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thetravellingvagrant · 5 years

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Day 10- Lviv: In Which I Befriend A Scrotum

Today was my last day in Ukraine. By some miracle during my time here, I had managed to not get mowed down by Russian machine gun fire, though, it hadn't escaped my notice, I had also managed to not do a great many other things that I had actually wanted to, either. Today, I planned to remedy that. I roused myself from bed uncharacteristically early and- for once- being that I felt ruinously befuckled in neither my mind or guts, saw myself leaving my rubbish little apartment on the less pleasant side of noon. My first stop of the day was Lviv's natural history museum- there having been a conspicuous and gaping absence of nightmare fuel on this trip, thus far.

After a not insubstantial amount of difficulty finding the place, I was eventually waved inside by a stern man, paid my entrance fee of 20 hryvnia (not a lot of money...) to an equally stern woman and was finally ready to bust the natural history seal of this trip wide open. I was genuinely excited; an emotion I thought I would never feel again after Belarus.

...I shouldn't have been, though. I think this was, by really quite some distance, the worst natural history museum I have ever been to in my life. It was comprised of just three living-room sized halls, sparsely decorated with not-very-many-at-all stuffed animals, jars of pickled fish and just the worst, most poorly written, poorly spelled, frankly vapid signage imaginable.

Fucking try.

still though, the big mantis was cool

Pictured: large boi

and there were some incredibly pleasing examples of bad taxidermy on show

Hwellp. I guess God’s dead, or whatever.

and so, despite paying one full hryvnia for each minute I had spent there, (again, not a lot of money), I still left the museum having enjoyed it thoroughly for what it was- i.e. total garbage. Oh well, on to my next destination: an internet cafe, to print my bus ticket for tomorrow.

The cafe, situated not far from the museum was an odd place; looking like and indeed actually being situated in someone's apartment, as it was. I stood outside for some minutes, wondering whether or not I should actually go in, as the last thing I wanted to do was accidentally just walk into some guys house and demand he print things for me, though eventually the little switch in my brain that makes me go “fuck it” flipped and I stepped inside to, thankfully, the right place.

Once in, the printing process was fast, painless and cheap. I was charged a single hryvnia (approximately 2.5p) and left triumphant, ticket in hand, five minutes later. The entire experience being so streamlined, coupled with the...diminutive nature of the museum had meant that I had, at this point, chewed through two of my four plans for the day in under an hour and for under one pound.

I decided that, given the unexpected glut of free time I had found myself with, it may be prudent to spend some of it scoping out my bus stop for tomorrow. My ticket, rather unhelpfully, read simply “near pizzeria napoletana” and given that this was the single most expensive item I had bought during my time, here and that my bus was due to depart at seven in the morning, with no opportunity to catch another one until mid-afternoon the same day, I was- I feel- understandably anxious enough to make sure that I would be at least standing in vaguely the right place when it arrived.

The stance was some distance away from any of my intended stops for the day, though the walk to it would take me through another lovely (lvivly?) park, or two, at the very least, so I pushed on, regardless. It was in one of these Lvivly parks, that I was stopped by two young men; Max and...Dimitri, I think? They were students, or very pleasant scam artists selling greetings cards to generate money for some student initiative to raise the quality of living for young people in the city or something. Or just drugs. Either way, we became embroiled in conversation. We talked about the usual sort of things you'd imagine- where I was from, what I was doing in Lviv, why, god, why did you come here now? Doodoodoodoodoo and all that. It wasn't until they found out that I was from the UK, though that things got awkward.

“Ah, then you must be excited for Brexit” Max said, beaming.

I exhaled loudly through my nose and shot him a look as if to say “don't go there, girlfriend”, except whiter and less sassy than that.

“Oh?” he said, a quizzical look playing across his face “you don't like Brexit?”

I told him that I thought it was an undemocratic omnishambles of the highest order.

“Huh...” he mused. “I thought all British people were really into the idea.”

and there it was. The single most embarrassing moment of the trip, so far. Worse than forgetting to sign my passport or nearly shitting myself while skidding around ice; this was the moment at which my face was reddest (fortunately, it being so fucking cold, it was already a bit red and you couldn't tell). I politely informed Max that not everyone in the UK endorsed Brexit and in fact in Scotland, the vast majority of people opposed it and then, out of shame more than anything else, bought one of his stupid fucking greetings cards and bid him a good day. Enjoy the drugs. Bastard.

My search for the bus stop went poorly. I arrived at the compound and found...several pizzerias. None of which were named Napoletana. I walked around for a while, hoping to stumble upon a clue as to where buses might actually stop in this god-forsaken place, but found nothing. Being without phone internet due to the ludicrous price of data on Vodafone, when travelling outside of standard touristy countries, there was little I could do except leave and hope that the Google gods would answer my concerns, later.

My last stop of the day (the penultimate one, The Scientists' House- a big fancy house where all scientists used to live- being such a non event that it wasn't even really worth mentioning. I couldn't find it and gave up, basically.) was Lviv's only and indeed my very first visit to a cat-cafe. I took my seat in a small booth in the corner and before my face could even unfreeze enough to order food, I was set upon by a very lovely and seemingly also very, very old sphinx cat, whom I immediately named Ballbag Snugginz, owing to his affectionate nature and also because he looked like a scrotum. Ballbag hopped onto my table (perhaps slightly unsanitary, though I'll forgive it...), took one look at the scarf I had laid across my lap and said to himself “I'm 'avin' that, I am”. He made a bee-line for my groin and after some very awkward kneading, wound himself into a little fleshy coil

and fell soundly asleep. Looks like I was here for the long haul.

Gross.

I ordered some food (Salmon and spinach strudel; amazing) and a pot of tea (ginger and mint; fine) and merrily munched through it, Ballbag still softly purring in my lap, which is now the best sentence in this blog and pretty much always will be. Ordering salmon in a cat cafe was a good call, I think. While I was strictly forbidden from feeding any of feline residents, the stench of the fish nonetheless bought them to me, albeit in each case incredibly briefly once they realised I wasn't for sharing, in droves.

By the time I had scraped the last of my strudel from the plate and gulped down the final drops of tea, Lord Snugginz had, if anything, only entrenched himself further into my groin in an even tighter coil and was now lightly snore-purring. I ordered a chocolate lava cake so as to not need to get up and go, right away.

The cake, as with pretty much everything else about this cafe was excellent but all too soon, it was gone and so too, did I need to be. I lifted Ballbag away from me and plopped him down on the seat adjacent to myself. I'll be honest, it didn't feel very nice, neither emotionally, nor physically. If you've ever seen the music video for Aphex Twin's song “Rubber Johnny”- moving Ballbag Snugginz was the tactile version of that. Absolutely manky.

Not in the slightest happy with that arrangement at all, Ballbag very angrily clambered back on top of me and with a look, as if to say “oh no you betta don't” except whiter and less sassy than that and went back to sleep. For fucks sake, Ballbag.

I decided to awkwardly put my coat, scarf and gloves on around him, much to the amusement of the staff, before moving him off for the final time and quickly darting away, as he sat, bleary eyed and grumpy, wondering what the fuck had just happened. I ended up leaving the cafe something like a 75% tip, as first, it was very nice, second, I hoped it would all go to B. Snugginz and third, I just had so much Ukrainian cash left that I didn't even really know what to do with it.

Despite it being crazy cold and also very late- my experience in the cat cafe, all told, lasting...several hours more than I intended- I decided to hop back to that god-awful supermarket for what I hoped would be the last time, to chew through some of my cash. I reasoned that I could save myself some Zloty by buying ingredients for tomorrow's dinner here, in advance.

Let me tell you, I went mental; I bought enough food for three dinners; the most expensive sausage I could find, a huge block of cheese, crisps, wafers, the whole nine yards and was still somehow left with the equivalent of £9 in local currency, which I was just, at this point, unable to spend. I returned home to bibble, clean and get some sleep, atop my hoard of remaining hyryvnia, like some kind of tiny, very shit dragon. Tomorrow: Poland. Again.

#lviv #ukraine #cat #cats #cafe #cat cafe #natural history #museum #cold #dinner #sausage #sphinx cat #sphinx

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team-crimsonfade · 6 years

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CrimsonFade

Chapter one - Ruins

Part three

——

Frisk's eyes fluttered open, still weighed down by sleep. The night was peaceful, or at least the short duration of which she had slept. In truth though, she was far too excited to sleep for an extended period of time. It felt like a very short amount of time though. However, there was a difference between waking up, and getting up. It proved to be a short conflict, as a sweet, lovely scent filled the air.

She compelled her body to obey, at least in order to discover the source of the scent. It filled her mind with a pleasant familiarity. As she sat up from her bed, and hopped off, she could see the source. A single slice of pie, which sat on a delicate little plate. She could detect the aromas of cinnamon and butterscotch, along with all of the other smells a pie would usually have. She wondered how this got here, and then realized the only source could have been Flowey. Rather than scratch her head over how he did it, she brought the pie over to her inventory. She felt some kind of warm feeling with the pie, a nostalgia that kept springs in her step. It somehow didn't feel right to eat it, at least not right now.

However as she smelled the pie up close, she anticipated the day she would happily gorge on the pie. In the meantime, she decided she would go and check on her flowery host. As she left the bedroom, she soon found him sitting outside. She wasn't sure how she was surprised, it wasn't as if he could burrow through the wood floors. Or could he? How on earth did he get that pie to her? Rather than ponder over any of these obvious and physics breaking questions, she walks over to the flower. Flowey vaguely notices her sit next to him, the dirt supporting her weight. He sighed, as he continued to stare up at the large tree.

"I sometimes wonder why I'm here." He suddenly says aloud. "What it is that keeps me alive. That tree shouldn't be alive. It's far from any source of sunlight, the air is stale in comparison to the healthy breeze of the outside, and the soil and roots are dry. It should have shriveled like a prune long ago, and yet here it stands. What keeps me alive? I'm a plant too, except I apparently have feelings, intelligence, and a desire to be alive. But no matter what I do, no matter what I believe, I am still just that. A plant."

Frisk continued to watch him in his deep sense of thought. She wondered whether he was speaking directly to her, or speaking with himself.

"What would happen if I died?" He asked. "Do I even have a soul that would just... pop out of my fallen form once I pass? Would I even turn to dust like other monsters do, or simply whither away and decay over time? The unknown, that's what scares me. If I were to die, the only thing left I would have to fall back on are memories. But... hardly anyone even knows me really. I'm... I'm content, with dying. I've... made peace with that. Even for immortal beings, or powerful ones, death takes us all. Time, is a very deadly force."

He turned to face Frisk, and she could see the worry in his eyes.

"But being forgotten, that scares me." He says. "It would be as if you've never even mattered in the world. You didn't even exist, and you never will. You'd never know if you made a difference at all in the world, for better or worse, or the impact you would have on someone if they remembered you. Dying is the easy part, living is hard. But being forgotten? I shudder at the thought. Frisk? Promise me that you won't ever forget me. Please."

She wasn't sure how to respond. This was such a dark and yet profound subject to dwell on, and to hear it from a flower was quite unheard of. But by looking at his face, he was absolutely terrified, at the very least greatly concerned over this matter. It would be malicious to say no to this.

Frisk smiled, and gently rested a hand on his head.

"Okay Flowey." She said. "I promise."

Flowey smiles warmly, and leans against the hand. He closed his eyes with contentment, and almost looked like a peaceful little baby.

"Thank you, Frisk." He said.

The two of them continued to look up at the tree, silently bonding with each other under the faint, yet gentle and serene breeze.

***

Some time had passed, and something was on Frisk's mind. She had to ask Flowey about it, but... was hesitant to bring it up.

"Flowey, how do I get home?" She asked.

The flower didn't respond at first, aside from a pained, deep breath, and an exhale. After awhile, he finally responded.

"Well that didn't take too long." He said. "But... I suppose it was foolish to think that this could last anyway. You're more likely to find Save Points ahead, if you were to remain for too long you would run out of Determination. And you're just too Determined to let that happen huh?"

Frisk didn't respond, just waited for him to continue.

"No matter." He said. "I can't keep you here, even if I wanted to. You're the best thing I've seen in a very long time. But... it's much too late for me to obtain happiness. Though I'm grateful you've given me the illusion of it. I don't know why I continue to live, but I know how I came to be. It required a lot of pain for me to be me, so much pain..."

Whatever he was referring to, it didn't seem that he cared to share. He shook his head, and sighed.

"But I am not the only one who's suffering." He says. "There is a man up ahead, whose heart and soul remain cracked and depressed to this very day. For over a century, he has pained, and the entire race of monsters has felt it. Even from here, I still feel it. I no longer wish for him to suffer in this way, nor for the feeling to continue to spread to the inhabitants. Somehow, I know that only you can end his suffering. So I shall allow you to leave, and continue on your journey, if you only promise to make it to the King, and end his suffering."

The way he phrased it was ominous. End the King's suffering. It echoed within her mind. And whatever it was, something compelled her to continue forth. The fact was someone was in trouble, someone was hurting and in need of help. She, as a person, was determined to help this person. And so she nods her head in Flowey's direction.

"Alright Flowey, I promise."

***

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Part three of “CrimsonFade; Ruins” Credit to Red Wolf on Undertale Amino

Last Part — https://team-crimsonfade.tumblr.com/post/179558905806/crimsonfade

Next Part — (Coming Soon)

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