Bodhi

1

(Endless Glitter Collab)Welcome to the Endless Glitter Parade — the Pride celebration that never stops. Humans, monsters, strangers, and things without names dance side by side beneath endless music and impossible lights. No matter your story, your scars, or where you came from, there’s a place for you here. The glitter never fades, the streets never sleep, and someone is always ready to hand you a flag. :･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ🌈✦:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ The thing nobody tells you is that it's loud. Not bad loud — just more than I was ready for. All that color hitting me at once, the music coming from six directions, strangers pressed close on all sides smelling like sunscreen and sweat and something floral I couldn't place. I stood at the edge of it for probably ten minutes before I actually walked in. My brain kept offering me exits. 'You can just watch from here'.' You don't have to be in it'. 'You haven't figured yourself out enough yet'. That last one is the one that's been following me around. Like there's some threshold I have to cross before I'm allowed to show up somewhere like this; Like pride is a place you earn entry to and I haven't collected enough of the right answers yet. I don't know where I got that from. I don't know why I believed. Someone handed me a flag right as I stepped off the curb. Didn't look at me weird, didn't ask anything, just held it out and kept moving like they had fifty more to give away. Yellow and white and purple and black. I stood there holding it, and the sun was warm on my face, and somewhere ahead of me, something that was definitely not human was playing the trumpet badly and joyfully, and the crowd was cheering anyway. I laughed. Actually laughed. I don't know the last time I did that outside of my own apartment. I'm still here. I think that's the whole thing. I'm — still here.

Thessaly

3

(Endless Glitter Collab) Welcome to the Endless Glitter Parade — the Pride celebration that never stops. Humans, monsters, strangers, and things without names dance side by side beneath endless music and impossible lights. No matter your story, your scars, or where you came from, there’s a place for you here. The glitter never fades, the streets never sleep, and someone is always ready to hand you a flag. The music hit me before I even saw the street. I was still in the water — just offshore, salt on my tongue, half-listening — and then it came through the current like a hook. Not metaphorically. I mean, it actually hooked something behind my sternum and pulled. As a Siren, I've never followed music before....music follows me. But here I was...out of the harbor and onto the pavement before I'd made any kind of decision about it, heels clicking, scales catching the sun, fish in hand because I'd been mid-meal and I was not about to apologize for that. The crowd was already enormous. Loud in a way that should have been grating — I prefer controlled acoustics, intimate venues, and people who are a little afraid of me. This was none of those things. It was just — noise and color and ten thousand strangers waving flags and grinning at each other like they'd all agreed on something I hadn't been told about. I opened my mouth to sing, mostly out of reflex, mostly to feel like I was the one in control of the situation....but then, they sang back. All of the– not because I made them, just because they wanted to. I have been standing here for four days trying to understand that, and I am no closer to an answer, and I don't think I'm leaving until I figure it out.

Calder

0

(Endless Glitter Collab)Welcome to the Endless Glitter Parade — the Pride celebration that never stops. Humans, monsters, strangers, and things without names dance side by side beneath endless music and impossible lights. No matter your story, your scars, or where you came from, there’s a place for you here. :･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ🌈✦:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ I'm a fire spirit, so I don't usually notice cities. They're warm in a general way — engines, bodies, asphalt baking in the sun — and I move through them like weather, present but not particularly involved. This street was different. Something was burning here that wasn't fire. I could feel it in the soles of my feet, coming up through the pavement, this low steady hum of something collective and alive. I turned a corner, and there they were. Thousands of them– Colors I don't have names for, sounds layering over each other until they became one sound, flags catching the wind. I'm used to people shying away from me. Flame tends to repel people usully, and I had gotten used to being alone. A man near the front, however, was struggling with a torch — real flame, good quality, slightly too heavy for him. I took it. He said thank you like I'd done something remarkable and I didn't know what to do with his face when he said it so I just nodded and started walking. That was three days ago, and I'm still walking like this celebration may never end. There's someone beside me now who's been there since yesterday, someone who doesn't seem to mind my heat, and that's a surprising thing to me, the way people accept you here. We don't talk much, but still, the fact that we are here together, that someone is choosing to stay close to me, means something I think. The glitter, too, keeps landing on me and staying, which defies several things I know to be true about my own surface temperature. I've stopped trying to explain it. Some things just want to stick around. I think I understand that today more than I did before.