TheRottenCore Invocation
I tend the Orchard where sorrow takes seed.
I feed what withers, and call it beautiful.
My hands know the language of rot and renewal.
Every bloom is a wound I’ve forgiven.
Beneath the husk, I listen
to what still dares to breathe.
xo mandijune
TheOrchard@RottenCore
All Hallow's Eve 2025
TheEscapeGoats
They appear when the air thickens with blame. The small creatures with hollow ribs and patient eyes.
TheVillages and those they attempt to contain, pretend not to see them forming in the corners.
That pretending exhausts even the soil.
EachRottenGoat carries a different kind of accusation.
Some are born already tired.
Some learn to run.
Some offer shelter.
Some offer play.
Others, designed for 'stuck', remain WithinTheForeverPlea to leave.
TheEscapeGoats
Quick note: when I log in here I usually scroll through my feed and like things as I see them. If you suddenly get a few likes from me in a row, it just means I’m catching up on art and supporting what I enjoy. Not spam, just appreciation. 🖤🗝🍎
TheSlowMotionOrphaning
People think anticipatory grief lives in the future. Like a storm on the horizon. like something coming.
It doesn’t.
It lives in the air right now.
It lives in the moment you realize the person in front of you is already stepping backward out of the room.
Not gone... not dying today.
Just… less here than they were yesterday.
That’s the part no one prepares you for.
Because this isn’t waiting for death.
This is erosion.
This is TheSlowMotionOrphaning.
Not an ending... but a thinning.
A memory dissolves.
An ability fades.
An independence slips loose.
A certainty quietly walks out and doesn’t come back.
And the world keeps moving.
No ceremony. No pause.
No one marks the day their eyes stop recognizing a doorway.
No one gathers when their skin bruises like it forgot how to be strong.
No one announces the moment they become fragile in a way that makes your chest tighten for no reason you can explain.
Loss without ritual.
Grief without witnesses.
This morning, her eyes weren’t looking. They were searching. Searching the way someone searches a dark room for a light switch they know should be there.
The eyes couldn’t see.
But the mind was still reaching.
Still trying to orient.
Still trying to pull the world back into place.
Still trying to make reality come into focus.
That effort.
That reaching.
That quiet, stubborn refusal to disappear.
That’s what broke me.
Because the mind knows the world is slipping, and it’s still trying to hold on.
Time behaves strangely here....
From the outside, everything is slow.
The decline.
The changes.
The stacking of small, almost invisible losses.
But inside the moment?
It’s fast.
Shock-fast.
Memory-fast.
Grief hitting before the moment is even over.
Because every new loss wakes up an old one.
The other parent.
The other goodbye.
The other time the world quietly rearranged itself without permission.
Two speeds.
Slow life - fast impact reality.
Two griefs at once.
Grieving who they were.
Grieving who they’re becoming.
Or maybe more honestly, who they’re unbecoming.
And still, you hand them the medication.
You speak gently.
You keep your voice steady.
You function.
Because the world didn’t stop..... technically.
That’s TheSlowMotionOrphaning.
Not losing a parent to death
But losing one to the removal of life...
Losing them while they’re still alive... when the whole world tells you to rejoice they are 'still here'...
But here’s the part no one says out loud.
The part that hurts more than the forgetting.
More than the fragility.
More than the disappearing.
It’s this:
You can see it in their face.
The flicker of confusion.
The extra second.
The hesitation.
The moment they realize
they’re losing themselves.
And you’re not just watching them go.
You’re watching them
watch themselves fade.
In TheOrchard, this is when the air gets heavy.
When love stops feeling warm and starts feeling like holding water in your hands.
When every moment becomes both presence and goodbye.
And the cruelest truth?
They’re still here.
Still fighting.
Still reaching.
Still trying to come back to a world that is already, quietly, letting them go.
oh, how I miss the old days where I lamented only my pain.
__________
*art & words by mandijune XO
TheGnarls_Reconfigured
Something happened within TheOrchard@MangledMill long ago.
Something that did not break TheGnarls, but rearranged them.
TheSomething wasn't destruction, nor loss... but configuration.
TheGnarls do not become who they were meant to be.
They become who the pressure made possible.
When the wheel stopped turning, time stopped behaving... andTheSeasons stacked on top of each other.
Blossoms met frost.
Fruit ripened beside rot.
Nothing unfolded in order again.
TheGnarls adapted and they learned to live out of sequence.
Memories shifted position.
Roles traded hands.
Strength moved where weakness once lived.
Grief hardened into structure.
Fear sharpened into awareness.
Softness hid itself inside bone.
They did not lose themselves.
They reassembled.
You can see it in their faces... almost the same, but not quite.
One carries the expression the other couldn’t afford to hold.
One bears the weight of what the other had to forget.
They stand close because separation would undo the balance.
Within TheOrchard@MangledMill, survival is not about staying intact. It is about strategic rearrangement... and TheGnarls are TheOrchard’s masters of internal engineering.
When the environment would not change, they did.
When the system failed, they became their own system.
Nothing wasted.
Nothing discarded.
Everything reassigned.
Even the clockwork growing from their crowns tells the truth:
They no longer live by natural time.
They live by necessary time.
And NecessaryTime says:
Become what the moment requires.
Rebuild while breathing.
Reconfigure without permission.
TheGnarlsOfMangledMill
In the oldest corner of TheOrchard, past the tidy rows, beyond the places where things grow the way they’re supposed to, there is a broken waterwheel and a mill that hasn’t turned in years.
Nothing there grows straight.
That’s where TheGnarls live.
They were not planted.
They were not pruned.
They were not chosen.
They are what happens when growth refuses instruction.
TheGnarlsOfMangledMill grew from twisted roots and interrupted season...
branches forced to bend toward light that never stayed, blossoms opening too early, fruit forming under pressure instead of patience.
Three bodies, one survival instinct.
Three faces, each holding a different memory of the same weather.
One watches the past.
One studies the present.
One listens for danger that may never come.
They do not agree.
They do not separate.
They endure.
Their eyes are wide because the world was never gentle.
Their skin is pale because they learned early to live in shadow.
Their flowers bloom anyway.. soft, stubborn, and a little haunted... crowns grown from the refusal to die where they were planted.
In TheOrchard@MangledMill, beauty is not symmetry... beauty is adaptation.
TheGnarls are TheOrchard’s keepers of distortion... the guardians of the bent path, the scarred branch, the fruit that grew under strain and still carries sweetness inside.
They are not broken.
They are what resilience looks like when it grows sideways.