Like People (Midsummer) (the 2018 play about fairies and mortality, not the movie about the cult lol)

[Kicker]

Okay, hear me out. There’s this play called Midsummer, and it’s an existential take regarding mortality and moral duality in the universe of Shakespear’s Midsummer Night’s Dream. The characters speak in modern rhetoric and it doesn’t at all follow the Shakespearean format. 

The script is so hard to find, and it’s only like fifteen pages long but I love the subtext and the characters, and the show brings me so much unadulterated joy. Don’t want to buy the whole play? Okay, I get it; totally valid. Instead, you can read this almost accurate synopsis: https://donnigro.com/2018/09/20/midsummer/ Or DON’T read it and just read my porn:

~~~~~~~

Peaseblossom has been very adamant about Puck’s steady, but developing spiral towards pure ungovernability over the course of the last few months. But Cobweb thinks he’s just waking up. It’s been a little over a year since he witnessed the death of Pan, which he references frequently, but consistently fails to describe or explore productively with any of the other fairies. Cobweb thinks this has something do with his suddenly (maybe not so suddenly, maybe everyone should have seen it coming) erratic behavior. 

“Hh-- ESSHHuu!”

“Why are you sneezing?” She’s perched on a branch and watching him try to muffle little explosions into his shirt. 

“-HEHK-Shuu! Fuck.”

“Why do we sneeze? Can everyone sneeze? How does sneezing…” Cobweb is in the habit of asking Puck a stream of multiple questions in a row, even when she knows he can’t (or won’t) answer them. But it’s not with the intentions of annoying anyone, really. She’s just got so many she has to get to later. And if she doesn’t keep proper track she might forget, so really, saying them outloud just happens to be a nifty method of keeping track--

“Cobweb-- Stop- stohhh- HEHSshhu!” His chest heaves, he places his hand there. Breathes. “Stop talking for a moment.”

And thus, a moment takes place. 

“Why are you sneezing?”

“Because the degenerate moved out of target.” He massages his temples with his thumb and forefinger.

“Human?”

“Yes, the human.”

She considers this. “You were trying to make the human sneeze?”

“Yehhh-- yes.” Cobweb can’t tell if he’s inviting it, or struggling against it, upper lip twitching, and eyes squinting in the preliminary. 

“But you somehow missed and--”

“There was a mirror behind it, I, Ihh-- ESSHuuu! Heh-- ESKSHuu!”  

He doesn’t need to keep going for her understand the math of it: magic, mirror, ricochet, torture. 

“Mustardseed thinks you do strange things like this because they arouse you.”

He cocks his head out to the side, raises a brow at her. “You think I made myself sneeze because it arouses me?” He gestures with her hand before she can intervene. “You think I tried to make a HUMAN sneeze because it arouses me?”

“Not personally.”

“I would never find, even a modicum of arousal in humans.”

“Why do you do it?”

But his mind is elsewhere. Nostrils twitching, breath catching, and uncatching. 

They are on a creek. Cobweb was looking for new land, which she gets around to doing every few years, after her fascination with one set of logs in the woods minutely dwindles, and she needs to find another. She did find logs (cottonwoods, which she hasn’t properly inspected), but more interestingly, she found Puck, doubled over, on his ass, sneezing, and sneezing, and sneezing by the creek. Clearly looking for privacy. 

He runs a hand limply through his hair and tightens his grasp there frustratedly. When he lets go, his hair is a jolted mess. “Fuck- ESSHuuu!” Puck groans. “The problem is that, at first I couhh-- couldn’t stop. But now, the spell is wearing off and they’re not-hh, they’re not coming… Hh!” A sharp inhale and then “ESKSHuu! As often.” He sniffles. Rubs his wrist under his nose. “Ugh.” Then on his arm.

“That’s unsanitary.”

“We don’t get sick.”

“That doesn’t make it sanitary. Why are you always annoying the humans?”

“They’re humans. They deserve to be annoyed. They deserve to be removed from Athens.” He rubs his nose with his wrist, again, harshly this time, with the objective of scaring away whatever is ailing him. 

“But you’ve always hated humans.”

He gives her a look. “Your point?”

“You’ve only tormented them this year so that’s abnormal, is what I’m saying making sense?”

“Hhh-- huh...” He shakes his head. Sniffles with… determination? “I saw the great God Pan die.” No, not determination, condescension. “I saw him die, you couldn’t understand. It was just me, I was the only one there-- Ihhh...”

Okay, she decides. So he isn’t going to answer her questions about targeting the human population yet. Which would have been fun. 

“Hhhh…”

But he’s sneezing which, in the thousands of years that she’s known him, she’s only witnessed a few dozen times. 

“Hehh..-”

So maybe this is fun too. Interesting too. If she’s not going to get answers on his human angst, she figures she should at least get some answers on this whole sneezing business, which, in retrospect she’d never even considered closely until now. She crawls towards him on all limbs. His eyes are closed, brows delicately raised, he licks his lips intermittently. And his breaths-- his entire body is contracting in the anticipation. Cobweb reaches out, her fingers delicately, and slowly resting on his cheeks, she draws his face in her direction. 

“Wh- What are you doing?”

“I’m watching.”

He turns, abruptly jolting to shield her. His whole body is wracked with the force of them, and she watches as his body, slim, soft, is moved with each involuntary spasm.  “ESSHH-uu! ESSKS-Huu! Ahh…” 

“Your sneezes aren’t like mine. Or Peaseblossoms, or Moths. They’re so loud. Why are your sneezes loud? Why are things loud? Is there an echo? Do it again--”

“ASSHH-uu! EssSHHuu! Hh..”

“Ah! Just as suspected. Echo. I bet the other fairies could probably hear it from way out if they were listening…”

He turns back around, but not before scooting a few inches away from her. “This is stupid.”

“It’s incredible. And humans do this often?”

“Yes, humans do this of- ESSHHuu! Humans do this often.”

“Gods are like humans.” She says. And she’s watching his nostrils twitch, subtly run, before he innocuously rubs them. “They die, like Pan, who died. And us to, who sneeze, much like humans sneeze. We’re not all too different, I don’t think.”

“You’ve been talking to Hermia too much.” He says. “HESSH--uu!” And for the next thirty minutes, he goes on sneezing. 

 

[Usagi]

I liked this it was good! Never heard of what its from though

[Kicker]

10 hours ago, Usagi said:

I liked this it was good! Never heard of what its from though

lololol thank you! Yeah, it's really obscure sighhhh. I'm glad you could get some enjoyment out of it though! :) 

[Usagi]

No problem man! You write well!