The Grand OC III: Do Not Steal: Week 7: TIME-BLIND

Username: The Fox
Name: The One and Only Perfect Day
Race: Moment
Gender: Agender (they/them)
Colour: The kind of sunset they don't make any more. (#FF5F54)
Biography: There was once a perfect day. Probably one of the days of the summer holidays when you were a child. When the days felt longer, the world felt bigger and the political landscape hadn't yet descended into the hellscape it is today. All of the things that kids these days have or do that you hate hadn't been invented yet. Music was still musical and art was still artistic. And at the heart of it one perfect day. The sun was golden. The weather was perfect. All was right with the world and it's just a coincidence that this perfect day happened to be positioned at the exact point at which you were young enough to experience without any adult worries or concerns to hang over you.

That's what they say anyway.

In a universe constructed not of hard science but of story and belief, there was a hidden realm separate from the rest of the world ruled by Time Itself and occupied by Time’s many anthropomorphised fragments. Minutes, Hours, Days, Months, Years, Decades, Centuries. Each of them embodied some popular conception of the time they represented. Simply by walking the mortal world they could manifest their moment, or at least most of them could.

Perfect Day was born retroactively. While other days were born of some tangible repeatable experience (Payday, Leg Day, Laundry Day etc), through the codifying of the days under various calendars (Weekday, Monday and her siblings, Valentine's Day and the rest of the holidays), or through some anticipated future (Doomsday, One Day, Someday etc), they were formed only in response to faded memories of a glorious past.

Though Perfect Day would often walk the mortal world with the rest of them, they never could manifest their Perfect Day. While the other days brought joy and order to the world, Perfect Day could not seem to affect it in any meaningful way. Even speculative days that were yet to come at least got to spread anticipation in the world. All Perfect ever did was ruminate on days gone past, days they had never even experienced, and slowly built a resentment for a world that did not seem to want them.

But there was something they were good at. They would tell stories of the long past Perfect Days that could never come again to whomever would listen, and their stories were compelling. Their charisma was enough to draw people in, to enkindle a deep seated desire for this unreal past. With every telling the sunlight was more golden, the grass greener, the days longer and the nights more beautifully still under the impossibly starry night skies. In their tale there were no problems, no faults in their Perfect Days. How could there be? But it was always inevitable that Perfect was not going to be happy reliving their non-existent glory days forever.

Their victim was Modern Day, who saw themself as an exemplar of progress but in doing so they harboured some derisive views of the past. Perfect tore them open and drank their essence. They could probably have chosen anyone and achieved the same effect, but they had resented Modern more than anyone else. With Modern’s stolen essence they found themselves finally able to manifest their idea of a Perfect Day in the world.

Their perfect day was perhaps a great day for a lot of people, but there is no such thing as universal perfection. Those whose needs were being met were mostly older generations whose ideas of what a perfect day was had long ago become part of Perfect Day themselves. The less privileged suffered and laboured to facilitate the perfect day of others, their bodies worn down and aching but their overwritten hearts filled with joy that was not theirs. As night began to fall, no it didn’t. Perfect Day held tight to the world, refusing to let go of that which they had desired for so long. Their so called perfect day dragged on and on and time began to lose all meaning. Days. Weeks. Perhaps Months. How can you measure the passage of time when time refuses to pass and become something new?

Forcing them to let go and return to the Timeless Realm was a difficult and time-consuming process. They shattered and consumed the essence of those who were sent after them, the biggest casualties in this process being a handful of Years and even a Decade or two. Moments just weren’t used to having to fight one another, and Perfect Day who had spent so long building resentment for all of the other Moments wouldn’t hold back, and with each victory they grew stronger.

It was only when Time Itself emerged from the Timeless Realm to walk the Earth that they were brought to heel. Time told Perfect Day exactly what they were:

Echo of nothing. Your poisonous regressive ideology has harmed innumerable both kin and mortal. You have sinned more than any before you. Your hands bear the blood of many of your own kin who loved you and once relished your tales. You are scum, a tainted fragment of myself. You will return to the Wastes, to a tower I built for you and you will wait there till the End of Time Myself.

Perfect Day had no choice but to comply. They resided in that isolated tower separate from the world for a long time, not that time was exactly measurable here, becoming more and more embittered until they mysteriously vanished one day.

Weapons/Abilities: Very little of their stolen power remains. The world around them tends to become more exaggerated in whatever way they are most noteworthy. Sunlight for example becomes brighter, more golden, warmer. Nighttime becomes more quiet, more still, more chill. Their only innate ability is their charisma. They are remarkably good at exploiting whatever deeply held nostalgia their audience has within them.

Description: Perfect Day is an androgynous humanoid with golden eyes and silver-grey hair. They are clothed in old motheaten robes with heavy shackles around their wrists and ankles though they don’t connect to anything.
They were deeply resentful of the modern world even before their attempt at manifesting a perfect day, and that feeling has only intensified after being locked away by Time Itself. Their strongest desire is to recreate the Perfect Day that they long to experience. There is very little they won’t do to achieve their goal.