paradox space is far less than linear.


Nothing happens all at once. Everyone knows that, none more than Kanaya. Grubs wriggle before planidia, planidia scuttle before pupae; eggs swarm together in a spawn before the tadpole can unfurl; that tadpole must shorten its gut, grow its eardrums, consume its own tail before the frog exists.

Cause produces effect. Effect becomes new cause.

Some of the time.

Other times, they effect their own causes. (Just ask Vriska.)

More often, the only links between effects are poetic and hesitant, more resonant and suggestive than anything resembling logic. She knew Prospit long before Aradia ever discovered the game, for instance.

She'd admired tentacleTherapist almost as long.

Trollian's timeline, then, is an approximation. Like every other perception of space, of time, it simplifies all the cross-hatching and resonance and twists.

Perhaps the situation is reversed. Maybe this is a simple line; maybe their watching is what makes possible such doubling back and skipping around.

Regardless, she cannot stop exploring the timeline.

She watches the grub-stage Rose. The adult guardian lowers her into a miniature ablution trap. The child is naked and pink, soft and squishy as if she's just finished ecdysis, squirming under a gentle fall of water. When she laughs, her gums are smooth and harmless. She claps her hands under the stream. Water flies in all directions, spattering and sparkling.

When he next passes by, Sollux reaches over her shoulder, hits alt+ and something else, then slinks away. The viewport acquires sound - tinny, whispery sound, but sound nonetheless. Now she can hear the tinkle of water, the squeaks of the infant.

The adult sings to the baby. Her voice is hoarse but confident, and Kanaya cannot help but think of her lusus's voice. (It wasn't real, but it was, but it wasn't.)

Every now and then, it seems that the adult falls apart. She needs the baby more than ever. Forever.

She doesn't know what to do; she's always in the dark.

The baby purses her lips and blows a bubble upward. The adult cups her palm and smooths back the wisps of hair.

How can anyone depend on such a helpless, ridiculous little creature?

Easy, Kanaya supposes. She's spent sweeps admiring (loving) someone who only came into existence hours ago. Nothing causes anything else, but effects continue to ramify and twist outward. A baby can save a grown person, forever can wink out into the dark.