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Shimi
@shimi.bsky.social
2K followers 541 following 1.1K posts
Arty bitey deaf old wolf. Lvl 62 Feral storyteller, poet, classicist, scribe, artist, composer & arranger. BA(hons) Fine Art/Sonic Arts. Episcopalian. Lector. Castus, non caelibis Amator animalium.
![A dramatically lit photograph from Tenebrae shows the Blind Wolf emerging from near-total darkness. Wearing a dark robe and a large grey wolf head, the figure looks upward into a narrow wash of red, violet and cold blue light that catches one bright eye, the muzzle, exposed face and folds of clothing while most of the body disappears into blackness. One hand is raised at the edge of the frame in an ambiguous gesture, somewhere between testimony, warning and accusation. The stark theatrical lighting gives the image a severe, prophetic quality, as though the Blind Wolf has stepped out of the dark to bear witness. Photograph by @netsui_prime.
BETRAYAL
A section from the libretto of Tenebrae
By Shimi & Critter
In the last days of the old world, their testimony was this:
We did not lose the animals.
We betrayed them.
Before the fence—
before the collar—
long before we traded ourselves for thirty pieces of silver, and entered into a contract with Empire—
we divided creation
into a human world
and an animal world.
But there had only ever been the world,
and we belonged within it—
[Pulse]
Eyes found one another beyond the fire.
Teeth near the throat.
Warmth against winter.
Nothing lived apart.
Not as symbols.
Not as property.
Not as lesser life.
The world taught us the true cost of standing alone.
We once learned weather from wings.
We once followed hoofprints to safe water.
[On Tablas]
Then we made “animal” the word for everything we meant to stand above.
And that was the first fence.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:6hpcvbf2bhtwyfh5cfmx6clw/bafkreidkmwdgn2uxudsikrupqwpsd7fqsltsimps2tkrpswy5rsom3lgbe)
![After that, the others came easily.
We renamed everything for use.
Cow became livestock.
Wolf became threat.
Rat became specimen.
Dog became pet.
Forest became timber.
River became power.
Mountain became ore.
Death became yield.
You see—it was a trick of language. The violence began in grammar.
Then came the ledger. Once we had boiled the world down to property, it screamed, and that scream we named industrial static.
But the scream would not stop.
So we muzzled it.
We learned not to listen to what remained alive.
We built walls high enough to hide what we had done to the world around us.
We took the face.
Then the name.
Then the covenant.
We were given a world to serve
and chose instead to possess it.
We called that possession progress.
We rewrote our covenant as a contract with Empire.
And when every other body had been owned, cut, and stripped of its name— we turned on ourselves.
[Pausa.]
We renamed what looked back at us, forgetting we had made none of this.
We found excuses and reasons to cheat the world.
Word by word.
Piece by piece.
We trained the creature in us to distrust its own body.
Hunger.
Grief.
Rest only by permission.
Toil without remission.
Neither sowing.
Nor reaping.
No storehouse.
No gods. No masters.
So we forged our own:
Algorithmic creations whispered in our ears: “We are your gods now.”
And for our self-made idols,
Creation became raw material to feed an approximation.
We fed them every thought,
every grievance, every appetite.
We breathed an imitation of life into them while they returned our hunger— automated, amplified, accelerated beyond mercy, beyond all human scale.
[Ictus incudis]
Worker.
Consumer.
User.
Target.
Content.
Resource.
Data.
We counted our steps.
Measured our sleep.
Sold our faces.
Traded our friendships for attention.
Fed our loneliness into machines that learned how to sell it back to us.
We mistook being watched for being known.
We mistook being measured for being seen.
We mistook endless choice for freedom.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:6hpcvbf2bhtwyfh5cfmx6clw/bafkreidpsgze5uaal6m2oluuln3r53une7b5awk44doc5sbfa52q723the)
![And at last—we domesticated ourselves. We learned to carry the leash inside our own skull.
[Pausa longa]
[Lupus caecus succumbit.]
Sit.
Work.
Buy.
Smile.
Produce.
Obey.
The Machine did not hate us.
It did not need to.
We were no longer our own, for we had been bought with a price.
We fed the Machine.
We fed it forests.
We fed it oceans.
We fed it the air we breathed.
We fed it the lives of creatures.
We fed it the bodies of workers.
We gave it our hours.
Our names.
Our children.
Our dead.
We became its Engines
and called the noise
“civilisation.”
[Pausa. Arpeggia.]
But enough was never enough.
The Machine always demanded more.
We rewarded those who remained calm while we tore the living world apart.
We called grief weakness.
We called fury disorder.
We called resistance a failure to adjust.
Then we named those who would not yield:
Undomesticated.
Unreasonable.
Dangerous.
Animal.
And that was the final insult: not merely to deny our oldest kin their name,
but to use that name for everything we feared within ourselves.
We spat the word downward
and did not realise
it had always been
our own holy name.
[Fractura]
We taught our own cubs to hide their teeth.
We clipped the wings of anything
that tried to escape our grasp.
We drugged the restless.
Caged the frightened.
Killed the disobedient.
And called obedience… love.
And still we could not become less animal, but chose instead to become animals trained to betray animals.
Products purchasing products made from the lives and labour of our relatives.
And still the human world reassured us:
Everything is fine.
Growth must continue.
There is no alternative.
Someone else will suffer.
Someone else will clean it.
Someone else will die.
[Pausa]
Do not look behind the wall.
Do not ask whose blood made it cheap.
Do not ask why the river is silent.
Do not ask where the insects went.
Do not ask what taught you to betray your own wild heart.
Do not ask what had to be killed in you before you learned to call this normal.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:6hpcvbf2bhtwyfh5cfmx6clw/bafkreicveyb7z2ohlmolghadosztdhkwxpagg3ktcey7a7e5ypmblftfca)
![Do not ask.
Do… not… dare… ask.
[Pausa]
Because you might remember.
[Subito intus. Intime et accusatorie.]
You might remember
that the separation was never natural.
The animals did not abandon us.
We abandoned them.
We abandoned the creature within ourselves, then punished every living thing
that reminded us ours was still alive.
We called their terror instinct.
We called our terror reason.
We called their homes wilderness.
We called our devastation development.
[Pausa]
But beneath that lie was an older lie—buried so deep it made no sound—
the lie that made all the others possible: that we stood outside creation, that we could cut ourselves free from the only home we ever had, and live; that we could be saved by condemning
what…
we…
were…
[Pausa.]
[Silentium tene.]
[Tabulae]
So ended the testimony of those who saw too late what the human world had become.
But beyond the last tower,
beyond the failing signal,
beyond the roads splitting open
beneath the weight of all they carried—
she was waiting.
Lykaeon.
Mother of the scattered.
Keeper of the old paths.
She who remembered us before we were made useful.
She did not come to save the Machine.
She came to gather those the Machine had discarded.
The strays.
The feral ones.
Those crying beneath the Engines.
Those of us who never fully learned to pretend we were not animals.
She called from a darkness older than fear:
Come away from the algorithm.
Come away from everything that taught you to betray the animal you are.
Bring your hunger.
Bring your shame collared to it.
Bring what survived.
Because here, in Tenebrae, we enter darkness—not because darkness is evil, but because it is one of the last things we have not learned to sell back to ourselves as hope.
Come home.
[Exeunt.]
Copyright 2026 Shimi All Rights Reserved](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:6hpcvbf2bhtwyfh5cfmx6clw/bafkreibig7xl774d2ig5ss5tygdlto3n2ndjgjsjxaziz5llhs7rlftjuu)
