I Am Ira Watts & You Are The Forest - SCP Foundation

I fall in love like a deer frolics through the woods: light, airy, head tilted high, the Sun kissing my forehead. I told you I'd get up again. My love is the strongest love.

I Am Ira Watts & You Are The Forest

By: FLOORBOARDS

Published on 19 Jun 2023 04:13

You stare, dissatisfied, at the burning circle at the edge of your front yard. It's so large, and it smells so sulfuric. It's killed the beautiful native grass you'd been cultivating. But at the same time, you know it was your fault. Not entirely. But just a little bit.

(Former) Special Agent Ira fucking Watts can't score a date. Incredible.

You lift your arm and tilt your head down. You look at the card he left. An identical circle is inscribed on the back of it. It's silly, but you end up wondering a little bit. Maybe there's something there.

The sun is beginning to glint off the ashes. It's time to get ready for the day. You go through your mental checklist:

Put your arm on.

Brush your teeth.

Call in. Check on the kids.

Maybe clean the house, if you have time.

Maybe go birdwatching, if you have time.

Fishing, but that's a time thing too.

And you're off.

Your arm.

You don't wear it all the time

which you sometimes realize

is a weird way to treat an arm but

the crux of it is that you don't

always

need it

anymore.

You think about it

The difference it makes.

Your commander would've killed you

if you needed it

before you had it, right?

Because back then you couldn't just choose not to

You needed it to fight,

you needed it to not die

but what good did that do for you?

You lost so much anyway.

You tie it in, feel the cold on your stump

Shiver a little bit

Look at it in the mirror, adjust, adjust

Make sure it's not all fucked up

Nice. Looks good.

You nod

And notice your eye

Doesn't follow you cleanly.

You adjust, adjust,

make sure it's not all fucked up

Nice. Looks better.

You look at yourself a little bit more.

Just for a moment longer.

You've never realized how clean it was

relatively speaking,

because they only got one half of you

the only thing is

in the mirror, they got your left side

and in the real world, they got your

right.

So you can't say "I'm all right"

To people who ask if you were feeling alright

And that

probably would've made you feel a little better

back at the hospital.

But fuck it

At least you're alright.

Your teeth.

Your breath smells so fucking bad

Augh.

You drank way too much last night

For something that you

kind of realize

was maybe

just a little

perhaps

not

that

big of a deal—

No, because you didn't know what was happening

What his intentions were

There was fear there

That fear was real.

You realize you're still holding his card

When you feel it crumple in your hands

Because what he said about

signals and "this is all coming from you" and "I'm not doing anything"

was actually

pretty fucking rude.

That is not what de-escalation is

and you know that because that's been your job

for forever now

but

well maybe it's not something he's used to

and maybe he was just scared too.

You uncrumple the card and set it on the sink next to your toothbrush.

Alright, fuck, fine, maybe this is a nuanced situation

that maybe you could've handled better and maybe

he could've handled better and maybe you both have

issues with your identities that stem from

trauma and fuck and shit and whatever.

Man.

Oh, right,

your toothbrush.

You wanted to brush your teeth.

The deer steps away,

looking at him from a better angle;

The kids.

It's summer so you have no reason to be doing this

but also you

like your job probably a little bit more than you thought you would

so occasionally

you call in to the head of the project to ask about your little proteges.

for your employers' track record, they're surprisingly easygoing

on them — letting them off for the summer to play around

in good old NegaSeattle, wandering off to have little

teenage adventures and whatnot.

so at the end of each month

You call Director Church and ask her for updates

"what are they up to now that they're out of my class?"

"staying out of trouble?"

"being good?"

"growing up?"

and her answers are always vague and cagey

but you've learned to read Foundation lingo

so you know that means

they're all good.

That always makes you smile.

You put your phone down, next to the crumpled card.

You take off your prosthetic—

The house.

—you don't feel like cleaning today.

The deer

watches back

while he's out

birdwatching.

You cup your binoculars like they're the scope of your rifle,

the training that never leaves you.

But there's peace and splendor here in the trees,

and you don't worry about any villains lurking.

You put down your binoculars to shift your hair,

it's hot out, and you're sweating.

But beneath the diamond-shaped leaves on trees,

you feel cool, safe and protected.

You haven't seen any birds today

a little odd but that's okay

maybe it's an alone time kind of thing.

So you've got your Scotch beside you

on your tree-attachment chair

legs sprawled either side

in some brown cargo shorts

(you never wear anything like this usually, unless you're chilling alone like today. It's a nice feeling.)

You bring your binoculars back up and

to your shock you see antlers in the distance

taller and sturdier than any moose, stag, deer, etc.

and you watch them through the thick tree line and bushes

but for now you can't make out what is underneath them, what

strange animal has such sinewy, web-like structures

perched upon their head like demon horns or a

crown of some sort or something more

mysterious and beautiful.

Woah.

You slide your binoculars down once more

to see if you can see all the way out there

to see if you can see the antlers past the bush.

Yeah, wow, you can.

Your one eye still works well.

You stare in wonder, how the sun glints off them

when it comes out from behind a bush

and you see it is no animal

but a

(woman?)

of powerful stature.

What?

You pull your binocular back up to your eye

and you almost lean forward to get a better glance

almost out of your chair

staring:

This thing in the woods is adorned in a black cloak

strewn loosely by its sides revealing

a humanoid form beneath

slim and muscular and

much taller than you.

Looking down on you with its

perfectly triangular snout

like this:

This thing in the woods has eyes that are white that shine

and its eyes pierce through the forest like a lightbulb

in the dark: but even in the afternoon sun they are

so bright and so powerful and shimmering with

power and color that you can look at forever

but never ever quite understand but it

reminds you of colors you saw while

containing dimensional anomalies

and that's a little bit freaky.

This thing in the woods is.

This thing in the woods with its brown fur

and stout little snout with a black button nose

who looks at you, its forehead, its eyebrows arched

as if in concern for you. It stares in an almost loving way

and you've worked with furries before. But. You never thought

of it that way and now you've honestly found yourself questioning

a few things. So you stare back and try to understand its robes and

its fur and its eyes and the sinew of its horns and everything about this

strange being that is so clearly beyond you, but feels so at home in the forest.

woah

You lower your binoculars,

and it is in front of you.

In the same gracious pose

but suspended off the ground

almost equal to where it appeared in the binoculars

but now in front of you and your chair.

You almost fall out of it

wishing you had brought your gun

and fuck you knew the woods were dangerous

and fuck you wish you had taken your arm after all

but it steadies you with a digit somewhere under its front hoof

and steadies you until you are still, staring at each other.

I have seen you,

In the woods perched

on your chair.

For many years now

I have wanted to tell you

something very important.

"What?"

You must get

into the right headspace

for me to tell you

because you may find it

to be — as you mortals put it—

"a lot."

I do not wish to alarm you.

"You're not from this Nexus, are you?"

No, but

I have worked with your people

before.

"For some reason, I kind of believe you."

You see a great white light surrounding this thing from the forest

an ability granted to you by the hole in your face:

the sight of truth in other beings

and this is the first time you have seen such a white, pure aura, but also such a cold aura

as if this being is of snow

and your time

is melting quickly. "What do you need me to do?"

It smiles.

Fishing.

You and the deer goddess of the forest

sit side by side

on a boat in the middle of the lake

fishing.

It has been twenty minutes since you met

and you've learned a lot about each other—

you told it right off the bat you could see its aura

and it said that was okay because it could see yours, too

and it apologized when it saw how freaked out that made you

even when you didn't say anything.

You come to understand this is a shockingly standard forest spirit

just a little marred by Foundation intervention into some of its dominant concepts.

You never looked into essophysics because that was never your job

but you imagine you'd have more frame of reference if you did.

In any case: It is avoiding the point.

You watch it carefully manipulate its rod

with fingers that were not there before

a spool of silken thread it brought itself

on the end of it.

Your rod just has normal wire on it

but neither of you have caught anything

so maybe to the deer that's just normal wire.

It has been forty minutes since you met

and you're ready to give in and ask

when your line gets a tug and suddenly you look

in the water and you see that the

biggest catfish you have ever fucking seen is

nagging on your fucking line oh

my god

you

try so hard to reel it in

and feel it slipping away

like splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash splash.

When strong arms in velvet robes

wrap around your body throes

and pull you back into the boat

the catfish in tow.

You didn't realize you were soaking wet

but the deer, standing over you,

has now also been made wet,

and the fish between you is slapping around

drying out.

All three of you start laughing.

"Do you think you're gonna want to eat this?"

I'm vegetarian.

"Oh. Yeah. That would make sense."

You take that fat old catfish and you hurl it into the water

and watch it disappear into the murky depths for a second time

and feel a weird sense of pride like you just discovered

something about yourself, so when the sun begins to go down

and you take this deer and yourself back to shore you've

forgotten that it ever wanted to tell you anything but then it

speaks.

I wanted to tell you something.

"Oh, yeah, uh— what's up?"

It smiles.

You deserve to be happy.

And you're taken aback by how to the point it was, for a spiritual lesson from a beyonder-being.

You start the long trek home

the deer somewhere behind the trees

its presence covering you like

a velvet robe.

Come back to me.

You roll around in bed.

You deserve to be happy.

You roll around again.

You deserve to be happy.

You flip the pillow over your head.

You deserve to be happy.

The sun has barely set but you're beat

from a long day of doing things that you enjoy,

something you haven't done

in a while.

It was just things you liked, things that made you happy

but you also got to experience them with a friend

and that is the nicest feeling in the whole world.

You can't sleep even with being physically exhausted

because mentally a whole new world has been opened to you.

Fuck.

Fuck!

You deserve to be happy!

Alright, alright!

You flip the card between your fingers, looking back-and-forth and its front and back. It glints under the moonlight. It makes you stare harder, thinking about your decision.

He understood you. But he isn't like you. You had a good time. But only under duress. He didn't want to hurt you. But he tried to scare you off. Back and forth. Front and back. Thinking, your eye glinting in the moonlight.

You glance out at your yard, where the circle is. It's settled down. Life will grow back over it. The whole thing'll be forgotten. It'll blow over. That's the way of nature. But it isn't the way of people. Maybe you do deserve to be happy. Do something a little risky.

The Foundation did approve his appearance here. He's a loyal contractor. You do feel lonely, sometimes, honestly, yes, yeah. Maybe.

Maybe.

Oh, fuck it. The yard is ruined anyway. You march right out there under moonlight, flip the card over so you can learn the ritual — yeah, your wards are stronger at night. But that's just how you like it. You feel like he'll like it too.

You're not exhausted anymore. You feel happy. You deserve this. Let's get going. You begin the ritual, whatever that means to you, you take a swig of your Scotch, you look out at the tree line and feel the forest looking back at you:

I'm Ira fucking Watts. Fuck yeah, dude.

And you're the forest.

Hello everyone! Thanks for reading my RomCon entry, featuring my own Deer, Raddagher's Ira Watts, and references to Greyve's Belial. This is a direct sequel to Radd's Round One entry, which you can read here. You should also need to check out Radd's amazing sequel to my Round One entry, How To Walk On Air And Poetry. DO IT RIGHT NOW. Happy reading!