No chewing. No crunch.
The field does not remember how to eat.
Vin’nyla kneels in the sugar corn ruins, mouth dry. The air tastes of phantom enamel.

VIN’NYLA (soft, disturbed):
No teeth.
Not even a molar in the dirt.
Just silence between the split stalks.
Just absence with roots.

The chewing sheds sit hollow.
Denture presses mid-bite.
Drawers sterilized, but empty.
No incisor, no bite-right, no lineage left to grind.

Once—
This was sacred.
Gum from cow.
Tooth from kin.
Bite as offering.
Gnash as inheritance.

Now?
Just a tremble in the jaw of the earth.

The air ripples.
Like wet chalk on velvet.
And I arrive.

No name.
No need.
I sit in the old circle.
Symbols drip from me like wisdom teeth unspooled in sleep.
Plaque fog, vowel-leak, root canal shimmer.

They ask.
Naked gums. Eyes wide.
“Why have the teeth gone?”

And I answer:
“No teeth. Then tongue.”

(SFX: low gum-pulse, flesh folding inward, taste bud drone.)

And so it begins.

Gums ripple.
Tongues Convulse.
A molar rises beneath someone’s sternum.
A canine unfurls behind a knee.
Someone chews light.
Someone chews guilt.
Someone chews sound.

By morning, the attic grinds.
By dusk, the wells mutter vowels.
The villagers listen from behind curtains, sipping broth,
devout and afraid.

VIN’NYLA (whispers):
If no teeth, then what?

Then tongue.
Then chewing again.
From sky. From socket.
From deep inside the self.
From the parts that forgot how to bite.

They thought teeth were the instrument.
But the body remembers hunger in stranger ways.
Vin’nyla does not feed. S/he awakens the jaw.

A shoreline underfoot. Air thick with stillness and echo. The world leans inward. The lake does not speak, it listens. And Vin’nyla responds.
VIN’NYLA (voice slow, almost reverent): The surface shifts, though nothing breaks it. The sky flickers, though the stars remain fixed.
I place my hand on the water. It is warm. As if it remembers.
I’ve walked for days, though time does not hold shape here. The farther I go, the less real things become. The horizon dissolves outward, like ink dropped into stillness.
The water murmurs. A language I almost understand.
I don’t mark the path. I am the marking. Each step a ripple, each breath a question the lake chooses to answer, in current, in silence, in depth and reflection.

This is not arrival. This is dialogue.
At night, I sleep beside constellations that rearrange themselves. Shapes form and unform, like memories rising before names return.
And still I do not know if I am shaping the lake or if the lake is shaping me. Perhaps both. Perhaps neither.
Then I reach the center, a place that should not exist. No shore. No sound. Only a stillness that reflects nothing.
I kneel. Press my palm to it. The lake hums.
And then it happens. Not a shift in the world, but a shift in me.
I am no longer touching the lake. I am within it. The surrounding water is now my own form. The current moves through me, shaping me as I once shaped the path.
I have not crossed the lake. I have become it.
The lake does not speak. It never did. But it listens, and what you listen to changes you.

No gigs. No plan.

Sun’s out like nothing’s wrong.

Keep walking. One foot. Then the other.

How long can someone rehearse for something that never premieres?

Told Aidan to leave.  

The old one at the kiosk still smiles.
Like they know departure’s in the air.
Like they’ve seen too many come and go with unfinished thoughts.

The key. Was it taken? Left?
Does it matter?

The virus hums in the background.
Like grief without a language.

Disinfect. Translate. Dream up futures that collapse by morning.

No fever. No cough. Just dread and pollen.

Aidan thinks the exit was for sunlight.
Maybe it was.
Or maybe silence got too loud.

At least the streets don’t pretend.
Cracked. Dusty. Full of stray cats and untold endings.

Could write.
Should write.
Deadline whispers “tomorrow.” Body replies with stillness.

Everyone talks about distance.
But this… this is familiar.
Always a few beats outside the rhythm.

Note to self:
There’s always a choice.
Even if it’s just which mask to wear today.

Gate closes at 19:10.
Plenty of time to forget something essential.

Time stutters. Reality thins. A corridor. A concept. A word no longer allowed.

Vin’nyla and Charamaynne walk a line that no longer holds its shape.

VIN’NYLA (quietly):
They call it a crash-out now.
Simpler. Clean.
Easy to catalogue.
Easier to deny.

But the word, conniption,
scrapes the archives like a rusted hinge.
Too jagged. Too human.
So I whisper it.
Into the airlock.
While the walls pretend not to hear.

CHARAMAYNNE (grimacing):
That dates you.

VIN’NYLA:
Crashing out is just conniption
with better PR.

The corridor disapproves.
A low pulse bleeds from the ceiling.

System Log: Emotive deviation registered.

They walk on.
Charamaynne’s boots don’t touch the floor.
The system has stopped trusting them with gravity.
Trust is reserved for the obedient.

They arrive at Processing 19.
There is no door.

Entry is a decision.
So is existence.

INSIDE –
A clerk waits.
Or rather: ripples.
A body made of overlapping timelines.
S/He speaks with the texture of six arguments,
all underwater.

CLERK:
What was the trigger?

(Pause.)

CHARAMAYNNE:
S/He spoke of conniptions.
That’s it.

The clerk distorts.
Phase instability detectable.

CLERK:
Unstable lexicon.
Phase-slippage probable.

A chair grows from the floor.
Vin’nyla doesn’t sit.

VIN’NYLA:
Composure bent. Didn’t break.

CEILING:
Correction.
Tensile limit exceeded. Timestamp 07:31.
Discrepancy logged.

CHARAMAYNNE (to no one, or to all):
You’re stretching.

The walls hum.
Not solid. Not settled.
There’s a taste now —
tin, ozone, regret.

And then —

The crash-out.

Not loud.
Not violent.
Just absence.
Vin’nyla folds —
thread by thread —
until even memory forgets how to shape them.

The clerk forgets mid-sentence.

Charamaynne remains.

S/He reaches into the coat.
Pulls out a word like a blade.

CHARAMAYNNE (aloud, defiant):
Conniption.

The room begins to melt.