Homestuck: Sidequest-Cosmic Love

You look to your former morail, now made matesprit and you wonder why. Why you aren’t happy after knowing that he wanted you so badly. Why you still feel like there are feelings unresolved in your mind. You balance on the edge of branch as he is below you, shuffling around in the leaves looking for what he thinks are sacred mushrooms. Ursamu wasn’t as spiritual as you, you know he used half of his drug problems as an excuse because he was a shaman once upon a time. But now that you’re all dead and now that he can just talk to any spirit he wanted, he was having a hard time dealing with the fact that he was pretty much obsolete now. You know he’s wise in some aspects, but something about being with him romantically doesn’t click with you.

From the start you always knew the females of your species were of interest to you. But you never quite seemed to know how to approach situations, or how to get out of ones that were staring you in the face screaming how poisonous they were.

But there was someone always in the back of your mind, and you hated to admit it but you’re really in love. You know it, and so does everyone else apparently.

You think it was recently after your pupitation. You liked to explore the forests that your hive was next to. You lived secluded away from a lot of trolls, before the revolutions amongst the higher bloods even began. From a young age you always felt more in tune with things around you, like you were always a bit higher on the spiritual ladder than most highbloods. But you didn’t use your ideas and thoughts to turn into psychopaths like most of them did. But highblood rage still fit your soul, and it scared you to think you would ever completely lose it. You knew your bananabeast lusus wouldn’t be around forever to help sedate you when the attacks came. And meditated for something you couldn’t put a name on quite yet was useless at those times.

You decided it was time to get a morail. At just a few sweeps old, you went into the forests to find someone like you. Armed with your staff, the one you would continue to use throughout your life, you prepared to meet the best and the worst.

But the forests were surprisingly quiet. There weren’t even that many lusii here. You climbed trees, searching high and low branches. Just when you were about to give up and go back home to look another night, you heard the flapping of wings and the sound of crashing, and yelping. Your ears focused on the noise, and you followed it, your form flickering through the branches. You found a girl, or at least that’s what it looked like, who was about your age and size flopped on a branch, groaning with green bruises lining her skin. She wore a sleeveless shirt, surprisingly a white color that had a symbol that was dark green. Dried blood was coated on her nose, and she had made marks on her cheek with some of it. She looked like a warrior. You blushed a little at her opening one big eye at you and grunting. You noticed a nearby parachute stuck among the leaves, tangled in spiky branches. Looking up, you noticed a hive perched nicely between the two trees. Feathers were strewn about the girl, pure white that shone in light of the two moons. You finally moved your heavy legs and touched her shoulder. She tried to swat you away but she just kinda flopped her hand on your face.

You gave a concerned look, and lifted her up in your arms, “Are you okay?”

“Go away! I’m fine!” She hiccupped, trying to conceal tears. “My dumb lusus just threw me out the window again. She keeps trying to help me fly. Dumb ass doesn’t realize I don’t have wings.’ She sighed looking up through the leaves, “She’s a birdbrain is all.”

She finally stopped gazing at the stars and looked to you. Something about her was mesmerizing. A few of her teeth were busted out, you noticed as she smirked at you, “And who are you miss highblood. Why is someone like you out here in the trees? Why do you wanna be up here?”

“I kinda make my mark up here. My lusus is a bananabeast, so we climb a lot despite her soaking in those hot springs.”

“You live by the hotsprings? I thought that place was abandoned. It’s way too cold for any troll to live in!”

“Not me. Touch my skin.”

She did as she was told and cocked an eyebrow, “Wow you’re even a little chilly. Is that how you make it out there?”

You blushed a little and smiled widely, “Yeah, and my hair helps. I’m growing it out to be big and long like the other big highbloods. But it’s hard to take care of.”

“Yeah I’ve seen some of the grown ups. They trudge around here sometimes looking for berries and junk. They’ve got wild hair.”

“You seem pretty nice.” You set her down and rub your thumbs together, “What’s your name?”

“Cuatha Garuda. And who are you?”

“Hercia Hercul.” You go to shake her hand, but she already grabs yours. Instead of letting it go, she holds it for a few minutes then looks down. “Sorry it’s just I’ve not been around a lot of kids lately.”

“It’s okay, you’re the first real kid I’ve met in a while. The adults I think are warry about having them with talk of a revolution on hand and all.”

“Yeah and im getting ready for it! I’m teaching myself to make weapons. But I’m bad at drawing.”

“Really? I draw well. Maybe I can help you make your blueprints?”

And that’s how it started. Despite being so young, you started helping her make things from the wood around you. You made toy swords, toy bows and arrows and then little pop guns. You two would frolic around the forest floor and in the branches every night it seemed and play games together. You would look at all the stars and talk about what the adults were doing, what your lusus did that was embarssing to you, and other stuff.

You liked to hold her hand a lot. That’s probably what set it off. She was really warm. You liked to see her hive a lot too. It was cozy, which was surprising for such a little soldier such as herself. She didn’t sleep in sopor, but used sticks, paper, leaves mostly anything she could find and had made it into a nest. Inside the nest were things like blankets, pillows, stuffed animals. Cuatha was embarrassed to admit she was a bit of a thief, and stole them from other hives from above. She also told you she secretly hated heights. She came over to your hive a lot. She was the first troll you ever saw naked, and you were happy to know that she and you were alike.

She was always close to you. You were inseparable. She was a nervous wreck, and chewed on her hair, nails, and even sticks. To help remedy her chewing problem, you found her berries that had tough skin that was sweet to chew and had a slightly sour middle. She would often stuff ten into her mouth and chew through them in minutes, so you cultivated them for her. She liked to cool off using your skin, and trusted you when she jumped from tree to tree.

It was like that for a lot of sweeps.

But then you started to meet other trolls. Ourean was first, and he was also your first matesprit. It was a rash choice, but he had been hurt and you nursed him back to health in the frost. Cuatha didn’t seem to mind too much, you were still close with her. That’s when you considered being her morail. But she was the one to refuse, saying she wasn’t ready for commitments to her quadrants.

You found your religious calling shortly after beginning to date Ourean. You happened to come across with something that had a rod and two slitherbeasts in a temple and it opened your eyes. You saw visions of a benevolent goddess who ruled the heavens, and used her wondrous powers to create a universe of equality. She was being pursued however by an evil master of time, and so you vowed to follow her in the name of kindness. After discovering that, you vowed never to let yourself go.

Ourean must have not appreciated your self discovery because shortly after your forthcomings with announcing your side on religious thinking he began to fade from you and soon you broke off as matespirts.
He allowed you in the Game he found however. As you got older, you noticed the world around you becoming more antagonistic and violent. It was uncomfortable to say the least, and so you agreed to escape the world.

You server player was a troll female named Lyrice, who you began to know only through conversation. Cuatha was off being the leader, trying to get everyone to correct spots on their lands and to get to a thing called God Tier. You hoped you would be a space player like your precious goddess.

Lyrice often complimented you, and was never degrading.
She was a jade blood, who had the hope of your species in her clutches, a matriorb she had carried with her into the game to ensure a propagation of a better troll society in a different, new universe. You two got along very well, and you hated to admit it was the first time beyond Cuatha that you felt you were truly in a red flush with someone.
In the land of Gears and Graves, your planet, your consorts were all ghosts. But when Lyrice arrived, she soothed their souls with her beautiful songs. It made you want her even more.

You hate to remember it but she was your first. She and you were in a stray field, amongst the flowers and trees of her Land of Sunshine and Alchemy. You were panting, sweating and bloody from a recent battle. She came close to you, drawing a skull on your face in her blood, in the shape of your goddess’ face. And she kissed you, and you fell in the tall grasses and it was all history from there. Nobody knew, and you had never told anyone else. It felt like a dirty secret still, and made you nervous and sickened at the same time to think it even ever happened.

But it was all over too fast. In a blink of an eye, she admitted it had all been for her own pleasure. She had always thought in the back of her mind that she was too cultured for a beastly woman like yourself. She cried as she ran away from you, and you could only stand there looking at yourself in the pond wondering what had gone wrong.

And then you sought out Cuatha again. You were lost. Two relationships had been rushed through without you knowing why or how they had ended. You had done everything right, was there something wrong with you that trolls just didn’t want to stay with you long term? Was it your body? Was it your beastly nature?

Cuatha had changed a lot since you were little. She was a lot rougher now, but only to
other trolls. She was always so soft-spoken around you. She chewed on cigars rather than tough-skinned berries, and sometimes lit them up. To prevent any unwanted damage, she had made a helmet for herself in this game.

You told her you were feeling lonely, not that you broke up, but you wondered why you couldn’t keep a troll in your red quadrant. She told you at first it was that you were too pretty, and when you blushed and denied that fact she chuckled and told you it was because your boobs were way too big. You agreed jokingly, baffled that she even mentioned that. But she was always brash, and you could tell her nerves were on edge with this damn game. It was tough trying to coordinate seven other people besides herself, so you decided to stay with her in the Land of Echo and Trance.

And you died there, well for the first time, trying to fight a tough boss-like enemy. It was a strange feeling, knowing your breath was escaping you. But in your fading consciousness, you felt her take you. She went through the gates somehow, probably with her lusus-like sprite on of the few that still remained, and took you to your dream bed within a mausoleum.

And when you were reborn, breath brought back into you, your reality was shattered. You were a Time player, the very thing your religion stood against. Cuatha knew you were distraught, and so stayed with you.
You decided to conceal your god-like abilities.

And then the game was incomplete. There were planets that had no players. Confused and distraught, you sought the wisdom of the frog temples. While spending time there, you contact players through time and space in a similar game, guiding them. You dealt with a human, a strange alien creature, with big goggles for a while until he deemed that he disliked you and followed the advice of your comrade Adamska. The temple slowly revealed clues that you were all to go to a future Alternia.

The Alternia you went to was more violent.

You were to each protect the players you needed, five very specific grubs, and ensure they lived so that the session could be finished and the game could be won.

You found your grub, a tiny mutant blood surrounded by violent blood-crazed purple bloods on a lonely island. It was a story that was sung over and over, you fell too deep into loving the poor grub and you suffered for it in the end.
You were found out for caring for a grub. They chased you to the ends of the island, cutting and burning every tree

They caught you finally, and ripped Hyderon from your arms. You prophesized to them falsly that he was to be a god amongst trolls, and that killing him would bring great suffering. To further prove your point, you strapped yourself to a rock and let the purple bloods torture you in any way they saw fit. It took weeks to die, to finally bleed out.
You wished you could have seen him before you closed your eyes one last time.

And that was that, you were stuck in a dream bubble now trying to live out the afterlife. You had tried to rekindle many relationships that just were not meant to be.

And now it was down to Cuatha.

Cuatha…the one you had wanted right from the start to be the one to hold you close. You had wanted to hold her hand and kiss her and just be in the reddest kind of love with her.
And so you stared at her hive, and debated, and cried and wiped the tears from your face and knocked on the door.

Cuatha had recently busted it up with the fuschia blooded Ptermi, he had seen her air-bound lifestyle in the tree house unfit for his more underwater based experience.

“Hey Hercia…” She muttered, she looked confused and dazed.

“Hey Cuatha…” You gently went to touch her cheek and her head sort of just fell into your palm. Dark green tears started to flow from her white eyes, and she knitted her eyebrows. “What the hell do I keep doing wrong?”

This had been the second red romance that had failed on her end. You guided her inside and sat down on her couch. She wasn’t wearing her helmet but there was a cigar lit inside an ash tray, the wisps of smoke were dancing with each other. She crushed the area between her eyes with her fingers and grit her teeth. “How can you stand it?”

“What?”

“Being single…?’

“I can’t really.” It was time to just get this over, “Look Cuatha. I think you’ve been trying to do this all wrong!”

“What do you mean? What can I do to make it right?” She stood up and clenched her fists to the sides, flailing them open as she began to rant, “Every time I try, I end up fucking up!” She gripped her hair, “I just don’t get it, what…what…”

You stood up in front of her, and looked her hard in the eyes. Her shoulders softened, noticing it was the glare you gave when in grand concern. Her eyebrows rose, “What…what are you looking at me for?”

“Cuatha…” You gently hold her shoulder, “Just…please.” You came closer, every part of you seemed to be shaking. You felt nervous tears form in your eyes. “Please stop crying.” Finally, after inching for centuries it felt, you had her in your embrace. AS you held her, it finally flooded over your lips. “Stop crying because…I…I love you.”

Cuatha suddenly grasped your shoulders hard and stared at you. You felt tears welling until she took you by surprise, lowering you down as far as you could go while not hitting the ground. And you felt her lips on yours. Sparks filled your sight, the world was melting around you. You felt her soft breath and her warm skin, and everything was perfect with the universe.

Afterwards she snickered but still had tears coming from her eyes, “Why in the ever loving fuck didn’t you tell me sooner…I could have been so much more happier. And I…”

“I knew too.” You blushed and cried too, “I’m sorry…I was scared.”

“You don’t need to be scared of me.” She brushed a few hairs away and looked at the paint on your face. A warm smirk filled her face, “Heh, guess we will have to change that color soon.”
Your face turned an even deeper shade of purple. “Cuatha…I…”

“Oh don’t give me that. You know I am loud and outspoken dork.”
You finally blinked the last of the tears and held her hard, “I’m just so happy…I never thought you would know…or thought you cared…”

“Why would I…” She sighed, “Yeah I was being an idiot too. I’m sorry. I should have come to you first.”

“No…it’s okay. That’s not important right now…” You nuzzled her nose and held her head stable, “All that matters is we are together now right?”

“Right. And I am as ready to take on the world as you are.”