#( tentatively of course and subject to change but... here we go ! )

[arminhug]

lame first dates || armin arlert x reader

read it on ao3 here!

synopsis: on a warm spring day outside, your close friend armin tells you his ideal first date. if only it could be you on that date…

notes: gn! reader, friends to lovers, one-shot, mad fluff, loosely implied college! au if you really squint, armin and reader being bookworms, just some cute friends to lovers with a healthy dose of awkwardness, also you're vegetarian in this bc i couldn't think of another way to make cooking for someone more awkward, but this is only alluded to once

song rec: bleached by video days

。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。..・。.・゜✭・.・✫

“That’s lame!”

He blinks at me, doe eyes wide and brows furrowed in almost comical confusion. Blinks again. Pushes his hands back into the plush grass. “How is it lame?” he inquires.

“Why did you agree to get coffee as a first date if caffeine makes you anxious? God, as if first dates aren’t already stressful enough!”

“Look, okay!” Armin is grinning, and I breathe out in relief, knowing I have not actually upset him. His animate face is bridled by the April sunshine, and I am struggling to take my eyes off him. Oh God, am I staring? I hope I’m not staring. “They were really pretty. I mean, out of my league pretty. I was in no position to start negotiating.”

“Why not? There’s nothing wrong with both having input in a first date. If anything it’s telling.”

“How?”

“If they get angry at you for negotiating the date, that’s a red flag.” I say definitively.

“Well, that’s you,” Armin emphasises, lying back into the grass. His left hand rests lazily against his button nose to shield out the clear sky. “You’re more assertive than me. I was just thrilled they actually wanted to go on a date me.”

“So where did that go?” I ask tentatively.

“It didn’t work out. We went on a few dates, but they told me it just wasn’t clicking. That’s fair enough, I guess, but I still felt… bad. Like I obviously wasn’t good enough for them. Why would I be?” he turns to me, pursing his lips. “Sorry, I know I’m being a little melodramatic.”

“No, I get it. I mean, you definitely are good enough. But you’re always gonna feel shitty after being rejected.”

“Yeah.”

“So, when was this? I don’t remember you seeing somebody.”

“Start of the year. But it was a few dates, not a wedding plan. I just don’t feel the need to broadcast if I’m going on a couple of dates to the entire group. Unless they ask, of course.”

“Well,” I start, meeting his eyes with a smile. “I was expecting at least a little change in behaviour, surely? Maybe a spring in the step, a little bit more energy, high on life and love and all that jazz?” I enunciate with a flair of my hands.

“Not really. Maybe that was telling that there was nothing there. After all, the dates were all standard… kind of awkward at times, but like I said, I was grateful somebody that pretty desired me.”

I’m trying not to cringe at how much he is saying this person is attractive. Seriously Armin, I get it. They were a god of aesthetic desire, no need to rub it in. Change the subject, I tell myself, teeth on my bottom lip. “Define standard dates.” I state.

“Oh, you know… dinner, a movie, coffee shops. I like the time I spend to be more imaginative and personal.”

“So what’s an imaginative date, then? What’s the ideal first date for you?”

Armin groans emphatically, shaking his head. “If you think coffee shop is lame, you are going to hate my ideal first date.”

“Bet I won’t,” I shoot back, leaning forward.

“Well,” he starts, then immediately rolls over, hiding his face with a groan, which is so cute it makes me want to burst. “You are seriously going to think I’m so lame!”

“I could never think you are lame, Arlert! I only thought the idea of you going to spike your anxiety levels on a generally very anxiety inducing conquest was lame, that’s all. Tell me!” I emphasise the last two words with a tentative shake of his shoulder, a feather light touch, hoping the contact will get him to open up.

“Fine! My ideal date is a day like this. Sometimes I imagine it at the beach, but we live nowhere near one, and they’d be busy anyway. I want a quiet spot in nature, somewhere me and my date can be alone–”

“Ooh, you’re gonna get freaky!” I jibe.

“Not like that!” his head shoots up, and as I suspected, his cheeks are already slightly flushed. Although I tease him about it, I find how easily he goes red to be one of his sweetest quirks. “I just want somewhere we– my date and I– would have some quiet.”

“Interesting, so we’d– you’d find somewhere like this,” I motion to the undisturbed corner of grass we have secured on the green, where fronds of tallgrass and milkweed encircle our undisturbed patch of greenery against young trees. The picnic bench, heavy with peeling green paint and student graffiti dating back years, is unused by us as we opt for the floor to vantage the serene lake. “Why do you need quiet?” I continue, genuinely wanting to know more.

“Well, yeah, here would be an ideal location. It’d just be nice to have the solitude, I guess. Plus, I’d bring a picnic–”

“Oh my God!”

Armin buries his face once more. “See? I knew you’d think it’s lame!”

“No, no! That’s so cute! I would never forget it if somebody made me a picnic,” I sigh dreamily, lying down next to him with just enough space between us for it to not seem flirtatious. As much as I want to flirt, to let him know how lovely I find him, I can never quite gauge if it would be reciprocated. He’s currently one of my closest friends; if he’s not willing to take it any further, I would rather let the feelings die, albeit painfully, on their own, and resume our friendship, rather than make him uncomfortable. The trouble is, Armin is painfully shy. If there is anything between us, he does a great job of hiding it, and judging by the recounts of people always asking him out, I wonder if he would ever make a move on me even if he did feel the same way.

“So nobody’s ever made you a picnic? I find that hard to believe.” he mumbles, peeking one eye towards me behind messy tufts of honey blonde hair and daisies.

“No, they have not!” I state dramatically, crossing my arms. “I got cooked dinner once, but they made it with meat. I literally told them I didn’t… hang on, what do you mean it’s hard to believe? Am I royalty who deserves picnics made for them on every date I go on?” A beat passes from my inquiry, and my heart skips. While only meaning it as a joke, I am more curious than ever to know what he is thinking right now.

“I just find it surprising that someone like you… I mean, it’s just weird. I thought you would have been taken on a lot of lovely dates.”

“Not really, actually. There’s been some nice ones, but none that I’ll remember for the rest of my life. Anyway, enough about my dates, I want to hear more about this ideal picnic first date!”

“Okay, so I’d prepare a picnic. Nothing too extravagant, just some berries, sandwiches. Maybe I’d make some cookies, or maybe ask if there’s anything they’d like to bring along. Before we arrived, I’d ask them to bring their favourite book, and I’d bring mine. Then, after we got comfortable, we’d swap books and read. I think it’d just be a lovely way to get to know the other person. You can tell a lot about a person by their favourite book.”

Oh my God. He’s so cute. I can’t stop myself smiling, instantly fantasising about how much I want to be the person who he takes on this picnic date.

“Your silence speaks volumes.” he shoots, his voice muffled.

“Armin!” I shout, louder than intended. “If somebody did that for my first date, I’d ask for their hand in marriage. That’s such a romantic idea! My silence is speaking the volumes of ‘holy shit, I wish I could have a first date like that’.”

“You think so?”

“Yes! You could get anyone you wanted if you planned that as a date. You should ask the next person you find cute what their favourite thing to bring on a picnic is, you'll be married by the end of the day." I assert hyperbolically.

“I seriously can’t asking people out. If I could… well.” he falters, furrows his brow and sighs. “Hey, what’s your favourite book?”

My body shoots full of adrenaline. Is he coming on to me? Or am I reading way too much into this? That's got to be a come on, right?

“Well, I have a few favourites, but the best I’ve read recently is Circe by Madeleine Miller.”

“Oh!” he exclaims with the sweetest grin, his eyes wide. “I loved Song of Achilles, but I never got round to Circe.”

Shoot your shot, shoot your shot, shoot your shot. I cannot stop my mind running, daring to ask if he’d like to read it, insinuating the date.

“What’s your favourite?” I enquire. I decide to test the waters. “What book would you bring to this picnic date… if I brought Circe?” Was that a bit too much testing of the waters? Oh, God. He shrouds his head with his bare arms, and I am weighing up whether this is because I’ve pushed it too far or if he’s blushing.

“Uh… well I have a lot of favourites, like you. But I’d most likely bring Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood. It’s something I read when I was young, much too young to fully understand the depth of the nuances, but it always stayed with me. As I got older, I reread it over and over and I was more immersed each time. It’s one of her best works, I’d even say it’s on the level with The Handmaid’s Tale.” During his rambles, he pokes his head up, clearly lost in the world of the book he describes to me. That’s when I am shot through with another course of adrenaline, desperately fighting any visible tells of excitement. He is blushing!

“Huh,” I muse. “Not read that one, only The Handmaid’s Tale and The Testaments.”

“So… we’ve both not read each other’s favourite books, huh?” he says quietly, pushing himself up onto his forearms and turning his head. He begins to bend his fingers against each other. I am absentmindedly biting my thumbnail, wondering if either of us might ask.

Fuck it.

“Um… no hard feelings if not–”

“It’s fine if you don’t want to, but–”

We both start in unison. Pause. Make direct eye contact.

“You go.” Again, in unison, before laughing nervously.

“Seriously, you can go first!” I gesture, wondering if he will really ask me.

He shakes his head shyly. “You go.”

“Well… if you’re going to ask what I think you are, then I want to hear you say it!” I tell him.

“So, what do you think I’m going to ask?”

“If you wanted to do that date together!” I blurt, then reel. Oh, that sly bastard. He’s gotten me to say it first.

“Yeah… I’d like that, (y/n).”

“Okay, cool.” I respond, internally smacking myself. Okay, cool? Who says okay, cool? “I mean,” I rectify, fidgeting. “That’d be really nice. When? Is here okay? Wait, I’m totally rambling, aren’t I? Sorry, I just…”

“No it’s okay! I… I was nervous too. Are you free tomorrow? Or is that too soon–”

“No, not too soon! What about a time?

“Noon okay? I mean, it doesn’t have to be, but–” We are both stumbling over words, rebuttals, speaking quickly and correcting ourselves on our own words. But we are also both grinning uncontrollably. I sigh, taking a moment.

“Noon would be great. Would you like me to bring anything? Drinks, or snacks?”

“Well, I can take care of sandwiches and fruits. If you could bring any drinks you like or some other small snacks, that’d be lovely.”

“No problem! But I have one question… are you really going to make me cookies?”

Armin exhales through his nose, shaking his head. Then he does something uncharacteristically bold; takes my hand and squeezes it briefly.

“For you, I think I can do that.”

[nebrasska-alasska]

do you have a certain upload schedule? Or do you just update whenever you finish a new chapter?

As of now, it's whenever I can! I usually try to upload chapters within 1-2 weeks of each other. And you will only ever see me upload on Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays, or Sundays... listen, there's no particular reason for this other than the fact that I'm lowkey a weirdo, but yeah, a little secret into my posting habits haha

I used to uphold a pretty strict schedule for 'The Secrets in our Quills' where I would upload every Sunday evening, and while that was probably preferable for readers, it was very unsustainable for me in the long run. Kind of burnt me out (especially with how long the chapters were) and is a big reason as to why I haven't continued working on the sequel for a bit, I'm still recovering hehe

But yeah! You can see my current upload schedule here:

Tentative Upload Schedule — something something something i write sonadow

I think I'm going to start making it a habit to post my monthly projected upload dates, so once we reach the end of this schedule I'll draft up the next update calendar and post that. And of course, nothing is set and stone and it's always subject to change, it's just a loose deadline!

[unitezine]

Frequently Asked Questions

What's a Zine?

A fanzine, or zine- short for magazine- is essentially what it says on the tin! It's a fan-made magazine based around whatever topic!

This zine is based around Nicktoons! Specifically, Nicktoons Unite, which reaches its 20th anniversary near the end of 2025! The theme is crossovers- looking

What Nicktoons can I use?

If it's a Nicktoon, you're in! Of course, there are a few restrictions- ex. if it's a show based on a pre-existing media, you must be creating your pieces based on the show specifically.

If your idea includes a show that isn't necessarily a Nicktoon but has aired on Nickelodeon, feel free to ask about it!! As a mod team, we have a few select shows that we'd allow in that aren't EXACTLY Nicktoons, but can be seen as one somehow. Take a second and ask!!

Is there a Theme?

As I mentioned before, the theme for this zine is Crossovers! Nicktoons Unite is a crossover at heart, and we want to highlight that!!

Want to make a piece featuring the classic Jimmy Neutron and Fairly Odd Parents crossover? Or maybe one between Doug and Robot and Monster? Perhaps Star Trek: Prodigy and Hey Arnold! Whatever you want to bring to the table, we'd love to hear it!

The layout of the zine is planned to be reminiscent of a late 90s/early 2000s Nickelodeon Magazine! So, magazine games, articles, ads- it's all fair game and we'd love to see people get creative!

What Can I Make?

Most zines are based around fanfic and art, and yes, that is the main mediums we are planning on working with here!

But! We'd also love to see anything else you guys can come up with! Magazine games, articles, cosplays, anything! There's a whole section in the sign-ups specifically for this, and you can throw in any ideas you want!!

What's Required?

Artists will have a variety of different sizes for their pieces, depending on what they sign up for/what they end up choosing (this may or may not change depending on how many artists we end up with!)

Banner illustrations will be 5,100x1,200 pixels

Half-Banner Illustrations will be 2,550x1,200 pixels

Singular, Full Page Illustrations will be 2,550x3,300 pixels

Comics will be one to two pages, with page size at 2,550×3,300 pixels !!

There will be a few other options that will have specifics brought up later, with others being case by case!

Fanfic writers have a minimum of around 1.5k words! We have a tentative maximum of around 5k, so it doesn't get too long, but it'd be alright if it goes a little over, or even a little under that 1.5k. :)

Are there any Restrictions?

This is a SFW Zine. Nickelodeon is a children's TV channel and we want this to be a family friendly zine!!

No non-canon romances please! We'd like to keep it open to a lot of fans and shipping can be a touchy subject to some!!

No OCs, please. We are planning on adding them to the credits page, so they will get their spotlight, I promise!

If you plan on joining, please be ready to reply to check-ins and get your pieces completed on time! - Please, if you do get behind as well, let us know!

Pieces cannot be shared outside of the discord until the zine has been posted and the mods have given the go-ahead! - There may be times where contributors are allowed to post wips publicly in order to advertise and the like! Listen to the mods on that front!

If you have any more questions, please do not hesitate to ask!! Thank you all so much and I'm very excited to get this thing started!!

[tarithenurse]

Inhuman

Fandom: MCU Pairing: Bucky x fem!reader, eventually Loki x fem!reader, Stucky, more (some canon, some not). Word count: 2014. Contents: Surveillance, homeinvasion, boredom, longing, success. A/N: Spam-updating today as I'll be gone for almost a week with minimal chance to post. Any questions are welcome. Please comment and like and reblog. Let me know if you want a tag.

Chapter 20

... Reader’s PoV ...

The days snail by with little to distract your mind or lift the mood.

Daisy and another team have finished sorting out a new protected settlement for the Inhumans that have sought refuge with SHIELD. Only a few people know the actual location, and as the refugees are send off to their new home, the base gets quieter. They will have three full teams of agents to help protect them as well as a bunch of safety measures to fend off any intruders.

This of course leaves HQ with an eerily empty atmosphere despite the fact that there are added guards there too. They’re friendly people and you’ve gotten to know a few of them by first name. Even so, it’s hard not to feel like they’re around to keep you in rather than anyone else out.

Granted a few moments in the cafeteria with the director, you broach the subject tentatively. “I don’t wanna sound ungrateful for the protection...but when –”

“When you can go home?” He’s busy removing the raw onions from the salad side dish.

You nod. “It’s been almost a week.”

“I don’t suppose Vasiliev gave you a date for his next visit?” The sarcasm’s strong with this man. “Until we know you’re not running any risk by leaving you’ll have to stick it out. Y’know that.”

“And if he hasn’t in a month? Or three?”

But Coulson just shakes his head, gives you a soft smile that somehow isn’t pitying, then changes subject to cooking.

… …

The days are almost exactly alike after you were put in house arrest. You get up, train alone, shower, and have breakfast. Then there’s work (no need to take a day off as you’re forced to be around anyways) followed by sparring with whoever feels like it (so in other words you often end up on your own...again) before finally running out of distractions in the evening.

It’s one of those late evenings that you’re on your own in the break room when the phone beeps, alerting you to a presence home in the apartment. Accessing the feed, you see a shadow in the darkness of the living room, but without the glitters to help identify the person it takes a long time for you to realize it’s not Vasiliev or even just a burglar…at least you don’t think so because the intruder finds a pitcher and fills it with water and proceeds to try and salvage the few plants you’d acquired.

Momentarily flicking away from the feed, you follow a hunch that’s got the butterflies in your belly flapping about and send at text to Bucky’s old number in the hopes for the best. Flicking back, you watch…and watch...and finally, the person does pull out a cell phone illuminating the them in a sharp blue-ish light from the screen. Even if you can’t see the face clearly there’s only one person with a jawline like that who’d worry about the state of your home.

The answer beeps in, making you giggle. *Polo?*

Finger’s dance over the phone, creating a new text to Bucky. *Look up at the light fixture and wave.*

It’s still very, very wrong for someone to break into an apartment...the least he could’ve done was ring the doorbell first. That too, would have sent a message to your phone. You can see him type in a response after he’s done as asked.

*I take it you learned some tricks now you’ve entered the business.*

Before you’ve got time to think up something witty there’s a new message on the small screen, asking when you’ll be home.

*No clue. Been grounded. But feel free to come and visit me here. You can also explain you sneaking in and where you’ve been.*

*What’s that supposed to mean?* *The grounded part.*

Now the bastard’s made himself comfortable on the couch and is flicking through a book under the light of a little lamp in the corner like he owns the place. You’re mostly annoyed because you’re not there with him, having to watch through the surveillance how perfectly right it looks for him to lounge around there and it makes you want to be there with him more than you’d realized. Fuck, I’ve missed him. That, of course, you did actually know, but the pang of longing is breathtakingly powerful, making your fingers tingle with the need to write exactly that to him…but you don’t.

*Long story short: you’re not the only one who’s been snooping around. Other intruder was not welcome.*

Watching him on the feed’s like seeing a mime perform a series of emotions: surprise, worry, anger, but also curiosity are making him change his posture. Rather funny seeing as he should be a cold-ass assassin-spy-person.

A series of short questions and answers about your current state and the severity of the event follows before you get around to telling him about a bunch of letters waiting for him if he can find them, leading to a lapse in the communication where you can watch him type things and, supposedly, delete it again before finally getting a vague response about it “feeling weird to snoop like that”.

*Rich coming from a guy sitting in my couch when I’ve not even invited him in.*

*Good point. Be a good gal and don’t drive your nannies mad.*

Clapping the book together before getting up, he waves to the light fixture and the hidden camera before sauntering out of view. Switching the feed, you see him enter the storage room and moments later he leaves again with the bundle of letters which he tugs under the jacket as he exits the apartment.

...

Next time your phone goes off with an intruder alert, you’re lying in the bunk. Clicking on the phone, it’s not Bucky you can see, however. The shape’s thin and crooked, and even without you power you’d recognize him and the faintly glowing eyes anywhere. The way he sways from side to side, searching the empty room for traces of you, sends shiver down your spine in much the same way a big spider next to you would…but he disappears again into thin air without doing anything else.

You know what to do, and it only takes two rings before Coulson’s picked up the phone. “He appeared?”

“Yeah but hold your horses...he left again when he saw I wasn’t there.”

The disappointment’s almost audible, and you can imagine how the director must basically almost deflated. “We ought to send a team to recover any possible evidence –”

“No need to…he only stood in the same spot and didn’t touch anything, so there’ll be nothing to find. Get some sleep and we’ll go over this tomorrow, sir.”

“Fine, but don’t go anywhere.” As if I could even if I wanted to...I’m not the one that can teleport.

… …

Most of the morning has passed normally, considering that normal is starting to become a mild onset of cabin fever, until you’re sitting at breakfast. That’s when the interrogation starts. It’s not that bad really, but frankly there’s not a lot you can say that can bring them any further and so eventually you’re let off the hook again with the promise that Fitz can have a look at the feed to see if there’s anything you’ve missed.

On the way downstairs to the infirmary, you stop by the lab to give him access to the feed with strict orders only to look at that one feed (admittedly: apart from you coming home a bunch of times there’s only one extra, but you don’t want to share Bucky’s return with anyone else until he’s ready).

“Oi, before ye leave, [Y/N], I’ve tested out the Rosetta implant on rodents just to see if it’d cause any damage and so far it’s promising.”

“Still not a fan of Radcliffe’s work.”

“Bu’ his other inventions were rather brilliant and well thought through! C’mon! Just think about it...”

“...prep a file about the thing then. All of the work on it. No promises though.”

Scientists are a special breed, you muse as you walk out the lab, leaving Fitz scrambling frantically in an attempt to do two things at once.

...

Sadly, there’s nothing at all to do at work so at lunch Kate decides that you can take the rest of the day off. With nothing better left to do, you decide to go see if Mack’s back from the “Band Camp”, as everyone has started to call the Inhuman safe heaven.

Yes!

You can already hear the music playing even before you get close enough to sense him in the work shop where he often can be found tinkering with an engine or some other project of his. AC/DC....not a bad choice. He looks up from behind the motorbike he’s been getting ready for you under the pretense that it’ll be easier to navigate through the city than a car.

“Perfect timing!” That smile can always make a day better.

“Good to see you back. How’s it going with her?” Nodding towards the bike. Even for an amateur like you it’s clear that it’s a beauty.

“She’s ready to be taken for a spin.” He gets up while wiping his hands in a cloth that might actually be countering the intention he had for doing that. “Now, you just need to learn how to treat her right ‘cause I’ll be damned if you ruin my work on this baby.”

“Understood, sir. Let’s hope that there’s anyone competent to teach me.”

Adding the last bit might not have been wise...at least it causes the filthy cloth to sail straight towards your face. Good thing you’ve learned how to duck things from both Natasha and May.

...

Riding a motorbike’s in some ways easier than it seems yet just as you think you’ve gotten the hang of it and have it all figured out there’s something that makes it entirely different from anything else...at least if the only other references are riding bicycles or driving cars. The weight for one’s very obvious when trying to turn a corner or standing still, but you avoid tipping over even with the terribly slow pace and eventually Mack doesn’t look as worried anymore.

He beams proudly. “I’ve to get going so that’s it for today. Not bad though.” It sounds genuine enough.

He’s just about to pick up the last few tools when he stops mid motion staring at something behind you. Fuck. You’ve sensed it too. Someone just appeared, and you know exactly who it is.

Turning, you force yourself to greet the man. “Vasiliev.” You hate yourself for the weakness with which you utter the name.

Mack’s picking up a wrench, trying to keep his movements slow as if he doesn’t want to startle a wild animal. The comparison might not be that far-fetched but it’s not the man’s looks that are the worst...it’s the smell. The room’s quickly filling with the sweet, putrid stench of rotting flesh.

“You don’t need to hurt me.” The voice’s still raspy and guttural. “I have come freely, yes? You can keep me safe from him?”

“From whom?” Mack’s still holding on tightly to the wrench but has otherwise not done anything to cause alarm.

Even so, Vasiliev looks scared out of his mind and his eyes are darting around the room as he whispers almost inaudibly: “The Mad Titan”.

A bunch of people are running down the hallway towards the workshop and it’ll only be a few seconds before they’re there.

“Let’s take you to a safe spot. Don’t run and don’t fight.”

Vasiliev nods, slowly lifting his hands up above the head. They’re webbed (partially, at least) and the nails look more like claws extending from each bony finger, making them seem grotesquely long. In an instant he’s surrounded by people pointing guns at him but to his credit he doesn’t flinch...not even when he’s shot with a Stunner. After that it’s easy, though repulsive, to carry him to one of the white pods.

[otherworldseekers]

Something's Gotta Give Chapter 9

Also posted to AO3 if you'd prefer to read there.

Severia and Nero return to Saint Coinach's Find, where Cid is eager to get on with the work, but both of them have unresolved feelings to deal with. Will a candid conversation help or hinder their future?

SGG Masterpost

They rode into Saint Coinach’s Find the next day just as the sun touched the horizon, their journey finally over. Cid hurried over as Severia swung down from the Kirin’s saddle. 

“You’re back! Everything went smoothly, I trust?” He gave a quick side glance to where Nero stood digging their precious cargo out of his saddlebags before giving Severia a pointed look. 

Severia sighed. “Nero behaved himself. Mostly.” She expected a flippant comment from the subject but Nero was apparently too engrossed in making sure the parts they commissioned had survived the journey intact. 

“I suppose that’s as much as could be expected,” Cid said sympathetically. ���At least it seems your mission was successful.”

“Quite,” said Nero, looking up. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ll get to work on the Aether Signature Configuration Device right away.” 

Cid watched Nero retreat into his tent with a worried expression, then turned to Severia. “It did go smoothly, right?”

Severia wondered if Cid could feel how charged the air was between her and Nero, and had been since she woke up lying next to him that morning. Neither of them had said anything about what happened the previous day and she wasn’t sure if she was grateful or exasperated. Why wasn’t he saying anything? After everything she had told him, after she had clung to him. Was he being considerate or was it just that he didn’t care? And why should it matter to her at all whether he cared or not? Their oddly contrived time together was over. Whatever had occurred between them was over.

“Of course, Cid,” she said, no trace of her inner thoughts bleeding into her tone. “Did you expect anything else?”

Cid frowned. “Nero seemed oddly reluctant to gloat or sing his own praises. It’s not like him. Nothing happened while you were gone?”

“Nothing,” Severia replied easily. 

“All right, I’ll trust you,” said Cid. “Things have been rather quiet here. Not much we can do until we can get past that last barrier.”

“Is there anything I can help with?”

“Not until we’re ready to send you in, which I imagine won’t be until tomorrow at the earliest. I’ll go help Nero. You rest up.”

“Of course.” She watched him walk away, feeling oddly deflated. 

Hadn’t she hated their journey? Hadn’t she despised Nero’s arrogant attitude and constant probing and teasing? Hadn’t she felt perpetually irritated in his company? Why did the air feel empty without his voice? Why did the world look so flat? 

She needed to get away and think. She needed a place to be alone. Mounting her Kirin once more, Severia galloped away from Saint Coinach’s Find.

She didn’t know what impulse led her to the gates of the Crystal Tower, but something pushed her onward. Past the Eight Sentinels, up the stone stairs, to the blessedly empty terrace with its glowing portal and unparalleled view of the Tower. Sometime during her ride out here the moon had risen and the upper air had taken on its strange purple/pink coloring. It was a sight you couldn’t find anywhere else in the world, she knew, and the warmth of gratitude, that she was here to see it, began to settle over the uneasiness in her chest. 

Despite everything else, the world was always beautiful. That much never changed. 

Settling down as comfortably as she could on the stone floor, Severia gazed out over the Tower and its surroundings. How many thousands of years had it been since the Tower was built? And yet it had lasted. She wished, in that moment, that she could be so strong and unchanging. She was the Warrior of Light. She must learn to stand tall and unassailable. She must fill in the cracks in her soul with duty, the hole in her heart with selflessness. 

What other path could there possibly be for someone like her? So why did the thought of such a life feel like a dead weight inside her?

It was perhaps a bell or two later when the purple haze lifted to reveal the sky full of stars and Severia heard footsteps behind her on the stairs. She waited with her head on her arms for the footsteps to approach. 

“Go away, Nero,” she said as harshly as she could manage. 

There was silence for a few moments, then, “How did you know it was me?” 

“You have a very distinct tread. The kind that says the man sees the whole world as his plaything, but is also used to having his plaything stolen from him if he’s not careful.”

“That’s… impressively specific,” said Nero. “And not inaccurate. Should I be flattered by your attention to detail?”

“I pay attention to everyone, in my own way,” said Severia with a sigh. “What do you want?”

“To ascertain your well being, hero,” he answered. “You disappeared. Garlond had a bad feeling. He went to the Toll to see if you had gone back there.”

“How did you know I’d be here?”

“A lucky guess, perhaps. Or perhaps… If I wanted space and quiet, I’d likely come here too.”

She sensed his much larger frame sitting down beside her while leaving ample space between them for her comfort. Did he know she would bristle at his nearness right now? That she wouldn’t be able to stand it? Did he realize why?

“All right you’ve ‘ascertained my well being’ now. I’m fine. You can leave.” She looked over at him finally and was struck by the expression he wore. His brow furrowed, his mouth stiff, his eyes pleading. 

“I think we need to speak to each other plainly.”

“I disagree,” she said, shaking her head. She scrambled to her feet in an attempt to leave, but Nero caught her wrist.

“Please, Severia.”

Her breath caught at her name on his lips. Why was it only when he spoke it that she felt it so deeply? Why was he doing this to her now? “Nothing good will come of this. You must know that.”

Nero stood up, but did not release her wrist. He had given long thought to this the previous night as he had lain sleepless with her beside him in their cave shelter. He knew what he wanted was too much to ask. But he had come to the decision that he could not, would not go back to what they had been mere days ago. 

There had always been, for as long as he could remember, a raw edge to his life. An emptiness that constantly drove him to seek more, do more. On;y once before had he felt something like contentment. On those occasions at the Academy when he and Garlond had combined their considerable skill and genius to make something extraordinary. And for a time he had thought perhaps Garlond was the solution to his dissatisfaction. That a life of discovery and invention side by side with the one person who was his equal was his future. 

But Garlond hadn’t seen it that way. He had left without a backward glance. Had all but forgotten his old schoolmate. It had hurt Nero more than he cared to admit. Deep inside, so deep he could almost pretend it wasn’t there, Nero had always yearned to be as vital to someone as oxygen, to be understood on a cellular level, to fit together with someone so well the edges between them blurred. 

When Garlond left, Nero came to believe that that part of him would never be satisfied. So he had shoved it away, told himself he needed nothing and no one. He could rely only on himself. Others were merely tools to be used and discarded depending on their usefulness to his goals. 

Then he met Severia Zetsuen. He had, at first, tried to use her the way he used everybody. To further his goals, to satisfy his desires. But she would not be content to be his tool and had defied his expectations at every turn. 

She who was at first an obstacle, then an opportunity, and then the author of his fall. She whose intelligence was like the morning sun shining through a begrimed window. Whose true smile was like a sweet, fleeting rainbow. Whose humor and wit was as sudden and shocking as an errant lightning bolt. Whose core of strength made him feel small in comparison. Severia Zetsuen, who had so unexpectedly proven to be his equal in every way. 

She had shaken him to his roots. So easily did she slip into and fill that empty, hungering space within him. It felt like a kind of madness, after having lived that way for so long, and perhaps it was. Perhaps he was mad to pursue this. But he knew that she too felt the chasm they stood poised over, or she wouldn’t be running away. 

“Tell me.” Nero took a step forward and gripped her shoulders. She looked up at him with fearful eyes. “Tell me that you didn’t feel what I felt. When we danced. When we kissed. Tell me that it sparked nothing inside you. That you feel nothing for me. Tell me, and I’ll believe you.”

Her mouth opened and closed once, twice. No words came forth. She couldn’t do it. The lie tasted like acid on her tongue. “Nero, why are you doing this to me?” 

“You haven’t said it.”

She bit her lip and looked away, refusing to meet the eyes that were boring into her. “I can’t… We can’t…”

“Say that you didn’t enjoy any of the time we spent together,” Nero begged. He shook her until she was looking up at him again. And he bent over her so that their lips were mere ilms apart. He wanted her so badly it was tearing him apart to hold back. “Tell me that you don’t want me to kiss you right now.”

“Please.” Her voice was a sob. “Don’t.” 

Nero realized his fingers were biting into her flesh harder than he had intended. He let go and backed away. Running a hand through his hair he said, “Forgive me.”

Severia hugged herself and nodded. They stood in silence for several moments. Nero studied her cringing form, as if she would gladly collapse in on herself if she could.   

“What are you so afraid of, Severia?” he asked. 

“Everything,” she said, closing her eyes. “Don’t you understand? I’m not what you think I am. I’m not what anyone thinks I am. Everything frightens me. Every fight. Every struggle. Every conversation. Every meeting. Every parting. Every day.” She looked up at him with tears in her eyes. “And you. You most of all.”

Nero bristled. “What have I done to deserve your fear? Did I not defend you at the Saucer, did I not comfort you when you were afraid? I held you in my arms, I slept beside you to shelter you from the storm.”

Severia flinched away from him, from the anger in his voice, from the memories. “Do you think I don’t know that none of it was real?” 

“Why?” Nero rounded on her. “Why must it be false? Because I’m a Garlean? Because I was your enemy?”

“Yes!” she cried. “I’m fully aware of the agenda you came here with. Did you think that I was too naive to realize that you’re trying to use me? Woo the hero with smiles and flattering words. Kiss her until she forgets what you really are. Make her fall for you until she gives you what you want. Am I close?” 

Nero grimaced. “I won’t do you the disservice of claiming you’re wrong. Those were my intentions. I would do anything to get that power, or so I thought. But Severia…” He paused. “Is it so impossible to believe it might have become real?”

Severia shook her head. “You said it yourself. That night at the Saucer we played a game of pretend.  We imagined a world where you could be just Nero and I could be just Severia. But that world doesn’t exist. It can never exist.”

“What if it wasn’t a game? What if it could be more? What would you want then?”

“Nothing,” she said, knowing it wasn’t true. But she would never admit to him how much she wanted it to be real, wanted to lay down the responsibilities she’d never asked for. How much she wanted to give in. 

Nero wasn’t convinced. “You didn’t kiss me like a woman who wants nothing. You liked it just as much as I did. You didn’t want it to end.” He reached out a hand and gently brushed his fingers along her jaw, his thumb caressing the scales of her cheek. “I don’t want it to end.”

Severia closed her eyes, desperately trying not to lean into his touch. “What you want doesn’t matter. The reality is that you are a man who seeks power he should not have and I am the one who must stop you.” When his hand dropped away she opened her eyes again. “Are you willing to leave the Tower alone?”

Nero stared out toward the Tower with a clouded brow. Was that really what she wanted from him? To give up on his dreams? To lay down who he was to be someone else? Even if it would win her, he couldn’t do it. He shook his head. 

Severia sighed. “Then I must stop you. And once the Tower is closed you will go your way and I will go mine. It would be best for us to never see each other again.”

“And that’s what you want?”

Want, want, want. Could he think of nothing else? She turned away from him. “I’m the Warrior of Light. There’s no room in my life for wants.”

Nero listened to the sound of Severia’s footsteps descending away from him, the beat of her Kirin’s hooves receding in the distance. He punched his fist into a nearby stone pillar, bloodying his knuckles. A poor distraction from the pain of Severia’s rejection, but for once in his life he had no satisfactory answers. He was unwilling to give up anything he wanted and so it seemed he was destined to lose it all. He turned the problem around in his head for hours as he lingered at the Eight Sentinels, but even his considerable intellect could not find a solution. 

Finally he turned his feet toward Saint Coinach’s Find where the rest of NOAH would be waking soon. “If this is how it must be,” he said to himself with a grim smile. “Then I will face it without surrender or retreat.” 

Thanks for reading! I would love to hear what you think!

[blade-that-was-broken]

Clay wasn’t sure what held him back. Upon the evacuation of the Golf Course, he had taken the rear of the group and although he knew Viva had found some help to get them to some place of relative safety, he had no idea who they were. Or even where they were going. It wasn’t until everyone had gotten away from the course, hours later and the world getting darker, that he started to find out things. He helped his people get settled down for the night, creating makeshift tents and shelters for the night. Everyone was scared. Of course everyone was scared.

They had lost their home.

They had no idea where they were going, what was going to happen, how their future was going to change yet again. First the escape of the Troll Tree and now the evacuation of the Golf Course, everything and anything was uncertain.

Everyone was well settled into a well-defensible clearing. He had heard Viva let a few scouts go around the edges to make sure things were okay and keep an eye out. He eventually found Viva settling in next to a fire with a couple other trolls - both familiar and unfamiliar - huddled around on logs dragged from the forest. He took a breath and closed his eyes for a moment, trying to collect himself, letting the smell of the fire and the crackling of the flames fill his senses.

“And here we thought Johnny here was the last pop troll around,” one of their guides cackled. He had some sort of strange accent Clay couldn’t identify and he couldn’t quite make out the form of the troll from the shadows, despite the illumination of the fire.

He could see Viva rather clearly. She looked a little confused but also curious. “What do you mean?”

“Well… Johnny left home for a bit and when he came back? Everyone was destroyed,” the troll responded. Another troll draped in shadows tensed. It was all Clay could make out from him. “Some of us saw a bit of it… it was… yikes. And after what he told us about… those giants? He thought that everyone had been eaten.”

Viva looked nervous. “The tree looks that bad?”

There was a hesitation. Another troll, who hadn’t spoken yet, let out a quiet, low, “Yes.”

“It was rough there for a while,” the first troll said, continuing to speak. “For him, I mean. Spent years with the gray and you know what comes with that…”

“I do?” Viva echoed.

Grayness wasn’t exactly a very common phenomenon around Pop trolls. They were naturally optimistic and happy, easy to forgive and extremely adaptable. Not everyone knew much about grayness and it was hardly mentioned in school work. Clay knew a bit about it, with some of the sad novels he read, but even he didn’t quite understand it all. He supposed, he had never really quite tried either.

“Hopelessness,” the troll said. “It’s only in the last few years, he’s gotten some of his color back.”

If the subject of their conversation seemed to have any objection to being talked about - and his struggles - he didn’t say anything. Viva looked between the group, the other Putt Putt trolls exchanging uneasy glances. “How… long-?”

“Uh,” the second troll - Johnny, Clay thought he remembered him being called - trailed off, uncertainly. “Over ten years? Maybe thirteen?”

“That…” Viva frowned worriedly. “We escaped about 14 years ago.”

“I wasn’t gone long.”

“And you thought your family was dead this entire time?” One of the Putt Putt Trolls - Flora - looked something akin to horrified with a touch of understanding and empathy. No one was entirely sure if anyone else escaped. They all suspected but no one knew who had survived and who had not. And no one was quite brave enough to go out and try to find them.

“If… If you survived, perhaps my brothers did as well,” the voice was barely a whisper and had a flicker of hesitant hope. “But I don’t want to count on it.”

“Why not?”

“He doesn’t want to be struck down again,” the first troll answered for him, understanding. “False hope can be devastating.”

“Other pop trolls survived,” Viva said, strongly. “The escapees. We were caught by Bergens and then escaped. There are others but we just don’t know where they are.”

“If they’re out there, they are exceptionally difficult to find.”

****

Clay followed John into the woods, his big brother humming a slow, unfamiliar tune. It sounded almost sad but that didn’t make any sense. He had never known his brother to listen to any sad music. John just started piling sticks next to a tree.

He had waited, momentarily, when John left the fire. Viva had glanced at him, a little confused but she trusted him. They talked about John almost like he wasn’t even there and although they talked in abstract riddles, Clay tried to piece together some things. Like his brother came back to the tree - for them - and thought his entire family was dead. Had for well over a decade. Just the thought made Clay sick to his stomach.

“John Dory.”

His brother turned around but his face just fell into a disappointed but almost concerned frown. Okay, so Clay wasn’t sure what he was expecting but he wasn’t expecting that for sure. It was like John was unhappy to see him. Perhaps he just should have known better. They had separated on terrible terms and John had said goodbye forever. The talk around the fire made it seem like he wanted his brothers back, to be alive. The look on his face told a different story.

“Oh. I guess I should have seen this coming.”

That was really not what he was expecting. “What?”

“One mention of my dead brothers and my brain decides yeah, lets hallucinate again,” John’s chuckle was hollow and without humor and it made Clay’s stomach turn over at least a dozen times.

“What?”

John squinted at him, slightly confused. “You don’t have to sound so shocked. I know you know.”

“I know?” Clay echoed, far more confused.

“Well, get on with it.”

“Get on… with?”

“I'd rather you leave quickly so I don’t have to take hallucination medication again. It messes with my memory and I’d like to keep whatever memories I do have at this point.”

“Get on with what?”

John tilted his head. “You’ve never acted this way before.”

“In your hallucinations?” Clay asked for clarification. “How does it usually go?”

“Lots of yelling, upset remarks, blame anger, etc. Guilt. Not you but me, obviously.”

That wasn’t obvious to Clay.

“Then you usually spout out how much you hate me and I just laugh.”

Clay’s stomach dropped. “Laugh?”

“Of course.”

“Why would you laugh?”

“Because you could never hate me as much as I hate myself.”

Clay sucked in a breath. “I don’t hate you.”

John looked mildly surprised, like he wasn’t expecting that answer. Clay wondered how many times John’s mind had told him that, using Clay’s face.

“Do you miss me?”

John snorted again. “That is a dumb question.”

Clay tried not to look hurt. “You used to tell me there was no such thing as dumb questions.”

“There isn’t. Except for that one. Well… except another one too but you haven’t asked me that one. I’m grateful for that.”

“What is the other dumb question?”

“Asking if I love you.”

Clay blinked. He had never really thought to ask that. No matter how much answer and resentment he held onto, for no matter how long, that never crossed his mind. And he was grateful for that. “I don’t need to ask a question I already know the answer to.”

He was pretty sure John was holding his breath. He was scared.

“I know you love me.”

And he let it out. “I do. Although I am a little surprised my brain is trying to assure me of that. That you know.”

“Do you think you have enough sticks?”

“Are you sticking along? Sometimes Pete is an ass about it.”

“About what?”

“The hallucinations.”

Oh right. John didn’t know he was real. “I won’t be obnoxious.”

He sighed. “Well, I can’t get rid of my guilty conscious so whatever.”

[abigailmoment]

Karlach and Astarion were playing three Dragon ante, and Astarion mostly wasn't cheating.

He also wasn't winning. This was partially because he kept drawing the mortal card that flipped the win condition for a gambit, and he had trouble changing his strategy to account for that. But it was mostly because he was trying to figure out how to work something casually into the conversation. But the subject on his mind didn't have any natural place among their usual idle comments about combat and rules clarifications.

Eventually he despaired and just said: "Karlach."

"Mm?" she said. She was staring with great concentration at her hand, which was lined up in front of her, leaning against a tree branch that had been trimmed smooth and whittled a little groove that the cards could perch on.

"Have you ever been in love?"

"Shit. Uh," she looked up from her hand. She squinted off into the distance, as if checking her past. Then she shook her head. "No. No I haven't."

"Really?" Astarion felt a little surprised.

"Yeah, no." She shook her head again. "I was a kid back in Baldur's Gate. And then, you know, Hell."

"Right," Astarion said, reordering the cards in his hand. "Of course."

"You?" Karlach asked him as she pointed at the card she wanted to ante.

Astarion took the card and put it face down in front of her.

"I'm not sure," he said, playing his own ante, face down. "You know. Amnesia."

"Yeah," Karlach said sympathetically. "That's a thing."

As if it were a bad case of the flu, that some members of the party had caught.

-

Full text below.

Full Text On AO3

-

"Well," Karlach said bracingly. "Here's hoping?"

"Hoping," Astarion echoed. "Indeed."

He reached down to flip their antes.

-

When Astarion sat down on the deer pelt outside of Lae'zel's tent she stopped sharpening her spear and peered at him suspiciously.

"What do you want?" She asked.

"I was just wondering how things were going between you and Shadowheart," he said lightly.

The suspicious peering upgraded itself to a glower. He put his hands up.

"Not making fun," he said. "Just asking. Just curious."

"Why?" she put the spear she had been sharpening down and picked up a scimitar.

"Can't I be interested in the well-being of my companions?" he asked.

"No," Lae'zel said flatly, beginning to sharpen the scimitar.

"How predictably brutal," Astarion muttered. "Find then. Don't tell me."

But he didn't leave, even as Lae'zel worked on the scimitar and filled the air with grating noise. Astarion didn't leave because she hadn't told him to leave, which was almost an invitation when you were talking to Lae'zel. And also: she was looking at the sword in the way people in bars sometimes looked into their drinks. It was the way people looked when they had stories and wanted to tell them so much that they stopped being picky about whether the person listening was a friend or a stranger.

Lae'zel pulled the scimitar away from the wheel and checked its edge.

"She held a knife to my throat," Lae'zel said. "And then she followed me into the night. I have tasted her. I have made her sweat and ache and tremble."

None of that was in any way surprising. Astarion had been present for the first part. He made a vague noise that implied he was paying attention, but didn't interfere with words.

"We have drunk wine together," Lae'zel continued, more slowly.

Then Lae'zel clicked her tongue and hissed in disapproval. But it wasn't at Astarion or what she was saying--she was apparently unsatisfied with the scimitar. And more interested in fixing that than talking. So she set it against the grindstone again. More irritating noises, because apparently some people were too good for whetstones. By the time she paused again Astarion was fidgeting with his sleeve.

Lae'zel checked the scimitar's edge, grunted in satisfaction, and set it aside.

"We spoke," she said. "At length."

Gods, that was a very long wait for very few words.

"About?" Astarion asked.

"Nothing," said Lae'zel. "Many things."

Lae'zel deliberated over what weapon to pick up next. She seemed to be having some difficulty choosing. Eventually she decided not to pick up any weapon at all. She put her hand on the edge of the grindstone, drawing her thumb up and down the rough surface of it.

"I don't want to hurt her," she said, curiously. A little wonderingly. As if she were just realizing this.

"Ah," said Astarion.

Lae'zel's eyes snapped up to him, as if she had forgotten he was there and was only now reminded.

"Leave," she decided sharply. "Now."

"Going. Going," Astarion said, standing hastily. -

He was not going to ask Wyll. That would be useless and mortifying. And the men were such gossips.

-

Astarion came up with a way that he didn't have to ask Gale directly. He volunteered to be the one to distribute food one night. Tav gave him an odd look, but didn't go so far as to actually comment.

Astarion included a bottle of Ithbank with the wizard's portion. Then a half hour later he approached Gale with the thought that Conjuration and Transmutation were really the same thing, weren't they? Just fiddling with objects. Shouldn't they be the same school of magic?

Tipsiness muted any suspicion Gale might have about Astarion's sudden academic interest. And once Gale started talking the only thing you needed to do to direct him was ask questions. Classifying the strict differences between the schools of magic led fairly naturally to talking about how he had learned about those schools. And from whom.

"Divination began with star-charting, of course," Gale was sitting between his telescope and the replacement crystal ball Tav had found for him after his first one had vanished. "Charting the celestial spheres is a complicated process, but everything is made easier by the presence of a learned companion."

"Stargazing together," Astarion said with only the faintest touch of interest. "That sounds pleasant?"

Astarion was a sitting couple of feet away, leaning against one of the white trees with red leaves. Close enough to speak easily, but positioned in such a way that Gale didn't have to look directly at him. Because while Gale would ramble happily to Tav or Wyll for guileless hours, he tended to cautiously censor himself when he remembered he was talking to Astarion.

But apparently the wine or the placement was working as intended, because Gale answered with thoughtless ease.

"Oh, exceptionally pleasant," Gale said. "It's really just magnificent to have someone who understands. Who understands the complexity of the universe, and also is of a mind with you in the importance of learning its intricacies."

It felt like there was something true and useful in those words. Astarion stayed quiet and listened.

"Celestial divination was an enlightening collaboration," Gale continued. "But call us old-fashioned, because we both preferred that old convention of mystical research. A quiet evening and an esoteric tome. Open between us, ink glinting in the firelight. Pouring over paragraphs and comparing notes. Companionship so comfortable that it almost felt like solitude."

"But isn't," Astarion said quietly.

"Precisely," Gale said, responding to Astarion but eyes still fixed on the point he was making. "A true antidote to loneliness. Though of course it isn't always easy. Being close to someone never is. But I know she will always care for me. And I will always be able to make her purr."

That was a surprisingly lascivious thing to say, after all the soft poetry. And also, it didn't sound like the sort of thing Gale would say about the woman who had broken his heart and then told him to kill himself. Astarion realized he might've been operating, for the last few minutes, under a misapprehension.

"Are you..." said Astarion. "Are you talking about your cat?"

Gale turned to look at Astarion directly, frowning.

"Tara is not a cat," Gale told him, emphatic and scolding. "She is a tressym."

Astarion's head hit the trunk of the tree he was leaning against with a faint 'thunk'.

"Of course," he said.

***

This is part of a series. The rest of the story is on AO3.

***

[acesamateurart]

Spring 2024 Commissions are Open!

A like, reblog, and share go a long way!

Thanks to my incredible community, I was able to obtain some different style pen grips to make writing and doing art a little less painful! And that means: my commissions are once again open!

It also means that, since my quarter one bills are paid and I've obtained the accessibility items I was looking for, the first $100 of these commissions is going directly into mutual aid. The first $50 will be given to 10 GoFundMe campaigns out of Gaza (found and verified through Operation Olive Branch), and the next $50 are going towards menstrual products to donate to my city's Free Store (a place where people in need can "shop" for free, and hygiene items are currently on the donation list).

I am, of course, Just Some Guy™, so if you don't like my art style or don't trust internet strangers to follow through, I do highly recommend checking out Operation Olive Branch. They're doing incredible work with finding and verifying Gaza GoFundMe campaigns, and even if you can't afford to donate, spreading the word helps!

Read on for more commission info, or check out the commissions carrd.

Instead of doing a flat overall number of slots, I've decided to set a number of slots available by color options. So, there are 4 sketches, 3 flat colors, 2 full shadings, and 1 color line art with full shading.

As it currently stands, I think 2 full shading and 1 color line art is the maximum of those types of commissions I can accept for the next few months, but this is subject to change. The sketch and flat color commissions, however, are easier to do, so when I finish one from those categories, a slot will be renewed. To see what slots are available, check the Ko-fi module, or see what's in the current commission queue.

Please read the rules and TOS closely! Mistakes happen and there is grace, but repeatedly crossing rules and boundaries (requesting blacklisted ships, content I stated I won't draw, using my art in commercial graphics without telling me, etc.) will result in my no longer doing business with you. I reserve the right to turn down any commission I'm not comfortable with, be it skill-wise or content-wise.

You can request a deadline earlier than 60 days through the Ko-fi module, and I will let you know if a deadline feels unrealistic (e.g. giving me 3 days to do a full shading with color line art piece, I would tell you I need at least a week, etc.) so that we can make a plan that works for both of us.

As I said earlier in the post, if you don't like my art or don't trust strangers on the internet to give money where they say they will, that's a-okay! Here are the GoFundMe campaigns that I will be donating to:

Medical/Disabled Line 9: Fadi and His Family

Medical/Disabled Line 11: Rezeq's Family Freedom

Medical/Disabled Line 13: Yousef, Omaya, and Family

Medical/Disabled Line 32: Haya, Mother, and Family

Prenatal/Postpartum Line 35: Khaleel, Hadeel, and Newborn

Prenatal/Postpartum Line 36: Yesmeen's Family

Prenatal/Postpartum Line 39: Alladaa Family

Prenatal/Postpartum Line 45: Fedaa and Children

Mutual Aid Line 3: Salam & Solidarity

Mutual Aid Line 6: Medical Tent

[justforbooks]

This is a necessary book. At a time when the future of cities is being discussed worldwide, Joseph Rykwert offers us an overview of the subject from its tentative beginnings in the Middle East some 10,000 years ago to the extraordinary experience of Mexico City today, with its population of 20m and rising. Has the city been a force for good or bad? When do measures of creative chaos in the life and form of cities tip over into conditions of alienation and dystopia? And what can we do to make our cities happy and healthy places to live in when they are shaped in part by economic forces largely beyond our control?

These are important questions. But before any answers, it must be said that the title of Rykwert's beautifully written book is a bit of a lie. This celebrated architectural historian is really telling us the intriguing story of how our cities - including London, Paris, Berlin, Mexico, Canberra, Brasilia and the author's beloved New York - got to be the way they are today. Rykwert is at his best when guiding us effortlessly through the past 10,000 years of city-making and at his happiest revisiting the individual buildings he cares most about.

As to how we can best influence positive change in our cities, instead of looking for strictly 21st-century solutions he takes us back to ancient Greece where the city was perfected - or so those of us at the tail end of long generations of classically educated Romantics still like to believe. The Greeks, says Rykwert, used the word "polis" to describe both the city and a favourite dice and board game rather like backgammon that depended on the interplay of chance and rule. Chance and rule: this is how they played games and designed cities. It remains, he says, perhaps the ideal way of making humane cities 2,500 years on from the completion of the Parthenon.

The city has not been shaped, Rykwert believes, by the kind of relentless impersonal forces of which Marx wrote; instead it is a "willed artefact . . . a human construct in which many conscious and unconscious factors played their part. It appeared to have some of the interplay of the conscious and unconscious that we find in dreams". Like dreams, the form of cities is malleable, and as a happy consequence we can do something to change them for our own ends.

Cities, says Rykwert in a revealing history-is-about-chaps moment, "are the aggregate products of the choices that were made by individuals". They do not develop organically - "they are too consciously manipulated" for that - but "develop quite unnaturally by jumps, by fits and starts". This "abrupt and uneven jigsaw of conscious and unconscious workings is exactly what I have always found both fascinating and perplexing". You and me both, professor.

So when did the city go off the rails in so many people's minds and experience? What happened to the golden age of fifth-century Athens? Rykwert, an unashamed city-lover, reminds us that the city has always been under attack by critics who have seen it as a symbol of humankind's fall from grace. Here is Andrew Marvell, quoting from Genesis: "And Cain . . . builded a city; & called the name of the city, after the name of his son, Enoch" (Gen 4:17). What the poet wishes to say is that the first city was built by a murderer as a shelter for sinful humanity driven out of the garden of Eden.

Not a promising start, then. As for the Greeks, not all of them were in love with the "polis"; it was mocked by Aristophanes, while Horace, Martial and Juvenal all laid into Rome. Rykwert might have quoted Julius Caesar here, too: the great soldier and controversial republican dictator com plained loudly in letters about the noise that continued throughout the Roman night and kept him awake. As for the early Christians, their ideal city was, of course, the heavenly or New Jerusalem described in gridded detail by St John in the Apocalypse. Intriguingly, Rykwert goes on to show how idealistic Christian sects - the Shakers, for example - were to build earthly settlements and buildings along St John's divine lines. The heavenly city could, in an unsatisfactory temporal way, be recreated in outline on earth.

Earthly cities, full of people making things and money, dancing, eating, singing and making love, can never be as squeaky clean as the New Jerusalem. A healthy, happy city will always be a bit messy, abounding with energy, passion and creativity and the disorder these qualities bring in their Dionysian wake. Rykwert is not against disordered cities, but against those that have lost their soul. No ideal resolution is possible, he argues, in big cities, partly because we all have different visions of what a city might be - the Shoreditch artist's idea will be as different from the Mayfair property developer's as the child sewing dresses in a Calcutta sweatshop will be from a Hollywood starlet shopping for the latest six-figure frocks on Fifth Avenue.

There may be no solution, says Rykwert, but by learning from history we can begin to understand the rules of the city-making game. We can see what to do and what not to do; what will make us happy and what will make us sad. What seems to have made so many of us sad at one time or another is the industrial city on overdrive and the subsequent dumb attempts - postmodern architecture with all its trite, whimsical conceits, for example - to tidy it up as it moves into a post-industrial phase. Rykwert spins through the creation of the industrial city and the ills spawned in its wake. But he is never so bald as to suggest, like some latter-day Aristophanes, Martial or Marvell, that all was wrong with the industrial city. It gave Rykwert himself his favourite "polis", New York. Without Bessemer and his invention of steel smelting or Otis and the first safe passenger lift, the charismatic Manhattan skyline would never have lifted off.

What Rykwert shows to devastating effect is the degree to which architects paid little heed to the plight of the inexorably expanding 19th-century city. They toyed with the design of public buildings, compounded grand urban planning theories (some quite mad), but only rarely considered the dystopian plight of the masses somehow surviving among rows of shabby buildings not fit to be called architecture, awash with sewage and ravaged by disease. "From this filthy sewer flows gold," wrote the social observer Alexis de Tocqueville in 1835; he was describing Manchester, workshop of the world.

A linear city that would have stretched from Madrid to St Petersburg, a gallery of railways set on arches around central London, garden cities, cities of towers: all these get their turn under Rykwert's microscope. When the professor gets to the 21st-century city, however, you can see him beginning to throw up his hands. We now live in a world of theme parks, of ersatz urban experiences, cyberspace and SimCity (city making reduced to a digitised game in which money rules). We have the city as all-but-redundant tourist attraction (Venice) and the instant new cities of southern China (Shenzhen, for example) as parodies of their old western counterparts. In a "the world is too much with us/getting and spending we lay waste our powers" moment, Rykwert turns to Wordsworth for solace. Faced with such inanities, he finds comfort in these lines:

The eye - it cannot choose but see;

We cannot bid the ear be still;

Our bodies feel, wher'er they be,

Against or with our will.

In other words, as sensual, sentient beings, we react viscerally against these dystopian visions, from SimCity to Shenzhen. And, in Rykwert's case, retreat to the glorious bustle of Manhattan. Here the city, for all the attempts to denigrate or undermine it by crude planning, mean building or escapist criticism, "remains unbeaten . . . though under constant siege [New York] has maintained its astonishing and contrary vitality". The greatest game of "polis" ever played, he might have said. You may well take issue with Rykwert and question whether New York is indeed the Athens of our day; but few authors can take you on such a convincing, rigorous and enjoyable journey from the fall of Adam and Eve to an electric-aided sunset over Manhattan. Rykwert's city game is well worth playing.

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[oppitfs]

Words: + 2K Prompt: Cooking together and healing wounds Warning: Slight season one spoilers; hurt/comfort; slight descriptions of blood and negative thoughts; sad ending. N/A: I had this idea a while ago while looking at the first season, but I just got up the courage to finish writing and editing it now. It's a bit ironic that I write tentative comedy with Megumi while leaving the angst to Yuji. The title is from the song Happier by Marshmellow.

“Please, Fushiguro” Itadori begged, hands clasped in prayer and a prominent pout on his face.

“I won't do that, Itadori. Do not insist." Megumi took a sip of his coffee, watching the pink haired boy offer the biggest version of kicked puppy dog eyes he had ever seen. Before Itadori opened his mouth to argue, Megumi added, "Besides, it's late to be playing cook with you."

From the couch in the common room, eyes still down on his cell phone, Kugisaki groaned in impatience.

“Just say yes so this idiot will shut up.” She points a blue-painted fingernail at him. “Not a piece of that emo ass of yours is going to fall off anyway.”

Megumi muttered an expletive.

Kugisaki was proving to be much more frustrating than Itadori.

Well, actually she wasn't wrong, but the very idea of cooking after a training day when everyone could very well order takeout was silly to say the least. What's the point of having Gojo's credit card if they can't use and abuse it?

“Okay, fine.”

"Yes! Good one, Kugi!” Itarori exclaimed at the same time that Kugisaki, with the same petulant expression as always, retorted: “See? Not a single strand of that sea urchin hair of yours has fallen out.”

Megumi wasn't really sure about that, but he was too grumpy to care about Kugisaki's nasty nickname. Instead, he got up and took the mug of coffee grounds to the sink.

He sometimes hated his outgoing classmates.

Even with his back turned and clearly pretending to be ignoring them, Kugisaki added:

“And make sure those meatballs are excellent! I'm a very demanding girl.”

Itadori suddenly appeared at Megumi's side, slipping an arm around his shoulders casually and intimately. The sponge slipped from his hand. Megumi knew that the pink-haired boy was an enemy of personal space, just like Gojo, but even so, the one-armed hug took him by surprise.

The room was hot.

"They'll be the best you've ever had." Itadori hummed. “Family recipe!”

“I think it's really good. I'm giving up one of the food at a nice restaurant because of you, you hear?"

When Kugisaki left, presumably heading towards Maki's dorm, Megumi pushed Itadori's arm away from his space. The pink haired boy just laughed out loud, apologizing before heading to the fridge.

Megumi snorted, white foam on his hands.

“I don't know why you would need my help. After all, this is your family recipe.”

The accusing tone didn't seem to faze Itadori, who spoke without looking at him:

“Well, I thought it would be nice for you, you know. Eating only instant ramen and drinking black coffee is not healthy.” The boy cocked his head as he looked him up and down. Megumi forced herself not to shy away from his scrutiny, but heat still licked his cheeks. “And what do you weigh? 60 kilos? You need to eat better.”

“There is nothing wrong with my weight.” Megumi retorted, feeling torn between offended and intrigued that Itadori knew his weight. He studied the ingredients placed on the counter by the other boy, testing the weight of the chicken packet, before adding, “And I don't just eat that. Shoko wouldn't let it. She is very strict about food.”

Itadori stopped whistling an irritating pop tune upon hearing this.

“She's the doctor here, isn't she? Wow. I didn't know you'd known her for quite some time.”

“What are we doing anyway?”

If the change of subject surprised Itadori, he didn't show it.

Megumi didn't feel like telling Itadori that he had known Ieiri Shoko since he was six, when Gojo had taken him to her to find out what his red face, fever and vomiting could mean. Intestinal problem, of course. Anyone would have these problems being put on the candy-based diet that Gojo kept. At least, that's what Shoko said while ruffling Megumi's hair.

Itadori held out a knife to Megumi and a cutting board with a large ginger on it.

“Chicken meatballs with ginger sauce.” Itadori answered, as if it were obvious, which it wasn't. “Can you cut the ginger for me while I grind the chicken?”

Megumi shrugged.

"Clear."

“It needs to be really thin.”

"Okay."

“And watch out for...”

“Itadori, I am perfectly capable of cutting a ginger”

"Right. Just making sure. But if you have any doubts...”

"One more word and I'm leaving." Megumi threatened, pointing the tip of the knife at the boy. "Stay quiet."

Itadori raised his hands, as if defending himself against a wild cat. The smile on his face was so big it pushed his eyes and the scars beneath them up, almost as if they were closing. Megumi wondered if he didn't feel pain from smiling so much.

“Sure, sure. Pardon me. I will not talk anymore.

“You are still talking.”

This only made Itadori laugh harder.

"Now. Now I won't talk anymore. Interest. Pinky promise."

“Itadori...”

The pink boy pursed his lips now, sliding his index finger over his thumb as if zipping it up.

He turned his back on Megumi, working on what should be the chicken, leaving the sorcerer the simple task of chopping – in thin slices, as “ Chef Itadori” said – the ginger. The penetrating and spicy aroma was not unfamiliar to Megumi. It reminded him of when he cooked with Tsumiki, adding more seasoning than necessary since neither of them had a recipe book, which resulted in spicy, strong food. His sister just stuck out her tongue and moaned in disgust, but Megumi always liked the sting of his tongue.

It was good. A good memory despite all the poverty they lived in.

Of course, that all came to an end when Gojo came along and included sweets in his routine. Tsumiki loved it and Megumi liked that she was happy. She deserved it after all.

Megumi felt that familiar feeling of anguish in his chest, the same as when he remembered his sister.

Tsumiki was good, kind and understanding. She deserved all the happiness a human could deserve.

But the world is uneven, isn't it?

And people like Megumi end up getting what they don't deserve while people like Tsumiki, truly good and without a hint of selfishness, are affected by curses and thrown into a hospital bed with no prediction of waking up...

The spiral of thoughts is cut by a wave of pain.

Red drips onto the cutting board.

“Fushiguro!” Itadori exclaims, appearing at his side quickly. "Are you well?"

“Oh, sure.” He replies, still staring at the small cut on his index finger. A red line runs down the milky skin. “It was a small cut.”

"He is sure? I'll get the first aid kit.”

“Itadori, this is an exaggeration...”

His comment was of no avail, as Itadori already had an arsenal of bandages and antibiotics. It would be ridiculous if the selfless gesture didn't take Megumi by surprise. It wasn't a deep cut and it would probably stop bleeding if he just pressed on it, but Itadori didn't seem to think that way if the way he carefully held Megumi's hand to clean the cut, much larger and warm fingers gently wrapping around his fingers – and perhaps reverence? – it meant something.

Megumi swallowed hard, not knowing how to deal with it – or with the way his heart missed a beat when Itadori gently blew on the wet wound.

He had a notion that Itadori probably wasn't used to seeing open wounds as often as Megumi himself had. No, the pink-haired boy had a nice life with his now-deceased grandfather, with friends and probably middle-school sweethearts all around him. Before meeting Megumi, he had never seen a curse rend the fragile flesh of heedless sorcerers with just one movement, never had to tend to their wounds after intense training and without pause because – according to Maki-san – 'curses won't care if it's sold out'. Yuji Itadori never saw what Megumi saw.

That thought makes his mood sour, any enchantment that Itadori is nursing his wounds dimming.

“Let go of my hand, Itadori.” Megumi ordered, pulling his hand away from Itadori's softness, caress and seal. He can't handle this anymore. "I already told you it's an exaggeration."

"But I'm not done yet." The pink boy whimpers, holding tighter, careful not to touch the cut skin. When Megumi tugged again, now feeling as if the tips of his ears had been dipped in embers, Itadori had the gall to laugh. “You look like a skittish cat. Let me take care of you.”

The words come out before Megumi can reflect.

"Why? Why would you do that?"

Why do you care about me when I threw you into this shitty life?

Megumi wanted to kick herself for having those thoughts.

He doesn't need help, Itadori's kindness, much less someone to care for him. Everyone knows that being a jujutsu sorcerer was a sentence, a race whose end was just a pile of corpses and dried blood. There was no gratification, there was no glory, there was no happy ending for anyone who entered this life. All that existed was a sense of purpose that each of the sorcerers clung to. Allowing people to come together, cross lines and bond was just a more painful way to end this marathon. Even the great Satoru Gojo knows this. Megumi doesn't want someone tending to his injuries, sharing fleeting moments like cooking together and caring. Because in the end, when all this shit with Sukuna is over, all he'll have left are sour memories.

He won't let Itadori do this to him, not when Megumi was the one who put him through this.

So why, even when he was hostile and visibly defensive, did Itadori still hold his hand and smile as if that was a silly question asked by a small child?

“Because I always take care of my friends, Fushiguro.” Itadori's eyes widened comically and his mouth dropped. “Is that a problem for you?”

Friends?

Megumi blinked, confused and a little incredulous. What was the damn logic behind Itadori's thoughts?

"What?"

“I know we don't know each other well, but I consider you one. I think near-death experiences do that.” Itadori responds genuinely. There's a crease in his forehead as he furrows his brows, seeming to contemplate that thought. His hand retreats after finishing the band-aid and Megumi tries not to miss the warmth of his fingers on his normally cold skin. "But if you're not on the same page, I understand."

"It's not that." Again the words leap out of him. "It's just... I never..."

I had someone to cook and heal wounds.

I had someone who cared besides Tsumiki.

I had a friend.

Even though Megumi knows he didn't say any of those things out loud, the soft look Itadori gives him shows that it wasn't accurate. He understands.

“Good, then I guess I can be first.” There's no pity, shame, or compassion when Itadori says this to him, just a softness and appreciative contemplation, as if knowing something new is a personal gain. “How about it, Fushiguro? Are we going to be roommates and friends?”

Megumi doesn't understand what's going on.

He doesn't understand Itadori.

It's frustrating.

Before he can offer a response, said boy backs away with wide eyes and a new urgency on his face.

"Oh no! I forgot the meatballs!” Itadori exclaims loudly, turning his back on Megumi. There's comic desperation as he adds, "Kugisaki will kill and use his nails to nail my coffin if I burn this!"

And, while Itadori fiddles with the pots and comments trivial things about the importance of being always careful with food, Megumi looks at the bandage on his fingers, memorizing the simple and tiny drawings of tigers under a blue background – it was probably bought by Gojo as a kind of a silly joke – and thinks maybe it's not so bad to have that kind of bandage under that kind of wound.

He'll think about what that means later.

_

There's no later when Sukuna rips Itadori's heart out and throws it away, a red smile coloring his teeth, as Megumi stares at the scene with cold horror coursing through his insides.

[gabrielurbinatm]

What would you consider to be "too far away" from Chicago to audition for The Harbingers? A friend and I are both hoping to send in auditions, but we do live approximately five hours away by car.

Thank you for the interest in the show! Always very exciting to hear that people are interested in auditioning for it. ☺️ As for the issue of what counts as "in Chicago," hmm... well, here's what I'd say:

The Harbingers is going to get recorded in-studio in Chicago. We're setting our sights on making a show that has a lot of episodes per year - something akin to what we were doing with latter seasons of Wolf 359 - rather than a short, limited-run engagement. I think that translates to multiple recording sessions, each one a good chunk of hours per day over the course of multiple days per recording block, with multiple recording blocks over the course of a year-long season. (All subject to change should better ideas arise, but that's the tentative plan at the moment.)

If you're five hours away by car, I think the question becomes... are you able to drive into Chicago and have somewhere to stay in Chicago a few times a year. I'm not directing this series, just writing it, but as a director I wouldn't want an actor to go through a full day of exhausting in-studio recording after driving for five hours. Heck, just as a person that feels like a grueling experience to put someone through. (And as a producer, I don't think my stomach acid would be all right with the various scheduling uncertainties that come with someone traveling that much in a single day.) All of those artistic, logistical, and empathetic concerns double at the idea of someone doing that commute multiple days in a row over the course of a recording block.

All of which goes to say... if there's ambiguity in the air, right now I'd say err on the side of sending the audition in. I think we'd rather hear the audition and, for the right performer that really fits with one of the characters, see if we can overcome any logistical hurdles. But by and by, I think the "how far is too far" guideline would be something like... can you realistically arrange things so that you are waking up within an hour's travel of a studio in Chicago for about fifteen to twenty days out of the next twelve months.

Hope that helps! Let me know if you have any other questions!

[photoniccyclone]

SFR Update: Chapter 11 Progress

Hello everyone! The SFR updates have begun again, for those of you that have read chapter 10 I hope you really enjoyed it for those of you who haven't yet, please go read that before reading this as I will be spoiling chapter 10.

I've officially finished the rough outline (I say rough but really... I don't think I'm gonna be making many changes to it) for chapter 11. Three days of outlining... whew... that was fun. So many gut-punching scenes here, I really wanted to just *write* them instead of writing them in a sort of bullet point fashion but oh well. That will start soon now.

The tentative name for Chapter 11 is "Collapse" not entirely sure if I like that name yet so for now it's only tentative. I would've named it "Acid Rain" but that would only make sense for a certain Zym scene which will now probably be lumped in with chapter 12.

So far chapter 11 is planned to have 6 (or seven, if we have room for it) scenes, we'll get to catch up with of course Calum who is not taking the loss of Del Bar too well and we will also catch up with Ezran and... oh man... his scene is gonna be rough... and the best part is it's only a build up to something even worse which is planned for the next chapter. We may or may not see Rayla again this chapter, depends on if I have room. We'll also be catching up with the fallout of Del Bar's fall and some really hard hitting Sol Regem scenes are planned. If you hated Sol Regem before... oh boy....

I'm saying it now

Chapter 12: "Burn" will probably be the darkest chapter in the story so far. With chapter 11 not being too far behind.

These are not the darkest chapters in the entire story or arguably even book 1. (Although that will be subjective) but they're definitely the darkest we've gotten so far. So turn down that shower head of yours to cold, because your probably gonna need to step into it once your done haha! Some scenes in chapter 11 alone made me choke up just BULLET POINTING them, I'd imagine it's gonna be a lot different writing them fully.

hehe... I'm excited, are you excited? I'm excited. Work on the chapter 11 rough draft should begin tomorrow, provided I'm not lazy and I'm aiming for a relatively swift release this time around. Call me crazy but I think we MAAAAAYYYY be able to target a February release for this one. I know I know... insane right? But I'm really motivated and I think I can do it (Let's hope this doesn't age poorly lol)

In the meantime, I'm contemplating setting up another coded teaser from the point of view of masky. You guys seemed to like decoding the last message and their pretty fun to do because they don't take that much time. I just need to know what I can encode...

Also after chapter 12 has been released, expect a brief hiatus, I'm not gonna stop working on the story but, it seems I have reached the end of my timeline that I set up a couple chapters ago and so I need to get back to that and start adding events that will hopefully last until the end of book 1.

I know how book 1 is gonna end and... oh boy... you guys are not ready for that. But I don't quite have the stuff in the middle figured out yet. But idk how much it's gonna be... I'd say we are about 65-70% through book 1 right now? So we'll see.

Since I now know what's going to happen in this chapter pretty much exactly, I'm gonna leave you with some out of context spoilers feel free to guess on these, I'd love to see the theories.

[wisdomrays]

MEASURES AGAINST POLLUTED MINDS: Part 2

The bad friend and the snake

Getting back to our main subject, we can list things we can do for the sake of ridding ourselves of ugly thoughts and images:

1. The noble Prophet counseled a pattern of action against a possible a corruptive feeling or thought as rage, which can drift one to perdition: “Rage is from Satan; Satan was created from fire, and fire is extinguished with water. Then when one of you is enraged, let him make ablutions.”[2] Here, God’s Messenger, peace and blessings be upon him, refers to a change of state and attitude. When the issue is analyzed from a perspective of human psychology, it will be seen that this advice is an effective course of action for controlling rage. Basing this on a saying of the noble Prophet, we can say that one must definitely have a change of state and environment for the sake of ridding oneself from the atmosphere of sinning. Thus, he will first be freed from the pressure of corruptive memories and images, and then by subscribing to a different atmosphere and different kinds of feelings and thoughts, he will be able to rid his mind and heart of the influence of those negativities.

2. A believer must always have righteous friends and be together with them. As I reiterated in many talks, the first thing they would teach a new student to learn religious discipline was a couplet meaning: “A bad friend is worse than a snake. If you come under his influence, he drifts you to Hell. As for a good friend, he takes you to Paradise.”

It is of crucial importance to have good friends, because a person cannot keep standing by oneself all the time. If we compare a person to a tent, one cannot be both the main pole and the pegs of that entity at the same time. As a man bears the tent of being on his shoulders, like a main pole, he needs a few friends to serve as pegs holding its cloth in place. Only then can that structure remain standing. When stones forming a dome lean on one another, they do not fall. For this reason, the noble Prophet stated: “One traveler is a devil. Two travelers are two devils (who run the risk of agreeing on something evil). But three travelers are a group.”[3] As the Messenger of God advised us to keep such company, a believer must adjust his or her atmosphere accordingly. Then what befalls on believers to always keep company with righteous and true friends. Thus, when we are inclined to a certain mistake, those friends will immediately warn us and try to bring us to our senses in the face of a possible wrong. Who knows, maybe most of the time, we will feel shame near those righteous ones and keep away from evil feelings and considerations.

At this point I would like to express one fact about my inner world. When my righteous friends warned me about certain mistakes of mine, I may have felt ashamed and embarrassed a bit. It may have been hard on me. But if looking at the issue in terms of the result it yielded, I always gratefully praised God for it, and felt sincerely thankful toward those friends. As a matter of fact, Bediüzzaman makes a wise warning by saying “If someone were to tell me that there is a scorpion on my neck or in my armpit, I would be grateful to him, not offended.”[4] If a righteous believer warns a fellow believer as “You are not careful enough with what hits your eyes and ears!” then that person will probably be shaken like a car brought to a sudden halt while going downslope. However, when he or she looks at the issue with respect to the eternal life, then it will be clear that it is nothing at all to worry about. Such a warning will help coming to one’s senses and being saved from falling into a vicious cycle. This is the reward of togetherness with righteous friends.

3. For a lifetime, a believer must be full of feelings and thoughts about the values he or she believes, must continuously read and think, and be fed by the essential sources without leaving a gap in one’s personal life. In addition, with serious effort and heartfelt prayer in this respect, it is necessary to pray for protection, help, and guardianship from God with the confession, “O God, please save us from sinning and rebellion. Be our protector! Hold our hand, we cannot do without You!” In fact, the Messenger of God teaches us a course of action by praying as “O the All-Living and Self-Subsistent One! I seek assistance through the means of Your Mercy, correct for me all my affairs and do not entrust me to my soul for the moment of a blink of an eye.”

Let me make one final point, that as those who turned to God sincerely in a heartfelt manner did not remain on the road, those who adopt righteous company, and with the help of God, never became lost.

[tarithenurse]

I see fire - 35

Fandom: D&D 5E/homebrew campaign. Word count: 2596 Contents: Friendshapes! Riddles that break the fourth wall. A/N: Tomorrow's chapter will be today just because I'm going to be busy tomorrow. Any questions are welcome. Please comment and like and reblog. Let me know if you want a tag.

Divider by @firefly-graphics

XXXV

Light is returning although the sun hasn’t risen yet. The colours of the jungle are still grey, laced with the lingering darkness of the night under the canopy but suddenly the group reaches the edge of the forest and step out onto a strip of grass before the shore of a grand lake dotted by water lilies and the occasional swimming lizard-folk. There are more of the people on the shore, all looking to greet their friends upon their return from a successful hunting trip – around 100 or 150 of all ages are gathered, living in simple huts on the shore of the lake and, Zilvra notices, none of them seem to like her although some approach the rest of the trio with curiosity.

“Up.” Kepesk is pointing to a steep path that leads up to a plateau.

On the top of the plateau something glints in the now rising sun but from down on the ground it’s impossible to tell what it is. Either way, they are bound to find out soon enough as the trio begins the ascend, glad to find actual steps carved out of the stone.

It’s quite a ways up, granting a beautiful view of the scenery with the lake and the jungle spread out beneath them, but they are more occupied with what lies ahead once they reach the top: there are tents of various sizes and shapes but what’s more intriguing are the large crystals suspended in midair. Almost drop shaped but still jagged, the odd angles refract the light as they bob ever so gently. Studying them are quite a few air genasi while others of the people tend to the daily chores further into the tent village – but they all stop at the sight of Anvindr.

“Welcome,” many offer.

“Thank you,” Anvindr responds, smiling happily, “I am Anvindr of Emir’s tribe. These are my friends Morella and Zilvra.”

An older male steps forward. “My name is Flow. I am Hiss’ husband and we are her tribe.” He looks to be around 80, white hair and soft grey clothes. “We know of Emir, of course...but we have no news of them.” If Anvindr is disappointed by that, he doesn’t show it but merely nods and Flow is quick to change the subject: “Come, let me introduce you to Hiss.”

Leading them to the centre of the village, he reaches a tent in muted blue colours outside which an older female air genasi is tending to the fire. As she straightens, they see that she’s tall and has slightly pointed ears, hinting at an elven parentage. Her white, long hair kind of floats on its own and her grey clothes are accentuated by a silver sash.

As introductions are made, she kindly offers them to come and rest and even calls for food and drink for the trio, guessing that they are exhausted after having kept pace with the lizard-folk.

“What brings you here?” she asks Anvindr.

“The crystals and the rumour of your presence,” he admits. “I am hoping to find a way to use the crystals to empower us so we can go home.”

She smiles. “Then our goals align. These crystals have an inert magical property and we are trying to find out how to utilize it.” Then she grows serious. “Do your friends know what we are talking about?”

“Not all,” he admits, causing Morella to arch an eyebrow.

“Then perhaps we should enlighten them,” Hiss decides, turning to the other two.

The air genasi once lived in the city of Sapphire in the Plane of Air where the ruby dragons and jinns ruled, Hiss explains, but the genasi were replaced by what turned out to be monsters: the jinn reproduced with storm giants which resulted in a new type of genasi – bigger, stronger, more powerful. They outgrew the original air genasi and as such replaced them. However the air genasi were still protected, living in a quiet corner of Sapphire until the giant genasi got jealous of the air genasi’s freedom. They revolted under a leader and the fighting caused the air genasi to flee about 50 years ago. Since then the air genasi have wanted to go home…also to find out what happened to the jinn and the dragons.

The problem is that the air genasi currently do not have the power to fight back nor do they have an actual way to get back to the Plane of Air. That’s why they are studying the crystals that contain some sort of dormant energy in the form of a liquid.

“That sounds familiar...” Anvindr ponders upon hearing the description of the crystals.

Zilvra knows what he is referring to: the crystal on top of the ancient Tower where the Masons had had their base was similar...yet different too. Somehow it must have been tampered with and thus become more potent.

Telling about it to Hiss, he reveals that it was used to create a dome of illusion before shattering when the liquid ran out.

In this area there are eight to ten big crystals and many more small ones. They are all floating steadily in midair and can’t be moved.

“We have not found other crystals,” Hiss explains, “but we have found three tablets with writing on. One moment.”

The old leader goes to procure the tablets but when she shows them to the trio, only Zilvra can read it as it is written in Primordial.

“These are...riddles?” Zilvra asks to be certain and Hiss nods.

“We theorize then somehow are connected to the use of the crystals but we do not understand them.”

Looking at the first tablet, Zilvra carefully translates the text for her friends:

I am a tune that’s often played, a classic hit that won’t fade. Whenever you are singing my lines, bringing smiles with the catchy rhymes, In a game of trick and jest I am there to put you to the test. Though my title may deceive, my chorus you can’t easily leave. So tell me, what song am I? A surprise that makes you sigh once you’ve been riddled and you’ve guessed I will reveal the tune that’s blessed.

Zilvra groans. While she hadn’t realized how old the song or the pranking tradition was, she knows which tune it is and she starts humming it to her friends. Only Morella is innocently unawares of the meaning but it’s easy to explain that she has just been tricked by one of the most (in)famous bards in history.

Putting that tablet aside, it’s now with a certain trepidation that Zilvra takes the next. Clearly the creators of these aides had had a brilliant time making them, though.

Shades of darkness, colours concealed. A world devoid of light, it’s fate revealed. A canvas veiled, a solemn shroud, a melody whispered – grief allowed. Onyx skies and ebony dreams. In every corner despair redeems. A symphony of sorrow, an eerie refrain. Embracing shadows, embracing pain.

There is more to it, but Anvindr is already waving his hand, eager to reveal what the answer is: “A canvas! Onyx and ebony!” he explains.

“Yep,” Zilvra agrees, already knowing what he is thinking.

“[Paint it black]!” he beams. “What about the last one?”

In the city where danger breeds, a melody of chaos and untamed needs. Guns and roses mark the way. A jungle where you’re bound to stay. An anthem of rebellion, fierce and raw. A warning to the world – a wake-up call. Can you guess the song? Its wild surge? A chaotic journey. A relentless urge. So tell me, dear traveller, if you are able: which tune echoes the jungle fable?

“How fitting,” Morella grins, “a song about the jungle when we’re in the jungle.”

But Zilvra shakes her head. “No, this is about the big cities and all they have of dangers and temptations. It’s just an allegory. Still, they do call it [Welcome to the jungle].”

“Oh.”

Singing a bit of the tune for her friends, only Anvindr recognizes it but that is to be expected considering how little Morella remembers of her past and that if she did recall it all, she would have grown up in the Fey Wild where they probably have other songs and traditions than here.

Looking to the crystals, they are still slightly at a loss.

“Come, let’s try some things,” Anvindr urges, coaxing his friends over to the nearest large one. “Do we have anything of crystal?”

“No,” Morella shakes her head.

But Zilvra grins. “Yeah we do! The glow-crystal the duergar dropped!”

It’s strapped to the side of her backpack, so it’s easy to pull out and hand over to Anvindr who taps it testingly on the floating object. The glow-crystal begins to shine softly (it will need a proper wack to really radiate light) but also the large crystal seems to hum.

“I think...hang on,” the genasi mumbles.

A bit hesitantly, he begins to tap out the melody of [Welcome to the jungle] on the large crystal and just as he finishes the first line, the smaller crystals rearrange and a split tears open in the air. Through it they can see a very different landscape where everything is either burning or made of fire. Large flowering bushes and tall trees, grasses that sway in the heat. All made of flames and lava and coal.

Anvindr tosses a stone through, establishing that the split is an actual portal to a different realm.

“That’s...the Fey Wild,” Morella whimpers.

It hurts to see her so distraught at the sigh but at the same time Anvindr wants to try the other songs and he taps out the start of the next melody, [Never gonna give you up].

For a second the portal closes but the it opens again to reveal nothing but clear air and blue skies.

“Home,” Hiss whispers.

Poking her head through the portal, Zilvra sees nothing more except a few clouds and it’s disorienting so she pulls back, having to steady herself to Morella for a moment.

“Let’s try the last one,” Anvindr offers with a certain hesitation.

Something in Zilvra had made her half expect to see the Underdark next – a tunnel or a grotto perhaps.

She sees neither. Instead it’s endless darkness of a much different kind than the darkness underground. Adjusting her eyes, she sees no shapes of tunnel walls or rocks...but she does see a round shape floating, turning towards the light coming through the portal.

“Close it,” she snaps, knowing instinctively that this will be trouble.

“I don’t know how!” Anvindr points out but at least he taps the melody for the Plane of Air once more, changing the portal just in time.

Morella had been keeping an eye on the figure. “That was a beholder,” she announces.

“Yeah,” Zilvra agrees, “but it wasn’t Grin.”

It’s differently soothing to look through the portal now while the trio discuss the problem they hadn’t considered before: how to close the portal. The tablets had not offered any clues to that. They try playing the last tune backwards but nothing happens.

“Do you hear that?” Hiss suddenly asks, cocking her head.

Mimicking her, they do indeed hear what she’s referring to: thunder. Thunder coming closer in the Plane of Air.

“We have to shut this down,” Anvindr growls, tapping out the melody for the Fey Wild.

Just as the portal switches, Zilvra realizes: “Play the same song again!”

But for now the portal is opened to the Fey Wild and it’s inferno...and a fiery being that stands at the ready. It looks exactly like the one the trio saw at the mines. And just like they’ve seen before, this one wields a fiery whip which it uses the moment it lays eyes on Morella. Although she uses her manic to try to blast the elemental back, it catches her around the ankle with it and pulls her into the Fey Realm.

“No!” the eladrin yelps, calling upon her gifts to magically reappear on the right side of the portal just as Anvindr finishes tapping out the song and the portal slams shut, leaving no trace behind.

Or almost no trace behind: on the ground lies an arm of the fire elemental, writhing and smoking as it begins to reform into a smaller version of the elemental. For a second that feels stretched out in the endless, they look at each other, the little fire elemental gauging its options before it sprints past Anvindr as the closest.

“Stop it!” Morella jumps into action.

It’s a mad scramble but eventually the elemental has been dealt with, reduced to a simmering goop of lava which Hiss carefully scoops up, wanting to study it.

“It’s not supposed to look like that,” Morella whimpers, clearly shaken, “it’s not supposed to be on fire.”

“Perhaps it’s because of Phaana?” Anvindr suggests.

Zilvra nods...but she doesn’t say anything about what she has noticed: the whip, fiery as it was, had not hurt Morella.

“Alright. Alright alright,” Anvindr mumbles, “so we’ve found a way home!”

“This is amazing,” Hiss agrees, “I shall gather the other tribes here.”

But Anvindr’s joy has already crumbled. “We have no way of withstanding an onslaught by the giant genasi,” he reminds her. “My quest isn’t complete even if we are a step closer: I have to gather the strength and resources for us to stand a chance.”

“You will not stay with us?”

“I cannot. I vowed I’d find us something...anything that could help us win our home back.”

Hiss nods in understanding. “Far be it for me to stop you.” Then she looks to Morella. “And your home...the fire...this is Phaana?”

“He invaded the Fey Wild in search of something, we think...and now he’s coming to the Material Plane too,” the druid explains as best as she can.

“As though still searching for it,” Zilvra adds.

Anvindr turns to the petite Fey elf. “But...you must know! You were the one that let him in!”

“Don’t!”

But in spite of Morella’s protest, the words cannot be unspoken and Hiss straightens up to her full height, demanding an explanation. Anvindr gives it, speaking freely to his elder as he explains about the worgen spirit and thee revelation of Morella’s (probably accidental) admittance of Phaana and his forces to the Fey Wild.

But Hiss relaxes once more, looking at the eladrin with kindness. “Sometimes even the best intentions can lead to devastation. I am sure you didn’t mean for that to happen.” Morella shakes her head with vigour, still glaring at Anvindr. “I shall let you rest now. I have something here to investigate and I must contact the other elders, guide them here.”

“Wherever they are,” Zilvra warns, “make sure they don’t go via Stouvania.”

The old genasi inclines her head. “Very well. We came to the port of New Bearn and walked through Welles, along the river, and through the gates...much to the dismay of the guardians.”

“That should be fine and the gate is no longer kept,” Anvindr agrees, “just...avoid Stouvania proper.”

Hiss leaves the trio by a tent that she decides they can use while with the air genasi on the plateau. The entire rise is littered with a variety of tents in a thin but durable material. It’s a loose setup but at the point that might be called a centre, there is a larger tent that presumably are for communal or council use. The tent the trio are shown to is not too farm from there and they gladly ditch their backpacks and settle down at last.

[trash-monkey]

Isekai; The world of Tenby

Chapter 5

After giving it a good thought I decided to put the Tent point into the Cooking set-up as I don't know when I'll get another point so I'll have to think carefully about my necessities and needs first, a Cooking set-up is a need for my survival after all. The zero turns into a one causing a small sized iron pot with a few wooden cutlery to appear in my tent right next to my pack right as Scaramouche comes down the stairs with his hands full, one looks like a long red ele, a red lizard with small horns, two weird shaped fruit horns too, and some dark with black spots eggs.

"I find a Red-finned Unagi, Red-tailed lizard, Henna berry, and Red Vulture eggs." He holds up each with it's corresponding name.

"How did you find them?" I asked because I didn't any of these when I was out there.

"You can find them when you know what to look for." I sighed as I pull out the cooking set from my tent and sit it by Scaramouche.

"What?" I asked confused when he hold them out to me.

"Skin them you know how to do that, right?" He sighed as he rolled his eyes when I shake my head no and he grabbed the poor quality knife I have in the cooking set.

"First we need to fill the bot with water but not all the water and then make a fire...." He instructed me to do which I immediately do so just the way he said knowing he won't hold back on his scorn if I made a mistake, after getting the pot filled I used the old desk chair for fire wood which I know how to lit without a lighter and it took me a few moments to get a amber going before into a full fire that is in the center of the room so nothing can catch fire.

"Now watch carefully" Scaramouche almost hissed with a stern tone after washing his hand in the bowl he had find and filled with a bit of water, he begins to skin and deboned the animals if they can be called that.

"How do you know all of this?" I asked as I watch him closely.

"My creator thought I should learn to fend for myself." The subject of his creator will be a touchy thing to talk about for a long time from now which he spoke in a small tone when talking about him.

"He was not only your creator he was also your father, Scaramouche." He freezed at my words for a moment before continuing on and putting the cut meat from the Red-finned Unagi and Red-tailed lizard into the iron pot that's been sitting in the middle of the fire for the water to boil.

"It's ok to feel sad and angry, confused."

"You're not from around here, are you?" He changed the subject onto me as he started on the fruit, pealing and chopping.

"Why you ask?"

"Most people 'around here' would know the basics skills of survival." I give a sigh knowing I can't hide it from him when it's so obvious.

"You promise to never tell a soul?" Scaramouche goes silent in thought but his hands continue to move and add the fruit into the pot when he believes the meat have been cooked part way through, causing the broth to turn reddish purple when it was added which he also added the eggs to boil them.

"Why should I?" He asked

"As a favor for waking you up?" I tried to reason.

"And what if I didn't wanted to be awakened?" He asked without looking at me as he stirs the pot with a wooden spoon.

"Then I'm sorry for doing so if that wasn't what you wanted." I apologized for my actions.

"No need for apology........thanks." Scaramouche mumbled but blushed red when thanking me for waking him and this caused me to grin at his tsundere behavior.

"And of course I'll keep it a secret, whatever it is." He takes a taste of the stew although it makes me curious on how he can eat, taste, all them things when he isn't actually 'alive'.

"To keep it simple, I'm from a different world on a journey to become strong." Scaramouche rised am eyebrow at me.

"Show me proof that what you're say is fact." He simply stated and demanded which I take a deep breath while thinking on what 'proof' I have and what to tell him.

"Well Scaramouche isn't your actually name and it's Kunikuzushi, your actually a kind person but reality hit you in the worse of ways causing you to create a persona of a harden person that nothing can hurt which isn't true." I take a leap of faith about his backstory being the same as his game counterpart and by his frozen state at my words I hit pretty closely to the truth, immediately before I could react he's holding the knife against my neck with ( ) in his eyes as he's up in my face.

"Who are you really?! No one and I mean no one but Citor knows the actual name he had given me! Are you the one that destroyed this city and trying to manipulate me with lies to get me to do what you want! ANSWER ME!" He hissed with a face full of rage as he moved the knife closer to my skin causing a drop of blood to drool out and slid down the blade, my eyes are wide with fear.

'Damn, he's fast!'

"Y-you said to show you proof!?! I can't because I don't have anything to show you expect tell you!?!? This is my proof that what I was saying is true!?!" I explained hurriedly not wanting my throat cut open by him and after looking into my wide fearful eyes for any signs of lies but doesn't he finally remove the knife from my neck before returning to his seat to continue stirring the stew like nothing just happened, I give a sigh in relief.

"If what you say is true, which I'm still doubting, you need to learn how to fight if you want to survive here." Scaramouche said bluntly like I expected him to as he taste test the stew again which I remained quite not knowing what to say to him.

"Learn to live off whatever land you're on." He continues on as he put on stew into a wooden bowl before giving it to me with a wooden spoon.

"Thanks, I know I need to learn it all to survive here but the problem is I have no teacher or no books." I blow onto the steaming stew on the wooden spoon before taking a bite and immediately tasted the Henna berry that mixed in greatly with the tender meat, which was very surprisedly good stew. Scaramouche stands up from his seat and stroll over to the bookcases before pulling books off the shelves which he drops the stack next to me on the ground.

"What's this?" I questioned although knowing he won't answer so I sit my bowl down to go through the books to see survival guides.

"These what you read?" Scaramouche nods as he sits down back in his seat and knowing it's going to be a burden but I need to read these so I sit them aside to put into my pack later.

"Read, practice, and when I think you're serious enough I might teach you a few things." A grin spread on my lips at his words before a chuckle leaves at the thought of what he said coming from a old man of wisdom instead of Scaramouche himself, he just rolled his eyes at me knowing what I'm thinking about.

"The stew is good so thanks." I gesture to my now empty bowl as I get seconds knowing I got some hard studying to do soon.

"Scaramouche, I'm thinking about staying here until I get some skill in fighting and survivability before beginning to travel."

"That'll be smart to do." His tone suggest that I don't have any sense in my skull which I give a chuckle at, him and his tsundere ways.

"I guess in your eyes I seem like a baby not knowing what to do." I commented as this situation reminded me of when Neytiri meet Jake in the first Avatar movie and making me wonder if this will go similar, dispite his small size he is strong.

"Definitely" I laughed hard at his bluntness but I have to hold in since my mouth is full and didn't wanted to choke.

"Is there any maps around here?" I asked as I finally my second bowl.

"There was but I bet they've withered away by now and they won't be any use either with them being so out dated." I nod as he's right about that as any map that survived would be useless with how much the land have changed over the years.

"Now that you're full you can start on your studying." I set the bowl down and picked up a book to beginning to read while Scaramouche clean up which will allow me more time to read and luckily the books are in good shape to even read, the paper isn't too fragile to touch.

"Wouldn't these books be outdated too?" I questioned after reading the first page.

"Things may have changed but everyone needs a foundation to start somewhere as knowledge is never outdated only redefined by time." With that I continue to read for what day light was left as I take the words he have said about knowledge to heart and when night falls I finally shut the book which I marked my place, knowing over time my eyes will become tried from all that reading and hope with Scaramouche help I can get some practice in the field so I can always remember what I have read.

"If you like we can share the tent?" I offered as I know in the future if he decides to follow me we'll be sharing the tent on more then one occasion.

"Sure" Although he agrees to it I can see in his eyes that if I try anything I'll be awaking up one day without my genitals and without a word Scaramouche grabs the white sheet from inside the lad.

"Shut up" Scaramouche glares at me when I was going to protest about him sleeping with just the sheet.

"I don't feel the cold as much as you." He mumbled under his breath as he burrito himself with the sheet in a corner as far from me as he can get in the tent, the fire is just small orange little ambers as we lay down for the night. I can see through a small hole in the ceiling of the basement study and see the night sky which I looked at until sleep takes over.

_______________________________________________

[petite-neko]

@izuchant Here, just for you :3 Here's a sneak peak of my wip involving whole 'date' section of my fanfic, including the event that prompted it. (Decided to tentatively add in the fry thing, courtesy of the anon :P) (Also, for context: this takes place after the Black arc, and Trunks ends up staying in the main timeline, and Trunks calls Gohan from the main timeline 'Chibi'.) (And, uhh, minor 'spoil' warning if anybody on here follows my fic, Nexus of Time, the alternate ending xD)

Trunks shook his head and laughed before he looked back over at Gohan. “You know— why don’t you take me out sometime? Show me a few places that you like to eat at—”

At the suggestion, Gohan blue-screened.

Of course, he knew Trunks didn’t know just what he had said, and Gohan also knew that his mind was just hearing what it wanted to hear, but it did not change just what he had heard, and it took him a moment to reset— “Ah – ahah— yeah.” Awkward, awkward laughter left him. “You know, your mother has been doing something similar with Bearus and Whis, although less going out and more treating them when they arrive – or, calling them with the temptation of good food.”

“Oh, is that why Bearus was snacking here when I arrived…?” Trunks said and blinked curiously.

Gohan laughed again, glad to have averted the subject for now. “Yeah. Thankfully, your mother at least knows how to satisfy a Saiyajin appetite, so the transition over to the God of Destruction isn’t much different!” Trunks responded with more laughter and Gohan continued. “Say, why don’t we start with her pantry?”

Trunks laughed and the two of them wandered off in that direction, their laughter echoing down the halls.

…..

Much to Gohan’s chagrin, Trunks was very insistent upon going out to eat at a place Gohan enjoyed.

Which meant that Gohan would have to—

Have to—

Take Trunks out for dinner—

Of course, all of this was in Gohan’s head. This was not a date. Not a— No. This was Gohan showing Trunks the stuff he had missed, the stuff that had been taken away from him—

Thus, to try and make things as informal as possible, to make it seem as less date-night as could be, Gohan decided that he could make it a day. A tour guide, that’s what he’d be.

Thus the two of them started the day out with coffee at one of the cafes that Gohan liked to go to.

“Coffee? I know what coffee is, Chibi.”

Gohan grinned. “Yeah, but you haven’t had fancy coffee.”

Now that got Trunks intrigued.

“I won’t lie and say I know all the ins and outs of it.” Gohan explained. “But it’s a different way of making it called espresso. It’s usually put into steamed milk and flavoured.”

Gohan also ensured to order some pastries while they were there, picking out a few things that weren’t in Bulma’s pantry.

From there they walked around town, and Gohan showed him some of the places that he hung out at while going to school, picking up some ice cream as they walked about. Gohan brought up some of his school days as they walked, trying – once more – to convince himself that, no, this was not a date—

For lunch they went out for, well, fast food. Something definitely not available in the war-torn future.

“This stuff doesn’t look, exactly, healthy.” Trunks commented on the burger.

Gohan laughed. “I’m not gonna lie, it probably isn’t. But I also don’t make it a habit to eat here.”

Trunks took a bite of the burger and blinked, chewing on the food. “It does taste good, though.”

Gohan grinned at him, enjoying seeing as Trunks enjoyed himself. Without even thinking about it, his hand had grabbed a fry and he was holding it out for Trunks to eat—

“Oh, thank you Chibi—” Trunks laughed, his hands still busy holding the burger and he leaned forward and took the fry with his mouth.

Did he just— fuckfuckfuckfuck—

Thankfully, Trunks didn’t seem to think much of it—

When they finished having lunch, they went to a park to relax. Gohan watched Trunks who watched the people mill about, the children playing and Gohan could see the smile the sight brought Trunks. Of course would enjoy seeing peace, enjoy seeing people going about their lives without the apocalypse looming over their heads. That was what Trunks had been striving for for so long—

The ultimate fate of Trunks’ world weighed heavily on Gohan’s bleeding heart, but he pushed it away for later. They were here to enjoy themselves, to show Trunks the possibilities of the past— To give him back some of those missed opportunities— Gohan’s hands itched to wander over and grasp Trunks’ fingers, to smile at him with love and adoration— But, Gohan stomped that urge downdowndown because Trunks wasn’t his, Trunks didn’t love him, Trunks—

“So, where are we going for supper?”

Gohan swallowed his emotions and grinned weakly. “It’s a surprise.”

The two of them wandered around a little more until it was closer to the time for supper, and Gohan led them to the outskirts of town before gesturing for Trunks to fly and follow him. Then he led them over to the town at the foot of the mountain his grandfather’s castle resided on.

“Hey, isn’t this…?”

Gohan grinned and looked behind him. “Yeah, I thought I’d treat you to the food from where my mom’s from.” He then led them to the restaurant the town was famous for, stating his name and the reservation his Grandfather made for them, and the two of them were led to a table with a lot of food—

Even though his grandfather said he’d take care of it, Gohan could only worry about just what this cost his grandfather—

“For the Ox King’s grandson.”

Gohan laughed softly.

“I– woah Chibi this is—” Trunks was blinking at the amount of food on the table. “Isn’t this a bit… much—”

Gohan laughed softly. “I know that food was scarce in the future, so you never got to fully satiate yourself.” Of course, he hadn’t been expecting this much food when he had asked— For Gohan was not oblivious to the way that Trunks was hesitant to keep eating during his time in the past. And, he supposed he couldn’t blame Trunks for it when he came to fight the androids with them. After all – once they had defeated the androids, Trunks would be returning to the future where he could not gorge himself on food, so it was better not to get into the habit. That way Trunks wouldn’t know what he was missing. But now Trunks was here to stay. Now Trunks could enjoy himself— “But, you don’t have to hold yourself back anymore. Go on, enjoy yourself and eat to your heart’s content.”

Trunks swallowed audibly before he sat down and filled his plate.

Gohan smiled and watched Trunks as he finally satisfied the usually insatiable Saiyajin appetite.