#I still maintain (and am proud of myself) for recognizing and taking the space I needed

[malusrecord]

((In all seriousness the urge to just change everything back to being centered around Danny is a constant thing---it has been ever since day 1 of making this blog---and it always will be. Maybe one day.))

[tordenvejr]

Hi! a few years ago, I messaged you about some of my anxieties about stagnating because I was too scared to grow out of childhood. You offered me some kindness and wise words that I haven't forgotten. I wanted to thank you for that and share that I'm finally taking the first steps towards the kind of independence that I've dreamed of!! My heart's still breaking that I might upset my mother, but I'm trying to find a balance between that and the joy of of having my own space. From what you've shared here, you seem to have worked hard to maintain a loving relationship with your family that still has strong boundaries in place, and I really aspire to that. Thank you for sharing your wisdom here!!! I appreciate the example you provide 🧡 sending you lots of love

i so appreciate you taking the time to share this update with me 🤍🤍🤍 i'm so happy to hear that you're moving towards what you want! and so proud of you!!! i understand, it takes a lot of will to do on a practical level and then there's the emotional aspect undernearth with the ache of going against what is known and familiar. and releasing the hooks that were formed in childhood of enmeshment with our family/environment, and letting a new way of relating and connecting take its place. i absolutely have and continue to! i appreciate you recognizing that (-: it definitely doesn't mean i always feel seen, heard and honored when i do, but then my work is not letting their inability to meet me where i need to be met be reason for me to dismiss or invalidate myself. if i feel my line has been crossed, then i can take space, i can choose what if anything i want to engage with the person about. if my boundary is being pushed then my work is not to give up on it to make things easier for others, but to emphasize and stand by it. that doesn't mean it doesn't fill me with anxiety at times because it certainly can, but i still do it because i am not going back to a place of mistreating and disrespecting myself in the name of appeasing other people. it does not mean the urge to put others first doesn't come, but i can make it through the 15 minutes (or hours) of doubting my right to boundaries and wondering if i am a horrible person for having them — and in the end it doesn't dictate my choices. i know your situation is different, i'm sharing this because i don't want to give you the idea that i am perfect (not saying you're saying this in any case, but my point stands) at it or that i (or you) have to be. you are further along than you might think, i'm sure ⭐️ i wish you all the best!

[yandere-sins]

Maybe some inspiration for a yandere kitsune atsumu fic?? I just imagine him coming across you hiking in the woods one day and he’s like “you’re cute I’m gonna keep you!” He thinks it’s cute to have a pet, something that is his alone that no one else can have

Oooh, thank you! I love the idea! Enjoy!

»»———————— ♡ ————————««     

This wasn’t how he usually did things, but what about him was ever normal?

If Atsumu wanted to mingle with humans, he’d go down to the town at the foot of the mountain. Roam its street, flirt a little with the giggling girls he met, or play with the children. In the hundreds of years he lived, he sometimes needed the change from his otherwise dull life. Atsumu was way too strong to brawl with the other creatures, and his own kind was too proud and traditional to be around of. So all he did was eat and sleep, occasionally do some trickery or run from the rain. It wasn’t a very fulfilling life to him; he didn’t even have a mate to share his days with, so what really was there left for the bored kitsune?

But you, you weren’t a usual thing either.

Few to none ever got lost in the forest that coated the mountain he lived on. There were too many rumors about strange creatures inhabiting these lands, of people going missing and turning up talking nonsense about what they experienced here. And even then, if someone wandered up here, it was usually an old monk with spiritual powers on a pilgrimage who could find their way around.

So what were you up to in his part of the forest? Perhaps you were lucky it was just his territory, or you might have already been torn up by an oni or lead astray by anything else. Instead, Atsumu had been following and watching you for a while as you moved through the lands. He waited patiently while you rested at the river and shushed away some of the animals that came too close to you for his liking. You might not recognize a deer as something dangerous, but he didn’t like thinking about the marks it would leave if it decided to bite. But now you were closing in on the end of his territory, and from then on, he wouldn’t be able to watch over you anymore, instead, having to go back to his utterly boring day in his utterly boring life.

That’s not what he wanted to let happen.

“Leaving already?” you heard behind you, instantly turning around in surprise to hear a human voice in the uninhabited forest. Even though you were tense, you didn’t seem immediately alarmed by his presence, Atsumu hiding his more extraordinary features behind magic. “Who are you?” you asked him curiously, and he lifted a hand, pointing back into his territory.

“I take care of the temple here. Not many humans come across it, have you made an offering?”

Imitating to be a shrine caretaker seemed to work as your shoulders relaxed, and you turned to him fully, flight instinct dispersing. “I must have missed it. I’m sorry...”

“No problem,” Atsumu was quick to chime up happily. “I can show you where it is. You wouldn’t want to continue on your way without divine protection, would you?”

Hesitating, you looked back at the path over your shoulder before shaking your head. “Certainly not. It can’t hurt to have some protection on this mountain, can it?”

You quickly caught up to him, and Atsumu laughed as you implied the rumors, shaking his head. “Don’t tell me you believe in yokai?” he teased you, and you quickly spluttered that you weren’t afraid of these things, putting on a brave face. However, twiddling with your thumbs gave away that you did mind - a lot.

Cute, Atsumu thought.

You soon enough started to tell him all about your adventure after he initiated the conversation with, “What are you doing here?” telling him you were just wandering to get some clarity of mind. Atsumu took the time you were talking excitedly to study your features. Humans were all so unique, and even if he was able to imitate their looks, he always found himself mesmerized. Foxes usually had just one topic when it came to looks: How unique and shiny is your coat? But it was different for humans. They dyed and cut their hair as they wanted, changed their bodies significantly over time. Their noses were all very different, eyes as unique as their gestures or voices. Humans were so much more interesting than the other kitsune, even if Atsumu didn’t envy how weak they were.

“There we are,” he interrupted you merrily at the foot of the staircase leading to the temple. There really were old, rotten temple grounds on top of the steps, but one you wouldn’t be allowed to see. Humans had long forgotten and abandoned this place, justifiable even, as it was too hard to reach and maintain. No one could even come here with all these dangers. But back in the days, he remembered how much he loved watching the humans build it and pray at it, before when the humans still co-existed well with the spiritual world. But it wasn’t like when he was a little cub anymore. It was his home still, but not one he would show you.

“Well then,” you chuckled nervously, eyeing the stairs. You two began the climb in silence, your eyes mainly on the unmaintained steps, trying not to fall over them. Even focused, you were quite the adorable one, and he appreciated how chipper and optimistic you had been all the way here. Yes, you certainly were a special human, Atsumu decided, his determination only strengthening the magic that was forming halfway up the stairs.

With how little you looked up, you didn’t notice how the stairs kept coming and coming, as if in a loop. Only the feeling of exhaustion was growing on your part, but when you finally looked up, Atsumu could see your eyes growing wide with the wonders you were seeing.

“Do you like it?” he asked, inching closer to you. You were so amazed by the gold and red of the beautiful, large temple spreading out before you, you didn’t notice him taking a whiff of your scent, a mix of soap and sweat, but nothing he found terribly appalling. After all, it was your scent, and he’d find you with it no matter where you went. The scent of his human.

With a delighted giggle, you took the last three steps, leaving Atsumu behind as you looked around you. You seemed to be in awe by how beautiful the temple was that it even made Atsumu forget for a second that this was just how he created it with his magic. “Who’d have thought there’d be such a beautiful temple in the middle of nowhere,” you mumbled before finally turning around to your guide.

“You must be taking really good care--”

Only then did you notice the prominent features of a fox spirit peeking out of his hair, his tail slowly wagging behind him. Of course, in a world of his magic, he’d not be able to keep up the appearance of a human, but you had long crossed the borders to the spiritual realms. It didn’t matter anymore if you recognized him or not.

Still, you backed away in shock while Atsumu always drew closer to you no matter how many steps you took back. “I am glad you like it. Why don’t you stay here?” he asked, and panic spread in you as you looked around to find a way out. Only briefly did you look to your left and then him again before you bolted. You were quick, but if he had run after you, he would have been faster, no question asked.

Instead, Atsumu approached his home - the place he lived in all alone until now - calmly, sitting down at the stairs to the temple and waiting for the loop to bring you back. No matter how far you ran, you eventually stumbled back onto the property, falling to your knees as you didn’t expect the open space. “Welcome back,” he greeted you, and even more panic crossed your expression. For every sadistic spirit, this would have been the absolute height of pleasure, seeing their prey so desperate, but Atsumu concentrated on the most important things.

He’d need to create a room for you. A room fit for a human, where you could feel at home while you stayed here with him. “Do you like beds or futon more?” he asked you as you stumbled back over the temple grounds the second time. You gave him a confused and flabbergasted look before booking it into the other direction again. Even if he wasn’t like the other kitsune, Atsumu decided to keep it traditional with a futon.

It took you three more times before you came to a halt in front of him, asking, “Why? Let me go! I want nothing to do with the likes of you!”

“Ah, too bad,” Atsumu sighed, standing up, and for the first time, you looked up to him properly, like the good tiny human you were. Even at your size, Atsumu was a towering force, making you feel relatively small next to him, a mere illusion from his magic. You wanted to complain as he wrapped his arms around you, pulling you up close to his body as if he tried to melt you two together, taking another deep breath. “I always wanted my own human. Everyone said how great it is to have one just for myself, and here you are.”

He felt you shiver in his arms at his words, and it brought a smile to his face. “You’re so adorable~ Why don’t you just stay here with me and let me have you?”

“N-No!” you said firmly, using his moment of inattention to push him away roughly. “Your kind just wants to play with us and make us crazy! I want to go home! I won’t play with you!”

“Play?” Atsumu mumbled before a broad smile grazed his lips. “Do I look like a child to you? I have no such intentions. If you want to leave, by all means, leave. I know you’ll come back all on your own.”

Anger festering in your expression, you huffed before turning on your heels, running towards and down the long staircase. How could he be so sure that you’d come back? Well, you were long caught in his realm, and he had sent out the invitations to everyone on the mountain to look at his darling little human.

It was just before sunset that you crawled back to him, having seen the horrors of true monsters that wanted nothing more than to drool on you and laugh about how pitiful you were. Maybe Atsumu did want to play with you a little bit, make you a little crazy, but mostly show you there were worse creatures waiting if you left his side. Instead, he’d keep you with him safe and sound, his arms wide open as you returned, making you fall right into his lap and into the comfort he offered to you, brushing over your head as tears streamed down your cheeks.

“I’ll definitely leave tomorrow,” you announced bitterly. “Sure, sure~” he merely pitied you, picking you up and carrying you inside the temple. In a few weeks, this would probably get boring, but by then, he’d surely come up with another method to keep you busy. And until then, he had a futon to share with you and a world you could never escape from until he decided to let you go.

But why would he ever let such a cute, amusing human go?

[yandere-daydreams]

A Yandere!Takuto Maruki/Reader commission for the very lovely, very patient @furudolove for Persona 5 Royal. I’ve never played a Persona game and I don’t plan to, but I can hope I got the majority of Maruki’s character, in this. He’d so idyllic, and so delusional... He’d make a wonderful Yandere, if I knew a little more about the series. 

Word Count: 3.0k

TW: Imprisonment, Emotional Manipulation, Gaslighting, and Isolation. 

You could feel every detail of the cot underneath you.

It would’ve been impossible not to. Prominent, pointed springs poked through the thin mattress and prodded at your back, biting into your arms, your legs, any patch of open skin they could find and force themselves into without objection. You took it in, for a moment, your body too sore and your mind too drained to do anything but lay back and let the chilled air wash over you, too cold to be natural, too sterile. When you opened your eyes, you did so reluctantly, but there was nothing to ease your anxiety. Above you was a plain, tiled ceiling, glowing with an artificial light you couldn’t quite name the source of, not unlike the lamp you might place above the cage of a reptile, and the rest of the room seemed to fall into place as your eyes found it, a desk and a pair of chairs coming into existence as you struggled to comprehend the world you’d fallen into. They were white and unmarked, your bed bolted to a floor speckled with grey dots. Like the presidential suite of a freshly renovated asylum.

You weren’t certain where you were, but you were sure you’d never been here before.

And you knew you didn’t want to be any longer than you had to.

Slowly, you pushed yourself up, your back aching under the strain, protesting any slight shift, as if you’d fallen too far and landed too suddenly. A similar pain was quick to make itself known in the back of your head, and thoughtlessly, you brought up a hand to try and soothe the knots of pressure tying themselves in the back of your skull. You hissed as your fingertips made contact with the worst spot, the area tender, bruised, but you didn’t have much time to investigate.

As soon as you’d begun to examine the area in earnest, there was a hand around your wrist, pulling your arm away gently and hesitating to release it when you failed to resist. Your attention turned to the man now standing above you, and suddenly, you were startlingly aware of just how muddled your mind had become, how difficult it was to formulate any thought beyond general observations about your current predicament. His features, although vaguely familiar, were blurry, unfocused, and you couldn’t bring yourself to try to put a name to his face. You didn’t have to, though, not when his voice was more than enough to identify him.

“You shouldn’t push yourself,” Your counselor, Takuto Maruki, explained. “I’d hate to see you hurt yourself this early on.”

You opened your mouth, but he was quick to hush you, letting your hand fall into your lap and repositioning himself, smiling as he lowered himself to your height. It was all you could do to stare in his direction, a million questions playing on your tongue, the least indescribable of which had to do with his attire, suddenly too formal, and the grin he was barely trying to conceal, wide and welcoming, only broadening at the slightest hints of your acknowledgment. “I know this seems strange,” He began, his speech rehearsed, as if he’d been preparing it while you were unconscious. “But there’s no reason to be afraid, anymore. You’re in a better place, now, a better reality, one where you can be what you’ve been trying so hard to be, with my help.”

“I don’t understand,” You whispered, drawing your knees to your chest, your voice smaller than you’d like it to be. The creak of the ancient bedframe threatened to drown it out. “I can’t… You want me to change?”

“I want you to be what you’ve always wanted to be.” This time, when he took your hand, he held it close to his chest, a wide, self-satisfied smile spreading across Maruki’s lips. As if he couldn’t be more proud, and expected you to be just as exultant. “You’re in so much pain as you are, (Y/n). I want to take that away. I’ll satisfy your desires, make you the person you want to be. Assertive, brave, confident.” He paused, squeezing your hand a little too tightly for the gesture to go unnoticed. “We’ll rule this place together. You’ll have everything you’ve ever wanted, and I’ll have you by my side. We’ll be happy.”

You blinked, once, twice, your gaze flickering from your knees, to the ground, to Maruki’s face, still alight with anticipation as he waited for your answer. You could only think to say the obvious.

“I’m sorry, but… I’d rather not.”

~

Maruki visited twice a day.

Or, it felt like twice a day, at least. It was difficult to tell, when the sky outside your windows was always dark and the lights were always on, remaining bright and untouched regardless of how many times you threw your few, meager possessions towards the unfaltering ceiling. You were given books to occupy yourself with, games and consoles to play them on, but the hours were long and he seemed to be the only company you were allowed. You were tempted to complain, but it was difficult to find your voice, when he was around. When anyone was around, really, but you tried not to think about that. Not when there were so many other things to keep your concern yourself with.

For example, the location of your prison, relative to the world you should be a part of. And, preferably, how you got back to the latter of the two.

When you asked, you didn’t dare think. You swallowed your nerves and spit out the words, keeping your eyes narrowed on the pad of lined paper in front of you. Maruki had handed it over the moment you expressed an interest in the object, but you had yet to decipher its contents. To you, it just seemed like a list of names, only a handful of which you recognized. “Where am I?”

“It’s complicated,” He answered, automatically. As if he’d expected you to ask this question sooner. “It’s… It’s my perfect reality. One where everyone can be exactly what they want to be, and have everything they long for. There’s more of it than-” He motioned vaguely around the room, clearly unimpressed with its contents. You couldn’t say you blamed him. “-this, but I didn’t want to smother you. I know how overwhelmed you can get, sometimes.”

“I’m working on that,” You mumbled, immediately longing to take it back. If anyone knew what you were working on, it was Maruki, the man who you considered to be one of your closest confidants less than a week ago. He was a kind man, and you’d trusted him… You still trusted him, honestly. It was impossible to stop, once you’d already allowed yourself to open up. “And there’s no way out of… ‘your reality’, is there? Without your help, I mean.”

Maruki took offense to that. He’d been seated at your desk, for the duration of this visit, maintaining a professional distance, but he stood when you brought up the topic of leaving. You heard a sigh as soft, measured footsteps made their way to your side. He hadn’t tried to close the distance between you two since you first woke up. Rather, he slid onto the end of your bed, his back coming to rest against the barred footboard, his legs left to intermingle with yours in the space between. It felt intimate, and as if by instinct, you were against it. “I don’t want you to feel like your a prisoner--”

“I am a prisoner,” You interrupted. “I can’t leave, so I’m a prisoner.”

“You’re a guest.” He sounded disappointed, but firm, his eyes flickering over your face and attempting to meet yours. You looked away, once again attempting to focus on his many, nonsensical lists. “I wasn’t lying when I said I wanted to make you happy. I can make people different, here, and I can make you different.” He finished with a bright, broad smile, only realizing his mistake a moment after your hurt became palpable. “Wait, that’s not what I - You won’t be different. You’ll be what you’re meant to be.” He leaned forward, resting his arms on his knees, beaming forward like there was nowhere in the world he’d rather be. “Nothing about you will change. If anything, you’ll be more you than you are now. Everyone here is. I can show you around, if you let me help you.”

“If I let you control me.” He opened his mouth, ready to provide another repetitive rebuttal, but you didn’t let him, biting the inside of your cheek as you fought to continue. “That’s what it is, right? You know I won’t fight, not once you’ve got me trapped in your little, perfect daydream. The only thing I can’t think of is why you don’t just-” You waved a hand in some vague, arbitrary gesture, attempting to vent your frustration physically. The effects were minimal, at best. “-do it, already. If this was really your reality, you wouldn’t keep asking for my consent.”

“It has to be your choice.” The declaration wasn’t triumphant, or altruistic, or anything less than pained. As if it hurt him to admit it. “I know you need to make progress. You want this to be your accomplishment, and I’m not going to take that away from you. I want you to be proud, (Y/n), I do, but I can help. This can be our achievement. I can make it so--”

“So I forget I hate myself?” Before you knew it, you were on your feet, your fists clenched at your sides and your vision red. You were angry. There wasn’t a point in denying it, why would you? He was the only person you’d spoken too in weeks, and it wasn’t like there was much to discuss. You had no one to protect your reputation from, and you refused to strive to prove yourself to Maruki. He didn’t deserve that. Regardless of how badly he wanted to try to act like he did, he didn’t. You were sure of that.

You had to be sure of that.

“I don’t want to be some brainwashed doll you can tow around as a shining example of how wonderful your fucked-up therapy is. I’m not who you want me to be, I’m not who I want me to be, I’m me. I have to be the one to deal with that, even if I have to do it on my own. There’s no quick-fix, or magic solution, or ‘cognitive wrap’, whatever you’ve been calling it. That’s not what I need.” You gasped, if only to stop yourself from losing your temper. You’d started to pace without realizing it, and when you came to a stop, you were facing one of the dull, white walls. It was fitting, you guessed. You didn’t want to see his response, not right away. “Remember the first time we met? When I went to you for advice?

His reply was delayed. It came with a soft exhale, ragged, but tamer than yours. Nostalgic, even. “You shook like a leaf. How could I forget?”

“I was terrified,” You admitted, letting a fraction of the tension in your body dissolve. “I was in a bad place, and it took me days to scrape up the courage to tell someone about it. If you’d made your offer then…” You let out a sad, breathy laugh, the sound as humorless as it was dry. “You said I had to believe I could make progress before I relied on anyone else. That’s what I’m doing. You can’t guilt me for following your advice.”

There was a beat of silence, a moment where you genuinely could’ve thought he’d begun to understand. Then, Maruki opened his mouth, and you were snapped out of that fantasy as abruptly as you’d been thrown into it. “I loved you back then, too. As much as I do now. If I could’ve done anything to end your suffering, I would’ve.”

You didn’t hesitate, your voice just loud enough for him to hear. “I think you should leave.”

“(Y/n), I--”

“Please, Takuto,” You interrupted, your nails beginning to dig into your palms. “I don’t want to talk about this.”

There was a huff. A sigh. But, you didn’t look over your shoulder until the metal-plated door had swung shut, a lock clicking into place from the other side, leaving you more alone than you had been before he made his daily visit.

For whatever reason, you had a feeling you wouldn’t be getting a second, that day.

~

Isolation was a tenuous thing.

You couldn’t keep track of time. Not here, not in this room, not when the sky never changed color and you never really felt hungry or thirsty or much of anything at all, if it didn’t have to do with Maruki and his ‘perfect world’. But, after your first real argument, Maruki had stayed away long enough to make his absence known, rather than just a particularly long lapse between tense encounters. It might’ve been a day, a week, a month, but you didn’t care about the specifics.

It was long enough to make you miss him. You supposed that was all that mattered.

There was a unique intimacy in the hand he rested on the center of your back, the steady fingers of a practiced professional rubbing slow, deliberate circles into the space just below your shoulder-blade. He hadn’t gotten this close before. He could’ve, you wouldn’t have had the courage to stop him, but after so much time spent alone with your own thoughts, this was the first time you truly embraced his presence by your side, his knee almost touching yours. Anything to make it feel like you weren’t trapped inside your own head.

He allowed you to sit in silence for a moment or two, your face buried in your palms and your legs crossed, keeping you perched on the edge of the bed, allowing you to wallow in your own self-pity and a fraction of his, too. Maruki didn’t seem to mind. He smiled, the expression nothing short of nurturing, pushing you a little close to the cliffside between you and the flawless, guilt-ridden submission he so very much to shove you towards. The way he spoke wasn’t any better, just as kind. As sickeningly tender as the rest of his facade. “I pushed you too far,” He admitted, a half-hearted laugh lacing the edges of his confession. “Too much ground to cover, never enough time. I should’ve let you think.”

You sighed, the sound desolate, miserable. A poor imitation of something that should’ve brought relief. “It’s not… It’s not just that. I’d never really adjust to…” You trailed off, swinging your legs over the cot’s side, kicking idly at the well-scoffed tiles. “...Whatever this is. Maybe you should work on that. Make a Visitor’s Center for your next abductee.”

“I’ll make you the host,” He added, prodding your side with an elbow. “My offer still stands, if you’ve changed your mind.”

You leaned against him. You leaned against him, and you rested your head on his shoulder and you let out another labored, languid sigh, somehow more sorrowful than your last. “I think you know what I’m going to say, Takuto.”

His collected grin pressed against the top of your head as he pushed a kiss into your scalp, a gentle hand coming up to draw you into a one-sided hug. You allowed it, indulged it, even, smiling up at him as he pulled away. Maruki took his time standing, stretching idly and holding out a single hand, letting something long and golden appear in his palm, a staff that tapered off into a sharpened point on one end, and sprouted into a shining, petaled star on the other. You were shocked for a moment, both by the gaudiness of the object and how wrong it seemed in Maruki’s hand, but you didn’t have much time to linger on the new addition. Not when he was so quick to draw your attention away.

“I think I’m too nice to you,” He started, still facing the furthest wall. “That’s the common factor. I get ahead of myself, and then I try to make it up to you with time and understanding and all the things I assume you’ll want. That just makes you hostile, though. I’ll try something different, next time. Something less… personal. On my end, at least.”

There were a dozen things you could’ve said. Accusations, questions, everything in between and a handful of options you hadn’t thought of, yet. But, as soon as you opened your mouth, your eyes were closing, your body collapsing and a supreme sense of exhaustion washing over you, traveling hand in hand with dizziness and every other sensation that could’ve urged you to sleep. Every other tortuous thing Maruki could’ve forced onto your mind to bend you to his whim.

You felt yourself fall to the floor just as your vision went black.

~

You woke up on a cot that squeaked when you moved.

It was an awful noise, rusted out and worn down, and it only got worse as you forced your body to move, pushing yourself into a more respectable position with arms that didn’t want to cooperate. They ached, argued, screamed, and you had a feeling they would creak too, if they could. The room around you was blurry, blurry and smudged and alien, and you realized rather numbly that you didn’t know where you were.

You realized you didn’t know where you were, and alarmingly, you realized you didn’t care.

You didn’t have to. There was already a familiar face at your side, one hand clamped around your bicep and the other resting on your shoulder, holding you up when you failed to do so yourself. It was your counselor, Takuto Maruki, smiling as brightly as ever.

“I have an offer for you,” He said, once you’d regained your balance. “One I have a feeling you’ll like.”

Without thinking, you found yourself nodding along.

[nonchalantdanger]

Lost Souls Wandering

“I have a theory that all artists are lost souls wandering their way back to Paris” -- Atticus.

Heh, I think I’m clever. Arras is won by the French, and we spend a final night in Arras with our characters. This is where my and @theimpossiblescheme‘s AU canon’s diverge a bit, but PLEASE go read Yesterday, Tomorrow, and Today. 

In which there is revelry, Roxane finds her way, and an unexpected ally appears:

To give credit where credit is due, the Gascony cadets do nothing by halves. They marched to war with grins, accepted death with a proud upward tilt of their chins, and now they celebrate their victory and toast their lost comrades with songs and wine and drunken dancing. De Guiche has already issued the news that they are to return to Paris in the morning, and the Spanish had retreated far enough that no fear of an ambush could worry them.  

Roxane is enthralled by the raucous ongoings of the camp around her; she has been toasted as a goddess of war by nearly all of the men able to stand and walk over to her — and a few more besides — her hand kissed to tingling, and her cheeks near-cramped from smiling. Even so, none of the joy echoing around her can match the comparatively quiet delight that has brightened Cyrano’s adamantine blue eyes to the most saturated of azures. Like chips of lapis-lazuli set within his smile-creased face, Roxane finds herself admiring their gem-like glint from her place seated at his side. Occasionally, he catches her scrutiny, his grin widens, and it takes every willful bone in her body to refrain from leaning over to kiss him again. 

Their fire is set a little away from the epicenter of merriment, a quieter refuge for the senior cadets — Cyrano and Le Bret — herself, and De Guiche. A singed hat marks the space in between she and the Comte, its bright peacock plumage marking it as the late Captain Castel-Jaloux’s; he would have joined their circle had he survived. 

Roxane is surprised at De Guiche’s presence; by her observation, between his decision to remain with the Gascons during the Spanish assault and the valiant fighting he must have done in the battle, the Comte had discarded his haughty arrogance, replacing it with a small, warm smile and the resigned chagrin of a man who has earned — not purchased — genuine respect from those who do not give it lightly. Cyrano’s distaste for De Guiche has similarly bled into a cool detente since the end of the fighting. To Roxane it is fascinating to see the two, previously so at-odds, sitting with only the pleasant crackling of the fire between them. 

Le Bret shifts in his seat, and Roxane hears the crack of his bones across the flames. 

Cyrano chuckles. “You are getting old, my friend.” 

“Hush.” Le Bret punches him none-too-lightly in his uninjured arm. “Your mouth threatens to be as big as your other appendage.” 

Any other man who would make such an implication as Le Bret would have had his guts ribboned on Cyrano’s blade, but the older cadet — and Cyrano’s oldest friend, besides Roxane herself — seems blessed with a rare leeway. Cyrano laughs, takes the blow with remarkable good humor, and helps Le Bret to his feet when the latter announces his goal to obtain more wine before the rest of the company drinks it all. He limps away, favoring his good leg heavily. Cyrano returns to his place just out of Roxane’s reach. 

De Guiche, who had stiffened upon the reference to Cyrano’s nose — no doubt remembering his unfortunate companion Valvert’s encounter with the aforementioned feature — relaxes once more, but only for a moment. Something piques his scrutiny; curiosity shifting in his dark gaze. His eyes sweep around the fire, marking the carefully maintained space between Cyrano and Roxane, and the riotous celebrations happening around them. His brows draw together and his eyes narrow further the longer he looks about. Roxane does not know what he is searching for, until De Guiche’s gaze once more returns to flicker between she and Cyrano and the empty space to her right.

Christian, after escorting her to the physician’s tent and confessing the details of his and Cyrano’s ruse, had not been beside her for even a passing moment. He had been gone, off to find the wounded and identify the dead, when Roxane and Cyrano had reentered the world following the revelation of their feelings for each other. He and Cyrano had exchanged words out of her hearing, and parted amicably, but Cyrano has not seen fit to relay the details of his sentiments yet. Roxanne knows he is safe — she had seen him moving about the camp, stumbling between a few other men nought an hour ago — but to be a man’s wife and not be beside him is strange and anomalous. Too strange. Too anomalous.

De Guiche’s slitted eyes fall on her. His look is careful, not triumphant; he is not a man who has just discovered a way to undo the woman who spurned him, nor does he look at her like she is the rack upon which he will torture Cyrano. Roxane, worryingly, does not know what to expect.

The Comte motions an idle hand to the space of their campfire. “Madame...I would have expected your husband not to leave your side...” He does not phrase it as a question, and his gaze flickers deliberately to de Bergerac. 

Cyrano, while not privy to the progression of De Guiche’s earlier piecing-together, does not miss the expectant and realizing tone of the Comte’s query. He bristles from his casual slouch with such violent quickness Roxane’s immediate, half-conscious instinct is to reach out and seize his hand where it rests on the log between them to prevent him from doing anything irreparably rash in her defense. She knows she all but gives the change between them away by doing so; for all that she was affectionate with him before, there is a weight to her motion, an honesty of the love she feels for him that she is sure sounds in the air like a bell. More damningly, Cyrano stills at her touch; the enormity of his regard, to stifle his ferociousness at her silent behest, is not lost on Roxane either. 

The Comte, ever one for self-preservation, recognizes Cyrano’s murderous intent for what it is. He pales and lifts his hands appeasingly despite his vastly superior tactical position;. “Peace, de Bergerac. I mean neither you nor Roxane any harm.” 

Cyrano sneers like he did at the Theatre de Bourgogne. It is an unpleasant baring of teeth. The detente is shattered, and Roxane fears that he will cut himself on the pieces. “You blithely ordered us to our deaths earlier this eve. Forgive me if I am disinclined to take you at your word.” 

Many a more battle-tried man has cowered in the face of Cyrano’s particularly fearsome growling; to Roxane’s surprise, De Guiche pulls his shoulders back and continues in a mild, unthreatening tone. he could ruin them both with a few words. Half a day ago, he would not have hesitated, but now he speaks reasonably. “As I said before we all nearly perished in this godforsaken mud, I shan’t leave a lady undefended.”

Cyrano bristles further; his scoff of derision is loud and rough. To Roxane, it is clear that he takes umbrage at the insinuation he would not be defense enough for her. The Comte intuits the same; pointedly, he looks to where Roxane still grips Cyrano’s hand. “It is her husband’s place to defend her, not yours, de Bergerac.” 

Cyrano flinches when he hadn’t under the slap of Valvert’s glove. De Guiche’s unsubtle rejoinder strikes true, and Roxane is too slow to anchor Cyrano’s hand in hers before he pales and withdraws it. 

De Guiche observes the interaction with interest, wisely tempered by caution. “Despite you both having duped me, I do still possess the power of sight; you have been exchanging glances I can only describe as love-struck since the end of the battle. Christian has avoided keeping company with either of you, his ostensible wife and his closest friend. What has transpired?”

Cyrano, unexpectedly cowed, is silent and still. Roxane, all at once, is inconsolably furious — she cannot stand seeing her love so off-kilter, cannot stand De Guiche’s presumptuous inquiry, cannot stand that Christian had not thought to maintain the ruse, and that she was such a fool. A breath; she fashions her anger into a mental blade like the one she’d carried during the siege and turns it on De Guiche. 

“You have never been deserving of my secrets, monsieur. You are too bold to ask for them so soon after attempting to ruin my happiness.”

De Guiche concedes with graceful shame. “You are not wrong, I am not too proud to say. As for why I ask...” he hesitates, shifting to include Cyrano in his address, “I am also not too proud to admit my life was in your hands today, de Bergerac, and I find it returned, and myself the debtor.” He gestures aimlessly, “I wish to help the both of you.” 

“You assume we need it.” The guttural notes of Cyrano’s ire have faded, but there is still an edge, and his eyes are a sharp, wary blue. Roxane nearly looks to the heavens at the impetuous nerve of him, so bold as to be brash. God, she loves him, and yet she wants to shake him by his ash-smudged collar. She feels De Guiche’s gaze fall solely on her, and she sighs her acknowledgement that his point has merit. 

“You might.” The Comte mutters softly. “You cannot fight all of Parisian high society, nor stop the insidious talk with the force of your wit. Worse still, you are not the vulnerable one.”

It is Roxane’s turn to take umbrage, and this time she does not intend to give it back. “Do not presume to tell me my own weaknesses, Comte. I am all too aware of my position as a prize to be won, irrevocably tarnished the moment I capitulate. You not so long ago cajoled, begged, nearly forced your infatuation upon me. The Cadets were sent to war because of your sour vindictiveness upon falling short in your pursuit.” She nearly snarls in her fury, but she sighs it away, “Loathe as I am to admit it, you are not nearly the worst carrion gossip who would feed on the corpse of my good reputation.” She waves an airy hand at De Guiche, whose gaze had fallen to his boots at her mention of his campaign to bed her — At the same moment, Cyrano’s gaze had glinted dangerously silver — and De Guiche’s conscience-stricken features rise level with Roxane’s once more. She prompts him, “Pray tell, how you might help, Comte.”

De Guiche hesitates. He seems to take her charge with utter seriousness. Roxane’s regard for his political mind rises, barely; De Guiche, at the very least, knows that if he makes any genuine attempt to tarnish her, Cyrano will kill him, son-in-law to the Cardinal or no. 

For all that he is formidable, Cyrano would be hard-pressed to reach De Guiche before Roxane cut him down herself. 

“I…” De Guiche clears his throat officiously. “How many know that you and Christian wed?”

Roxane laughs lowly, “The entire camp, seeing as I kissed him in front of all of them. Called him husband. Little did I know the man who’d inspired me to cross a war zone was Cyrano.” 

De Guiche winces at the bitter irony in her tone, but Roxane can see that he is intrigued. “Forgive me if I pry: I do not have the fully story. I may be better equipped to manipulate the situation in your favor if I could…know how you came to be…so utterly in love.” He says the last quietly. Roxane is surprised to register hollow longing in the words, a wistfulness she did not expect from such a shrewd man as De Guiche. For all his wooing of her, she’d never expected him to treasure tender emotions past their usefulness in manipulation. She feels a smidge of regret for misjudging yet another person in her life, at least in that small way. 

She looks to Cyrano; it is primarily his tale to tell. His eyes are shocking in their cerulean shade, and there is a vulnerability in them that, if abused, could tear him apart. For all that his body and soul is steeled, his heart, Roxane realizes, has always been fragile. She wishes she had known; she would have protected it better. Maybe then he wouldn’t be looking at her now with such trepidation, such too-shy hopefulness. His resolve solidifies. He tips his head to her, then to the ground. He huffs a fortifying breath, then begins. 

De Guiche listens attentively as Cyrano relays their tale. He begins at the theatre, with the burst of joy at being seen. He glosses over the despair caused by Roxane’s desires, but then moves into the part of the story she does not know herself. Cyrano’s artful words illustrate the grand scheme to woo her, the melding of two men into one, an author of divine prose and sublime turns of phrase with the face of a Grecian hero. De Guiche frowns at Cyrano like he is seeing a different man in the cloak of a de Bergerac, nonplussed at the self-consciousness, the crippling doubt that stayed his words from ever leaving the pages signed by another’s name. Roxane cannot stop tears from falling down her face. She wipes them away before Cyrano can see. 

She tells her part too. It takes less time, but its importance can’t be overlooked, as she describes Christian’s honesty and Cyrano’s admittance. Their ardent revelations to each other. Their lack of foresight, in terms of their reputations. She falters as her words run up to the present; Cyrano’s hilt-calloused hand enfolds both of hers where they rest in her lap. It soothes her to feel the strength in him. 

When she looks up, De Guiche’s eyes have fallen to their joined hands. He looks moved. The way he subtly swipes a knuckle under his eyes speaks to it. 

After a moment, he smiles. It is a surprisingly kind expression on such a saturnine countenance. “You are both…unspeakably lucky to have found each other.” His gaze darkens, “I will not jeopardize that. I swear on my…recently reclaimed honor…” He has the wherewithal to jest lightly at his own expense, and a line of tension across Cyrano’s shoulders relaxes by a fraction. 

“Nothing is yet dire. I have some…influence in certain circles that could smooth this over.”

De Guiche explains a potential plan. It involves quietly annulling the oaths Roxane and Christian made to each other, and explaining to the Cadets the truth, up until the point where they were married, and skipping to the reveal that Christian had asked Cyrano to continue writing the letters. Cyrano takes that upon himself; the Cadets respect the sanctity of the Guard House like few other places, and if he swears them to secrecy there, they will keep it on pain of a solid, inescapable pummeling. 

Roxane swears to speak to Christian; they still have words that need exchanging, if only to resolve any festering hurt and misunderstanding. 

Then De Guiche continues unexpectedly. “When you arrange the wedding…I should like…I would offer to cover any expenses you incur, for the ceremony.” He wrings his hands; Roxane has never seen him squirm before now. “I can also be your official witness, and speak to the sanctity of the vows in society.”

It is a gracious offer. Cyrano’s formidable nose wrinkles with suspicion for the first time in hours. He says what Roxane is thinking, “Such favors usually accrue a cost. What do you want from us?”

“Nothing, truly.” De Guiche sighs when Cyrano’s eyes narrow to chips of sapphire. “I swear it. I meant it, before, when I said I owed you my life, Cyrano. I also owe you an apology, Madame de Robin, for my uncouth behavior before.” He bows shallowly from his seat.

Roxane feels something close to relief wash cool through her chest for the first time in days. She allows herself a small smile. “You are forgiven, Comte, but I expect an extraordinarily extravagant wedding present.”

“Of course.” De Guiche, gratifyingly, is pale with relief too. She wonders at her luck — her near misfortune — of causing a Comte, a cadet, and a veritable hero to be afraid of her. She would like to get used to it. 

She thinks Cyrano’s awe enough as she looks to him again. Gently, as if seeing the force of her regard in her eyes, he takes her hand in both of his and kisses her knuckles. For all that Cyrano de Bergerac is a force of nature, he tempers her. 

De Guiche clears his throat. “I… think I will follow Le Bret’s example.” It is an unsubtle escape to leave them alone. Roxane cares very little. 

Despite how many details they must coordinate and futures they must discuss, neither she nor Cyrano speak. He shifts close enough for her to pillow her head on his shoulder, her arms folded through the crook of his, and they regard the fire and the brightening stars on their last night in Arras. 

Paris, and a life together, awaits them.

[sweetwritertanya]

Noble Heart (Part 2)

Summary: The two days are up and you find yourself in Augustus’ house ready to give him your answer. It is both exactly and not quite what he expected.

Warning: Still none, just a bit of old-fashioned (literally) fluff. Very tame so far!

Word Count: 3029

Takin a deep breath, you wonder for the millionth time if you should be doing this. On the way over, you had stopped in your tracks and turned back at least seven times. You were anxious and restless and beyond worried for the past two days, constantly contemplating what your options were, changing your mind over and over again when you thought you had reached a decision.

Your family had served no help to make matters easier on you. Mother was unmistakably mad at you, refusing to address you or even call out your name since that day. According to your younger sisters, more than the refusal on itself, she felt betrayed that you didn’t talk to her or even warned her before such a rash reaction. You understood where she was coming from, but you also had an inkling that if you told her anything, she would have tried to talk you out of it.

As for your Father, you could tell he was a bit proud of you. He was the one who always taught you to stand your ground, voice your opinion and not let anyone look down on you. If anything, your actions were a fruit of his teachings throughout the years and he was delighted to have raised you with values and morality. He wouldn’t voice it, though, not when your Mother was around. You could just see it in his eyes and the smile you caught him having while staring at you from the corner of your eye.

And strangely, it was more so your Father and the fate of your sisters that played a major role in your latest decision. You had gone into the town alone the last two days for groceries and took your time as you searched for any sort of paying job you could take on to support your family. Without the Duke’s funding, it would be up to you to save your family. Your Mother, as much as she would deny it, could never work anywhere but home. You, at the very least, could read and write, even knew more than the basics of math and French.

But it was with a heavy heart that you understood there were no jobs available for women in town. Only men had such a privilege.

Hence, where you stood at the moment. In front of the big mahogany door of the late Duke’s mansion, hands clutching and unclutching into fists at your sides as you tried to gain the courage to knock. Closing your eyes tightly, you force your arm to raise and two strong bumps of your knuckles on the door are enough for steps on the other side being heard after a few moments. The door opens.

No going back now.

“H-Hello. I would like to have a word with the late Duke’s grandson. Would that be possible?” you ask the male server that opened the door, with a rigid stance and neutral expression.

“And who should I inform is looking for his Grace?” the man inquires.

“Oh, I’m Adela Evans. He should recognize my name” you tell the server, chubby hands clasping together in a spike of nerves.

The man steps back, allowing you in and closing the door behind you.

“It will only be a moment, Lady Adela.”

The man leaves you alone at the entrance as he goes down one corridor of the big house. The entrance is just a step down from the living room, no walls dividing the rooms, and you can’t help but marvel a bit more at the beautiful and grandiose habitation, the tall ceilings and windows, the ornamented heavy furniture and expensive looking fabrics of the sofas and curtains. A big arched staircase rises to your left to the second floor, mate porcelain tiles covering each step, the same tiling used on the floor, covered up by an expansive colorful rug. You had only ever been able to see such luxury during the festivities thrown in this mansion, thrice before.

“Lady Adela.”

The resonant cordial voice of the man you came looking for jolts you for a moment, as you were too intrigued by a beautiful vase and its design to hear the approaching footsteps. Turning around in a swift movement, you catch sight of Augustus placing his dirty gloves on the table at the end of the corridor from where he came before coming into the living room. Contrary to how you expected him, in a formal suit from head to toe, like he was the last time, he was actually in fairly casual clothes, even a few buttons of his collar were undone.

“Your Grace” you greet, looking away from the glistening skin on the exposed skin of his neck and chest.

“That would depend on the answer I assume you came to give me” he refutes, coming to stand a few feet away from you, arms crossing in his chest, head leaning just the slightest to the right. “So?”

Sucking your bottom lip beneath your teeth, you refuse to meet his eyes and stubbornly remain silent for a moment. You really didn’t want to give him any satisfaction in what you were about to say, but you knew that, if he really thought about it, all the cards would be on his side.

“I maintain my truth, I do not wish to marry a man I do not know” you state, clasping your hands behind your back, still refusing to meet his gaze.

“I see” he breaths out almost in discontent, but coming back to his feet immediately. “Well, then, I believe we have nothing more to talk about, Lady Adela. Wish you the best for yourself and your family.”

He takes a step back and raises his right arm towards the door, signaling for you to leave as there was no more business between the two of you.

“You misunderstand me, your Grace” you enlighten, seeing a bit of interest coming back to the man’s honey eyes as one of his eyebrows shoots up in his forehead.

“Is that so? What could you have possible meant, then?”

“Maybe this would be better discussed over a cup of tea, if you be so kind, your Grace.”

For your surprise, the self-invitation from your part makes the man chuckle and it’s a jovial laugh you haven’t though possible to come out of him. It made his eyes wrinkle a bit at the sides and deep lines appear beneath the curve of his lower lashes, but somehow it made him look younger.

The man couldn’t be more than a few years older than you, maybe three or five years, certainly no more than ten or twelve. But the way he carried himself the last time you saw him - the first time you saw him, actually - made him seem much older than he really was.

A toss of his head gestured for you to follow him as he made way through the big house, stopping to inform a servant to bring tea and biscuits to the greenhouse. You didn’t even know that the mansion had a greenhouse.

Sure enough, he guides you through the house to the large backyard, a green paradise that you always admired the most when coming over. But it was slightly different, with a newly built tiny glass house next to the beautifully bloomed flowers, the earth dug up as new plants seemed to have been moved around and new seeds planted.

“I do apologize, but we have been working on the garden the last few days. I do assure it is very pleasant inside, though.” Augustus guaranteed, opening the white door to the greenhouse and letting you go in first.

Inside was a metal white circular table with two matching white chairs with colorful seats. Shelves filled with beautiful flowers and aromatic plants in pots surrounded them. Sunlight came through the glass ceiling and the door was left open to circulate air, freshening the space a bit.

The maid came in just as both of you sat down, leaving a tray with two sets of tea cups, a tiered tray complete with biscuits and sweets, and a tea pot with steam coming out of the spout. She poured the hot liquid into each tea cup and Augustus allowed her to leave right after.

“Now, Lady Adela, I do believe you were about to explain what exactly is your decision regarding the marriage” he brought up, as soon as you were both alone again.

You would have liked to grab your tea cup and drink in order to buy more time, but it was a warm day and the tea was still too hot to drink. Pursuing your lips, you sigh and force yourself to say it all out loud, like you had already decided.

“If I were to agree to the marriage, when would the ceremony be held?” you question, raising your chin and setting your eyes on his.

“It would be as soon as possible. I would say the preparations would take less than a week” he guesses, amused by how you keep dodging the main point.

“One week…” you whisper under your breath, eyes falling to the ground as you internalize what he said. It was less than you expected. You nod decisively and raise your eyes back to his. “Very well, it will have to do. I will agree, but only under my own conditions.”

The man in front of you sighs and for a moment he looks really tired, almost exhausted, but blinks and straightens back up in his seat, rejuvenated. An intense stare lands on you.

“And what would those conditions be?”

“From this day onward, we are to get acquainted the best we can. I wish to have some knowledge of who I am giving myself in marriage. Also, if I happen to not get along with your person, up until the day of the ceremony I am allowed to change my mind.”

He stays silent for a few moments and seems to be studying you. Under his penetrating gaze, you try your best not to squirm and remain unmoved. You wonder if he realizes that, even if he disagrees to your conditions, you would still have no real choice other than to agree to the whole thing. Your family’s well being depended on this. The conditions were more so to give you some sort of leverage, some sort of power in the arrangement. To avoid the overwhelming feeling of impotence crushing you.

“As you wish, Lady Adela” he finally agrees and you let out a breath you had no idea you were holding, relief washing over you. “In light of your acceptance, I do have some matters I would like to get arranged this afternoon still, so I do not have much time. However, until we finish the tea, do feel free to ask questions and, as you put it, get to know the man you are marrying.”

With that, he takes hold of his tea cup for the first time since you had sat there and sips on it, sitting back and crossing his long legs as he awaits your reaction. A bit taken back, you stare for a moment before avoiding his eyes and cleaning your throat, reaching for your teacup and drinking the sweet tea as well.

“Well… For starters, I would like to know why does a Duke have calluses in his fingers.”

He seems startled at first, his tea cup falling from his lips a bit and eyes widening a bit, before he composes himself and the smirk he creates is hidden behind the porcelain cup.

“I am not yet a Duke. And if I may, I would like to know why you seemed so attentive of my fingers, Lady Adela.”

His soft voice is filled with inuendo and you can’t help the blush that comes to you when you realize what he was hinting at. Doing your best to pretend to ignore it, you reach for a biscuit and bite it with a sip of the tea before changing the topic.

“Who are you then, your Grace?”

“I do believe we will become close enough to call each other by our first names, Lady Adela. You may treat me by Augustus, simply” he encourages.

“If so, you may also call me Adela, simply. But my question remains… Augustus.”

It feels strange to refer to the man by his first name, it tingles in your tongue and trembles your heart a bit. You can’t be sure if you ever called a man only by his first name before.

“It is a very complicated question, don’t you think? Do you know who you are, Adela?”

Pondering it for a second, you understand where he was coming from. But there was also no need to go into depth with the question, introspect on oneself profoundly to know how to answer adequately.

“I do. I am Adela Mary Evans, eldest daughter of John Evans and Mary Evans, sister of three precious children. Taught to be polite but honorable, brave and kind. To dwell on the positive rather than the negative and to always have hope. To search for the good in people. I believe that’s the majority of who I am.”

Augustus listens carefully to your speech, frozen in time as you voice your answer. By the time you are finished, he remains still for a moment more, eyes intently set on you and you feel your blood running quicker in your veins. But the intensity is gone as soon as he averts his eyes and leans forward on his chair, placing the now empty tea cup back on the table.

“Then, I envy you, Adela.” He confesses, and his voice sounds sad to you. “I’m afraid I am running out of time, my apologies. I’ll accompany you to the door, lady.”

He stands up and you follow suit, wondering if you should press on. The fact is you didn’t get much information out of him at all, since the very first question you asked remained unanswered. So, as you are walking back to the house across the garden in complete silence, you voice your guess.

“Are you, by chance, a gardener? I mean, before becoming a Duke” you deduct.

The rhythm of his steps falters only for a second, before he continues going forward with a tense back and raised chin, adopting a defensive stance. His eyes are still set forward, never lingering to you.

“What makes you say that?”

“Aside from the calluses on your hands, I saw the gloves you had… the ones you placed on a table before approaching me. They were gardeners’ gloves. You are wearing light comfortable clothes and also, you said ‘we’ were working on the garden, including yourself” you explained, eyes set on him from the corner of your eyes to gather his reaction.

He remains quiet as you reach the backdoor, and only back inside does he acknowledge what you said.

“You seem to have forgotten to add observant as one of your defining characteristics, Adela. As well as intelligent” he compliments, finally looking to his side at you and throwing a small smile your way.

You can’t help but feel that the smile wasn’t honest, having the burning suspicion you have offended him somehow. And feeling guilty about it.

“There is nothing wrong with being a gardener, Augustus” you whisper lowly as you approach the large living room, not sure if the servants were aware of his former occupation or not. “When I was looking for a job, I would have done anything from distributing newspapers to work in the kitchens. If only someone would have me.”

He looks back at you inquisitive and puzzled, slowing down the pace as you cross the room to the main door.

“You really went and tried to get a job?” He seemed entertained by such an idea.

“Of course. Marrying you was obviously not my first choice to save my family.”

He snickers and shakes his head a bit, a natural smile still on his lips as he grabs a suit jacket from the rack next to the door, which gives his appearance a more sophisticated look.

“I would have thought any woman would have jumped at the opportunity of becoming a Duchess” he admits, hiding his brown curls under a small hat.

“And I would have to disagree. Not if one values themselves.”

Augustus opens the door for you before following you outside.

“I will be taking my horse to town. Would you like me to take you home?” he offers.

“No, thank you. It is not far and it’s a beautiful day, I rather walk.” You keep out how uncomfortable you feel riding a horse, not only due to the effort of getting your plump form on top of it, but also feeling your flesh jiggling throughout the whole ride. Very uncomfortable.

“I see. Then, in order to conform with your condition, I will come around your family’s house tomorrow” he resolves.

You were not too keen on having to explain your decision to your family, but it had to be done sooner or later. If he were to come around the next day, you would have to explain everything by tonight. You sigh just thinking about it, but decide it’s for the best.

“That would be agreeable, yes. I will see you then.”

You were about to turn around and start your way back to your home, but you are completely taken by surprise when Augustus’ hands take a hold of your right one and, before you understand what is going on, he takes it up to his lips and kisses your knuckles softly. Your breathing staggers and your eyes must be as big as plates, not quite understanding why such an act sends tingles up your arm and down your back. Maybe it’s the way his deep eyes never leave yours as he does so, a fiery glow behind them.

“Until tomorrow, Lady Adela.”

Only when you are more than halfway home do you realize you never reciprocated the goodbye before bolting out.

[gigi-sinclair]

Cendrillon (crossover with “Versailles”, Guillaume/Thomas Jopson, rated G)

Blame it on @rubysharkruby, and specifically this gifset. Also, I believe it was @oochilka who said “a Thomas Jopson for every Matthew McNulty character”, and I can thoroughly get behind that. 

If you haven’t seen “Versailles”, I would say Guillaume is more or less a 17th century French Edward Little. The poor guy just wants to do his job. 

For the @theterrorbingo Free Space, and my third Bingo!!!

“I hear you are cobbler to the King.”

Guillaume looks up from the tannery workbench. In front of him stands the most beautiful man he's ever seen, tall and dark-haired. He's dressed simply, as a servant, but he is as lovely as any aristocratic flower Guillaume has glimpsed at Versailles.  

“We work for all sorts of people,” Jeanne calls across the workshop. The man glances at her. “None of our clients have ever been dissatisfied.”

“But you are correct,” Guillaume says, bringing the man's startling blue gaze back to him. “We are fortunate enough to have a position at court.” At least until the King catches wind of Jeanne's disloyal sentiments.

“My master is in sore need of new shoes.” He has an accent, Guillaume remarks. English, although his French is very good. “But I am afraid he dislikes leaving home. I would be most grateful if somebody could go to him.”

Guillaume is far too busy with the King and the orders from court these days to take on such errands himself, but he finds himself strangely loath to assign the task to someone else.

“Where do you live?”

“My master's home is outside Menuls-lès-Saint-Cloud.” A fair ride from the workshop. A trip out there would certainly take more time than Guillaume has to spend.

“I can come tomorrow afternoon.” He can sense Jeanne's eyebrows go up, but ignores her. It's easy enough to do when the man bestows upon him a smile dazzling enough to put butterflies in Guillaume's stomach and palpitations in his heart. He even has dimples, Guillaume notes, with simultaneous despair and elation. He has always been inordinately fond of dimples.

“Thank you, monsieur. He is a very particular gentleman, he only wants the best.” The man gives Guillaume a look that can only be described as meaningful. Even after his experiences at court, where volumes are spoken with looks and gestures, Guillaume does not possess the skills to discern that meaning. He takes the address, and bids the man a farewell which is ridiculously forlorn, given they are complete strangers.

As soon as he is gone, Guillaume hears Jeanne scoff.

“You have something to say, dear sister?”

“Merely that I am pleased to see you taking work for someone other than His Majesty. And that your familiarity with the Duc d'Orléans seems to have affected you in more ways than one.” This meaning could not be clearer, and she could not be more wrong.

Guillaume knows of Philippe's proclivities, naturally. Those same proclivities lived in Guillaume long before he met Philippe. He wonders, at times, if that was what encouraged friendship to blossom between them, even more than their shared experiences in the war.

“If you are short of work, Jeanne, I'm certain I can find you something to do.” His tone is less imperious than he would like, but she says no more.

***

The mysterious gentleman's home is a moderately sized villa, tidy with a well-kept garden. It is not the home of an aristocrat, but nor is it a place for a pauper. The handsome servant himself greets Guillaume at the door.

Overnight, Guillaume almost managed to convince himself he had exaggerated the man's appearance. He, who had seemed an angel on Earth in the tannery, would no doubt appear ordinary or even plain in the light of day.

Guillaume was wrong. The man is as lovely now as he was yesterday. As he greets Guillaume with another of those astonishing smiles, Guillaume hears himself ask, “What is your name?”

 “Jopson, monsieur. Thomas.” He says it the English way. Tom-mass. It is utterly delightful.

“I am Guillaume,” Guillaume tells him, as Thomas leads him into the house.

“Yes,” Thomas replies. Amusement colours his voice. “I know.”

A man awaits them in the drawing room. Although the weather is mild, he sits before the fire. Like the house itself, this room is well-kept without being extravagant, with tall bookshelves against several of the walls, and paintings of seascapes on the others. The gentleman is not elderly, but Guillaume recognizes the ravages of drink on his face.

“Captain Crozier,” Thomas says, in English. Guillaume can understand a little, although he would never attempt to speak it. “We are honoured with a visit from the King's shoemaker.”

Crozier casts his eyes across Guillaume's person, then snorts. “All right, then. Let's get on with it.”

Captain Crozier—given the seascapes, Guillaume assumes he is a naval captain, or was one, rather than an army captain—suffers from severe bunions. He winces as Guillaume measures his feet, although Guillaume is as gentle as possible. After marching for years with his own troops, this is a condition with which Guillaume has great sympathy.

“Tell him,” Guillaume says to Thomas, as he wraps up his measuring tape, “I will make him the most comfortable shoes he has ever owned.”

His words make Thomas' eyes light up. At once, Guillaume wishes to do that again, and again. “Oh, that would be very much appreciated.” Thomas repeats the sentence in English to the captain, who laughs derisively.

“He wouldn’t be the first to say that. But I welcome his attempt.” The captain's gaze goes to Thomas. “Why don't you have a pair made yourself, as well, Thomas?”

“Me, sir?”

“If his shoes are as good as he claims, then you surely deserve some of your own. You're on your feet far more than I.”

A fetching blush comes to Thomas' cheeks. “That's very kind, sir.” He turns to Guillaume. “My master has kindly offered me a pair of my own. If you don't mind...”

“Not at all.”

Thomas sits on the nearest chair, and removes his current shoes. They are of very poor quality, badly made to begin with and crudely patched on top of that. Guillaume wishes he had brought a pair of completed shoes for Thomas to wear while his are being made.

Guillaume has seen a lot of feet in his time. In and of themselves, they have never interested him, but Thomas' feet are strangely fascinating.

Guillaume bites his lip, striving to maintain the highest level of professionalism. The level that has kept him at court, even if Philippe's influence was obviously what first opened the door. He takes Thomas' measurements as briskly and efficiently as he did his master's, until he arrives at Thomas' left instep.

It is high. Before he can consider what he's doing, Guillaume traces it with his index finger. Even through Thomas' stocking, Guillaume can feel the heat of his body. He twitches, but does not pull his foot away. Rather, he pushes back, just a little, then raises his gaze to meet Guillaume's.

Guillaume feels his own face heat to match the blush darkening Thomas'. He pulls his hand away.

“I shall deliver the shoes myself, once completed.” The vow is rash. He might be called to Versailles at any time.

“I look forward to it, monsieur,” Thomas replies, in a low voice that does not quite suit a conversation about shoes.

***

As promised, the shoes Guillaume makes for Thomas and his master are among the finest he's created. The leather is richly tanned, supple beneath his fingers, and the stitching is exquisite, if he does say so himself. For all his sins, Guillaume is not usually a prideful man. He is proud of these shoes, and excited to present them to their new owners.

To one of their new owners in particular. He smiles to himself on the ride up to Menuls-lès-Saint-Cloud. He would say he feels as giddy as a schoolboy, but Guillaume was always a serious child.

“Good afternoon, monsieur!” Guillaume did not write ahead to announce his arrival, but Thomas greets him as if he was expected. “I'm afraid Captain Crozier has taken ill.”

“I hope it is nothing serious.”

A delicate frowns settles upon Thomas' forehead. “No,” he says, sounding tired. “It is quite usual.”

There is nothing to be said to that. “I have your shoes.” Guillaume holds up the bag in his hand. It seems an idiotic statement—why else would he have come?—but Thomas brightens, the frown disappearing.

“Please, do come in. I'm so eager to see them.”  

He takes Guillaume to the same room they were in before. Guillaume sets aside the shoes made for the captain, and unveils Thomas' pair. “They're wonderful!” Thomas exclaims. “Might I try them?”

“Of course.” The prudent course of action would be to hand the shoes to Thomas, to let him put them on himself. Instead, Guillaume says, “Please, sit.”

Guillaume has spent a great deal of his life as a supplicant. Before God, before the King. It feels just as natural to go to his knees before Thomas, to take one of his stocking-clad feet in hand and slide it into the shoe. The fit, of course, is exact.  

“My goodness.” Guillaume looks up. Thomas' cheeks are rosy, his lips parted in a way that makes Guillaume feel quite warm. “That's lovely.” He clears his throat, as Guillaume sets down that foot and takes up his other one. “In Italy, the captain and I heard a story about a lady who flees from a royal ball, and is found again by the perfect fit of a slipper she left behind. Do you know the tale?”

“I have heard a similar one at court.” Guillaume remembers Philippe recounting it to him, thinking, no doubt, that the subject matter would appeal.  

Thomas holds his gaze. “Then you will know that the one who returns her slipper is a charming prince. Like you, Guillaume.”

Guillaume swallows. “I am far from a prince.”

“Perhaps.” He reaches out to rest his hand on Guillaume's shoulder. His touch is light. Still, it makes Guillaume's heart beat faster. “But I find you very charming indeed.”

He moves slowly. Guillaume has ample opportunity to shift away, to get up and leave, to reject what Thomas is clearly offering. He does none of that. Instead, he allows Thomas to sit on the floor beside him, to take Guillaume in his arms, and, finally, to press a kiss, soft and tentative, against Guillaume's lips.

Despite the circles he now moves in, despite his close friendship with the King's only brother, Guillaume is a simple man. He is not ashamed of that. There is a natural hierarchy to the world, and Guillaume is well aware of his place within it.

And my place at the moment, he thinks, wrapping his arms about Thomas and returning kiss with ardour, is exactly where I am now.  

[justheretobreakthings]

Kings Over Aces - Chapter 2

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Word Count: 3,114 (Total Word Count: 6,290) Read on AO3

Story Summary:

The Voltron Coalition has an alliance in the works with the resource-rich planet of Yuipra, and it’s the paladins’ job to keep on the king’s good side while the deal is made. That shouldn’t shouldn’t be too great a challenge; after all, they’ve courted plenty of planets before for the sake of alliances.

Unfortunately, things are made much more complicated when the king takes a special interest in Keith.

Fic content warnings for attempted rape/non-con.

“I’m telling you, he wants me,” Lance said, for what was probably the dozenth time since breakfast.

Pidge rolled her eyes, stretching her leg out along the couch to kick Lance where he was seated on the opposite cushion without moving from where she’d comfortably settled with her tablet. The paladins were spending their downtime after training this morning in the lounge, all having claimed their usual spots to relax, but Lance harping on about last night’s dinner was making it even more difficult than usual - which was saying something, as the weirdly translated Altean books Keith tried to pass time with were hard enough to focus on anyway. “He does not ‘want’ you,” she said. “You think every person we ever meet at these coalition things ‘wants’ you, and how many times has that been the case?”

“Plenty of times,” Lance answered. “I’m not gonna be able to keep track exactly.”

“It’s sort of a numbers game by this point, isn’t it?” Hunk asked, tilting his head back from where he was seated cross-legged on the floor in front of the other two to join the conversation. “You flirt with basically every single person you find attractive - ”

“ - And your standards for that aren’t exactly sky-high,” said Pidge, “So you’ve probably hit on like five hundred people since we got shot out into space. Which would make your success rate - ”

“All right, I see where this math is going,” Lance groaned. “For your information, I do not flirt with nearly that many people.”

“Good point,” Pidge said. “Just winking and making finger guns probably doesn’t count. Or at least only counts as, like, half a flirt.”

“It’s not - you know what, whatever. We’re not talking about my overall track record, just last night. And that king was totally into me. Basically talked just to me the entire night. You saw, right, Keith?” He turned to Keith, who silently cursed his inability to turn invisible. “Back me up here.”

“Um,” Keith said. “Well, you certainly talked to him a lot.”

“I was replying to him, that’s how conversations work. But he was totally flirting with me, right?”

“Uh…”

Lance huffed and crossed his arms. “Okay, that doesn’t count for anything. Keith probably wouldn’t recognize flirting if his life depended on it.” Keith let out a little harrumph of indignation. Sure, that was true, but there was no need to just announce it like that.

“Nah, I’m gonna go ahead and take his testimony as gospel,” Pidge said. “Sorry, Lance. You bombed.”

“Need me to get Kaltenecker to make you some ice cream?” Hunk asked, reaching up to pat Lance on the leg.

“I’m like two seconds away from slapping all of you.”

“The bitter sting of rejection is such an ugly look on you,” Pidge said drily. A small beep sounded from her tablet, and a moment later, she sat up. “Allura just messaged. They’re getting an incoming signal from Yuipra, we’re probably gonna solidify alliance terms. Gotta go join ‘em in the bridge.”

Lance groaned. “Why do we all have to go? Shiro and Allura are in charge of all of that.”

“I dunno, to make a good impression?” Pidge stretched as she stood from the couch. “Besides, you should be excited. Get another chance to talk to the love of your life.”

“At no point did I ever say anything about him being the ‘love of my life’,” Lance said as he and Hunk reluctantly stood too. “All I said was that he wants me. Which I still maintain is one hundred percent true.”

“If you say so. You coming, Keith?”

“Yeah, I’m coming,” Keith said. He shut off his electric reader and dropped it onto the seat to come back to later before joining the others, shuffling in behind them for the short walk to the bridge.

When they arrived, joining Allura and Shiro on the deck, the holoscreen was already on and tuned to an image of King Olren, the arms of two of his ever-present guards just on the edges of the frame. The discussion was already in motion, but Olren paused mid-sentence as the door to the bridge slid open.

“Ah, the rest of your paladins have arrived, I see,” he said, smiling down at them as they took their places on the bridge. “It is a delight to see you all again.”

“You too, your majesty,” Hunk said.

Allura smiled as she looked back over her shoulder at the others. “King Olren was just telling us that he was quite impressed by our performance yesterday, as well as our engagement with his people at the banquet.”

“Quite so,” Olren said with a nod. “Your presence went over very well amongst my nobility. And, of course, I was just as enamored by Voltron as anyone in my court. Your knowledge and passion are obvious. Now, I’ve spent the morning reviewing the terms of our potential alliance with my advisors. Yuipra’s stance on interplanetary relations is perfectly in line with your current mission statement of resistance against the Galra empire and liberation of those under its control. However, I must confess slight apprehension over how the citizenry would respond to engaging in a conflict in which we are currently not directly involved. As your proposed terms are outlined right now, the use of our resources versus the coalition benefits that you would grant us in return seem rather unbalanced.”

“That’s only in the short term,” Shiro spoke up. “We may currently be thin on benefits, but that’s entirely due to past Galra occupation that we are working to wipe out. Already we’re seeing the signs of environmental improvements and economic growth from planets that have been liberated and are being helped by the Coalition now. The trade agreements and political relations we build now will yield positive growth over time, and in the long run it’ll more than offset the costs of your involvement.”

“And you have evidence to back your claims of long-term benefits?”

“I would be more than happy to send you any details about the Coalition’s fiscal plans and projections of resource growth that you need,” said Allura. “You will find that we have been nothing but meticulous.”

Olren nodded. “That would do nicely, Princess, if you would be so kind. I must admit, your confidence alone is quite the sales pitch.” Allura lifted her chin, a proud smile on her lips, and Olren grinned back. “The rapid creation and propagation of the Voltron coalition makes ever more sense. It’s certainly likely that Yuipra will have its part in it as you make history.”

“We thank you, your majesty,” Allura said.

“I am still not, however, quite ready yet to solidify an alliance with your coalition,” Olren continued, and Allura deflated. “Not due to problems with any stipulations we’ve laid out as yet, but because I like to know those with whom I ally on a more… personal level, you see. It is one thing to be able to ally with someone politically, but such bonds are far more meaningful, not to mention harder to break, when they are personalized to a nigh emotional level. Wouldn’t you agree?”

Allura paused a moment before answering, “Well - well, yes, of course. I completely understand where you are coming from.”

“Excellent. Now, I’ve gotten a bit of a chance to gain some familiarity during our banquet, but if Voltron would be so willing to indulge me, I really prefer to do so more privately. One-on-one, actually.”

“All right,” Allura said slowly. “So, erm, what, exactly, are you proposing?”

“Suppose I’ll get right down to it,” Olren said through a little breath of a laugh. “I wish to host an intimate dinner in my private dining room tomorrow evening. And I would like your red paladin to accompany me as my date.”

Lance cast the others a grin - a smirk that seemed to say, I told you so - before he stepped forward and bowed grandly. “Your majesty,” he said as he straightened up, “It would be an honor to - ”

“No, no, not him,” Olren said, waving a hand dismissively. “The red paladin.”

“I am the red - ” Lance started, before his face fell and his eyes widened. “Wait, do you mean - are you - are you talking about Keith?!” he spluttered, gesturing with his thumb toward Keith, who stood in stunned silence as all the eyes in the room spun toward him.

“Yes. Keith,” Olren said with a smile. “I do hope you will accept my invitation?”

“Uh - I - I - ” Keith stammered out.

“Is, ah, is that really necessary?” Shiro asked. “Voltron functions as a unit, you see, and there’s no need to have only one of us to dinner rather than the whole group.”

“If you function as a unit, then your red paladin’s character should reflect that of all of you,” Olren said. “You need not worry, really, over the effect on our potential alliance. I must admit, I’ve found myself quite taken with his disposition already. But you do understand why I may want to take the time to personally assure myself that we will be a good match, yes?”

“Understandable, yes,” Allura said. “I’m sure that we can arrange - ” She paused as she glanced back over her shoulder at Keith, whose knees were growing shaky and who had long since felt his face heating into a bright red.

Allura furrowed her brow and turned back toward Olren. “Could you please grant us a few doboshes to discuss our availability?” she asked. “We will be happy to resume this conversation shortly.”

“Of course,” Olren said. “I look forward to a call. And I must admit, I do expect to like what I hear. I’m not in the habit of taking ‘no’ for an answer.” He cast them all one last smile before his holoscreen went dark and then disappeared.

Allura let out a breath before turning around toward Keith. “Keith,” she said. “Are you ill?”

Keith blinked at her. “Am I… what?”

“You look ill.”

Slowly he shook his head. “No, I’m - I’m not sick.”

“Because if you have any sort of bug that the king might catch, that would certainly not reflect well, nor be ideal for you and your state of mind during a dinner. Or if something in their meal disagreed with you - ”

“It’s just, um - this is - he said.” Keith took a deep breath. “He said - he said he wanted me to be his date.”

“Yes?” Allura said. “And?”

“And, well, I, uh - I don’t - I don’t really have - ” Allura tilted her head, and Keith took a deep breath before finishing, “I don’t date.”

“Oh for the love of - ” Lance groaned. “Of course. Of course Mullet’s never been on a date before. We should’ve known.”

“Is that all?” Allura asked. “Keith, I’m sure it won’t be much of a problem. Everyone gets nervous the first time they go on a date. We could always go through some etiquette with you, some conversation starters. We’ll no doubt have to brief you on a number of courting customs anyway, seeing as nobility is rather more particular in how they go about it, but I’m certain that - ”

“No, look, that’s not it,” Keith interrupted. “It’s - it’s not that I haven’t dated. I mean, I, um, I haven’t, but it isn’t - it’s just that, I don’t date.”

“I’m… not sure I follow,” Allura said.

With a grunt of frustration, Keith brought a hand up to card his fingers through his hair as he searched for the words to explain it in a way she’d understand. “I just - I don’t do that, I - I don’t feel the things that people are supposed to feel when - when they’re on dates, like, the romance and all, they - they don’t - ”

“Hang on,” Pidge interrupted, lifting a hand and peering at him with narrowed eyes through her glasses. “Keith, are you aro?”

Keith felt his voice halt in his throat, and he crossed his arms and took a step back, ducking his head a little as he closed in on himself and avoided looking at his teammates’ faces. It wasn’t that he thought they’d react badly to it, or judge him for it - at least, he sure hoped they wouldn’t. It was just that this was personal, and he much would’ve preferred to come out when he was actually ready to, not just… like this.

But, of course, now that it was out there, it was out there. Not like there was any point in denying it. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “Um, aroace, to be specific, but, uh, yeah. Yeah.”

He dared a glance up beneath his lashes. Pidge was nodding slowly in understanding, and Shiro was more or less expressionless - he’d already known, after all. The others all just appeared to be confused.

“I’m sorry, arrow?” Allura said. “Pidge, what is that?”

“Aro. Short for aromantic,” Pidge answered. “Means he doesn’t feel romantic attraction.”

“Wait, for real?” Lance said, his brow wrinkling and his eyes scanning Keith up and down as if looking for some sort of clue on his clothes to verify it.

“Yes, for real,” Keith snapped. “Why the fuck would I lie about something like that?”

Lance lifted his hands innocently. “Shit, man, I wasn’t accusing you of lying. Just, you know, processing the new information. Guess that kinda clears up some of the rumors that were going around the Garrison…”

For a moment Keith was about to demand some follow-up about these rumors, but decided to let it go for now. He’d overheard plenty of gossip about himself as a student on every other subject - whether he cheated on the sims and how he did it, how he got into the Garrison, his juvie history, his relationship to Shiro, his family. A couple rumors about his sexuality were a mere drop in the bucket. It wasn’t important now.

What was important was the matter at hand: the dinner date with King Olren. “Look, the point is, I don’t do the whole ‘dating’ thing. It’s - it’s not my thing. I wouldn’t be able to pull it off.”

Allura crossed her arms, tapping her finger pensively against her elbow. “Well, what if we trained you on it?”

Keith frowned at her. “What?”

“On dating. I’m sure we’d be able to give you sufficient instruction to handle a single dinner date. If we trained you, do you think you’d be able to manage?”

Keith took a step back. “Allura, I told you, I don’t feel - ”

“I know, I understand. I’m not asking you to be attracted to him. I know you can’t control that. But I also know that this could be a very advantageous alliance for Voltron, and a date with you seems to be the deciding factor. Would it be at all possible for you to, er… fake it?”

“Fake it?” Keith repeated incredulously.

“Yeah, yeah, that could work,” Lance said, nodding. “I mean, that’s not exactly hard to pull off, right? I’ve faked my way through dates before. You know, I meet someone online, but when I show up to the restaurant for a date it turns out they’re a total weirdo, so I smile through the dinner and make small talk and just sorta, like, humor them. Let them have a nice evening then get the fuck outta there.”

“What, you can’t just be up front about not liking them?”

“It’s called manners, Mullet.”

“Look, I’m not going to - ”

“They do kind of have a point, Keith,” Shiro interrupted.

Keith turned to him, taken aback. If anyone knew how uncomfortable Keith was over the concept of dating, it would be Shiro. Keith had only even learned about aromanticism and asexuality because Shiro had explained them to him, back in their Galaxy Garrison days, and his surrogate brother had held his hand tightly through the process of coming out for the first time. So him saying that Allura and Lance ‘had a point’ about sending him on a date… it was unexpected, to say the very least. “Shiro?” he said. “You - you think I should…”

“Keith, I’m not saying you need to, uh, take it very far,” Shiro said slowly. “I know you’ve got your boundaries, and I respect them. It’s just, well, it isn’t as though Olren is asking for your hand in marriage or anything. All he’s requested is a dinner date. I realize that it wouldn’t be a comfortable experience, but one awkward evening in exchange for all the resources Yuipra can offer… It would be a shame to have to pass it up.”

“Exactly,” said Allura, giving Shiro a grateful nod. “There’s no need to make it a bigger deal than it is. One dinner date. That’s all.”

“I mean, Olren’s certainly not my type either,” Shiro said with a shrug. “But if it was me he’d asked after, well, I wouldn’t love it, but I’d take one for the team, you know?”

Something rolled in Keith’s stomach and he swallowed down a lump in his throat. That was true. Shiro would do this without hesitation. Hell, even if it had been a woman asking, which would definitely leave Shiro uncomfortable to all get out, he would take the fall. Because that’s what he does - he makes sacrifices for his team. That’s what a leader does. And Keith was the leader now.

One date, he repeated mentally. He could handle just one date, surely. For Voltron’s sake.

“All right,” he said, his voice coming out sounding quieter and dryer than he would have liked. “All right, I’ll, uh, I’ll do it. You can let him know.”

Allura let out a breath of relief and smiled at him. “Thank you, Keith. I’ll get a missive off to him at once, and we can start training.”

“You know what I still don’t understand?” Lance said as Allura turned away toward her podium.

“What?” asked Keith.

“This guy had a dinner with our whole team,” Lance said. “He was sitting at the same table as Shiro and Allura and, well, me… and he goes for Keith. I just don’t get it.”

“Lance,” Shiro said with a frown.

“Look, I’m just saying what we’re all thinking. It’s not like he didn’t have options. He actually chose to thirst after the mullet. Out of everyone there. This was a conscious decision on his part.”

“Everyone has their own tastes.”

“It’s like if he’d gone to an art museum and decided that his favorite exhibit was the bathroom door.”

“That’s enough, Lance,” Shiro scolded.

Lance shook his head. “I dunno, man. Just doesn’t make any sense to me.”

Keith could only shrug in reply. It didn’t make any sense to him either.

[ashleyenst1000]

Intro ENST Midterm Exam

Ashley Morales

Sustainable Resource Use: Problems and Potential Solutions 

Blog post: 9/1/20

This week’s readings showed that humans are overusing the earth's resources, and that our way of life is not sustainable in the long run. Currently, we deplete resources with no concern for the future, and engage in practices such as deforestation and overfishing. And that use is not distributed equally across the population. As mentioned in the textbook, the highest percentage of resources are used by the small fraction of people who live in developed countries, due to extravagant lifestyles and increased consumption (Miller and Spoolman, 2021). Additional causes of environmental problems are population, poverty, the omission of environmental costs in the prices of goods and services, and increasing isolation from nature. If we continue on this way, we are essentially digging our own graves. Protecting the environment and limiting our consumption of resources is integral to the preservation of humanity, because Earth does not need us as much as we need it. 

According to the World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity we were experiencing ozone depletion, loss of biodiversity, and an overuse of water resources in 1992 (Union of Concerned Scientists, 1992). These issues are backed up by tireless scientific research, and unfortunately, many of these issues have been intensified in the years since the warning was issued. In terms of population growth, we were straining the limits of what the earth can sustain at 5 billion. We are approaching 8 billion people, which puts a massive strain on natural resources. This is important because it shows that the problems that we now face were outlined years ago, and little was resolved. However, the scientific community proposed solutions to the aforementioned issues, and the most important solution is to limit ourselves. We must put a limit on our consumption and our waste in order to allow nature to sustain us. 

Social issues also contribute to the environmental crisis we face. Poverty is a source of environmental stress, because when a group or society lives in poverty, they cannot afford to make sweeping lifestyle changes to care for the environment because they are worried about immediate survival. The warning to humanity also cited the insurance of sexual equality and reproductive rights as a potential solution to environmental issues. Access to family planning resources and birth control can vastly slow population growth, as can education. 

The warning mentions the necessity for society to adopt a “new ethic” (Union of Concerned Scientists, 1992). In order to address environmental issues, we need to create change on a large scale, and address and change common perceptions. According to the textbook, there are six principles that will allow us to live more sustainably: Switching our main energy resource to solar power, encouraging and maintaining biodiversity, allowing chemical cycling to occur, implementing full cost pricing, implementing policies that allow us to help the most people while still keeping the environment in mind (“win-win”), and staying responsible for future generations. Keeping these in mind, especially during the formation of policy, will improve our relationship with the environment. Especially recognizing our responsibility to future generations. We have gotten to this point by making short-sighted decisions and not thinking critically about the future ramifications of processes such as deforestation, but thinking towards the future will help change the view that instant gain is not as important as long-term success. Having a lot of wood products now is not as important as having a supply of wood that lasts forever if we allow it time to regenerate between uses.  

These environmental issues are often caused by competing worldviews, especially among figures in government and influential heads of business. Not only have policy makers not planned for the future, but some also hold a human-centric worldview, and believe that the purpose of nature is to support humans, creating a hierarchy of importance at which humans are the peak. This view also claims that we are the managers of nature, and if there is an issue, our advanced technology can save the day. However, a different worldview is the earth-centered worldview. The idea behind this is that we as humans are part of the ecosystem, rather than above it, and that we are dependent on nature. This view also claims that natural capital exists for all species, and that we do not automatically have more of a right to it than any other plant or animal. Adoption of the earth-centric worldview would help us redirect our ways of thinking as a society to be more mindful of the ways in which we interact with the world around us.

We all have work to do to reduce our resource consumption, on a country-wide scale as well as on an individual scale. I recently took the ecological footprint quiz, and my results stated that if everyone lived like me, we would need 3.2 Earths to sustain us all. My personal Earth Overshoot Day was April 21st, meaning I used my equal share of yearly resources almost four months ago. My ecological footprint is 5.5 global hectares. I was a little disappointed to receive these results, because I previously thought I lived sensibly and used my resources wisely. However, it is important to consider that there are factors out of the control of some individuals, such as the type of house one’s family lives in, or the type of food they  have access to. Even so, I was proud that my ecological footprint was less than my country’s average, although I was also scared that my country’s average was so high. The average ecological footprint per person in the United States is 8.1 global hectares. Meanwhile, the biocapacity per person is 3.6 global hectares. This means that the majority of people are 4.5 global hectares over their biocapacity. I myself am 1.9 global hectares over my biocapacity. 

The warning mentioned that sustainable resource use is “enlightened self interest”, because it allows us to think about what is best now, and what will also help us improve in the future. Similarly the book mentioned that the Earth is not the one that needs saving. Environmental movements usually market themselves as “saving the Earth”, but in reality, we are just helping it. We need to be more sustainable and implement changes to our behavior in order to save ourselves. This point reminded me of a documentary that my fifth grade teacher showed my class, which was called Aftermath: Population Zero. It asked the question: what if all humans just disappeared right now? The film showed that the immediate aftermath would be apocalyptic, but eventually, the planet would stabilize. Trees would grow on the land where homes once stood, and environmental biodiversity would increase, because we are not there to destroy habitats. It was honestly a jarring movie to watch as a 10 year old, because in watching it, I had to acknowledge that Earth does not need us. Earth’s purpose is not to provide for humanity. The earth has been around for billions of years, and will continue on after humans as a species have died. The changes are so we can acknowledge our dependence on the environment and do the least harm to it while we’re here, hopefully prolonging our existence in doing so.

Word count: 1203

Question: How can we incentivize a large scale reduction of resource consumption?

Bibliography:

Miller, G. Tyler, and Scott E. Spoolman. 2021. Living in the Environment.

Union of Concerned Scientists. 1992. 1992 World Scientists' Warning to Humanity.

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Science: Our Knowledge of the World

Ashley Morales

9/9/20

   This week’s textbook chapters broke down science as a whole, from the practice of it to the basic aspects that we understand about our world. Science is the basis for our understanding of the physical world around us. Science as a field of study assumes that measurable patterns exist in nature, and they can be understood through observation, measurement, and experimentation (Miller and Spoolman, 2021). This understanding is gained through the scientific method, which is the testing of a hypothesis and the gathering of data. All scientific experimentation must undergo review by peer scientists before it can become reliable. This is relevant because it solidifies our knowledge about natural processes of the world, and when it is deemed reliable, we can build on the knowledge from there. It is important for people to have an understanding of basic chemistry and biology so that they can understand the delicate balance in which the world works. However, even with this knowledge that we have amassed about the world, we continue to act in ways that directly contradict that knowledge in terms of environmental damage. 

Flow chart depicting the scientific method. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. 

Starting at the beginning, we have deduced that the world is made up of matter, which is anything that has mass and takes up space, and is controlled by energy, which is the ability to do work. These interactions occur within systems, or sets of components that regularly function and interact. Matter, energy, and information flow through the systems from the environment and then back into the environment. Systems can be affected by feedback loops, or changes that cause other effects on the environment. A positive feedback loop causes further change in the same direction, while a negative feedback loop cancels itself out. An example of a positive feedback loop is northern ice ice: as the white ice melts, more dark land or water is exposed underneath. The ice has a high albedo, which would normally reflect the radiation energy and keep the temperature relatively stable. However, since the ice has started to melt, the land or water underneath absorbs the radiation energy rather than reflecting it, making it even warmer and melting even more ice. This is a positive feedback loop because the system keeps intensifying the initial effect.

The natural world lives in a delicate balance and relies on a few key factors to keep life going. The three factors that sustain life on earth are sunlight, nutrient cycling, and gravity. All of life is reliant on energy from the sun because the sun supports plant growth, which is integral to food chains, as well as the production of oxygen and the absorption of carbon dioxide. Sunlight also keeps us warm by working with the particles in the air through the greenhouse effect. Life relies on nutrient cycling because there are limited materials on this planet, so elements like phosphorus and nitrogen move through ecosystems so that it does not run out. All processes are also reliant on gravity because the basic principle allows the processes of nutrient cycling and the atmosphere itself to exist. 

Ecosystems on the earth rely on the above factors, and ecosystems themselves are systems of living and nonliving components. They are home to different plant and animal species depending on where they are in the world. An ecosystem relies on biodiversity, which is essentially the variety of life on earth, and can be present in a few different ways. Species diversity can mean species richness, which is the number of different species, or species evenness, which is the abundance or ratios of species. Genetic diversity is the variety of genes within a species that can affect the outcome or even induce evolution. Ecosystem diversity is the variety of the Earth’s ecosystems themselves such as deserts, grasslands, forests, and more. Finally, functional diversity is the variety of natural processes such as the flow of energy and the cycling of matter that occur within ecosystems. The diversity in an ecosystem works together to create complex webs of interspecies relationships and dependencies on each other and the surrounding environment.

 Some of the species within these ecosystems are native, and some are nonnative and invasive. A native species is one that normally lives and thrives in the area, whereas a nonnative species was introduced to an area either purposefully or by accident. Most of the time nonnative species don’t do much harm, but sometimes they can overthrow an ecosystem and fill the niches, or purposes, of native species. An example of an invasive nonnative species is the cane toad in Australia. The cane toad was introduced as a natural way to keep the cane beetle in check and prevent them from destroying crops. However, the cane toad did not do its intended job, and fed on the crops as well as other species in the ecosystem, and due to their ability to quickly breed they became a menace to the ecosystem. By the 1980s, Australia had a cane toad problem (Lewis, 1988). 

Some species are indicator species, which will show early on if there is an issue within the ecosystem. Birds tend to be indicator species, so when there is a large scale environmental issue there will sometimes be a mass bird die-off. Even now there are much fewer birds than there were 100 years ago. Some species are keystone species, which have large scale effects on the ecosystems, sometimes even helping their existence and survival. An example of a keystone species is the wolf, because when it disappears, the ecosystem falls into chaos. 

In the Yellowstone National Park, wolves were removed from the ecosystem. During that time, deer overpopulated because their predators were gone. Unchecked, the deer began to deplete the vegetation, which contributed to erosion, fewer small consumers, and a more meandering river due to the instability of the land. However, when the wolves were reintroduced, the ecosystem re-stabilized. The wolves ate excess deer, but even without being eaten, the deer began to avoid certain areas where the wolves would hunt, allowing vegetation to return. When the plants returned, the land stabilized and the river wandered less and remained more consistent. The increased plant life allowed smaller animals to return, which then allowed their predators to return as well. The return of the wolf as a keystone species brought genetic diversity to the ecosystem, and changed the physical landscape of the area for the better as well (Sustainable Human, 2014). This case study demonstrates the interconnectedness of ecosystems, and how changing one factor can throw everything out of balance, even abiotic factors such as river formation and erosion. 

We have amassed all this knowledge about our natural world through scientific discovery, and yet humans have only been on this earth for a miniscule portion of Earth’s existence. If the history of the world was condensed into a 24 hour day, humans only exist for two minutes, and all of recorded history only spans a few seconds (AsapSCIENCE, 2012). And yet we have had such a profound impact on the world in such a short time. With all of this knowledge, we continue to contradict it in our actions. We continue to stress ecosystems and destroy habitats and diminish biodiversity, even though we know that all of these factors are integral. Science can help us understand but we need other incentives to change. 

Word count: 1228

Blog Question: Knowing all that we know about earth’s natural balance, ecosystems, and important processes, why do we as humans continue to interrupt ecosystems, destroy habitats and overstep our niche, affecting most aspects of earth’s function?

Bibliography:

AsapSCIENCE. “The Evolution of Live on Earth.” Youtube Video, 2:19. November 28, 2012. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2_6cqa2cP4

 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. “Flow chart depicting the scientific method.” Photo. 2012.

Lewis, Mark, dir. Cane Toads: An Unnatural History. 1988; Australia: 2015. Youtube.

Miller, G. Tyler, and Scott E. Spoolman. 2021. Living in the Environment.

Sustainable Human. “How Wolves Change Rivers.” Youtube Video, 4:33. February 13, 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ysa5OBhXz-Q

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Environmental History

Ashley Morales

9/16/20

This week’s readings examined environmental preservation from a global scale, and examined history from a geologic time scale from the big bang. Big history is a way to observe time from the big bang, and functions as an overview. It is not as human-centric as traditional history, and instead of separating humanity by civilizations, it observes society’s overall scope. Big history studies large trends over time, such as periods of extinction or periods of prosperity for life. It is an interdisciplinary approach to history, including some life science (“Big History”). However, it does still spend quite a bit of time studying humanity due to our profound effect on the earth in such little time. Part of the cause of our environmental impact is modernization, and from the industrial revolution to the present, environmental preservation has been an uphill battle. And if our modern lifestyles don’t keep the planet in mind, is it really a “progress”?

The anthropocene is a proposed epoch of geologic time that would mark the impact of humanity on the earth and would include anthropogenic climate change. Geologic epochs are a way to divide such large spans of time, such as the Paleocene epoch, whose beginning was marked by the asteroid impact that killed off seventy-five percent of Earth’s species. We are currently undergoing a large extinction event, which typically marks geologic periods of time. Scientists and historians debate over when to start this anthropocene, because some believe it should start at the beginning of human manipulation of the earth when we began farming as opposed to hunting and gathering. Others feel that it should start when we detonated the first nuclear bombs, because that shows a profound shift in our impact and a shift in the environment, with ecosystems still reeling from the event. It will take nature years to recover from the levels of radiation released from the detonations (“Anthropocene”).

I believe the anthropocene should begin around the industrial revolution, because that shows a marked shift in our use of resources, advances in technology, and societal changes in environmental views. The industrial revolution was when we started to severely alter the environment by mining for coal on a large scale, building railroads across huge stretches of land, and manufacturing products in factories. It is the beginning of the modern lifestyle of overconsumption and destruction, which has defined our epoch. 

Additionally, this time period in America was also when people started to worry about our resource use and our effect on our surrounding environment. Early conservationists from the mid-1800s such as Henry David Thoreau and George Perkins Marsh. Thoreau noticed native species around him dwindling, so he moved to a cabin in the woods and wrote about his experience through an environmental lens. Marsh raised the question if natural resources truly were inexhaustible, so with studies he showed that the rise and fall of civilizations of the past had been determined by their resource use, and that many past societies fell due to reckless consumption of natural resources or inefficient resource use. However, conservation of the environment became more popular in the late 1800s and early 1900s, with the Forest Reserve Act of 1891, the foundation of the Sierra Club, and the environmental protection policies of Theodore Roosevelt. 

The aforementioned policies just outline the early stages of American environmentalism. Modern environmentalism took off with Rachel Carson’s A Silent Spring. The book outlined the effect that the pesticide DDT had on the soil, air, and water, and was a milestone in the protection of the quality of our natural resources.This also influenced a number of environmental laws and policies in the 1960s-1970s. Congress banned the use of DDT in 1972, and environmentalists hoped that the government would continue to fight for environmental rights. During the Nixon presidency, America saw an unprecedented rise in the number of environmental protection laws. The Clean Air Act of 1970, The Federal Water Pollution Control Act of 1972 and the formation of the Environmental Protection Agency were all championed by President Nixon during a high point in American environmental advocacy. (Miller and Spoolman, 2007)

“Trends in total DDT concentrations in whole fish sampled by the National Contaminant Biomonitoring Program from 1969 to 1986. Data are from U.S. Geological Survey, 1992. For the 90th (or 50th) percentile concentration, 90 (or 50) percent of samples were below the concentration shown.” 

In recent years, fossil fuel corporations and organizations have taken a stance against environmental protection that has been heavily supported financially, and has created a problem for the environmentalism movement by blocking and rolling back environmental protection policies. The corporate stance has been supported by many politicians. In fact, we have not had a president since Richard Nixon who prioritized environmentalism in their campaign or time in office. Our rapid growth and consumption is going mostly unchecked in the US, and seeing as the US is a major contributor to worldwide pollution and a major consumer of world resources, the consequences of this could be disastrous. Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed is a book by Jared Diamond detailing the collapses of past civilizations, as well as the factors that we face that could lead to ours. Some modem problems discussed include deforestation, overpopulation, and anthropogenic climate change, with the root of our issues being overpopulation relative to carrying capacity. It is reasonable to worry that without change, these issues will doom modern society. We tend to value progress or growth as arbitrary measures of societal success, but these are the ugly side effects to our lack of restraint in our quest for so-called progress (“Collapse: How Societies…”).

Humanity has not always lived beyond its environmental means. During the “tribal” era of environmental history, humans lived sustainably on the land with minimal environmental impact. However, European settlement changed that, clearing forests for settlement and displacing those who had lived there and cared for the land for so long. European settlement was the beginning of an incredibly damaging time for the North American environment. Settlers/colonies had little idea of the impact of their actions, and just saw land as something to own and conquer rather than an environment that we as humans exist within and rely on. (Miller and Spoolman, 2007)

In the view of geologic historical timelines, humans have not been around for long at all. Yet in courses on big history, the study of humanity still takes up around a third of the material. This is due to our profound impact and innovation. However, was it “better” during the tribal era? Modernity has solved a lot of problems in terms of humanity’s quality of life, but the complications that come with modern societies also seem to impede efforts to protect the planet we call home. Capitalist interest has seeped into every part of life, to the point where the Environmental Protection Agency is barely even protecting the environment anymore, and instead allowing drilling in nature preserves for example. It is clear that the sentiment of the seventies was wrong, and the government will not put policies in place to help environmental problems without extreme public pressure. 

Word count: 1129

Blog Question: Is the increasing separation from nature in modern life affecting our view of the environment? Is “modernity” really working in our favor? Is it possible to care for the environment and live sustainably without completely uprooting society, or is the uprooting of society necessary?

Bibliography:

Miller, G. T., & Spoolman, S. (2007). Living in the environment. Cengage Learning.

Pesticides in Stream Sediment and Aquatic Biota. USGS. https://water.usgs.gov/nawqa/pnsp/pubs/fs09200/. 

Wikipedia contributors, "Anthropocene," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Anthropocene&oldid=983363396 (accessed September 16, 2020).

Wikipedia contributors, "Big History," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Big_History&oldid=982722857 (accessed September 16, 2020).

Wikipedia contributors, "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Collapse:_How_Societies_Choose_to_Fail_or_Succeed&oldid=981990777 (accessed September 16, 2020).

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Environmental Ethics

Ashley Morales

9/23/20

This week’s readings focused on environmental ethics, justice, and our relationships with nature. The textbook chapter discusses environmental worldviews, education, and sustainability. Environmental worldviews diverge into two major branches: human centered and earth centered. Human centered focuses on humans as either dominant creatures that can exact our will, or as dominant protectors of the environment. Either way, according to this view, our needs come first, and the environment serves us. The earth centered worldviews (or life centered worldviews as they are sometimes called) claim that all forms of life have value, even if that value is not particularly useful to humans, and that they deserve to exist just as much as we do. How we view ourselves in relation to the environment is important in determining our actions to either benefit or harm it. The overlap between environmental worldviews, environmental justice and our relationship with nature begs the question: how can we improve? Education and exposure to nature could help reduce environmental impact and injustice. 

Another major tenet of our readings was the idea of environmental justice. Environmental justice is the intersection between social justice and environmentalism. It realizes that there is inequality in environmental quality and environmental benefits/burdens between communities, and that those inequalities are influenced by race and socioeconomic status. For example, toxic waste sites and landfills tend to be placed in lower income and/or minority neighborhoods and can have harmful effects on residents. Once the issue is identified, if local government even listens to community concerns at all, response time is embarrassingly poor: there are “dramatic differences between white communities and people of color communities in the time it took to mitigate hazardous sites; there were also marked disparities in compensation measures, the penal-ties against polluters and violators of pollution-law, and the stringency of cleanup solutions” (Figueroa, 2009). There is little sense of urgency for the wellbeing of these communities based on response time to hazard, as if these people are seen as disposable. Additionally, these neighborhoods have less representation in decision making processes and less total political power than richer whiter neighborhoods, and thus have to receive the consequences of decisions they had no say in. Education and awareness of these issues are integral to resolving them, as many people outside the problem, as well as even those experiencing it are not educated on what is happening to them, and how they are victims of environmental injustice. Education could potentially lead to activism and reform. 

As a society, we can barely acknowledge and protect the rights of our fellow citizens now. But an interesting philosophical/ethical dilemma is our responsibility to future generations. This idea interrogates one main question: does the present generation have an obligation to forfeit some convenience now for the security of generations in the future? This brings up a few issues. First, if these theoretical people do not exist yet, how can we negotiate what is best for them and us. They also cannot reward or punish us for our actions because when they are around and feel the effects of our actions, we will be gone. But it would have been very helpful for our current environmental situation if our parents’ and grandparents’ generations had taken us into account when making decisions about energy, pollution, and resource use. Additionally, sustainable consumption would be better for our immediate wellbeing as well as establishing better-functioning systems for the future. In terms of systematic change, it is good to frame these issues in person-person terms, even if it slightly devalues nature. This is because it sells reform and change better, especially in politics.

It seems to be easy to devalue and reject nature, especially since we are moving more towards urban living and distancing ourselves from the natural environment. We could take an “out of sight, out of mind” approach. However, we do rely on nature, not only for resources, but for our own happiness due to our evolutionary relationship with nature. Biophilia is an “innately emotional affiliation of human beings to other living organisms” and has two main components. The innate aspect means that this is part of human genes and evolution, while the emotional aspect means that it can be pleasing and/or motivate action driven by an emotional response. We also physically benefit from time outside: “In addition to the emotional and physiological benefits from nature contact, there is some evidence of a linkage to cognitive functioning” (Heerwagen, 2009). It really makes very little sense that we continue to pollute and devalue nature, even though it has been proven to be a lifeline for us, not only in its usefulness for our lifestyles, but in its benefits for us internally. A lack of contact with nature is referred to as “nature-deficit disorder” and can point to a variety of issues such as anxiety or attention-deficit disorders (Miller and Spoolman, 2021). This is why urban areas are desperately in need of greenspace such as parks and trees and gardens. Not only would it benefit us physically, but it would help us feel more empathy for the environment because we’d be surrounded by it, and maybe would help some disparities in environmental quality between communities. 

Being around nature and being educated both about it and by it can help solve a lot of our current environmental issues. We actively threaten our own species existence with our action, and part of it stems from the fact that not enough people are educated about the environment, or how it works. Those who make policy allowing oil drilling for example would benefit from formal environmental education in order to see the issues with that decision.  Additionally, many people could benefit from the aforementioned contact with the environment. A lack of intimate connection with the environment can reduce our perceived responsibility to the environment and to others (Miller and Spoolman, 2021). The best way to approach and solve issues is with education. This can be seen within the current Black Lives Matter movement, where many non-black allies are educating themselves in order to better address and combat racism within themselves and their own communities. Being open to learning, especially in the issues of racism and the environment, where the facts seem to be clear, is the first step towards change. Issues of racism and ignorance can stem from bigotry, and it is possible to change. Environmental injustices towards people of color does not need to be part of our reality. It exists because of systemic injustices based on prejudices that can be unlearned. What is harder to change is self interest. After learning about racial discrimination in environmental hazards, will people who are unaffected by these issues be willing to take on some of the burden to soften the blow for the oppressed? After learning about the benefits of nature, or even experiencing them, will fossil fuel companies change their tactics and values for the common good of society?

Word count: 1154

Blog Question: 

Why is it so hard for humans to give up convenience for the wellbeing of others? We see this now during coronavirus with mask-wearing, and with the arguments against intergenerational responsibility and even just in the presence of environmental injustice. It’s a very “why should I care about them mentality”. How  can we evolve from that, especially on a large scale?

Bibliography:

Courtney Cameron, “5 Health Benefits of Spending Time in Nature,” Natural Wellness Academy, October 7, 2019,

https://www.naturalwellnessacademy.org/2019/10/07/5-health-benefits-of-spending-time-in-nature/

Figueroa, Robert Melchior. 2009. “Environmental Justice.” In Encyclopedia of Environmental Ethics and Philosophy, edited by J. Baird Callicott, 341-348.

Heerwagen, Judith. 2009. “Biophilia.” In Encyclopedia of Environmental Ethics and Philosophy, edited by J. Baird Callicott, 109-113.

Miller, G. Tyler, and Scott E. Spoolman. 2021. Living in the Environment.

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Environmental Economics and Capitalism

Ashley Morales

9/30/20

This week’s readings interrogated the value of ecosystem services, sustainable business, our place as consumers and citizens, and the role of environmental law and policy. Ecosystem services are the benefits that we reap from the environmental functions, such as nutrient cycling or pollination. We greatly undervalue them economically, not including the price of harming them in the total price of the good or service we use them for. We also undervalue our natural capital itself, such as our forests or lakes and rivers. If we actually used the full-cost pricing of goods and services, which would include the externalities of the ecosystem services and natural capital often left out, we could actually use our resources more sustainably because we as producers and consumers would understand the true cost (Miller and Spoolman, 2021). “If ecosystem services were actually paid for, in terms of their value contribution to the global economy, the global price system would be very different from what it is today. The price of commodities using ecosystem services directly or indirectly would be much greater” (Costanza, et al., 1997), and knowing that producers try to make everything as low cost to produce and consumers try to buy the lowest cost option, we would produce and buy less as a direct result. 

Diagram of ecosystem services. 

The textbook chapter twenty three also explained subsidies, and this shows that the government has more control over the economy than a lot of people think. The government can intervene to prevent market failure, and the only reason fossil fuels are the price that they are is because the government subsidizes coal and oil companies. These are “perverse subsidies, [which] lead to environmental damage and harmful health effects. Examples include depletion subsidies and tax breaks for extracting minerals and fossil fuels, cutting timber on public lands, and irrigating with low-cost water. These subsidies and tax breaks distort the economic playing field and create a huge economic incentive for unsustainable resource waste, depletion, and environmental degradation” (Miller and Spoolman, 2021). They could very easily subsidize renewable energy companies instead, but they choose not to. Glorification of coal and oil by the government has leached into society and has become an example of how salesmanship has permeated culture and forced us into the role of willing consumer. Coal and oil were sold as agents of progress and economic growth, and so we buy cars and complain when gasoline prices rise, even though gas is not nearly as expensive as it would be if it was not subsidized by the government. 

Capitalism does not only compel us to use up resources, but it preaches productivity and consumerism as a way to add meaning to your life. Within our capitalist society, people themselves are seen as numbers and only valued by our productivity. We are even sold political candidates through capitalist methods. This is the main argument of the article “Consumer or Citizen” on The Online Gadfly. According to the article, “the distinction between the consumer and the citizen is crucial to an understanding of the causes of the degradation of our political institutions. That distinction might also point the way toward a restoration of our democracy” (Partridge, 2002). This is an important issue, because if a small group of salespeople can advertise their candidate to us well enough, that can affect our culture and our future. The article claims that we are sold candidates through a series of images and buzzwords, and that because of this we have begun to care more about a candidate's image, air, and “likeability” as opposed to actual arguments and stances on important issues. An example is the Al Gore vs Bush election, because during the debates Gore clearly showed masterful command of language, argument, and fact, but Bush won the election because his team pushed him as more “likeable”. Politics now uses the same advertisement tools as corporations, and we are just cogs in the machine. Politics is sold to us through entertainment as a distraction from real issues, similarly to the “bread and circuses” of ancient Rome, when the Roman government made sure to feed and entertain the population to keep them calm and ignorant of real issues. 

We are evolving into consumers in our everyday lives because we are being treated as consumers at every turn with ads and media telling us we need things. Even our emotional responses are commodified as tools for political campaigns, that then try and sell our feelings back to us in exchange for a vote. We are used as focus groups, with our emotions recorded and manipulated. This can be applied to environmental issues because people still seem to ignore obvious facts, both in electoral debate and environmental discourse. This is because climate change deniers sell their side well, playing to people's innate emotional desire for comfort and stability, so they say that nothing is wrong and people believe it.

Reading this article honestly felt like the plot description of a Black Mirror episode, especially when the author discussed the oligarchical structure of the government, and that the ideal citizen is an efficient worker who consumes and wastes without a second thought, and is well trained but not too educated in order to avoid uprising, and instead is obedient while the oligarchs control their life. “Success” is really just a social construct based on how much you can afford to consume and waste, and without knowing, we are just pawns of these larger systems of power. This reminds me of the song “The Fine Print'' by The Stupendium, which satirizes American capitalism by setting it on a space colony. 

However, there is still opportunity and room for change. We can break the cycle of thoughtless consumption and waste, and we can evolve into more than what the aforementioned “oligarchs” want us to be. New visions of law, policy, and business are popping up and developing to be more environmentally friendly. Sustainable businesses, sometimes also referred to as green businesses, abide by certain practices that reduce waste and environmental impact, and actually try to have a positive effect on the surrounding environment or community (“Sustainable business”). They also attempt to incorporate “progressive environmental and human rights policies” (“Sustainable business”). If more businesses abided by these ideals, we would consume and waste less. Additionally beneficial to our society would be a lean towards environmental law and policy that protects nature and incorporates principles of environmental justice, protecting those who are unjust victims of environmental hazards. It is evident that change needs to happen soon, and we need to restructure business to reduce waste, restructure laws to increase sustainability and address issues such as environmental racism, and restructure our economy to take into account the external environmental costs of goods and services. It is an intimidating task, but the government holds a lot of power in this matter, and if they subsidized and sold sustainability to us like they do fossil fuel companies and political candidates, we might stand a chance. 

Blog Question: Is there ethical consumption under capitalism? Does capitalism even make sense as a modern economic system? Is “green capitalism” a viable option for the future?

Word Count: 1192

Bibliography:

Costanza, Robert, Ralph d’Arge, Rudolf de Groot, Stephen Farberk, Monica Grasso, Bruce Hannon, Karin Limburg, Shahid Naeem, Robert V. O’Neill, Jose Paruelo, Robert G. Raskin, Paul Suttonkk & Marjan van den Belt. “The Value of the World’s Ecosystem Services and Natural Capital.” May, 1977.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzKbjVLpnX0RRERLVGVvV2dZSWM/view

Miller, G. Tyler, and Scott E. Spoolman. 2021. Living in the Environment.

Partridge, Earnest. “Consumer or Citizen.” The Online Gadfly. April, 2002. http://gadfly.igc.org/politics/left/consumer.htm

“What are Ecosystem Services?”. CEEWeb for Biodiversity. 

http://www.ceeweb.org/work-areas/priority-areas/ecosystem-services/what-are-ecosystem-services/ (accessed September 29, 2020).

Wikipedia contributors, "Sustainable business," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sustainable_business&oldid=970836002 (accessed September 29, 2020).

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Population Growth and Employment

Ashley Morales

10/7/20

This week’s materials have to do with population growth and its relationship to ecological damage and quality of life. To start, there are almost 8 billion people on this planet according to the world population clock, and the number is growing steadily (“Current World Population”). According to the US population clock, there is a birth about every 8 seconds and a death about every 12 seconds. That coupled with a new international migrant every 47 seconds leads to a net gain of one person every 18 seconds. Even though the US population numbers are not growing quite as fast as the world population clock, whose numbers are flying, the US population is still growing quite steadily, and a gain of one person every 18 seconds is important for the third most populated country in the world (“US and World Population Clock”). 

Is Earth able to support all of these people? The world’s carrying capacity, or the number of people it can support is a hotly debated topic among scientists and scholars, with some questioning if it even exists, and arguing that the technological progress we have made so far and further innovation will nullify the idea that there is a limit to the amount of people that the earth’s resources can sustain. We bypassed this limit through the genetic engineering of food, so technically we could further bypass it as technology evolves.

Population growth in more and less developed countries

Source: United Nations Population Division, World Population Prospects: The 2010 Revision, medium variant (2011). 

Is population growth a problem? Currently yes, because of the way that we are growing. Most of the population growth occurs in the world’s less developed countries, with only 4% of the new population being added to more developed countries in 2018. So the real question to consider is the quality of life of those being born. This refers to cultural carrying capacity, or “the maximum number of people who could live in reasonable freedom and comfort indefinitely, without decreasing the ability of the earth to sustain future generations” (Miller and Spoolman, 2021). The current issues are that most babies are born into extreme poverty, and, as those countries develop, their resource use will increase intensely. While the Earth may not have a distinct limit in terms of the resources that can sustain us, it does have a limit as to how many people can live here comfortably and happily in the long term. 

How can it be fixed? Many of the issues that stem from overpopulation have relatively simple solutions. The issue is implementation. For example, fertility rate could be lowered through an increase in educational and employment opportunities for women. Additionally, access to family planning resources and birth control would further reduce population growth, and lessen strain on families and the environment. But for those solutions to be implemented, one would have to contend with the religious societal values of the countries that need it most. Many of the countries with the most rapidly growing populations have cultural values to prevent the education of women or the use of birth control (Miller and Spoolman, 2021). Therefore, this relatively simple solution becomes more complex, because a solution that would be accepted by the country would be one that does not conflict with societal values, even though those values are sexist. 

To reduce consumption, especially in more developed countries, we could employ more people per position and have every individual employee work fewer hours. People having more free time would encourage creativity and do-it-yourself projects, and actually reduce the mindless consumption of products that we are taught is beneficial for the economy, but is actually incredibly harmful to the environment (New Dream, 2011). However, in order to implement these changes we would have to subvert the American expectation of working at 100% all the time, and the ideas that having more money or stuff is a measure of success and happiness. And as is evident by the fact that we still deal with these issues even though we know how to solve them, changing the culture of a society, even for the benefit of its own residents, is very difficult. 

However, aspects of these solutions are already being implemented. The New York sustainability plan, also known as PlaNYC, was a plan proposed by mayor Bloomberg in 2007 to help reduce resource consumption and prepare for new residents sustainably (“PlaNYC”). Transition towns have also been attempted and community funded to combat the effects of climate change and economic instability through increased self-sufficiency (“Transition town”).

What are some other benefits of this reformed society? Other benefits of this reformed society would be an overall higher quality of life. Working less would not only reduce consumption, it would reduce unemployment and therefore lessen poverty rates. Additionally, it would reduce stress on the individual employees. People would be able to pick up hobbies or cook healthier food or just relax. The parable of the businessman and the fisherman really sticks with me when I consider this potential future. Basically, a businessman goes on vacation and sees a fisherman, and asks about his life. The fisherman goes out in the morning to catch fish, plays with his children, then in the afternoon he teaches children how to fish and in the evening he goes into town with his wife and friends. The businessman then gives him (unsolicited) advice as to how he can increase his productivity, wealth, and potentially grow an empire. When the fisherman asks what he would do with the wealth, the businessman replies that he would pack up and settle down somewhere, fish in the morning, play with his children… and essentially live the life he already has (Koehler, 2008). Why do we as a society over complicate life so much? Why do so many people work jobs they don’t like day in and day out just to hopefully someday retire, relax, and get to enjoy their time? If jobs just employed more people for fewer hours each, there would be less unemployment, and more people would have both greater financial stability and greater free time. People would get to enjoy life while they are living it instead of spending all their time slaving away for corporate America just to get maybe two days off at the end of the week. 

What's stopping us from creating this utopia? Mainly that it does not benefit the heads of large corporations who essentially own the government. If companies hire more workers, that means they have to pay more salaries, slightly decreasing their profit. If people have more time off, consume less, and create more, then they are not the mindless consuming employees that corporations want. Corporations benefit off of the culture of working yourself to the bone until that magical age when you can retire. A more stable economy and less resource consumption are sold as stagnation because it does not represent constant growth. But is constant growth really beneficial? If the majority of the people contributing to the economy can’t enjoy their lives due to stress or unemployment, who is said “economic growth” truly benefitting?

Blog Question: Why don’t more people realize that we can in fact change society? Society can be restructured, the current system is not the only way of doing things. So why are people so complicit in the lackluster quality of their lives instead of actively looking for ways to restructure?

Word Count:  1236

Bibliography:

Berrett Koehler, “More Than Money - What Is "The Good Life" Parable,” YouTube video, 3:05, August 8, 208, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7JlI959slY

“Current World Population.” Worldometer. Accessed October 6, 2020. https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/. 

Miller, G. Tyler, and Scott E. Spoolman. 2021. Living in the Environment.

New Dream, “Visualizing a Plenitude Economy,” YouTube video, 4:51, September 15, 2011, https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=HR-YrD_KB0M

United Nations Population Division, World Population Prospects: The 2010 Revision, medium variant (2011). 

“U.S. and World Population Clock.” Population Clock. United States Census Bureau. Accessed October 6, 2020. https://www.census.gov/popclock/. 

Wikipedia contributors, "PlaNYC," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=PlaNYC&oldid=952681772 (accessed October 6, 2020).

Wikipedia contributors, "Transition town," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Transition_town&oldid=980641800 (accessed October 6, 2020).

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[angeltriestoblog]

I figured out what I want to do with my life! And made a vision board!

It came to me in a flash, really. One minute, I was watching a handpainted narration of the life and death of one of the greatest painters of all time, and next thing you know, I've abandoned it completely and started furiously typing away at my laptop about what I envisioned myself to be in five years' time. And I know I've had my fair share of false alarms in life: I thought I had what it takes to be a lawyer after seeing Legally Blonde for the first time while on my way to a school field trip, and seriously considered pursuing a career as a fashion blogger or MTV VJ because I was kind of fed up with school.

But this one just makes sense. Advising and assisting clients in producing content, collaterals, and campaigns according to their business objectives and based on collected data! It marries my love for writing, my knack for snooping around (the academic term is research!), and the specialty in technology and management my university ensures I'll have at the end of my four-year degree. i have yet to see how it’ll allow me to give back to society since that’s also a factor I want to consider in looking for a dream job but I’ll make it work. I found it hard to sleep that night, thanks to this nerdy, giddy kind of adrenaline rush I had. I broke down this big idea into smaller and smaller action steps until all I had left was a refined list of ideas and intentions, and a splitting headache.

I needed to make sure I was constantly reminded of their existence so all my choices and decisions would serve as a step closer to reaching all of them. So I caved in to the wishes of the "law of attraction" side of the Internet, and created my very own vision board! Simply put, this act of visualization is a powerful technique that can be used to manifest desires and reach goals. Our subconscious minds mainly recognize symbols and images: by merely looking at our vision boards everyday, subliminal messages are being sent to our brains, which will encourage them to work tirelessly to achieve the statements we are feeding to them. I can't find any explanation for this that's less abstract but since many people seem to swear on it and I have a lot of free time and printer ink, I figured why not, right?

It was convenient that I had this small corkboard from Daiso already stuck to one corner of my bedroom wall with several layers of double-sided tape. It used to be a year-long calendar of birthdays but I realized that I've never referred to it and often have to rely on either Facebook reminders or stock knowledge--there is no in between. All I had to do was to look at my list of goals, and compile photos that correspond to each of them, cut them up and arrange them in an aesthetically pleasing manner. You'll see below that I lacked the stereotypical luxury car and beachfront mansion with a walk-in closet and that's because I decided to focus on my goals for the next five years so it looks even a little bit more achievable.  

Here's the finished product, along with explanations for each picture, to make this how-to more personal and to also hold myself accountable.

 Make my girl Jenna Rink and everybody at Poise proud by writing for a magazine | I had listed a specific one at the time, and if you follow me on Twitter and Instagram, you already know what it is and how this endeavor turned out - but on this blog, I'll shroud it in a little cloud of mystery for now and talk about it more in a future post. I'm very happy producing content for this space of mine and have no intention of stopping any time soon. But at the same time I know that I'd be missing out if I didn't take the chance to be part of a community that leads me to like-minded individuals, allows me to grow even more in my craft, and "gives creators a space to speak their minds and push the limits of their artistry, without imposing any restrictions or expectations", as I stated in my application form.

 Be active in three organizations next school year | (I had to blur one of them out because I'm not a member yet and I don't want to jinx it.) I know it's bold of me to assume that we'll be returning to school any time soon, but if we are ever lucky enough, I want to outdo myself when it comes to the orgs I'm a part of. I have been a good follower throughout my first two years of college but now I believe it's my time to try my hand at leading a group of people and being more involved in the conceptualization and execution of projects.

 Go on a trip to Europe | Not even just a specific group of countries anymore (I used to be a France, Italy, Spain supremacist)--I mean the entire continent! (But then again, with its rich history and culture, picturesque tourist spots, diverse cuisines... even the sheer adrenaline rush that comes with being in a land completely different from the one you come from, how could anyone not want to go?

 and 12. Get the job of my dreams | I actually nicked these photos from the website of a cooperative I want to work for once I graduate from college. I know that I can't plan out the rest of my career trajectory as early as now: things are bound to change at some point, but I hope that I stay in a field that combines creativity and business strategy to craft campaigns, create meaningful content, and market solutions to brands.

 Expand my network | I acknowledge how knowing people who know people who know people can open windows of opportunities that I wouldn't have been able to have anywhere else. But I also look forward to building genuine connections with people from all sorts of industries. Talking to the same circle of friends can sometimes feel like you're trapped in an echo chamber: there is certainly much to learn from others' viewpoints.

 Volunteer to teach kids | I don't think the written word could have changed my life as much as it did, had it not been for the presence of English teachers who believed in the power of the language to shape the minds of the youth. I guess this is just me trying to give back and help the next generation express their ideas and bring them to life by channeling my inner John Keating.

 Maintain a clean workspace that is conducive to productivity | Especially during these days, I spend a solid 18 out of 24 hours sat at my desk, trying my best to make magic happen. It's very important that I keep it a constant and active source of inspiration, free from any distractions, and at the right level of comfort. Although it's not as minimalist as I hoped it would be and my table is about an inch too high for my liking, I'm still pretty satisfied!

 Document memories consistently, be it through a physical or online journal | Speaking of clearing out my room, I recently found around 20 notebooks I had filled up over the years. Though maintaining them must have been such a hassle especially as I got older and reading through them was a distraction from completing the task at hand, I am thankful I painstakingly chronicled everything going on in my life and kept them in good condition. Seeing the goals I had set for myself all those years ago and how I achieved most of them without making a conscious effort has inspired me to do my older self a favor by putting in the work now so she can reap the rewards. (While I'm on this note, can anyone recommend a good app for journaling? I keep all my current entries in my Mac's Notes app because even though I am more of an analog person, I seemed to have lost the patience and persistence required to keep a physical journal. But at the same time, I'm scared of my laptop suddenly cr*shing and wiping out everything I had stored)

 Stay focused on my work always | I didn't know how to show this without having to spell it out in words so I Photoshopped my face onto the head of a woman working in a cafe because those who study in coffee shops along Katip always look like they're getting stuff done.

 Keep learning about the world even when I'm outside of the classroom | And this is not limited to frequenting the nearby museum, although that does sound like a great idea right now. This could also mean attending seminars, workshops, and talks, buying books and binge-watching documentaries or YouTube videos about a topic that I find interesting, engaging in discourse with someone (plus points if they have a different viewpoint!)

 Write my own book | Before I even found out that humans were destined to pick a career and work until they died, I already knew that I wanted to spend my days as a writer. Specifically, I wanted to see my name on the cover of a book: By Angel Martinez. (Please refer to the 4:32 of this video and look at how far this dream actually goes back.) But once I realized that I wanted to enter the world of business, I thought I would have to give this up altogether. Thankfully, I now know that one's ability to get published is not reliant on their career--I mean, even beauty gurus get book deals these days. I'm not really sure what it's going to be about but I'd honestly be down for anything: even if it's just a compilation of my best entries on this blog.

13. Go all out when I take myself on self-care dates | I'm talking about picnics at the beach, with a basket full of fruits, a posh looking hat, and a good piece of classic literature! Or fancy dinners for one complete with as many glasses of red wine as I can down! People watching at Downtown Disneyland like my paternal grandmother in hand, with a plastic bag of souvenirs on one hand and a cream cheese pretzel on the other! (The possibilities are endless and I'm already mapping most of them out.)

14. Be financially stable enough to re-enact that one scene in Pretty Woman where Vivian Ward struts down the streets of Beverly Hills in a chic white dress and black hat, an endless number of shopping bags in tow | The part where I humiliate a sales lady who snubbed me the day before because she didn't think I could afford what she was selling by saying, "You work on commission, right? That's right. Big mistake, big, huge." is entirely optional.

I also included some two inspirational sayings that were originally laptop wallpapers from The Everygirl. I feel like they perfectly sum up the attitude I want to have as I forge my own path and accomplish everything I have set out for myself. If I was somehow able to convince you that this activity serves as the perfect springboard for all your dreams and aspirations, here are a couple of tips that could hopefully help you make yours!

Be ready for some intense introspection | Though it may look like a simple arts and crafts activity at the surface, making an effective vision board simply cannot be achieved if you're not willing to do some much needed reflection and watch it balloon into a full-on existential crisis. Identify which areas of your life are most important to you and how you would like to see them evolve over a period of time.

Specificity is key | The trick is to make your goals as concrete as possible, then translate them into visual elements. I know some people who wanted to get into particular universities, who have Photoshopped their names onto acceptance letters and pinned those to their corkboards. As stupid as that may sound in retrospect, I reckon it's an elaborate way of claiming something that's right within your reach.

Design it any way you want | Don't feel pressured to make it look like it's worthy to be on someone else's Pinterest because that's exactly how you lose sight of why you're doing it in the first place. The only person your final output has to resonate with is you.

Don't get discouraged | Although a vision board can attract positive energy and manifest your intentions to the universe, one thing it isn't capable of doing is granting your wishes in an instant. Don't be upset if what you have cut out and stuck on has yet to happen: I truly believe in the saying that the more you look for something, the more it seems to avoid you. Instead, continue to work hard and focus on the progress that you have already made.

Have you made a vision board of your own already? How has it turned out, and how many of the things you had put up have come true? I know you may be a complete stranger from the other side of the world but I'd be happy to hear from you anyway! Wishing you love and light always, especially during trying times such as this. Wash your hands, pray for our frontliners, and check your privilege!

[wisdomrays]

TAFAKKUR: Part 6

Listening to a Fly

"Surely, those whom you invoke, apart from God, will never create a fly even if they combine together for the purpose. If the fly takes something from them, they cannot rescue it from him."; (Qur'an 22:73)

Good day my dear friends! I know you are tired of me, I bother you so often, especially in hot weather; but would you mind listening to me a little? I don't understand why you are so proud! Did God create just you, and someone else created me? Some people do claim that I and all the other creatures evolved just by chance, in a process they call evolution, but I wouldn't pay attention to them if I were you. Our Lord, God, created you and me, and the whole universe. Then why do you see me as being so unimportant? Of course, my Lord made humans superior and gave them an honorable place in this world, but this is only for those humans who recognize God Almighty and who pray to Him. If someone does not recognize the Creator, then this person will fall lower than me; I know my Lord, and I do not change my behavior. I don't do anything but what He taught me. True, I am not tested as you all are, but I am happy with my lot. I carry out my duties obediently.

Although I do many useful things, most of you (except for the zoologists among you) aren't aware of what my uses are. Some people even say, "Why has this black bug been created? It is of no use."

If you just look at my wings, you can see that they are like a perfect work of art. Think about it, what would be more difficult, producing a large watch or a small and sophisticated one? Obviously producing a small watch is much more complicated. But one must remember that nothing is easy or difficult for God, He just says "Be" and He can create anything. By saying, "Be" He can create a microorganism or an elephant in an instant.

Just as you have organs that carry out the biological functions in your body that are necessary for your survival, I also have organs and systems in my body which carry out similar functions. The only difference between yours and mine is their structure and working principle. For instance, we both have hearts. Your heart pumps the blood to the body via the veins, and my heart pumps the blood to the spaces between my organs. You use your lungs for breathing while I have capillary tubes called trachea which transfer air directly to my tissues. The organs in my head are composed of many small particles. Each one of my eyes is created from hundreds of small hexagonal structures called ommatidia. Each has its own lens, a pigment cell that isolates it from the others, and a crystal cone. A special protein called chitin covers my body. Each one of my hairs acts as a special receiver, allowing me to detect all vibrations. Chitin is made up of a protein, which is durable and not permeable to water.

My mouth is shaped like a tube, while my tongue is like a sponge, helping me to taste my food. My feet, made up of chitin, are very thin and formed of many parts with a hook at the tip, making it easy for me to climb vertical surfaces.

There are hollow tubes in my wings, making them very light and strong. The hammer-like organs (halter organs) under my wings help me to balance while flying. There are some know-it-alls out there who claim that these organs were secondary wings that lost their function during evolution, but they seem to forget that there are many insects that have secondary wings. If this is so, why did I need to "lose" mine? It is hard to understand why these people do not try to understand reality. Actually, God created me with one pair of wings and two organs to help with balancing. These organs have nothing to do with mutations, adaptation, selection or evolution. Although my ancestors did mutate at times as all living things have done, we have never changed or evolved. Some of us are weak and some are strong; this is a rule of God. This rule is necessary for the ecological balance to be maintained. Some flies will be food for other living creatures, while some will survive to produce more flies. I have not heard of any other flies evolving into a new living creature.

I can fly better than you. You have imagination and knowledge, and you have the ability to improve yourselves, yet you still have not been able to invent a machine that can fly as well as I can. I can turn a somersault in a tight space. I can walk on the ceiling. I can sense the approach of your hand. I can take off so easily that I do not even need a "runway" like airplanes do before taking off. Airplanes can be used for destroying other things, but us flies help to build a better world. My Creator (God) has given me coordination in flight; I do not crash into other things and do not cause any damage while flying. The Qur'an (22:73) says: "Oh mankind! A parable is set forth, so listen to it: Surely, those whom you invoke, apart from God, will never create a fly even if they combine together for the purpose. If the fly takes something from them, they cannot rescue it from him."

The Qur'an is a miraculous book; yet, unfortunately some people do not understand this yet. Even if all human beings were to work together, they would not be able to build a small "fly". If I take something from you, you cannot get it back from me. For example, when I snatch a piece of your food, I simply pour digestive enzymes on it and it melts. These enzymes break the food into pieces and make them liquid. Then I am able to drink this liquid. Well now, it would be impossible for you to convert this food back to its original form. Let me show you my nutrition cycle on the right.

When someone mentions the words "flight and insect", it is most normal to think of only one insect, the common house fly, but there are in fact many species of flying insects: approximately 90,000. Since we have wings, we are all called "diptera". There are many of us on the earth; from this one can conclude that there will be useful as well as harmful insects among us. Some of our friends take pollen from flower to flower, making honey for you to eat. We eat a variety of foods; some eat meat, some eat vegetables, while others eat fruit.

My friends and I who belong to the Musca type are the most frequently encountered flies in your neighborhood. We, like the other species of flying insects, increase our reproduction rate with increases in temperature. We produce large numbers of eggs. The maggots that you see in rotten food are in fact my larvae. The female fly leaves her eggs on the food you leave out in the open. These eggs hatch in a few days, the time being longer or shorter depending on the temperature. The larvae have a great appetite for everything and they grow fast as they eat everything they encounter. Then they enter a dormant period and retreat into cocoons. After a short while, they come out with bodies that are totally different anatomically. If you were to tell this to someone without a great deal of know-ledge, they would never believe that these crawling larvae will turn into flying creatures one day. It is hard to predict or understand such a huge change. There lies a great wisdom in both our forms. For example, if we did not exist, only bacteria would be able to help decay the dead and this would take too long. But, thanks to my larvae and their presence everywhere in large numbers, this process is completed in a matter of few days. Due to their speedy consumption of decaying matter, maggots have been used often in medicine. They have been used to get rid of decaying tissue on the wounds that aren't healing, and in this way they speed up the healing process.

Now, I also want to remind you of an unfairness that you do to me and all other flies. As you know, our eggs develop and spread fast during the warm summer season; each of us can produce hundreds of eggs. We go all over the place to find food and sometimes we find it in your trash or in animal droppings. Those who see us in these places mistakenly accuse us of carrying and spreading disease. But the reverse is true; we consume the germs that spread quickly in hot weather. These germs grow on food all by themselves, we don't produce them. Germs are living creatures too, and they use their abilities bestowed on them by God to grow everywhere. All we do is clean the environment by eating them as we feed. We are able to digest germs thanks to the strong digestive enzymes that we carry. Despite what is believed, I am a clean animal. I clean myself all the time, using the digestive enzymes in my saliva. If it weren't for me, the germs would grow and spread faster.

I hope that from now on you won't try to shoo me away when you see me on your hand. Instead, I hope that you will watch how I move and observe me more closely; witness the fine art in me. When you think about me, consider what I have told you. Don't you think that you should change your opinion about me?

[nigel-twycross]

Darling, It’s Cold Outside

October 29th, 1980

@lukeselwynx

Nigel:

Nigel needed a bit of an escape. By now, he felt as though the death eaters were breathing down his neck for his help and support in their planning of the next moves. There were people from the Order who were definitely onto him now, and getting more suspicious by the minute. As much as he tried to stay calm and ignore the looks he would get from various people lately, Nigel could only handle so much of it before he had had enough. Getting away for even just one night felt like more of a solution than cooping himself up in his flat forever just because he was afraid of possible consequences. 

Pulling on a light jacket, Nigel stuffed his frigid hands into warm wooly pockets. The air was crisp this time of year, which often made his hands feel dry if they were exposed for too long. Still, he wanted to get a night out in the cool fresh air. The park was his favorite area to roam on clear nights like this, so that he could sit and look at the stars. However, as he was walking along, he noticed a male lounging on a park bench shivering. Walking over to him, the blond stared down in wonder. "Aren't you cold?" His voice was soft, curious, as he tipped his head to the side and waited for a response. "Clear night, though. Only a few clouds tonight."

Luke:

Luke stared up at the stars, finding the small details interesting - like how he couldn't look directly at them, because they would almost disappear from sight. Instead, he had to look at them almost in his peripheral vision, as difficult as that was for him to do. He had just started to make out one particular star when his vision was obstructed by someone standing over him.

It took a moment for his eyes to adjust, but he blinked a few times and then squinted to see. This was someone he...recognized? Or maybe not. He had slightly common features? Luke had seen so many people through the years that all the faces started to blur together. Even if paying attention in the meetings for Death Eaters, he had a hard time picking out anyone on the street. "It's... a bit chilly. Yes," he admitted quietly, starting to sit up to better greet this person. "Yeah, that's true... The stars are easier to see and there isn't so much light pollution out here..." To be polite, he moved over for the other, not wanting to seem greedy. "I just needed to get away for a while..."

Nigel:

One thing that Nigel could say was his special talent other than his knack for healing, was his ability to recognize people extremely well. It only ever took him a few tries to memorize names, even less for faces. If he saw someone twice, almost always during that second meeting he would remember them. He knew this male, that much he knew for sure. Nigel was almost positive he knew his name, too, but held onto that information for a little while longer. Getting it wrong would be embarrassing. More so than guessing.

Nigel couldn't help but laugh as he inevitably gave in, and agreed that it was cold outside. Scrunching his nose as he chuckled, he took a seat beside him now, that there was room. "Small talk isn't exactly my forte, so excuse me if I start asking you intrusive questions. I like getting to know people," he smiled sweetly, looking over at the male. "Plus, I'm a healer, so it's natural." Letting a moment of silence fall between them as his eyes teetered up to the sky, a soft chuckle escaped Nigel's lips. "Me too. Sometimes I feel like getting away more than I feel like staying around. Guess that means I'm probably doing something wrong, hm?" With a slight smile tugging at his lip, Nigel looked back over at him. "What are you running from?"

 Luke:

At first, Luke wasn't sure what to expect from this man. He seemed to recognize him somehow - Luke could see it in the man's eyes. But he might have been too polite to say anything.

The man's smile was nice. Innocent. Even as he mentioned asking questions, Luke didn't feel too worried. It was nothing he wasn't already used to. "A healer? That's probably useful I'd say. Sounds neat." His own tired eyes searched the man's features. He was handsome.

"It doesn't mean you're doing something wrong. I can speak from experience. Sometimes it just means you're with the wrong people, you know?" Luke's heart raced at the question, trying to decide what to say - the truth, or something not quite the same as truth. "I'm... I'm just running. From my past, and from feeling insecure and...sometimes fans, honestly... but most of the time I feel like I don't know who I am anymore. Like I'm just losing myself..." It was a lot to throw at a stranger but he felt an odd relief from doing so.

 Nigel:

Knowing how to heal others was one of the greatest gifts Nigel could think of. He’d always found it to be an admirable profession that didnt get nearly enough praise as it should. “It is, for sure. My mother has a lot of experience in the field.” Even if Nigel had been sure that he knew the man, he was hesitant to admit that his mother was a muggle. 

Letting out a laugh, Nigel ran a hand through his hair. “That’s nice of you to say. I guess you might have a point.” Of course he had a point, just like Han and Henry and Gilderoy and Miriam had points. Nigel couldn’t convince himself that anyone was right. There were so many voices in his head that he hardly knew which to listen to. When the male said he was simply just running, Nigel nodded in understanding. “Everyone feels insecure at times. Even the most confident people,” he assured him.

Giving the moment space to breathe, Nigel turned to him a bit more, tipping his head to the side. “Luke, right? You left Hogwarts early, did music for a while. Now you’re back.” And part of the Death Eater allegiance, but he refrained from mentioning that for now. “Let me see your hands, they must be cold.” He had been shivering earlier, and one thing that Nigel had learned from being cold quite often was how to charm his pockets to warm his hands when they were tucked away. Motioning for Luke’s, he held them in his own a moment to warm them up. “Maybe you need to do a bit of self discovery...”

 Luke: Luke smiled at the other. Healing was something special, something that only certain people could have the personality to do. Not everyone could handle it, either emotionally or mentally, or physically... Luke was one of the people who would never dream of doing that kind of job. On the other hand, though, he was also in a bit of a mood. He felt conflicted and lost, and emotionally drained. So he knew for a fact he wasn't showing off his gratitude properly for the kinds of thing this man might be able to do, the number he could save.

"It's a point for sure... I need to follow my own advice... I always let people walk all over me and I feel like... I don't know, I just never feel satisfied you know? I never feel like I do great things anymore. I used to feel accomplished and secure and... Now it's cold, and I haven't been back to my flat in days, and I'm sitting on a bench staring at the stars with... well, you," he paused to laugh. It was pleasant to hear someone recognized him from Hogwarts, and not necessarily from the music scene alone. "Yeah... I'm Luke. I'm sorry, I'm so bloody horrible with names I... I know you from somewhere, I know I do but... Well, Hogwarts probably, right? And...well, you know..." Death Eaters, he wanted to say, but he knew he shouldn't. Not aloud.

He was glad it was dark enough out that the other couldn't really see how his cheeks flushed. He wasn't sure why he was blushing at a time like this. The man offered to warm his hands, that was all. It wasn't a huge deal. And his hands were very warm. The touch was calming and stabilizing. For a moment he didn't even mind that he was essentially holding another man's hands. "Self discovery, yeah... I thought I'd be done with that after traveling the world and... joining a group that might have made me feel like I belonged, and... I don't know. I'm young still, I know, but... I suppose I had hoped the time of self discovery would be over. I still don't know how to talk to girls, even. Certainly don't know how to date, or even maintain friendship really..."

 Nigel:

Nigel listened without commentary for the most part, as he normally liked to take in everything that someone was saying before making a judgement on what to say back. However something about his recollection of the past few days caught the blond’s attention. “Have you just been wandering around outside? That’s a sure fire way to catch a cold,” Nigel warned, hoping he’d take him seriously. 

“Not that I don’t enjoy stargazing with strangers,” he started. “But you should probably reconsider how often you’re out here at this time. Especially in this weather.” Nigel didn’t hold it against him in the slightest that Luke didn’t remember his name -if he had known it at all. It wasn’t as if Nigel was Mr. Outgoing either. “Nigel,” he answered with a smile. “Hogwarts definitely. And yes.” It didn’t need to be said for them to understand the silent communication.

Perhaps it was Nigel’s eyes playing tricks on him, though he could have sworn that he saw a hint of blush in the male’s cheeks as he took his hands. That wasn’t uncommon, though it was cute on Luke. Nigel said nothing more as they sat there. “Maybe you need a simpler method. Pick a bunch of activities to do at home and see which you like. Meditation, candle lighting...” Giving a shrug, Nigel kept thinking. “Imagine you’re talking to a guy, then. Would that help?” It was a hopeful question, though Nigel hadn’t given away why, attempting to sneak it by and see how Luke would react.

 Luke:

Luke couldn't help but laugh softly at the other. He took his concern seriously, of course, but it was funny coming from the other, like a parental warning of sorts. He nodded in confirmation, not exactly proud that he'd been wandering outside for a good while, and intended to continue for a while yet. "It doesn't bother me too much. This weather, I mean."

Nigel. That was the name. Now it sounded familiar, too. In some ways, he felt like he could have guessed it - but that was a name he figured he would never have guessed. "Hogwarts came first, I definitely thought it was that." He listened to the other's suggestions, trying to let them sink in despite the fact that none of them really stuck. They just didn't have that appeal he was looking for. "Well I mean, I haven't spoken to girls in a romantic context, but I can talk to them normally I think? Guys, you know, there's not really--... I mean, maybe?" He started to realize that he was overthinking it - or at least, he thought he was overthinking it. Surely, it wasn't a hint? No, no, Nigel was just trying to help. His heart raced and his cheeks flushed darker. He suddenly didn't know how to explain that it all depended on whether the person he was speaking with was flirting, regardless of male or female. Nothing sounded right in his head. "I... No, I don't think it's helping," he laughed nervously, unable to meet the other's eyes. It had been perfectly simple before, but now he couldn't help but look at Nigel in a flirty way and that ruined it. Now his tongue was tied, his lips pursed shut. He didn't move his hands, though.

 Nigel:

Nigel met new people fairly regularly since he worked at St Mungos, but he much preferred meeting people in normal settings like this. He had never been one to prefer small talk though Nigel was good at it; you had to be, when you worked with people. Here they were, talking about the weather while looking up at partly cloudy skies and bright shimmering stars. That was the most muggle thing that Nigel could think of. “Well that’s good, then.” He could have badgered the male about how he really should be taking better care of himself else he get a cold, but he didn’t want to lecture. 

Laughing warmly at the way Luke started to trip over his words, Nigel scrunched his nose slightly. It wasn’t that he was laughing at him, but rather admiring how flustered he seemed to be as he thought it was quite cute. “Talking to anyone normally is a proper way to start.” Not everyone enjoyed or felt entirely comfortable with flirting right off the bat. Done correctly, it could be extremely successful. Despite it being dark, the flush in the male’s cheeks deepening became extremely noticeable now, to which he hoped Luke didn’t feel as embarrassed as he looked. “Well... Do you think,” Nigel hesitated, wanting to word his question carefully. “That maybe, you could like both men and women? In a romantic sense?”

 Luke:

Luke couldn't help but wonder how in the world he had landed himself here, in this conversation that always seemed to make him flustered. He hadn't spoken about this since being on tour, and now here he was chatting away with a stranger about things he rarely spoke about. Like it was nothing.

"I can talk to people normally, I mean... I have to. It's literally a major part of my career. But the aspect of really trying to flirt with someone is... daunting at best and I lose my way with words--" Then Nigel suggested that maybe it wasn't only women that made his heart race and his eyebrows raised a bit, both in surprise and consideration. He had never really considered that before - it was never something his parents would have approved of, and so he never gave it too much thought. But the fact was, he was sitting there blushing over a cute guy talking and holding his hands. He hadn't really allowed himself to go down that track, but he just realized the track instead moved on him and he found himself standing at the end of the path forced with a decision. Acknowledgment, or denial.

"I... don't know? I think so... maybe? I've had some men flirt with me but I was always on the road. It never would have worked so I...never really... entertained that idea..." He looked at Nigel, meeting his eye briefly before nervously chuckling and looking down.

 Nigel:

Having always been raised to be comfortable talking about his feelings, Nigel could understand if not everyone shared his experience. He wouldn't ever want to push someone into talking about something that caused them anxiety or discomfort, which was why he was being so careful with his words, as to not upset the man. "Well that's good, then," he replied, trying to reassure him and make him feel a bit better. 

Nigel was no cupid. He could flirt when he wanted to, but the act of someone flirting with him made him turn a bright shade of red. Coincidentally, not far from the flush in Luke's cheeks that he was seeing now. Perhaps they had more in common than he originally thought. "Conversing with someone in that matter can be tricky," he agreed, nodding his head. "You never know how it's going to end up. Then again, a normal conversation could be looked at the same way. I'm not saying that to scare you out of talking to people," Nigel chuckled. "But when you think about it, talking to strangers could go well, or horribly wrong, if they don't know your style of conversation. Even friends sometimes misunderstand each other."

It wasn't all that surprising to hear that men had flirted with him in the past. He was attractive, for starters. Nigel could certainly admit that. "Maybe you should consider it. It doesn't have to be now, but... in the future. I guess, just don't close it off entirely." Realizing he was still holding Luke's hands, Nigel gave a warm smile and slowly slipped out of them. "So... Mr. Musician, hm? What do you play?" A subject change seemed to be overdue at this point, and he didn't want to embarrass Luke any further.

 Luke:

Luke laughed softly and bit his bottom lip, looking away for a moment. He was still processing this conversation. For a brief moment, he felt like maybe he could work at it now - right at this second, right here. It wasn't like he was doing anything else with his life anyway. But he quickly understood he was too nervous for that, and it only became slightly worse as the other pulled his hands away. Now, his hands felt cold...and empty. It wasn't to his liking, that much was for sure.

"I don't think I would close it off, not entirely..." he mumbled, nearly down to a whisper level. Why was he breathless all of a sudden? That was random. After blinking a few times to gain focus again, he smiled at the man and returned his hands into the pockets of his jacket. "Hmm? Oh! I play piano. I can mess around on a few other instruments, but piano is my main one. And singing." It took him a moment to realize that the topic had changed so greatly, and he looked over. "Nigel? Have you ever... I dunno, been with someone? I mean, romantically, for any amount of time? Sometimes I feel like I'm the only person I know who hasn't. Never. Not even once."

 Nigel:

Nigel had taken Luke's nervousness as a sign that perhaps he wasn't ready to talk about this further. Really, he wasn't even sure at this point how they had started in the first place, but it was an interesting topic to bring up between people who've just met. Then again, they had met before, likely, in passing at school. Though Nigel wouldn't call that knowing someone. Getting to know Luke on a more personal level after this night sounded like something he would be interested in, however. Perhaps even helping him build up his confidence. 

The level of volume in the male's voice had dropped significantly, to which Nigel took that as a sign that a subject shift was a good call. His eyes lit up however when he mentioned piano. "Really? I play as well. Have since I was little." He could sing, too, but not likely to the caliber that Luke could. Besides, he was much more self conscious about his voice than his ability to play beautiful music. "My best friend plays the guitar. She's quite good." Before they could continue their conversation about music, it seemed that Luke was backtracking. Suddenly his question made Nigel blush, and his eyes widened a bit, taken aback. "Oh, erm... Well..."

He ran a hand through his hair awkwardly, trying to come up with the right words. "Not until very recently, actually." Conveniently enough, he avoided mentioning how complicated the situation was, considering the person he had slept with had a girlfriend, but their relationship was a bit open. "You're not the only person who hasn't, I can promise you that." Realizing that he could have meant several different things, Nigel opened his mouth to speak, inhaling sharply though no words came out right away. "Do you— I mean, do you mean you haven't been with someone intimately, or, haven't even kissed anyone? Sorry, I just, that was a bit vague..."

 Luke:

Luke now noticed that Nigel had a blush on his own cheeks, which both made him feel better because he now wasn't alone, and made him feel more nervous. Maybe he had overstepped, a bit. He inhaled deeply and let it out, realizing that his breath was visible in the frigid air. He felt bad for changing the topic back, in a way, but at the same time he felt like if he hadn't, he never would have gone through with the conversation. "I mean... I've not had a real kiss... not a meaningful one with a person I was actually interested in, and... I guess, yeah, I've kissed some people, but it was stupid tour stuff. Like, truth or dare, or bets with other mates, or... I-I dunno. If you don't count that stuff, I've never even really had a first kiss... Certainly have never been with someone intimately, that's for sure," he laughed. "I just... I dunno." He couldn't say it. It wouldn't come out. You're cute, I'm cute, let's make out was something that he'd NEVER be able to say (especially since he never considered himself such, anyway).

With a defeated sigh, mixed with a strained chuckle, he shook his head like perhaps they could drop it. He was genuinely interested in the fact that Nigel played the piano as well. Maybe he should focus on that. "I played since I was little, too. I sang all the time and my parents pushed it, wanted me to pursue it...after school, of course."

 Nigel:

Apparently Nigel had judged wrong when he had made the assumption that Luke was uncomfortable talking about it. At least, he wasn't entirely uncomfortable. It seemed more and more clear by the minute that he wanted to talk about it, but maybe he was just nervous, or scared of judgement. That was something Nigel could completely understand. If he wanted to talk about it more, Nigel was willing to, though he wasn't sure if they should be out here much longer. 

It was a bit shocking to hear that Luke had never had a proper first kiss. Then again, first kisses were always awkward anyway, in his experience. No one ever knew what they were doing, and it was downright impossible to get it perfect. "I mean, I suppose that counts. You've gotten it out of the way, then, so when you do fancy someone enough to kiss them, you'll at least have a bit of experience." Having only kissed people because you'd been dared to however couldn't be the most rewarding experience. Unless you did have a bit of a crush on whoever you were kissing. For Nigel however that would have just made him anxious. "I don't think that's a bad thing at all." Nigel hadn't either, until a few months ago. 

"Right, after school. That must be why you finished early, right?" After a moment, Nigel spoke again. "We don't have to avoid the other subject, if you want to keep talking about it," he offered, in a softer voice. "I just didn't want to make you uncomfortable." Some things were more private in conversation, so he hadn't wanted Luke to disclose anything he wasn't ready to share, either. "We could go somewhere else to talk? So we're out of the cold."

 Luke:

Luke had to focus on breathing. There was something about the way Nigel was attempting to keep up with him (obviously an impossible feat, without the ability to read minds) that was absolutely endearing. He had to keep from laughing when the other described him as 'experienced', though. The kisses he shared with other people were always little more than pecks on the lips. He didn't know that he would call himself such. "I just... I dunno, I hate feeling lonely." He looked out at a patch of grass, zoning out for a moment. "Yeah. It was why I left early - had to work hard so that I could be 'properly educated' and still chase the dream..."

He looked over to Nigel again, recognition in his eyes. So the other noticed just how awkward he felt, after all. At the same time though, he wanted to talk this out. It wasn't like he had many people to vent this kind of information out to, anyway. "I make myself uncomfortable. You don't need to worry." He offered a small grin before letting his own eyes dart to Nigel's. His eyes were pretty - he might even be able to get lost in them for a while. "Oh! Right! Sorry, you must be freezing. Do you know somewhere? Or, we're sort of near my flat--"

 Nigel:

"I think everyone does, to an extent." Sure, he knew plenty of people that liked being on their own, but being on your own wasn't the same as being lonely. He highly doubted there were many people -if any- that never got lonely. Nigel was the sort of person who not only craved physical attention from others but had almost always had access to it, so to be deprived of it, that made him feel lonely. The loneliest he had ever felt was that month between he and Henry's relationship where they had been fighting. 

Offering him a small smile, Nigel chuckled. "Has that dream been chased to death? Or are you still making things work?" He always wondered if that sort of life was really what people expected, before going into it. Whether they truly enjoyed it, or if it was overrated. "That's sort of what I do, worry," he confessed with a laugh. Their eyes locked onto one another's for a moment, which made Nigel's smile a bit more genuine and infatuated, a light blush creeping back onto his cheeks that he would blame on the brisk autumn air. "A bit, yeah..." 

When Luke mentioned being near his flat, Nigel figured that might be best. "We can go there, if you don't mind. I'm alright with that." It gave them privacy, and perhaps Luke would feel more at home there. More comfortable. "Should we apparate or walk? Up to you, I don't mind either."

 Luke:

Luke shrugged, truly uncertain. It was difficult to say, really. "I don't think it was chased to death," he sighed. "Just...to sleep. It needed a break. I'm trying to find some sort of inspiration, some way to get back into it... but so far, no luck. The war and everything has just made it nearly impossible for me to really focus on it." At the worry comment, he couldn't help but let his grin spread wide across his face. "I can't blame you for that. I'm the same. It's almost all I do."

He stood up, but stayed close - both to the bench and to Nigel. "No, of course! We can definitely go back. You can stay the night, I've got a guest bedroom, and... Sorry-- bit strong, erm... I don't get guests over often enough." He scratched the back of his head nervously, trying to brush it all off with a smile. "We can apparate! Here--" He held his hand out for the other to take, then pop!

The room was nearly pitch black, which shouldn't have come as a surprise to him, but alas - he was never there, and it didn't cross his mind until now. "Oh, Merlin-- Hold on, let me grab my wand and-- Oh!" There was a crash that sounded to him like his piano bench toppling over. "Lumos!" The light revealed a spacious living room area with great windows that would normally view the outside world, only the curtains were drawn. There was a piano, a record player, dozens of records lining the wall, and big comfy furniture. Behind them was the kitchen, which came into view once Luke properly turned the lights on, and past the kitchen was the bedroom area. "Sorry about the mess... Clutter and such. Not around much really..." Now his blush was perfectly visible. "Would you...like a cup of tea? I could put a kettle on, and... well, I mean, we could warm up."

 Nigel:

On one hand, it was sort of endearing how excited Luke seemed to be over having someone come visit his flat. While he wasn’t used to such immediate no-questions-asked hospitality other than at St Mungos, it came as a bit of a shock. However, it wasn’t enough to completely scare him away. “No, no, that’s alright. I mean, it might have been a bit strong, but that’s alright,” Nigel smiled softly to reassure him. 

 How quick Luke was to take his hand was surprising, but Nigel took it firmly and held tight as they disappeared from the park and wound up in a pitch black room. “Careful! Should I- oh, you’ve got it.” What came to view with the lights on was not what he had expected, but it was rather nice. Looking around, he didn’t think it was messy as Luke probably saw it, though he wasn’t sure. “Don’t apologize, really. I feel like I’m hardly ever home either.” 

Taking the time to walk around a bit, Nigel couldn’t help but appreciate all of the details in the flat. He almost missed the question as he wandered around. “Hm? Oh, that would be nice, actually, yes. I would love some.” Nigel stripped of his jacket, laying it over the back of a chair. “This is a really nice flat. Where are you usually off to, if not here?”

 Luke:

The flat was simple, which was how Luke liked it, but it was also spacious. Two or three people could easily live here together and not feel as though they were bumping into each other all the time. Perhaps that was a double-edged sword though, because the space also reminded Luke constantly of how empty he felt. "I...yeah, I feel like I'm never around. Actually this might be my first time back in...three days, this time?" he mumbled to himself.

He ran to the kitchen, which thankfully wasn't really walled off so he could continue conversation with Nigel as he prepared tea. They were half-walls, and he could see straight into the living room. "My mother always gave me a stern talking to when I didn't do the full shebang for tea. So I suppose it's only habit for me to get a tray going and everything." He flourished his wand this way and that while he grabbed other things here and there, the kettle starting to whistle. Meanwhile, small teacups and dishes for milk and sugar floated to the tray. Once he grabbed the kettle off the stove, he placed it on the tray and placed the strainer with tea leaves inside. He pulled the tray off the counter, bringing it to the coffee table in the living room and sitting on the couch. "We just have to wait for it to steep-- How strong do you like yours?"

It wasn't long before Luke was shrugging his own jacket off, placing it on the back of a couch and slipping his shoes off under the table. He made himself comfortable, expecting Nigel to do the same, pulling his legs up and crossing them on the cushions. "Thanks. I-I dunno, I normally just...go places to get away from here, honestly. It's a terribly lonely feeling when it gets quiet, and night falls, and... I mean, knowing I'm here alone..."

 Nigel:

Nigel felt a bit bad for Luke, though he understood where the male was coming from. It must be hard to live in such a large place by oneself, especially if you craved the company of other people. Whilst Luke had run to start the tea, Nigel slowly made his way into the kitchen, running his fingers over the walls as he did so. "Your mother sounds like a proper lady," he teased, chuckling softly. "I don't think my mum is as educated in tea making. But she does enjoy a good cup." 

Watching as Luke worked, Nigel joined him in the kitchen, leaning up against the counter. Had they been in his flat, he would have hopped up, though he didn't want to seem rude on his first visit. It had just become a natural habit for him over the years considering he was short for a male. He would have offered to help, but it seemed that the wizard had everything under control, to which Nigel decided to make his way back to the living room. "Normally I might say the stronger the better, but somewhere in the middle sounds all right, tonight."

Mimicking Luke's body position as they sat down, Nigel folded his hands in his lap, listening as the man spoke. "I can imagine." A hesitant pause filled the air before Nigel opened his mouth again. "You've never considered getting a roommate? What about your bandmates? Or, sorry... perhaps they don't live around here. Unless you've done most of your work on your own." Nigel wasn't really sure how Luke's music life faired, but he would have assumed that there were people he would have met along the way that he perhaps stayed in contact with.

 Luke:

"Oh, she is. Very proper. Which is sort of odd? Because it wasn't like she came from money or anything. I think actually she wasn't wealthy at all growing up, and she ended up being just like her mother, who was the same way - had to have everything put together just right, had to make everything look as fancy as possible. Even if it was kind of fake, in a sense. She had to have the house tidy, had to teach us proper manners, all that..." Luke shook his head like he didn't really understand any of it, but it was just his way of life. He'd come to accept it a long time ago.

Once it had seemed like enough time had passed that the tea would be to Nigel's liking, he continued with his serving etiquette - in a way that would make his mother proud, ignoring the fact that his legs were crossed on the couch as he did it. "I haven't ever really found someone I like enough. My bandmates switch out every tour - I'm really the only constant member. Although, our drummer has been on tour with me three times in total! But he has a wife, three kids. I don't think he'd stay with me," he snickered. "Most of my work has been my own and...I just find people I like to take along with me, to play with me. They're not really officially 'my band', so to speak... But I like to get smaller players and then they'll come with me for the experience, so then it builds their profile as well. It gives them a leg up in the music business."

 Nigel:

Nigel couldn't imagine living such a prim and proper life like that. He was well mannered and polite, and his parents had raised him well, but they were more the type of people to push for generosity, hospitality and empathy over properness. If he misplaced a piece of silverware or mistook a salad fork for a normal one, they wouldn't ridicule him. "I think I'm a combination of both of my parents, though some might say I take after my mother more, what with the interest in healing, and all." Again he had to bite his lip to avoid mentioning that his mum was a muggle.

Merlin's beard... No wonder he was lonely. Never having anyone constant in his life for longer than a few months? How were you supposed to get to know someone enough in that time? Sure, sometimes it didn't take as long, but to really know someone.... you had to dedicate months, sometimes years. "Oh, I see... And you played these tour games with someone who was married with three kids?" Nigel teased, referring to the dares he had mentioned earlier. "Kidding. Mostly," he added with a smirk. "So... have you really never had a proper kiss then? That's fascinating. If you could choose, do you think you'd want it to be with a girl, or maybe a boy?"

 Luke:

Luke didn't really mind the fact that his life growing up was so 'proper'. It came in handy later on in life. Feigning coming from wealth bothered him, in that sense, because his mother and father always wanted it to seem like they had some sort of posh background, which was why they acted the way they did and why they raised him as such. Maybe they were hopeful that one day their son might make them rich...which, he did... but still.

"I like that, though. It's a good trait to get. Caring for others, wanting the best for them, helping them with injuries-- all of that is admirable. There's nothing wrong with that," Luke insisted, finishing serving the tea and handing the cup to Nigel before offering up the smaller tray of milk and sugar. "At least you didn't feel like you were a wannabe posh bloke, trying to fit in with kids richer than yourself. That was what my parents always pushed for, for some reason." He started to pour his own tea and get it ready, smiling at the comment about his tour days.

"So, yes, I would play these games with someone who was married - but at the time he only had one child," he teased back, like it made such a difference. "And he wouldn't partake in the dares, not really. He'd be the one daring me to kiss someone else. But there were all sorts of people I went on tour with, you know? Some really cute girls that had absolutely no original thoughts in their head, some really cute boys that lived across the country - one boy from Scotland that... gosh, Nigel, his eyes..." He sipped at his tea, seeming momentarily lost in thought.

"I've had plenty of...kisses, I suppose. But no, never a proper one. If I could choose?" He leaned against the couch, seeming to stare in the distance, but his eyes were focused on Nigel's shirt sleeve. "I don't think I would really care which, honestly? There are loads of men out there that might actually like me for who I am, not just my stage personality... I dunno."

 Nigel:

Nigel couldn't help but laugh as Luke told him that it was better than pretending to be something you knew that you weren't. He had learned that the hard way, as it turned out, and was still battling that thought quite frequently. Especially now that he was questioning the side that he had chosen to take in the war. Taking the cup of tea that he was offered, he fixed it the way that he liked, milk and two sugars, before stirring it by waving his wand slightly. 

"Well, that makes it loads better then," he teased, pushing lightly on Luke's leg as he rose the mug to his lips and took a sip. It was hot, of course, but not too hot, and just the way that he liked his tea. Satisfied, he let out a soft sigh and placed it down. They were back on the topic of exploring Luke's sexuality, which Nigel found rather interesting, as it seemed the more he spoke, the more obvious it became. Then again, sometimes things seemed clear and ended up very confusing. "What were his eyes like?" he wondered aloud, wanting to know so that he too could picture them.

In retrospect, Nigel knew that it wasn't likely that Luke was starring at him specifically, but rather in that general direction. However, feeling Luke's eyes on him or anywhere near him made Nigel start to get uncomfortable, but not in a bad way. In the way that someone would flush if they caught their crush staring at them. Sure, he thought Luke was cute, but he couldn't really tell if he had a crush or infatuation. His cheeks turned a light shade of pink for this, shaking his head. "Oh, I'm sure there is," he finally agreed after a few minutes. Mainly to get people to stop staring. "That's good though, it means you're open to new possibilities. I'm sure you won't have to wait long for that kiss."

 Luke:

"Exactly! Loads better!" he laughed with him. Luke had obviously been fond of the man he was talking about, because he had a reminiscent look on his face, an old nostalgia in his eyes. "I still talk to him around holidays. Wonderful chap, in all seriousness."

When asked what the man's eyes looked like, he couldn't help but smile. "Nigel, they were... God, they were piercing and beautiful." His cheeks were turning red again, even as he sipped his own tea. "I mean... They were this striking blue. A blue I never would have believed possible. On rainy days, they were practically neon in color, if that makes sense? I just mean...wow. It was like he was a ghost and he could look right through you." He had a dreamy look in his own eyes, now, but he was ever present. His grin was wide, almost unbelieving, and he was meeting Nigel's gaze. "It's so hard to imagine it now, but... That was one pair of eyes that I'll never forget. They were just gorgeous... Sounds creepy though, I should probably modify how I talk about eyes--" He laughed and shook his head, running a hand through his messy hair. "Eyes are just...the first thing I really notice on a person usually. I always feel like souls connect through the eyes." He glanced back to his teacup when the other said he wouldn't have to wait long for the kiss, smiling softly. "Thanks... Here's hoping."

 Nigel:

There was no way this boy wasn't at least partially attracted to boys, Nigel was convinced of that now. Whether or not he had admitted that to himself yet, it was quite painfully obvious that he felt attracted to some men. If you think about it, sexuality isn't as complicated as people make it out to be. Even if someone is straight, it didn't mean that they liked all members of the opposite sex, so why should people think of those who identify as gay or lesbian or whichever else, any differently? Luke may like some men, and not like others, which was a-okay. 

The way that he described the man's eyes painted a beautiful picture in Nigel's head that he could see so vividly. Gorgeous blue eyes was something he would have noticed too, though he was quite the sucker for a pair of brown eyes. He had always thought they were underappreciated, especially considering most people tended to say things like eyes so blue I could drown in them. Well Nigel hadn't wanted to go swimming anyway. Figuratively, of course. "It doesn't sound creepy, trust me. Actually, I've thought the same things, before. Eyes can tell a lot about a person." It had been his favorite way of communicating, using your eyes.

"They're easy to notice. Plus, it means you maintain eye contact," Nigel pointed out, a smirk tugging at his lips as he took a sip of his tea. "I'm sure it'll happen soon. Did you... have any other questions, or? I mean, because you asked me before, you know. If I had ever been with someone I liked." Sure, it was a bit blunt to address the elephant in the room, but everyone was distracted.

 Luke:

Luke laughed a little and nodded. "They're just... I don't know, there's so much you can see in them. And I have a theory, although I'm not sure how accurate it might be, or how it connects, but... Wands choose wizards, personality chooses patronuses, and... I think something in our genetic makeup determines eye color, but in a personality kind of way. It also sort of...determines a bit of who we're attracted to? It's a start, but it's not like I'm very scientific or have any real background knowledge of any of that... But I like greens, they're my favorites, with different browns following. Blues might be really pretty, but it depends on them for me... That's why that guy's were so fascinating to me. They were the brightest blue I'd ever seen in my life, it didn't remind me of an ocean or something it... It reminded me of ice," he finished. His own eyes flashed with delight at the subject before he calmed down and sipped at his tea again.

"Have any other questions? You mean-- Oh... I, erm... How do you know when it's the right time? Like, to go in for a kiss? Or, gosh, how do you know when to take things further? I've heard about all these different signals and things, but I've never experienced it, so I never followed what the bloody hell anyone was talking about."

 Nigel:

Nigel listened to Luke's theory, which was a rather interesting one, even if there was no proof or evidence behind it. It sort of reminded him of the theory that names gave people certain personalities, too. "I think that's clever," he nodded with a smile. "In a way, I think you could argue that every part of a creature is related to personality. Their name, their home, who they associate with, their hair and eye color... all of it. It's a hard thing to prove, but it's a wonder to think about." When he mentioned green eyes being his favorite, Nigel couldn't help but laugh. "I'm fairly certain that true green eyes are the rarest color. A lot of people have hazel eyes, but call them green because of the way they look. Maybe that's why they're your favorite. You don't see them often."

To hear Luke talk so enthusiastically about something made Nigel smile, especially since in that moment, he spoke with such confidence that it was hard to imagine just moments ago he was tripping over his own words. Then again, it didn't last very long as they switched the conversation back. However, Nigel didn't mind it all that much. "Well," he started, thinking over his response. "For a first kiss, you're going to want to not overthink it. If you try too hard to make it perfect, you're only setting yourself up for disappointment. You also have to read your partner's body language," Nigel explained, sipping at his drink. "A good indication that someone wants to kiss you is if you notice they're staring at your lips a lot."

It was rather difficult to explain on the fly, so he understood why Luke would be confused. It wasn't like there were people talking about this everyday casually. "It's mostly about reading the situation, and seeing whether or not the person seems engaged and interested. Touch can be very helpful in figuring that out, as well. For example, say you've just kissed someone. If at any point their hands start to move more so down your body, well, at the least it's a sign that they desire to be closer to you physically. At most, that's probably an indication to take things further."

 Luke:

Luke smiled and nodded as the other spoke, happy that he understood where he was coming from. He wanted to explain, for example, that Nigel's eyes were most unique in both shape and shade, and his facial structure was attractive and-- No. He couldn't say those kinds of things right now. It wouldn't be appropriate. 

But then he started talking on about various signals, tips to read body language. He talked about hands moving down the body, and looking at lips, and Luke didn't even realize initially that his own gaze rested upon Nigel's. He nearly gulped, tearing his eyes away and looking down to the ground instead. Heart racing, he decided to focus on sipping his tea. He wasn't sure what to say or do, now, which only made it more awkward.

 Nigel:

Nigel had gotten so carried away in answering the questions that Luke proposed in a rather logical and somewhat professional manner that he hardly noticed that the male was staring at him. He did however notice the abrupt shift in eye contact, and the man's eyes darting toward the ground. Instantly Nigel had assumed he said something that made the other uncomfortable. Back tracking slightly, Nigel passed the mug in his hands back and forth as he watched the other. "Are you alright? I haven't said anything that made you uncomfortable, have I?"

"It will be easier, in the moment when you do have that sort of experience. Talking about it feels a bit silly, I'm sure, but it does help a bit." If everyone talked about it, maybe less people would have these questions. After all, Nigel himself knew a fair share of people who were never properly given a sex education talk. "We don't have to keep on about it if you'd rather talk about something else.

 Luke:

Luke blushed. "What? No! No, no... I just felt... silly." He glanced at the other's lips again and blinked, turning to look into his eyes again. "It's just... You're cute. And it's not like I didn't know that before, not like I didn't notice it... but we're talking about this and... I don't want you thinking poorly of me--" His cheeks were very red now, and he stared down into his teacup worriedly. It was better to come out with it now than to drag it on and be suspicious. Besides, it was better to talk it out now and get the hurt and rejection over with, rather than wait and end up heartbroken.

"You have nice eyes. They're almost hard to look at without staring," he mumbled, snickering lightly and trying hard to lighten the mood. "I mean... I dunno. I just want you to know so you aren't...uncomfortable too, I guess..."

 Nigel:

Luke’s mouth was saying one thing but his body language was screaming out the opposite. Even if it had nothing to do with what Nigel had said, something must have switched to make him all flustered again. It was apparent in the way he stammered, the way his eyes widened a bit and the unforgiving blush on his cheeks. Nigel was about to interrupt when Luke gave him a compliment that now made his own eyes widen. “Oh...”

Nigel had only just started to get used to people calling him cute. He had never really thought of himself in that light until Henry had come along, and only started to believe it a bit more when Gilderoy had agreed. Now he was sitting in Luke’s flat and the male was telling him the same exact thing.  Cheeks tinted pink as he sat there listening to Luke ramble on, hiding somewhat behind the mug of tea in his hands. “I can assure you it takes a lot for me to think poorly of someone,” he managed to get out without stuttering.

The sweetness in his words was not expected, and it was now rather certain that Luke was as attracted to guys as he was girls. At least by physical appearance. That often lead to sexual attraction as well, but they would open that door another day. For now they were just concerned with figuring out if Luke was attracted to men. “Thank you,” he replied meekly with a smile, shaking his head. “I’m not. Uncomfortable, I mean. I actually hadn’t noticed if you were staring, but that’s on me, then.”

 Luke:

Luke sat there for what felt like forever, feeling almost sick to his stomach with nerves. He didn't want to cross a line, and at the same time the line kept inching closer to him somehow. Without him moving. Like it wanted him to just tiptoe further...

"I never want to make you... discomfort is the worst and... I think it's worse when you barely know the person who made you uncomfortable but... a-anyway, I just don't want that for you--" He sighed and shook his head, more at himself than anything. "I don't know much about this kind of thing. I could write songs about it all day but that's because I'm clever with lyrics and not much else... so it's not like I could be smooth and tuck your hair back, and stare into your eyes and start to lean in or anything-- I would only end up making a fool of myself... it would be horrible..."

 Nigel:

Nigel wanted to laugh but held back, not wanting Luke to think that he was making fun of him. Rather, the reason for it would have been out of amusement for how cute and flustered he was getting. Even though Nigel himself too was a little flustered and surprised by these confessions, it was nice. The attention would certainly take some getting used to, but they had just met, so he was positive that didn't exactly make the situation super easy and comfortable. 

"I'm not expecting you to be perfect, you know that, right? You don't have to try and impress me." The mere fact that they were both musicians and had things in common was impressive enough. Plus, Luke seemed like a genuine person, which Nigel admired. His cheeks flushed a bit hearing all of this, though he smiled softly and placed his tea cup down. "You're being far too hard on yourself. Try relaxing a bit, I'm sure you'd feel better," Nigel suggested. He waited until Luke wasn't looking at him before leaning in and pressing a kiss to the man's cheek, figuring it could be taken as friendly if anything, though he meant a little more behind it.

 Luke:

Luke had not anticipated being so nervous. Was this normal? If this was what crushes were like, he finally understood why the hell people often tried to ignore these emotions. He worried at his bottom lip, holding it between his teeth again and again. Ears and cheeks hot, he was surprised to hear about Nigel's expectations.

"That's... probably a good thing, because I really don't think you'll be getting 'perfect', nowhere near it..." He laughed, surprised he could manage it given the current situation. "Wait, when you say... wh-what do you mean? In what context?" He didn't know if Nigel was brushing him off politely, or if he meant that this was okay, that Luke could keep trying... because if he could keep trying, that was both terrifying and exciting-- He couldn't even complete the thought, moving to set the teacup down as well. And that was when he felt the kiss pressed to his cheek, and he turned back and looked at Nigel with wide eyes, an adorable yet shocked expression. Suddenly, he laughed excitedly and touched his cheek. "Oh, right, now I most certainly can relax, Nigel!" He sank into the couch, still smiling like an idiot. It took him a moment to gather himself, and then he gazed over to look into the other's eyes. "Feel a bit like I'm flying, Merlin..."

 Nigel:

Nigel never expected anyone to be perfect, especially not when he was first meeting someone. While it was true that first impressions were important, he also knew that people were human. They were bound to make mistakes and fuck up and get embarrassed. It happens to everyone, but that doesn't mean that they are a bad person, or not worth getting to know better. In fact, Nigel almost preferred that people got embarrassed around him and fumbled. Not only did it make him feel more comfortable but it meant that they weren't trying so hard to be something that couldn't exist in nature. If Luke had tried to come off as some suave musician who knew a lot of people and acted like they were famous, Nigel wouldn't be sitting here right now having tea with him. He would have taken him to be a stuck up bloke who thought that status made you more appealing.

That was part of the reason for the kiss. Nigel didn't normally kiss anyone he had just met, but then again, the first time that he hung out with Henry outside of the hospital they had been cuddling up to one another. The kiss was to get him to stop worrying, though he would have given it to him eventually that night. Laughter spilled from his lips like smooth wine as he pulled back, shaking his head. "Sorry, I couldn't help myself. At least you know now that you could fancy guys." Had he known a simple kiss on the cheek would have this much of an affect, perhaps he would have waited until right before he had to go. 

"That was just your cheek, you know..." he casually reminded him, not bothering to go into specific details about what it would be like for different kisses. Luke could imagine that as he liked. "Not exactly a proper kiss, but closer." Picking his mug back up, Nigel drank the rest of his tea, leaning back against the sofa. "Don't overthink. Just do what makes sense in the moment when it comes, and you'll be fine."

 Luke:

Luke held his breath for a moment like it might make him come back down to earth. He was still cross-legged on the couch, yet somehow it felt like he could have been floating. "I don't think it's really a matter of 'could' at this point..." Nigel's laugh was something that somehow was like music in itself - it reminded him of the colors green and yellow.

"I know it was just my cheek, so can you imagine?" For the first time in such a long time, he actually felt playful. He had energy that was comparable to when he performed onstage - lightning in his veins, zapping in his fingers and collecting in his chest. In one swift move, he managed to rise on his knees and almost hover over the other, one arm supporting him from the side of the couch so that he didn't exactly have Nigel cornered (he wasn't close or confident enough for that really- the man needed to be able to escape if he wanted) but he had definitely closed much of the space between them. "If... If I'm not overthinking and I'm doing what makes sense, then... could I?" His voice had dropped to a whisper, and somehow the atmosphere became more serious in his mind.

Luke's eyes darted between the man's lips and his eyes, finally coming to rest on his lips. He didn't want to push forward, didn't want to cross over that line until it was okay... but he inched closer, letting their noses brush, letting this moment hang in the air.

 Nigel:

The fact that Luke's reaction to Nigel kissing him had been so strong made him feel that he had some sort of super power. Normally, Nigel was the one getting flustered and embarrassed in these situations. Maybe it was because he had more experience than Luke did with these things? Though not much more, as he saw it. Nonetheless, Nigel was feeling rather pleased that he could make someone feel like that just by giving them a kiss on the cheek. He imagined it was what Gilderoy and Henry felt like when they had gotten Nigel to blush so easily. 

Nigel was surprised at how quickly Luke's body position changed, and admittedly a bit confused. Raising a brow, he set the mug down officially after having finished the tea, his eyes locked onto the other male's movements. It was a bit nerve wracking to watch him like this, though not uncomfortable. There was more of a anxious anticipation in the air that Nigel was surrounded by. Then Luke spoke again, his voice lower and softer now, which made Nigel's heart skip a beat. He wasn't scared, however, as he was certain he knew where this was going, and though he would have never made this move first, the kiss to the cheek had been a subtle set up for Luke to pursue should he desire to do so.

Nigel didn't respond with words, though, as when you were going through the motions it was best to let your actions speak for you. Remaining still as he could as Luke leaned in closer, Nigel closed his eyes when he could feel their noses brush against one another, and leaned in a bit closer so that all of the remaining space between them had disappeared, their lips flushed against one another's. If anyone had asked what Nigel thought the night had in store for him prior to this, he would have answered something bland such as falling asleep to television. Never in a million years would he have imagined he'd be here, kissing someone that he had barely known though they got along rather brilliantly to start. 

Luke was cute though, so Nigel hardly minded snogging him. His lips parted ever so slightly as they kissed, taking the lead. His lips were soft, which was surprising, but pleasantly so. As they kissed for a moment, Nigel nudged his nose gently against Luke's in a rather affectionate way, letting it linger for a bit.

 Luke:

Luke felt like his heart was in his throat. He could feel it there, pounding, taking his breath away. The moment lasted an eternity. In honesty, he was expecting a verbal response. Something like a straight yes, but even a grunt or hum or... something would do. He didn't want to push him to discomfort.  But then he noticed Nigel leaning in. His own eyes closed as their lips pressed together, his free hand falling to brush against the side of Nigel's neck. He was more than happy to allow him to take the lead, his own lips parting slightly to follow suit. As their noses brushed together, he let out a breathy laugh, feeling their breaths mingle. Goosebumps formed over his arms, as though they were back out in the cold. "You're a good kisser..."  After inhaling deeply, he leaned in for another.

And suddenly his hand slipped, right off the back of the couch, and he bounced - bounced, how the hell did he bounce?- off the side and onto the floor. From the ground, on his back, he stared in horror and amusement at Nigel on the couch.

"...Don't mind me. I'm just gonna be down here... gonna sink into the floor and cease to exist..." With a strained laugh, he covered his face with his hands. "Ughhh, fuck me, why am I so terribly awkward? "

 Nigel:

Nigel couldn’t help but laugh softly ay his comment, scrunching his nose. “You’re not so bad yourself,” he replied, teasingly. While Nigel wasn’t expecting a second kiss he certainly wasn’t going to refuse one, especially not after the first being so nice. Before they could even get that far however, Luke had somehow managed to topple over off of the couch and land on the hard floor beneath them. Nigel’s eyes shot open in fear and a bit of shock, wanting to make sure he was alright. Never before had someone fallen over after kissing him, so he wasn’t quite sure what to do in this instance. 

“Are you alright?” he asked, uncrossing his legs and kneeling down on the floor to make sure he was fine. Perhaps it was a bit of the healer instinct in him, but Nigel casually started to examine for any bruising or injury. “Well... it could have been worse. You could have fallen on top of me,” he offered an attempt to lighten the mood a bit before standing and giving Luke a hand. “Come on, let me help you up.”

It was at that moment that Nigel truly realized their height difference. Luke wasn’t all that much taller than him, but it was more noticeable now, as he imagined what it would have been like to kiss him had they been standing. At the thought, his cheeks blushed slightly and his hand ran through his hair to cover up the awkwardness he was feeling in that moment. “Really though, are you alright?”

 Luke:

"I'm fine, really I am. The only thing hurt is my dignity--" he laughed. This was cringe worthy, in his mind. So un-smooth that it would go down in history as the most awkward he had ever been. He hadn't anticipated that the man would start to inspect him, however. Nigel was so damn cute.

After standing with his assistance, he took in the silence that seemed to surround them, blinking and watching. Nigel was blushing again. "I'm fine, Nigel, I promise." After a moment, he reached out and gently took the man's hand, fingers tracing along the skin over his knuckles. "Should... should I stop?" he asked as he stepped closer, free hand rising to brush his fingers along Nigel's cheek.  He was nervous again and yet, he still felt that electricity, that lightning in his chest, that spark as he caressed Nigel's skin.

 Nigel:

Nigel was glad that Luke hadn’t seriously injured himself, as he would have taken it to be his fault. Or at least, part of it. It would have ruined the mood that they had carefully constructed, otherwise. “Good. We don’t need to be explaining that you broke a bone because I kissed you,” he teased, laughing softly under his breath. “It would hurt my healer reputation.” Of course he was only kidding, and he was far more concerned for Luke’s safety and well being than his image as a healer. 

Having that physical attention felt so rewarding that Nigel didn’t want it to ever cease. It was something he craved often, even in a platonic sense. Draping one of his arms loosely around Luke’s neck as he spoke, Nigel thought for a moment before responding. “I’m going to let you read the situation.” His eyes glanced from the male’s lips back up to meet his eyes, a slight smirk playing on his face as he took a step closer to decrease the space between them. Luke’s breath was warm and comforting. He had a sort of rustic scent about him that smelled vaguely of aged wood and leather. Though Nigel wanted to kiss him again, the next move was completely up to Luke.

 Luke:

Luke couldn't stop smiling as Nigel spoke. "I'll have to make it my duty to save your reputation, then - even if it means I end up with a bum arm~" He laughed, letting one arm go limp just for show.

That same arm only ended up wrapping slowly around the other's waist, though. He held him securely - despite his small frame, he actually had strong arms. He felt solid. "Letting me read... hm. I get a sense that this is some kind of test." After a playful, suspicious squint, he rested his forehead against the other's, looking into his eyes for a moment. He didn't hesitate after that, closing the space between their lips, free hand resting on the side of Nigel's neck. He could hear his heart pounding in his ears, but he didn't want it to stop.

 Nigel:

Normally it took a lot for Nigel to be this comfortable around someone where he was able to interact like this. Perhaps that also had to do with his more reserves nature since he hadn’t had much experience involving himself with romantic partners. A kiss on the cheek seems like a friendly gesture compared to this. Despite all of that though, he found himself quite enjoying Luke‘s company. He was laughing, which he hadn’t allowed himself to do often anymore, and felt more like himself. Even, dare he say, a bit flirty. “There’s an easy way to test that theory,” Nigel countered, raising an eyebrow.

His lips quirked upward into a slight smile as their foreheads touched, brushing his nose against the other man’s as their lips met. With the arm that was around Luke’s neck, Nigel pulled him closer, his other hand resting against the male’s chest. It was a bizarre feeling, being in the man’s arms like this, though at the same time entirely thrilling. The kiss, although simple, left his stomach with butterflies. Pulling away after a moment, he smiled softly and looked upward. “You didn’t fall this time,” Nigel teased, stealing another quick kiss.

 Luke:

Luke felt those soft lips press against his again and it almost made him feel like he were melting. Stress seemed to fade into the background. At the same time, the butterflies in his stomach fluttered wildly. He inhaled deeply upon feeling the hand on his chest, like he somehow felt the touch more that way. After Nigel pulled away, Luke had his eyes closed for just a second more. He wanted to hold onto that feeling. "I didn't. I mean, I could correct that if need be? Should I throw myself down?" he replied with a laugh. The quick kisses were practically a tease in themselves. He wanted to hold Nigel there, keep him against his lips somehow.

"I'm... honestly probably not great--" he managed to get out before sighing and scratching the back of his head. He looked so happy though. "Sorry... no practice. Not really."

 Nigel:

Nigel shook his head and laughed when Luke suggested he could throw himself to the ground. “Please don’t, you’ll make me very anxious and then I’ll worry,” he admitted, not caring that he was being honest. Honesty was the best policy, was it not? He would much rather have Luke upright like he was now, arms wrapped around Nigel’s waist and close to him. 

Luke was a good kisser. He didn’t give himself enough credit for it, likely because of the inexperience. If that really was his first proper a kiss, then Nigel was surprised. It almost felt as though Luke had embellished how little experience he had. “Would you like me to be honest? You’re actually rather good at it, considering.” Luke was just so in his head about it, that Nigel was sure that was why he had been nervous and a bit awkward. The arm that had been draped around his neck before now rested on his shoulder, while the other one stayed in place. “I really wasn’t expecting any of this tonight,” Nigel laughed under his breath.

 Luke:

Luke smiled at him and shook his head to reassure Nigel that he wouldn't, in fact, throw himself onto the floor. No matter how funny it might be. He stood firm, holding the other close, wanting to keep him there as long as he could.

"Well when you lead into it with 'should I be honest?' it makes me all the less likely to imagine I'll like the answer!" He laughed, somehow in that moment looking younger than he was - childish in nature. "Makes me nervous-- Wait, really? You mean that?"

He appeared shocked, but he was also somewhat distracted by the placement of Nigel's hands. He'd never had anything like this, intimate and close. The closest thing to it was at a concert, running through a crowd as fans reached for any part of him they could get their hands on...and it was nothing by comparison. This was so much more personal, so much...nicer. "I-I really wasn't expecting it either, but... I'm glad it turned this way--"

 Nigel:

Nigel scrunched his nose, biting back laughter. Admittedly he withheld just being straight up with him to tease. He was going to be nice either way, even if Luke had been terrible at snogging. Nigel would never flat out tell him he was horrible at anything. “I wouldn’t lie to you. I have no reason to.”

Luke’s expression was admirable, as though he almost didn’t believe him. In a way it was a sort of humbleness that Nigel didn’t see in people often. Hopefully it would be able to give him a little more confidence when he romanced people. “I am too,” Nigel smiled, moving the hand pressed to Luke’s chest up to his cheek. “Maybe I’ll have to wander parks more often.” Slowly, he dropped his hands and found Luke’s, taking them in his own as he stepped back. “Though I’m still a bit cold from being out there so long,” he chuckled. “The tea helped a bit.”

 Luke:

Luke laughed, squeezing the man's hands in his own to try and warm them up. "If you want, I could find some blankets? Could make a fort, even..." He snickered, waving his wand and watching as some blankets from baskets in a corner flew over the couch. "Fire in the fireplace too? That might help..." He kept one hand around Nigel's waist, waving his wand again and sparking a fire in the fireplace. After the wand was no longer needed, he slipped it into his back pocket and looked back at his ... guest. Luke wanted to keep close to him, wanted to know him more. And not just from kissing, necessarily. It was as he said before- he didn't have many friends.

 Nigel:

Luke was being so sweet that Nigel didn't have the heart to just up and leave afterward, even though he had work the next day. Then again, it was getting late, and he had offered for Nigel to stay the night... Perhaps he would have to after all. No, not have to, but rather maybe he would take that offer. "If you keep talking I'm not going to want to ever leave," he joked, chuckling a bit, though there was truth to his words. Nigel loved cuddling under piles of blankets and pillows, and by the fireplace? It was very romantic, even if it hadn't been intentional. Normally he might get shy over something like this, though for some reason, he was perfectly fine today.

"Let's just sit, and warm up, then," he decided, giving Luke's hands a gentle squeeze in return. They could relax a bit, get cozy. Perhaps talk a bit more, now that they had survived the awkward kissing conversation from before. Nigel felt like he needed to get to know Luke more. What sort of music he listened to, what he played, what he liked and disliked, what he thought about before he went to bed. Those little details about a person that no one ever seemed to wonder about, Nigel wanted to know. What he kept in his bedside table in the most innocent way, what his favorite book was, and which one last made him cry. Vulnerable things. They didn't have to get to those deeper ones tonight, but it helped him to get to know a person in the long run. "Come on," he nudged, pulling him back down to the couch.

 Luke:

"That's good though, no? I mean, I'd never argue to having the company." Luke shrugged cutely. "I don't like to flaunt it, but... erm, I have money. I could honestly hold you over until you find another job. But maybe not. I think you've found your calling." He scrunched his nose a little just to be cute - he had to play to his strengths after all. "Maybe I shouldn't get you sacked." He moved with Nigel to the couch, taking a moment to sit down first before putting his arms out for the other. In his mind, he imagined holding the other, chatting, playing with his hair... things he dreamed he would do with someone.

"C'mere, Nigel." They would both be comfy. And one of the blankets could fall over them, too. Warm, close, together. "When do you have to go in next? Early tomorrow, or...?" He might be small, but he momentarily forgot his size - instead he felt like he was the larger man, ready to be the larger spoon.

 Nigel:

Not having to work for a bit did sound lovely, sometimes, but Nigel knew that it would never be feasible. He loved his job, and he loved helping people. Sometimes though he didn't realize that he needed a break until it was too late, and for that reason alone, not having to work might be beneficial. "That's quite alright, I wouldn't ask you to do that. Besides, I quite like my job," he nodded with a smile. It was sort of adorable to see someone else scrunch their nose in the same way -or at least a similar way- as he himself did. It was just a quirk he had acquired over his lifetime, but it came in handy often. "I would appreciate if you didn't. But, if you were to visit... well, I wouldn't kick you out, let's just say that."

Oddly enough, Nigel didn't even hesitate to cuddle up to Luke, laying down with his back to the male's chest. It had never mattered all that much to him who was the big spoon and who was the little, but in this moment, little for him just made sense. "Not too early, or else I would have left by now," he replied with a brief chuckle. Though he wasn't entirely sure if that was accurate. He might have stayed either way. "Tomorrow morning. It's getting late, though. If I apparate home I might keep myself up all night."

 Luke:

Luke felt the weight against him, and his arm wrapped around the man's waist. It was secure, it made him feel whole somehow. Even though normally, he slept in his underwear - and despite the fact that he would love to feel Nigel's warmth against the skin of his chest, his stomach - this made him so happy. He was comfortable.  "Should I find reasons to visit then? Make up illnesses? Would you kiss it better? That's the important question."

He pressed a gentle kiss to the side of Nigel's head. "Keep yourself up all night? Why is that?" Luke's fingers traced Nigel's upper neck, before combing through his hair.

 Nigel:

Nigel buried his face in his hands despite the fact that Luke probably couldn’t even see him. “Oh, shut up...” he laughed, swatting at him over his shoulder playfully. “Only if you’re lucky.” Of course he was only teasing, but he admired how confident Luke seemed to be now. Truthfully, he would love to maybe see Luke at St Mungos if it were for any reason other than needing immediate medical attention. Perhaps for a lunch break. 

The kiss made his cheeks flush, sighing quietly. Relaxing into the male’s body, Nigel hummed to himself contently. “Apparating isn’t exactly the most relaxing type of transportation. And I’m already starting to fall asleep. A shiver shot down his spine, feeling Luke’s fingers creep around the nape of his neck and through his hair. The skin around that area was always a bit more sensitive, particularly near his ears. 

“I think I should probably just stay put...” Waiting to hear Luke’s response, Nigel blinked slowly, enjoying the attention he was getting.

Luke:

"What? You wouldn't? You wouldn't kiss me? Oh how dare...?" he teased, laughing as he spoke into his hair, close to behind his ear. Luke loved that the other man relaxed around him, that he was comfortable enough to fall asleep here. His hand continued through the man's hair.  "I'll wait to go in until I feel lucky," he hummed happily. "I think you should stay put too, then. Makes sense..." As he spoke, a blanket carefully wrapped around them as though it had a mind of its own. His eyes watched the fire, eyelids drooping slightly. "Let me know before you get up... I'll make breakfast." His voice was lowered to a whisper.

 Nigel:

It was difficult to remain calm as Luke spoke so close to his ear. He had always had sensitive hearing, and it wasn’t that Luke was being loud, but talking directly into his ear like that often turned Nigel on,l which he was trying to avoid. “I didn’t say no...” Nigel smirked, tracing patterns into the couch with his finger absentmindedly. “In private, sure.” 

The blanket dropping down onto them was like a cherry on top of this evening. Warm and cozy underneath it, Nigel felt safe and comfortable there. It said a lot that he trusted Luke enough to stay the night. Nigel’s breath hitched slightly at the lowering of Luke’s voice, covering it up by humming softly. Scooting back a bit so that he was closer to the male, Nigel closed whatever space had been between them, their bodies flush against one another now. “Sounds lovely,” Nigel murmured, starting to fall asleep to the sound of the fire crackling

[aliesteem]

An Immensely Through Fine Dining Experience from the Brokest College Student Ever.

I’ve recently broken into my old, student email and was reunited with the dozens and dozens of papers I’ve written about dining in Culinary school. These papers scored me A’s and made me realize I possibly do have a future in writing. I’m still proud nearly two years later so I thought I’d share. Enjoy!

Introduction

I am a college student and with that, it’s practically needless to say that I am also broke, very broke. I, however, through great resilence have maintained my champagne dreams enough to actually see a fine dining experience. This is NYC, there had to be one I could afford. In my heavy search the top, three included Tocqueville, Del Posto, and Le Bernardin. These three I took into consideration because of there more affordable price range, beautiful display, and interior design I’ve seen online and (or) its popularity online. It was  Tocqueville that caught my eye. Located 1 East 15th Street in Manhattan, NYC. Tocqueville was most affordable as if they were thinking of college students like me who dreamt of a mouthful of caviar. The others came with a hefty price tag, ones that honestly made very nervous. To me, a $10 burrito Chipotle sounds like a luxury so you can imagine my reaction in finding out Le Bernardin restaurant that costs over $87 for its pri-fixe menu. It doesn’t sound like a shocking expense to some but on this side of the fence, it is.  Del Posto was a little more affordable at $50 but it still wasn’t in my price range.  Luckily, Tocqueville provided the most inexpensive pri-fixe menu only costing $36 for a three-course menu. I felt relieved. I decided this restaurant is my final choice.

Tocqueville, named after the French political sociologist and theorist is owned by husband and wife Marco Moreira and Joann Makovitzky who also own new restaurants 15th East and The Fourth in the same city. With no trouble found I found that the Chef is Jason Lawless on StarChefs.com. He has managed the kitchen since August 2011. The restaurant itself has been opened since 2000 and in seventeen years it has built its reputation of being one of the most innovative French-American restaurants in New York City. You can see from how modern chic yet classic they truly are by their restaurant design. From the photographs provided on the official website, tocquevillerestaurant.com - the look of the restaurant is a cool but clean creamy white and black color scheme. I can tell it is a place that provides excellence a traditional fine dining restaurant would hold but pulls themselves away from being boring and ordinary. I adore the minimalistic and classic take. Their dishes and plating looked absolutely sparkling as well. The picture heading the page of their menu category was the Grilled Filet of Beef. A pearly white plate of succulent meat topped with small diced tomatoes, red onion and herbs were appetizing enough for me to set a reservation for a party of two with a close friend.  

`Making the reservation was fairly easy. Once I called a person who sounded to be a young woman answered sweetly. I asked to make a reservation and she was very quick and efficient. There wasn’t any of the run around that I had anticipated. The space I wanted was open. It didn’t take any more than say four minutes. I was surprised. I expected the restaurant to be packed with reservations especially on a Friday. We talked for a short while after about what will partake once I arrived. The phone call was my first experience with Tocqueville’s true hospitality. It made me all the more comfortable with coming in and dining.  

My expectations in visiting Tocqueville are sky-high. For one, it is a fine dining restaurant. I’ve never been to one. This is exciting, I want it to be fascinating. Above all, I am looking forward to the food. Since I’m a meat and a wine lover the Red Wine Braised Short Rib sounds appetizing. I cannot wait. There is a bit of nervousness about the way the employees will treat me, however. I am visibly very young and a person of color. I sometimes feel when I enter nice places that I’m not supposed to be there. I feel like the oddball. In past experiences the waiters did nothing to eliminate that feeling, making me more unsettled with long stares and awkward treatment. Other guests dining had body language that expressed that I was ruining the atmosphere for them.  I hope that doesn’t happen this time but as always I am remaining positive. From what I know now Tocqueville is a beautiful restaurant with a kind, warm friendliness. I’m counting down the days till the visit.  

The Visit

I woke up a Friday morning with a Ferris Buller-type charisma and energy. I was going to visit a beautiful fine dining restaurant in the city! I have never been to a French restaurant before much less one that was seemingly so elegant. I had the jitters. What should I wear? How should I do my hair? Which train should I take? Is my friend going to be on time? Did I give her the right directions? A million and one questions running through my head. I thought I ought to relax my nerves before I begin my day. I snugged my feet into my orange fluffy slippers and made my way to the kitchen. I picked a Lavender Jasmine mix tea from my collection to boil. Tea always soothes the soul. I brought my mug to the window and looked out for a moment. The day was chilly, sunny but very chilly. “How am I going to dress nicely and still be warm?” I asked myself then take a short sip. I was still nervous but pushed to let it go and know everything will go well.  

My reservation was at 12pm sharp for lunch. It was already about 8am and I know how slow I can be with getting ready in the morning so I start right away. I jump into the hot shower, brush my teeth and prep my skin with scrubs and cleansers for makeup. I hop out, dry off, put most of my day’s clothes on and begin to do my makeup. This takes the longest out of getting ready. I try to see if I can get it done within 30 minutes' time. Nope! It took me almost an hour because I kept messing up but luckily I started early so I was still in good time. I decide on a long, oversized, grey sweater that flows over my black leggings. I pair it jet black heels. Next, was my hair, I have natural, kinky curly hair that usually needs lots of attention but yesterday I braided it up. All l had to do now was unravel them so they can come out fluffy and defined. Once all my clothes were on, fully moisturized, fixed my hair and makeup done and feeling confident to step outside it is 10am. I get a text from my friend, who I invited to dine with me.  “I don’t know what to wear!” she texts. She thinks she’s going to be late. I knew it but I didn’t stress. I tell her don’t think too much in it, just wear something nice but no jeans or sneakers. She tells me she’ll figure it out. I just hope she makes it on time. I make sure everything around the apartment is tidy and in order before I head out the door. I text my mother that I am leaving to go to the restaurant since she’s already at work. She texts me “Good luck!” and I’m out the door.  

I live on a very popular, main street in Brooklyn. It’s loud and lively this time of day. People are heading to work and school in droves. Walking down the block to catch the A train I run into a family friend I haven’t spoken to in a long time. So long, in fact, I can’t even remember her name but her face is vivid in my memory. She asks how I am. I tell her about school and how much I love majoring in Hospitality Management since I’ve transferred from the old school. I keep in mind the time and explain to her I’m on my way to somewhere important and have to get going. She reminds me to say hello to my mother for her and I rush into the train station. Luckily the train arrives immediately. I’m not a train girl not in the least. I know it’s the New York way but I love traveling on an empty bus as oppose to a crowded train with performers yelling “It’s Showtime!” in my ear. It’s not my cup of tea. While I’m on the train I read a Pete Wells article I’ve pointed out. I need to know his review for a class. I’m really into it because I’m a fan of sushi. It’s one of my absolute favorites. The good read distracts me from the groups of people stuffing themselves into the cart along with the street entertainers swirling on poles above my head. I’m thankful.  

My stop is a Fulton Street which I switch over to a 4 or 5 train because it gets me to Union Square under ten minutes. Once I climb out of the train station I check my phone. There’s a text from my friend she says she needs more time but is about to get on the train now! It was 11:23am and we planned to meet at 11:30am. I guessed she lost track of time. I decided to find a way. I am kind of scared to walk in so I wait right outside the restaurant to wait for my friend meanwhile taking a few pictures of my own. It’s nearly 12pm but she is nowhere in sight. 

I go inside to introduce myself to a woman who I believe is the Maître d’ of the restaurant. I tell her my reservations and how I am a student doing a report. Her face suddenly gleams in a huge smile and asks if I talked to Roger. I express I don’t know who Roger is even though I feel I should know. She tells me to sit down which she gets him for me. In a few minutes, Roger is in front of me. A short, well-suited older man with blonde white hair. I don’t recognize him but he says he’s a professor at my school. He begins to ask me questions about wine. I was taken aback a little because I wasn’t expecting it. I tell him my Wine & Beverage professor that I’m taking now, Professor Aliah. I convey how much I’m enjoying her class and all the elements in detail there is to wine-making. It turns out Professor Roger is a Master Sommelier. I wished I said more about wine to him but I was so nervous I’m not used to settings like these.  My friend still wasn’t there after the talk with Roger. I told him I’d wait a bit longer she is supposed to come any second and he told me to take all the time I need. In the meantime, I took pictures and looked around the restaurants outside and the entryway. The name of the dining establishment is printed white on a black sight like a tent over the sidewalk.  The door where the guest enter is made up of all glass. It is chic, modern and simplistic. The Maitre D’s desk in the reception appeared tall, sleek, dark wood tabletop with a shiny, brown wooden, dimmed lamp. There are also award plaques and photos framed all along the wall. Their awards included the 2016 Forbes Magazine’s Restaurant with the highest rating. Best of Award of Excellence 2016 by Wine Spectacular and a 4.8 out of 5 from Zagat 2017. The restaurant is not just popular but highly respected and celebrated, making its way to more great success is that they’ve been recently recommended by the Michelin Guide in 2016.  

-

 I looked at the time on my phone and it said 12:30am. Since I was already checked in I figured I was safe from losing my reservation but I opted to seat in the dining room than to take up space in the front seating area any longer. To get to the dining room one needed to pass by the bar. The bar designed with a black and silver color scheme was the most modern section in the restaurant. On the bar top sat a huge marble vase filled with light blue, yellow and pastel green orchids that touched the ceiling. Soothing French jazz spilled gently out of the above speakers. The ambiance, graceful and contemporary. I was in awe. I actually hoped I could have my lunch there.   As soon as I sat down Roger offered me water and the front server – who name escapes me handed me a menu. I told him I wanted to wait for a friend. He was very kind and understood. Pouring the water I realize the glasses were short, open chalice glasses, still easy to hold by them small stem. It was fifteen minutes later when I heard my friend’s voice speaking to the Maitre D’ in the reception area. Seconds later she came walking in the dining area and sat down. She apologized for the lateness. I’ve been late to her events before so I could only be so upset. Seconds later the front server returned to hand us menus.

-

The menus were the longest menus I’ve seen. The outside a smooth olive green, the outside a yellow and cream menu with a folder style with all its printed dishes in bold and script. The front server in his black and white uniform finished with a sharp blue tie read over some of the meals that were listed. I appreciated his attentiveness. His body language was confident, alert to where I was impressed by his time and time again throughout the service. He was very efficient when scanning the room and our table. I took the opportunity to ask him the style of the napkin fold, neither did Professor Roger. “We simply make up the style,” he told me. The back server then came up to us from a side station behind the elongated gold curtains and offered bread. I was watching his Frenching style closely. He did it so quickly, it looked easy for him. When I attempt it in class I often lose the stability of the utensils in my hand. I chose the focaccia which was scrumptious. It was dense but not overbearing with flavor. The focaccia was filled with olives, spices, herbs and was beyond incredible with the home-made butter. I asked for another.  

-

My friend and I talked about our morning getting ready and caught up with each other’s lives since we haven’t talked in a month. In perfect timing, the front server came to take our orders. We picked two courses from the pri-fix menu. I ordered the Organic Potato and Baby Leeks Soup as an appetizer and a Red Wine Braised Short ribs entrée. As we waited for our meals and the back server pointed each of our tables I observed the dining area. The dining area was mildly lit from the light gold, sparkling crystal chandelier from above. The walls were a warm yellow with rich, gold curtains to match. The seats were made up of a comfortable cool silver, velvet. My attention was grabbed by the gigantic paintings on the wall that was created by an artist named Cheryl Roy Starer. The abstract art stood up on the walls so stunning with its blends of green, blue and white. It was a conversation piece definitely.  We were met with a unique hors d'oeuvres compliments of the Chef. It’s a fresh new take on the Southern-known treat. It’s a toasted golden brioche topped with the cooked yolk and whites of a quail eggs and finished with Alabama caviar.  The deviled eggs we centered on an all-white porcelain dish designed by Bernardaud Classic Silverware. This was my first time having caviar. The flavors delicate and salty reminded me of sardines in a way. The texture was cold creamy goodness. I wished I could have more. As we scrapped the crumbs from whatever was left of the exquisite deviled egg dish the back server approached us again to offer more bread. This reminded me of my Dining Room class where we service almost the same exact way, consistently offering our guest all the bread and quail eggs whites hard-boiled finished with Alabama caviar.  The deviled eggs centered on an all-white porcelain dish designed by Bernardaud Classic Silverware. This was my first time having caviar. The flavors delicate and salty, reminded me of sardines in a way. The texture was cold creamy goodness. I wished I could have more. As we scrapped the crumbs of whatever was left of the exquisite deviled egg dish the back server approached us again to offer more bread. I was waiting. 

-

This reminded me of my Dining Room class where we service almost the same exact way, consistently offering our guest all the bread they’d like. It was nice to be on the other side of the service. I chose the focaccia again. I could not get enough. This time however I was able to dip it into the Potato Leek soup which arrived moments later. When I first saw the bowl it was only filled with sautéed’ black mushroom and a miniature leek in the center of the bowl. I thought to myself there must be a mistake. Turns out the front server came prepared with a tiny creamer pitcher and poured the creamy soup into the bowl right in front of me. It was original and added a special touch. To be completely honest, I was expecting the soup to be bland. I’ve had potato soups so lackluster I pushed myself to finish a bowl. This wasn’t the case. The soup was luscious and silky, earthy with just enough seasoning. The soup was so harmonious with my pallet I was tempted to lick the bowl. I reminded myself I was in a very classy place but it was difficult not to, simply divine! When the entrée arrived I was the most enthusiastic. I am a huge meat lover. Anything meat I am a fan of. I’ll choose it over anything in the menu. I looked at the plate in front of me. The dish appeared kind of odd. My image of short-ribs wasn’t this. The dish came in a wide, circular plate. The meat of short rib formed in a rectangle, an island centered in the middle of potato puree. The short rib was glossed over with a deep brown red wine sauce that resembled chocolate. A lady sitting across from our table asked what dessert we ordered. We told her it was actually an entrée and she was surprised. On top of the short rib sat a roasted pearl onion and cylinder chunks of buttered carrots. The short rib melted on my fork as I cut through it. It was wonderfully tender, I didn’t need a knife. The flavor was robust, the sauce adding a vigorous taste of richness. Swirling a piece of the meat through the potato puree and putting it in my mouth it felt like I was eating butter. It has to be the most well-presented, heavenly dishes I’ve experienced in recent years.  Unfortunately, I was unable to order a dessert since I was on such a strict budget. Next time I’d make sure to experience the sweet parts of their cuisines. 

-

It took a while before the check came and I appreciate that. Usually, the front server passes the check to me as soon as the last fork bite leaves my mouth and I find it disrespectful. It hints that the server wants you to hurry up and leave completely killing the feeling of hospitality. My friend and I were fully ready to go when the bill came. It came up to $63.15 for both of us, not too pricey. We decided to tip 20% then we were on our way out but not before I could check out the bathrooms. There were three available bathrooms in the restaurant. One upstairs, one ground level and the other downstairs. I chose the downstairs bathroom. The staircase down was dark with small, glowing gold light to lead the way. The bathroom was covered in light and dark brown marble. The look gave a beach house theme added with the beige weaved baskets and dried plants spray painted gold. The vases were filled with white seashells. The walls were a sexy, dark gold against a shiny, wide mirror. The light was too dimmed, however. I couldn’t see myself as clearly as I would like. The bathroom was also extremely clean, immaculate even. I could tell the restaurant as a whole took tidiness and organization seriously.  I enjoyed myself thoroughly at this restaurant. The ambiance and décor gave me what I wanted, fully satisfying my eyes as well as mouth with every savory dish. I’m glad I decided to come here as opposed to other establishments. It was affordable yet delivered an essence of great fine dining. I plan on going with another friend for a celebration. I’ll try everything I had my eye on the second time around. The restaurant met all expectations and taught me an extra thing or two about quality service. It ensured a tranquil sense of hospitality and an intuitive and refreshing strategy in service. I’d recommend the restaurant to absolutely anyone.  

[poorvioletdraws]

Tom vs. The Underworld

Chapter 1 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8 | Chapter 9 | Chapter 10

Chapter 2: Santeria, Part 1

I had been moping at home in our kingdom for two days before I decided to leave. No matter how many video games, or ping-pong matches, or the numerous times I hurled pear grenades at Petey as we played dodgeball, I just couldn’t stop thinking about how I left Star on the day we should’ve left for our trip together. My parents were away discussing business matters with the Pigeon Kingdom so that ruled out me talking to anyone about my problems. Brian’s expertise was anger management, and I wasn’t particularly angry over anything that counting backwards from ten would resolve. And Petey is loyal and all, but he doesn’t quite get it. So I decided to just go wherever the road led me and my skeleton horse-drawn carriage.

I picked up my “Alphonse the Worthy’s Atlas of the Multiverse” and started turning its pages. The titular sea captain had documented many dimensions throughout the universe that I thought would be a great starting point for Star and I to choose where to visit on our first getaway. All she had to do was pick one--any one. But she didn’t circle anything. And there were SO many dimensions we could have seen together. There’s the Underwater Dimension, Pixtopia, and even the Plains of Time where Father Time literally maintains time! There’s the Desert Dimension, home of the universe’s best hot dog, the Goblin Dog—I’ve always wanted to try one. There is even the Crystal Dimension where all the renowned, most evilest of beings are imprisoned; sounds pretty metal if you ask me! 

I let out a sigh and closed the book. I sat it down on the table next to the throne chair I had been slumped in and rubbed my fingers to my temple irritated. Was none of those worlds just not interesting to her, or was she hiding the fact that she already had been there before… with Marco?

I pulled myself up and decided to brood over by the window of my carriage for a change. My skeleton horse trotted along a mountainous volcanic region of the Underworld, towing my caravan behind it. I had been travelling for two days now and I didn’t really know where I was headed, I just knew I wanted to get away and go anywhere at this point. I wanted to clear my mind and give Star space. I wanted to see something new. Star and I both would be seeing something new right now if it all worked out. But now I’m travelling through my homeland, the same old Underworld where I have lived all my life. 

Granted, this was a region I had barely been in. My family would travel by portals to get to Lava Lake so we wouldn’t have to waste time travelling the hard way. This area was a divider between the lake and Prickly Plains, where the demon city of my common people resided. I don’t know why I decided to take the long trek through, it just felt like something I had to do. Plus, the change of scenery was not too bad. There were mountains of all sizes and volcanoes oozing out its molten rock like blood from a wound. The path I was on was decorated with charred skulls and skeletons, probably of tourists who foolishly came to the Underworld without a firesuit or any other form of protection from the burst of flames that would emit from the earth spontaneously. But no matter how cool the sight was, I couldn’t stop thinking about Star.

I wanted Star to be with me right now. I wanted her to finally start having fun and enjoy being a teenager for once. She no longer had any obligations to the Butterfly throne. She was done with being a princess and wanted to be free. But I can’t help to think that maybe she wanted to be free from everything that pertained to that aspiration. And since I am a prince, that included me being apart of what held her back as well. 

“Ugh! What does she want me to do? It may be easy for her to just give it all up, but not for me.” I groaned as I rested my chin in the palm of my hand and leaned on the windowsill with my elbow. The Lucitor throne is what I’ve always known to be mine one day. I was proud of it--being a prince. It is my path and something I accept for myself. But I should accept what she wants for herself too. I finally got a second chance for Star and I to be together and I don’t want it to end over me being upset or letting my emotions get in the way again.

Without warning, my skeleton horse halted its pace abruptly and I shifted about on my feet. “Why have we stopped?” I said aloud.

I opened the door of my carriage and stepped out to see where I had ended up. I first noticed a humongous mountain a mile or so before me with bats and vultures dotting the sky around it. It was the tallest point in the Underworld--The Mountain of Boom. And seated within the mountain’s col was what looked to be a small town. There were a few buildings and residences built in to the mountain range as other structures came to the center of its valley. A crowd of demons bustling around a busy marketplace was the forefront of the town that lay ahead. It actually was a wicked sight to behold. The perfect place to get distracted.

I looked up to read the large entrance sign in the shape of a traditional Japanese shrine gateway that I was standing under. “Yomi Town”. Never heard of it. There were a lot of civilians around for it being in a remote location so it must have some interesting secrets behind it.

“Guess I’ll have a look around, not much else to do.” I said while placing my hands in my pockets and walking through the torii. “Get comfortable, skeleton horse.”

“Yes, Master Tom.” My horse uttered from behind me.

I strolled through the town’s marketplace engrossed in fascination. Not only was it loud, but it was crazy busy. Demons and monsters littered the streets haggling over shop items or enjoying the many varieties of food selections to be had. There were handcrafted weapons laid out on embroidered mats and decorative wares such as plates, bowls, clothes, and jewelry all being presented by its sellers to their intrigued buyers. I saw street performers dancing with basilisk boas while others blew fire from their mighty jaws to create authentic glass art. Customers were entering and exiting restaurants, ordering at side carts, or walking around eating their delicacies in order to not miss anything the market had to offer. There was even cute little cerberus puppies on display in the window of a pet store. I just had to check those out!

The little monstrous pups with three heads were tumbling and pawing at each other without a care in the world. I pressed my hands up against the window to admire their adorableness further. There were five of them altogether and they were practically identical. Their jet black fur was smooth and their red eyes shone brightly as they tussled with their siblings. One of the multi-headed canines finally noticed me and came up to the window. It looked up at me with its six big eyes and gave me a tiny fanged smile, wagging its tail playfully. It was so cute!

However, despite all of the excitement, my hand idly returned to its previous location in my pocket and held on to my compact phone. I began to wonder what Star was up to right now. Not being able to text her nonstop was one of the hardest things about this time away. She hadn’t called me since I left, come to think of it. Did she even care where I went? I wonder where she ended up going to… Probably Earth, I bet… Who am I kidding, I know she did…

I closed my eyes and pulled my other hand away from the glass and back into the adjacent pocket of my leather jacket. I sighed as I felt the depression returning. Even though I’m far away from her, I still can’t forget about Star...

“P-Prince Tom?” I heard a feathery voice float through the noise of the multitude of monsters and rest upon my ears. Her voice was familiar and inviting, I knew I heard it some time before. And although it was soft, it was as if everything around us seemed to hush for the female demon that stood a few feet from me.

She was a teenager like me, an assumption I gathered from her appearance. She had gray skin with patches of what resembled small rocklike fragments dotting portions of the parts of her body that was shown. Her golden eyes mirrored the sunlight and her somewhat disheveled scarlet hair spread out like a bird’s wing. But only the right side of her tresses were visible as the left side was concealed by the hood of her black sleeveless sweatshirt she had on under her shoulderless jean jacket. Her dark blue denim shorts were high-waisted and her white knee-high combat-style boots were scuffed from extensive use perhaps. 

I remembered her. She was the delivery girl for that store on Lava Lake that would bring our order every few weeks. I answered the door for her once. She was clumsy and a bit high-strung, but she seemed friendly. Her name was…

… nice to meet you, Raya. Well, see-ya around …

That’s right. It came back to me. 

“Hey there, Raya.” I greeted her by taking my hands out of my pockets and waved at her, my phone being forgotten at the moment.

She looked surprised and said, “You remembered… someone like me?” She began to blush and smiled to herself. “Thank you, Prince Tom…” 

“Hey, I told you last time. No need for the formalities. Just Tom is fine.” I told her.

“Oh, no I couldn’t.” Raya tightened her grip on the bag she was holding. “My parents would be very upset if they knew I spoke to you in such a casual way... I’m sorry, Prince Tom.” She sounded very sorrowful over the thought of the idea.

“Well it’s fine, I guess…” Feeling defeated, I rubbed the back of my head not knowing what to say next. I fixated on the bag in her hands and became interested by its contents being a rather large flat square. “Hey, what’s that?” I asked.

“Oh, just a vinyl record.” Raya reached in and pulled it out. I recognized the band on the front and got a little excited.

“Are you for real?! Love Sentence! I love them! I’m like their number one fan.” I didn’t notice I had grabbed on to it during my fit of fangirling. I continued to gush over them, “What the!! This album is hard to find and contains all of their songs from when they first started out, like before they even were famous! There’s even a lot of never before released stuff on here! So you’re a huge fan too?!” 

She said without hesitation. “No, never heard of them.”

If this were a cartoon, this is the part where I would face fault.

“What?! Then why did you buy such a widely-sought-after-by-fans album such as that?” I exclaimed dumbfounded.

“Oh is it that rare?” Raya looked it over perplexed.

“Yes, of course, have you not been listening to what I’ve been saying!” I was astonished by her naivety over such a remarkable boy band such as Love Sentence. 

“... So that’s why it was the last one.” She said nonchalantly.

“WHAT?!” I felt fire explode from me as I yelled in disbelief. Keep it together now, keep it together. 

I quickly calmed myself down and pleaded with Raya, “You have to let me buy that from you.”

Raya put the record back in the back and looked at me worriedly. “Oh… I’m sorry, Prince Tom, I can’t do that…”

“Why not? I’ll pay double what you paid, anything actually! Please!” I had grabbed on to her shoulders and begged for the album.

“I can’t because it’s a gift…” Raya said meekly, the gray on her cheeks were turning pink.

“Oh.” I squeaked out. Well that was a definite open mouth insert foot moment. I dropped down from 10 to 0 on the freak-out scale and could now think with a clear head again. I quickly released my grasp on her shoulders and it was my turn to blush due to the awkwardness that I had caused. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have touched you like that. And I shouldn’t have tried to pay for something that is a gift of yours…”

Raya smiled at me and said happily, “Actually, Prince Tom, it’s kind of nice seeing how passionate you are about music. I’m the same way really.” 

“Yea… Still that was a jerk move on my part. I still have a lot to learn about boundaries obviously… So I’m sorry.” I apologized as I was still kicking myself for how I acted.

“Thank you.” She gave me another sincere smile and accepted my apology.

I didn’t want to pry but I still wanted to know why she bought that record. So I asked, “So… you buying that for a brother, or a sister, or a boyfriend maybe?”

Raya shook her head and said, “Every year my family comes here on vacation and there is always some one-of-a-kind finds out here. I try to buy one souvenir for each of my friends back home since they don’t get the opportunity to leave our hometown very often…My friend Blair loves this band so I had to get it.”

“Wow… that’s pretty cool of you.” I praised her kindness. There is also more to this place than I thought and since her and her family come here enough to know about it, I had a great idea come to mind. “Hey, how about I help you shop for your friends as a way to make up for how I acted?”

Raya grew nervous again and said, “Oh no, I don’t want to take up your own time here that you could be spending with your family or… your girlfriend?”

Upon hearing her rebuttal, my heart skipped a beat. I started thinking about Star again. If only you knew, Raya. You won’t be taking up any time that I would have been spending with her because she didn’t even want to come with me anywhere… 

I shook the thought away and tried keeping my composure as I told her, “Nah, it’s cool. I’m travelling alone actually. This is my first time here...” I began itching the back of my head, unsure of how she would handle such a proposal, but I continued anyway. “I was thinking… Since your family comes here more than I ever have, do you think you could also show me around?”

Raya put her hand to her chin and was actually considering what I had asked of her. “Well, if Your Highness… I mean, If you insist, Prince Tom. It would be rude if I turned down your request.” She began fiddling with her fingers. 

“Awesome, let’s go then!” I was ecstatic. This was a great chance to get distracted. I started strutting forward but then froze in my steps. I looked back at her and said, “Uh… Where to first?”

She giggled and we walked down the main street together.

There was so much to see and so many novelty stores that I never would have expected from a town so deep in the mountains. This section of Yomi Town containing the marketplace and shopping center was known as the Tsukiyomi District. It was the social hub for practically everything. Raya showed me the music store where she had bought the vinyl record. What made it stand out from many others was the signed instruments it had from popular bands and infamous singers--I even saw one of Eclipsa’s skeleton guitars on display. While there earlier, Raya was debating on whether she should buy “The Box of Applause” for one of her friends and after a second opinion by me, she did (seemed different, but cool). Raya scored some gourmet coffee beans from an espresso stand as a gift and I pointed out a seller closeby with all sorts of exotic crystals she bought as another one. We finally picked out chocolate scorpions from a dessert store for the last friend on her mental list--it being a banned delicacy back in Prickly Plains--and we tried a few for ourselves.

In between our search for souvenirs we were also able to do some of the recreational activities Yomi Town had to offer--we went ziplining through the fiery caverns, played a few games of flamethrower tag at an arcade, and we caught a local band performing at Yomi Town’s cemetery event center while passing by. I even tried extreme hot air balloon racing with the speed being controlled by miniature dragon flames; now how sweet is that! I let Raya beat me though, I swear. I was actually quite impressed with how this day was turning out.

Raya knew a lot about Yomi Town too. She told me about the Mountain of Boom being the largest volcano in the Underworld and that when it erupts its vibration is felt throughout all of Mewni. It’s lava empties into crevasses around the mountain, kind of like a fondue fountain. There’s a hot spring at its base where her family is staying that has water with temperatures reaching up to 1,000 degrees due to the lava flowing underneath.

It was towards the end of our adventurous day where I slipped up. We had made it to a clothing store where we were trying on outrageous fashion styles and having so much fun laughing over the choices we showcased in front of a set of full-length mirrors. 

Raya and I both were making vogue faces while wearing matching spider hats and spiderweb shades when I mindlessly said, “Haha! Oh wait, let me take a selfie so I can send it to--” 

I stopped myself before I could finish but I was already holding my compact phone up as a reflex to snap a photo. Send it to Star? What was I thinking. Why would I say that? Would Star even care anyway?

Raya didn’t notice I had cut my sentence short and she agreed with a simple “Sure.”

I went ahead and took the picture for the sake of not alerting the demon girl of my sudden switch in emotion; but I didn’t send it. I was somewhat happy, from what my forced expression on the photo suggested, but deep down I was still bothered by my situation with Star. After all this, still?!

I removed the hat and shades and sat them back on the display rack. I’m sure it was written all over my face how I was feeling right now. I didn’t want to bother Raya with my problems so it would probably be best if I stepped aside for a moment.

“Hey, I’m going to get some fresh air, ‘kay?” I mumbled. Without waiting for a response from her, I walked out of the store and wandered over to a courtyard that was in proximity to the marketplace but away from all of the hustle and bustle. I stood under a large black tree with bare branches and frowned wistfully at it.

I can’t believe myself sometimes. After everything I’ve done today I still can’t get Star out of my head. She was probably having her own fun right now, with Marco. Not giving me a second thought… Seriously, what is wrong with me, why am I not good enough...

“Is everything alright, Prince Tom.” I heard Raya’s amiable voice as she carefully stepped up from behind me. So she did follow me outside...

I didn’t want to lie to her and I didn’t want to hide the reason for me ending up in this town. But these were my own problems and after she dedicated her time to me (to keep me distracted) she didn’t deserve my drama or baggage. She could’ve been doing anything she wanted, but she hung out with me. She wasted her time for me to show me around a place that she has been coming to for years. Yet I was the one being a downer? It seemed she had fun today, but did she really?

“Prince Tom?” She repeated with some worry in her tone after I forgot to answer her the first time.

“Sorry, I just… started thinking about my girlfriend…” I confessed with my back still turned on her.

“Oh! Is she okay?” Raya inquired concerned. 

“Yea… I think she is. I’m just… We’re having a…” I was struggling with what to say. This was my business and I needed to handle it on my own. “Hey, t-thanks for today.” I choked out trying to deflect from my growing depression. Why did I feel I were on the verge of tears.

“Prince Tom?” 

I heard her lightly step forward as my eyes welled up further. I croaked out, “You know, I don’t have a lot of friends… And it seems the ones I do have, the ones who are supposed to be my best friends, would rather spend time together than with me. And you have been SO kind to me today for me to just start acting like this. All I wanted was to relax and have a great time while I’m away. I just wish it were always like this when I’m with her... I’m sorry you had to put up with me and do things you’ve probably done a million times. You probably had more important stuff to do and I selfishly took you away from that. I can be such a buzzkill so I understand if you’re ready to just go--”

“Prince Tom, don’t say something like that.” Raya objected. Although her voice was still very sweet-sounding, it had invoked a formidable presence that rendered me speechless to what she had to say next. I turned to face her to see she too appeared to be holding back tears. She walked closer to me and put both of my hands in hers and said, “There will never be anything more important than showing you, our Prince, around a place that has been apart of me for years. You even helped me immensely with gift shopping, which I am so grateful to you for. I’m glad I was able to share with you the fun things I like doing. And for you to be happy, well, it makes me happy witnessing that…”

I still couldn’t find my words, “Raya… I…”

Within an instant, she had released her grasp and stepped back from me. Her voice became genial once again as she coaxed me further, “When you’re ready to talk, I’ll listen. Your friends are probably just occupied with issues of their own, so it may seem like they don’t have time for you. Just try not to take it too personally, and most of all, try not to let it ruin your time away from what is upsetting you.”

I felt my anxiety beginning to fade from what she said. Over the past few days I felt so empty. I felt that no one understood or even cared. I was trying to feel that void of not being acknowledged or not being wanted. But then I came here. This place and Raya was starting to help me feel whole again. And for only knowing her for a short time, I was glad I had found a friend like her.

“Raya, thank you so much for that.” I expressed my gratitude toward the demon girl.

As if on cue with my words, an ominous bell began to toll in the distance.

“What’s that?” I asked as I scanned the area for the origin of the ringing.

“Oh, that’s just the temple where they do all the rituals and sacrifices and tortures, you know, stuff like that.” Raya spoke as if it was just some ordinary, everyday occurrence.

“Okay I gotta see that.” I said. Well, for the Underworld, it is kind of the norm.

“Alright, I’ll show you.” Raya went to pick up the bags of gifts that had been sitting on the ground by her feet.

“Here, let me get that.” I volunteered. 

Raya became flustered and said, “Oh, you don’t have to do that, Prince Tom. I don’t want to burden you with having to carry my gifts.” 

“Nah, it’s cool.” I held my hand up and the bags began to effortlessly float into the air the same way the packages did when Raya came to our lake house. “‘Kay, ready?”

Raya was amazed by my telekinesis. “That’s amazing you can do something like that. Thank you!”

“Yea, I guess it is.” I couldn’t help but grin over her compliment. 

The two of us began to walk away from the courtyard, not noticing two gray figures that had been crouching behind some bushes hop up and take off in the opposite direction.

Raya and I rounded the corner as the gigantic bell recessed in its tower ceased its powerful resonance. I was expecting to see an ancient temple erected with stone pillars or something basic along those lines, but instead, what my eyes discovered was truly magnificent. It was an enormous cathedral designed in the style of perfect Gothic architecture. It was made of black stone that glimmered from the surrounding fire that spewed from the ground steadily. And the craftsmanship was superior. There was a significant amount of excruciating detail no matter where your eyes wandered, right down to the last arch. I was mesmerized.

“It’s… It’s…” I stuttered as I couldn’t quite think of a word to describe it.

“Wicked, isn’t it?” Raya stared proudly at the building. She asked if I wanted to go inside but I think she already knew the answer from how bewitched I was already in the temple’s beauty. 

We walked under a series of flying buttresses that outlined the foyer of the temple. And I just couldn’t stop gawking at the sight of the art on the walls. There was depictions of torture and agony brought on by fire-breathing demonic figures and satanic language etched in its borders. Any Mewman would cower and flee but to us demons, it was glorious.

I stopped marveling long enough to declare to her that this is probably the coolest thing I’ve seen all day but she had started walking through a great passageway. I quickly followed behind her to enter a room even more darkly majestic. We walked into the grand hall that was dimly lit by floor-length candelabras positioned systematically near the walls and toward the center. There were rows of benches facing an altar made of a numerous amount of skulls with what appeared to be blood dripping down from it.

“Darn, seems like we missed them harvest the blood from the unicorn.” Raya mumbled to herself.

“Hey what’s that?” I pointed over to two large statues that faced away from each other behind the altar. We walked over to them and I saw a table with small wooden boxes filled with beads and rope used for making what seemed to be necklaces. I stepped up and started examining each one. There were beads shaped like eyes, fangs, bats, teeth, and skulls. Upon further investigation, I could see that in the hands of the statues were finished necklaces hanging from them.

“These are the founders of Yomi Town, Izanami and Izanagi.” Raya explained as she came to my side. “They were demon lords from long ago that originated from this region and became known as the Underworld’s greatest fighters of that time. My mother always told me stories about them during bedtime when I was little. I’m sure your own mother did the same…”

I intently watched Raya as she spoke. She really did know a lot about this town--No, the Underworld’s history. More than I did, that’s for sure. My parents and advisors focused my rearing on what my duties as a prince are and what they will be as a king. Although I may be the prince, I have never been to Yomi Town; a place of great importance to my people and home to two legends. I’ve never even been to Prickly Plains either, come to think of it. And that’s the home of my subjects. Raya’s home... My people don’t even know who I am or what I’m like. I mean, when I first met Raya she was afraid I would harm her. Am I really that out of touch with my own people and their lives? Have I been too preoccupied with what has been going on in Star’s life that I’ve neglected my own? If I’m to rule this world one day, I need to understand it and be more involved in it than I have been. 

“Please, tell me more.” I implored her. 

Raya continued, “Alright, Prince Tom... Well, Izanami and Izanagi were close companions and fought alongside each other during many battles. Their most famous--and final legacy--was what had transpired from the war against the demons and Mewmans. Izanami was captured during an ambush on the battlefield and held prisoner by the Mewman army. When Izanagi tried to save her, he was too late. They burned her as a show of force to the demon army, her necklace being the only thing he could recover from her ashes. And although he fought fiercely for her revenge, he wasn’t the same without her by his side. When his army retreated, he kept fighting until he died in battle… alone.” 

“Tragic…” I murmured as I studied the statues.

“So as a tribute to them, this temple was built. Other events and activities take place here but this ceremony is the main highlight of the temple. The giving of the necklace.” Raya pointed at the hands of the statues. “Because Izanami and Izanagi were separated, tragedy ensued and created the key factor for our species losing the war. And even after the treaty was signed between the Mewmans and demons, many still do not trust them and fear they will try to separate us from those close to us again. Izanami and Izanagi were strong because of their unity. The necklaces solidifies a union by two people who come before the statues--which are the sacred presence of the demon lords--and seek their blessing to never have their own companionship separated.”

Upon hearing the end of Raya’s retelling of the two demon lords’ story, an idea popped into my head.

“Hey, you know what? We should make one together.” I suggested.

“W-h-what?!” Raya stammered.

“Yea.” I responded unabashedly as I started picking through the boxes of beads. “To symbolize our friendship.” 

“Oh. Okay…” Raya said with flushed cheeks as she started helping me choose what should go on our necklace.

Within a few short minutes, it was complete and I held it up to show it to her. “Look, it’s finished! Do you like it?” I said exultantly.

“Y-yes.” she mumbled while still blushing nervously.

I turned toward the statue and said, “Now, let's hang it on--”

“EEEEEEEAAAAAAAAHHHH!!”

A blood curdling shriek came from the hallway and caused the necklace to drop from my hands in an instant. The frightening screech carried on as the commencement of chanting voices were now heard as well.

“Oh! They’re about to torture someone!” Raya exclaimed.

“What?! We have to see this!” I said excitedly. “Come on!”

I ran out of the room toward the screaming. It took Raya a moment to follow me as she looked back at the altar once more.

After spending some time in the temple, we finally headed on our way. We had been walking down by some of the shops again while talking about our favorite torture devices and how it would feel to be the victim in a situation like that. 

I was on a jovial high as I told her, “That was the best part about today for sure!”

“Well I hope just not the torture.” She remarked.

“No way! The whole temple itself was freakin’ awesome! I’m so glad you showed it to me!” I clarified punched my fists up into the air triumphantly .

Raya halted in her tracks and fixated on me as a smile began to tug , “I’m glad you liked it, Prince Tom… It is my favorite place about this town…”

“Really?”

Raya nodded as her cheeks reddened once again. “Every year that’s usually where I spend most of my time… Something about it is just so calming to me. When you walk in everything that troubles you seems to go away, at least for a little while. So I hope it had the same effect on you…”

I gazed over at Raya and felt something I couldn't really explain. This whole time I was too busy thinking of being distracted when I failed to recognize something else. Raya wanted me to enjoy myself. She didn’t really know me but genuinely she wanted me to still experience what this town could do for me. Had she known all along that I came here for this sort of retreat? Or could she just sense that I needed this? It was true that I felt some relief but once she had put it back in perspective, I tried my hardest not to think of what I was trying to forget. Fortunately for me, there was something, or should I say someone, lying in wait for the opportunity to help me further.

“Raya!” A powerful and intimidating bellow came from behind me, causing me to almost jump out of my skin.

I turned around hesitantly to see a tall looming figure with a muscular build and dark gray skin. He wasn’t anywhere near the height of my Mom, maybe half her size at least. He had long, sharp horns like a springbok and wild crimson hair. His glowing yellow eyes were in a glare as his fangs shown. Although he was very menacing-looking, he was wearing a baby pink tank that read “Gneiss Guy”.

“Hi Dad…” Raya darted her head down as she greeted him. 

Oh it’s her Dad. I relaxed a bit.

“So who’s your friend? This BOY!” He growled as he placed emphasis on the gender portion of his statement, the ground beneath him cracking.

I tightened up a bit and could feel the sweat break out over my face.

“Oh!” She perked up and held her right hand out toward me as if she were presenting me. “This is Prince Tom Lucitor.”

“H-Hi…” I replied shakily.

Raya’s father’s eyes shot towards me as they sparked even more, I felt my heart stop. He was silent and still snarling. But then all of a sudden, the killing intent that was emitting from the great Stone Demon did a complete 180. His face grew soft as he gave me the biggest smile I’ve ever seen. “Ah, Your Highness. It’s been some time since I’ve seen you. You were barely able to peek over your crib if my memory serves me correctly. My apologies for not recognizing you, our Young Prince. I am Albion, head of the Belmonte Family.” 

He bowed. I sighed in relief.

“Raya!” His loud roar was directed at his daughter now but still caused me to jump again. “It was Piers and Peter who alerted me of your whereabouts and that you were hanging out with a BOY, only to come and find that it is His Majesty’s son! Why didn’t you come get the rest of your family to greet the Young Prince? Unforgivable!”

It was Raya’s turn to stiffen up in nervousness.

“No, no, It’s alright. We just met. Well actually, we met before. But--” I pleaded for her.

“Your Highness, will you please do our family, the Belmontes, the honor of courting you!” He proclaimed, though it seemed to be more like a demand than a request as he knelt to the ground with his head touching it. I faintly remembered that Raya put her body in the same position when she first met me.

“... C-courting? I do--” I stuttered, a bit confused by his word choice.

“Thank you, Your Highness!” He cried out happily as he scooped me up and took me away with Raya trailing behind us.

[redefinethegrind]

Borderline Personality Disorder, The Will To Power, Spirituality, and Happiness: tying it all together

I am writing this manuscript on Borderline Personality Disorder because I want to connect to others with the same diagnosis. I am a provider with the diagnosis and I have an intimate understanding of what my brain goes through on a day to day basis. It is fascinating to me that something as simple as going to the gas station and buying a coffee could cause so much anxiety and grief. It has, however tied me up. I have spent hours trying to gather the courage to understand the perfect way to obtain a cup of coffee and it has impacted the flow of more than one of my days on this earth. That is ridiculous, but seemingly unavoidable to me when my anxiety, obsessive thought, splitting, and mood imbalances all hit at once.

My perception of self has never equaled the perception that others tell me that they see. People around me assure me that I am funny, charismatic, outgoing, caring, and a good person. In my head I often feel that I am disgusting, pathetic, weak, and a loser. I feel like a parasite sometimes while I fully strive to be a giving human being. That is the faulty wiring of my brain that I adopted sometime in early childhood. I have formed my personality around hating myself and feeling like I am never good enough. I don’t even know what I am trying to measure up to.

Formerly I thought that feeling never good enough was a positive thing for me. I thought it would push me to achieve more as I rose in life. I wanted to be the greatest human being in the world and I hated myself for not being that person already. I set an unreasonably high bar and laughed at myself when I failed to achieve success. If I failed at any task I would use it as evidence that I was indeed the failure I had come to know. If I succeeded I would write it off as something that should have been done better or more efficiently. It was unreasonable and counterproductive to my being to have those thoughts, but I could not make them go away.

I began seeking solace in material possessions at some point in my life. I was buying expensive cars and bigger homes. The material things would distract me from my inner conflict and pain. Ultimately, I realized that material possessions can never fill the void that I was feeling. Human connection is the only thing that can satiate that craving. I am indeed a human being. BPD has made me truly feel alien at times though and unable to connect with others. That is a fallacious thought and I now recognize it as such.

I have had days where I look around and everything seems foreign to me. During periods of stress and duress I would swear that people’s faces change and even the colors of my surroundings change. My inner voice takes on a different tone. My perception of the world warps with my mood. I feel it intensely and deeply. I am not making it up or crying for attention as I was led to believe as a child. My world genuinely changes based on my mood and faculties. That very subjective nature of my own reality makes this personality disorder difficult to pin down and properly treat regardless of the time and energy I dedicate.

This had led me to studying the very nature of consciousness and reality. I have read books by Jeffrey Schwartz and Caroline Leaf on neuroplasticity. I have studied quantum mechanics, relativity, anatomy, physiology, and psychology seeking concrete reasons for my sensation and perception. I became familiar with Deepak Chopra’s views on tying quantum mechanics to our consciousness. I started to see that I was not alone in viewing this reality as a very mailable and ever-changing substrate. I saw that humanities greatest minds were struggling with the same questions and looking on with both awe and frustration.

I wanted nothing more than to understand what my perception of consciousness, space, and time, truly boiled down to and to share my experience with other human beings. The kinds of thoughts I have are not typically talked about over morning coffee or the evening’s spaghetti. My thoughts are sometime uniquely Ernie ‘isms and I must accept that. Having BPD makes me immediately feel lonely though as I struggle to connect with others on concepts and ideas. I am well adapted at helping others in my professional life because I have an outlined task at hand and an end goal. I actually think my personality disorder makes me a better provider in some ways because knowing the type of person I am, I do not pass judgement. I am able to relate to others and feel empathy. Because my emotions are felt so extremely I am able to understand the emotions of others.

One maladaptive behavior I have taken to over the years is stifling my emotions completely on the surface. I have found myself to be suppressing the expression of my emotions to the point of operating in a robot-like fashion. I remember actually consciously choosing this process as a young child, as young as 5 years old maybe. I chose to suffocate emotions of anger and to sit in a hallway for hours on end one day. As I remember it I was at a relative’s house I did not want to be at and instead of participating in any social activities I sat in a hallway staring at the wall. Even at that young age I would sometimes skip breakfast and lunch as to isolate intentionally and not participate in normal activities. This went from a conscious decision as an early child to a subconscious reaction as an adult. Where the switch happened I don’t know, but now I catch myself avoiding social situations, meals, or performing simple daily tasks without having ever thought about it. It will be something that another person will point out. “Aren’t you hungry?” and I will think “Hmm, I don’t know, let me think about it… I guess I am hungry, I didn’t eat lunch.” Sometimes I will find a reason. It is like I throw a subconscious temper tantrum. I don’t even recognize myself doing it at this point and I wish I could control it. I am now monitoring my mood and looking for cues in order to correct the maladaptive behavior. This is strange as I am 33 years old.

I recall an experience in preschool when I was asked to sit in time out for coming at another kid with a plastic chainsaw. I took my time out of two minutes as I remember it, without fuss, then I would not get up on time in. I refused to get up for the rest of the day in fact. I made the punishment intentionally extreme as a choice. I remember choosing to not stand up as an act of self-disparaging rebellion. I remember thinking “I can sit here all day in time out just to show these people it doesn’t bother me.” As an adult I evaluate the behavior. I am thinking it was a way for me to say “I can’t be broken by your punishment.” I took a strong nihilist stance early on. Rules were ridiculous to me and whether or not I was supposed to suffer I would refuse to. I think I was trying to show them that punishment would be useless. They could not change me. They could not break me. I was in charge. I think I needed to feel in control. I believe it was overcompensation for a life that was truly out of my control. That is the best theory I can put together as an adult.

This sense of loss of control and my struggle to maintain a sense of it went on to define many aspects of my personality. Perhaps I was wanting that preschool teacher to look at me and say, “enough is enough, you don’t deserve to be punished” and to look at the ridiculous idea of changing another sentient being’s social behavior. I never understood why someone else could make rules or boundaries that I had to abide by. I think even as a young child I found them to be repulsive and insulting… arbitrary at best.

Was this manipulation? Was I truly engaging in a mind game with an adult at such a young age? In my mind the internal voice kept telling me to sit at that table in time out. To just wait it out. To see what happens. Who would break first? Not Ernie. That is what I did. It was a small event that essentially meant nothing, but in my mind, I can still relive it and feel the same emotions I felt then. I needed to show these people that though they could physically put me in restraints, it didn’t change a damn thing.

As an adult I saw the same behavior in a woman I call my twin. She seems to have many of the same thought processes and beliefs that I do. She struggles with boundaries and guidelines. She finds life to be mundane at best most days. She wonders why in the hell someone with so much mental energy has to be caged in such a dull environment. I stood in her way during a minor mincing of words we were having. I blocked her path to exit our shared kitchen. I could see her anger building. She was absolutely not going to give me a single answer at that time no matter how much I demanded it. She was appalled that I could stand in her way and physically overpower her. Though I could block her way, I could not get her to speak a single word. I could not break her. She was in control. She struggled and longed to have the ultimate sense of control. She could be physically restrained but even her living twin, the person she connects with deepest on this planet, was not going to be able to pull a single utterance from her conscious mind if she didn’t will it so. She had to win.

I saw myself in her that day. I saw an absolutely unbreakable spirit. What twinsie and I share is beyond physical, sexual, or psychological. It is deep and I cannot label it. I have never seen it in two other people. It is uniquely ours to share. We have something that the rest of this world could only dream of. I am the one person that she will ultimately break down for in this world and I am proud to be the one person that will break down for her. To take away those secure walls and expose our vibrant inner beauty. I love seeing her stand true and proud, a defiant lotus that the rest of this world doesn’t have access to. I am actually driven by being the one person that she lets in to her secretive world. That is how I define true love. I will absolutely break down and give up my sense of security and become vulnerable to share the ultimate connection with my true twin flame. I feel as though I long to both break through her every wall and to allow her to simultaneously break through every one of mine.

That is something I was seeking in this life and BPD was limiting me from sharing. A connection. The world felt alien. Until I felt someone with the same splitting, angst, core values, and pain I didn’t think I would ever find someone who would understand me. That feeling of loneliness was overwhelming and was defining my life. It left me standing alone in a crowded room.

Back to childhood, I look to an incident on the school yard. I was dangling from the monkey bars. I remember kicking my friend directly in the testicles intentionally while playing “chicken.” In my mind I knew exactly what I was doing, and I intended to kick him in the most painful area possible to drop him from that collection of steel. I was a child, I don’t know why I wanted to hurt him, but my thought was “I need to hurt this person right now.” I am still friends with him today, his name is Josh. We went on to discuss spiritual matters as adults. That day on the school yard I brought my leg forth and connected as intended right in his groin. I then remember the teacher coming to me and telling the other children that it was an accident. I bought into her story and lied about my intentions. I claimed I did it on accident. I took the teachers story and went with it. I saw that I could get away with murder. I saw that given the right social performance I could do anything and spin it as something it wasn’t.

Unfortunately, that ‘social performance’ aspect became central to my childhood. I felt like an actor much of the time. I was playing a role to get the results I wanted from every given situation. I never let even my family know the real me. I only opened up to a few core friends, and even then, I never fully opened up and showed my real core. I felt vulnerable if people were able to figure me out, so I always acted. I would pretend to be engaged in some boring TV show just to throw people off of understanding my true interests. It was like I knew I was surrounded by people that I really didn’t want to connect with so I would connect with them on things I didn’t care about so that I could then have false relationships with them. By maintaining the superficial relationship, I was in control. If I ever felt comfortable enough I would break down the superficial connection and allow a true, deep connection to exist. I can count on one hand the number of people I have ever started that process with. The people I would feel comfortable truly connecting with were special and I would show them my true vulnerabilities and interests in music, art, video games, and science on my own terms. To give them some sense of control in getting to know me was my ultimate way of letting them know that I truly loved them.

I don’t know why I complicated my social interactions so much, but I did. It was elaborate and took a lot of my thought process. It continues to do so and I do it now without conscious thought or effort. The truth is, I am able to ‘bond’ with anyone on just about anything because I have become a chameleon at blending in when needed. I can fake being interested in just about anything when needed and people automatically see me as their friend. The truth is, deep down I have not connected and with most of those people I share surface level connection I do not wish to have anything deeper. I do not wish to let them in. I genuinely have come to love all people and I actually enjoy getting to know them, but initially that wasn’t the case. Early on I simply played a role and felt completely detached emotionally from almost everyone I came into contact with. I now get my sense of well-being from being able to keep everyone calm and genuinely liking me. I don’t know why, but my personality has developed in that fashion. It seems that if someone has a problem with me I genuinely internalize it and let it gnaw at my gut deep down. On the surface, however, I have made a habit of acting completely unphased by anything no matter how harsh. It is like I feel one thing and exhibit another on the surface. My personality is complex and maybe even inappropriate.

I knew at some point my truth was my own truth. I could easily manipulate reality one way or another even as a child. I found myself in deep thought over emotions and relationships. If something was not going my way as a child I would do something like go out of my way to put myself in an obviously vulnerable position in order to gain some leverage in the form of getting an adults attention and therefor gain control over my environment when the adult found me to be in a precarious situation and would come to my rescue whether it be mentally or physically. I could use my projection of deep sadness to get adults to feel sorry for me. I could use a projection of being excited about something that everyone else found repulsive as a way to get people to back out of my personal space and think I was weird. I was in control. I was letting people in who I loved and pushing people away who I didn’t. I was learning more about those people while they learned nothing about me. It was a guaranteed safe place.

I now see my eccentric likes and dislikes as an elaborate filtering mechanism. I would put up a wall of weirdness and if someone actually tolerated getting through all of the weird parts of Ernie they had earned the right to get to know the true Ernie. They could get through and see that I am indeed a loving, caring, compassionate, gentle, altruistic human being. But first they had to wade through a sea of dead baby jokes, menstrual blood tinged cottage cheese and conspiracy theories that Ernie also finds amusing.

The good energy that makes me up is also capable of appreciating the dark side of life and finding it amusing. It is important to me that my true friends see that and know that all in all I am a good person but that I can laugh and muse at the darkness. That having no boundaries and no limits is simply my way of being truly open to experiencing every aspect of life. That being able to test my power one day doesn’t mean I want to be in control, because the very next day I might test my vulnerability. I want to experience life to it’s fullest and most extreme. I am wired that way. I want to feel fully in control while knowing fully well that ultimately I am powerless.

Looking back, it seems like a child’s cry for attention. As an adult I think that sense of control over emotional relationships gave me comfort in a way. I was more comfortable knowing that I was leading the adults on and letting them think I was a certain person when in my mind I was not that guy. I am trying to honestly explore that feeling and to see if I am indeed driven by the want to control and manipulate or if this is truly involuntary… or at least to explore what it is like living in a mind with BPD

In my first marriage I connected fairly quickly with a quiet girl who had a somewhat bumpy past. Growing up she was also left to fend for herself at times, at least that is what I gathered from the stories she told me. I connected with this girl and we spent much time together. We learned each other’s personalities, likes, and dislikes. I was not always honest in the beginning. I would, for example, say I didn’t like sea food when in reality I loved eating fish. I would choose to not like it because she didn’t like it. I would lie to connect with her. That went on for the first few months of our young relationship. I was 17 years old when I met this girl. I was still figuring out who I was, and I was forming it with another person around a process of manipulating in the context of borderline personality disorder.

The relationship had ups and downs, but early on I was the first to say “I Love You.” I was the first to make the extreme moves and then use my brain to fill in the rest later, trying to logically connect the dots. I saw this girl in a hallway in high-school and my first thoughts were “could you ever marry her, would you be with her forever, would she be the love of your life?” I immediately began planning to go all in with her after we first agreed that we were dating. I escalated things quickly and vowed to spend eternity with her because she gave me the time of day. Most people don’t think like that. I did. I was all in day one. I also at the same time felt like I would destroy her life by letting her get with such a loser like me. I wanted to love her and to save her by pushing her far away from me. The selfish part of me needed her, the selfless part of me needed her to be free.

I started off spending my every waking moment obsessing about this girl and ultimately did go on to marry her, but in the process, something strange happened as I did not understand my brain at the time. I would get comfortable with her and things would be going well, and I would assume that I was not doing enough or good enough for her. I would then create tension and angst in the relationship and pressure her away from me. I would push and push. Because I was not perfect. I would always assume that there was some flaw or fault in myself that just wasn’t good enough and I would use it against us. I would tell her time and time again that I was not good enough for her and that I was a pile of garbage and that she could do better. That was my depression seeping in and it was not a valid thought. The example that I read from a person with BPD that really stuck with me is this: “I could see a person begging for money. If I didn’t give them money I would kick myself for being selfish. If I did give them money I would kick myself for not giving enough.” It was like no matter what I gave it was never enough. I was wired to believe that my all out best effort was going to fall short and therefor I was doomed to be a piece of trash.

The pattern of constantly self-loathing and memorizing disparaging remarks created emotional turmoil and I would then push my partner away and reel her back in. This happened over and over again. It was exhausting. It resulted in significant damage. My personality was unstable enough that she never knew what she was going to get. She spent her time going out of her way to keep me from going insane and I constantly tested boundaries. What would she truly tolerate? Did she love me enough to put up with this? Unfortunately, this also enabled the borderline behavior to exacerbate. It went from something that I was doing at age 5 as an experiment to something that I couldn’t control as an adult. My emotions had become out of my control and they were being used to shape relationships in my life. It was chaotic and seemed a bit peculiar when compared with the way other people seemed to feel.

I have often felt alien and alone in this world. I felt that other people could not possibly feel so disconnected to their fellow man while fully knowing that they are indeed human themselves. Now reading the literature, I am encouraged that many people feel just like me. Alien. Robotic. Foreign. They have unknowingly programmed themselves to inappropriately use emotions to influence relationships as some sort of response to stress. The problem with BPD is, by the time it is active and roaring, it is too late to look back. It becomes the norm. The ego is established and without a great deal of introspection, guilt, pain, and rethatching, identifying these things as maladaptive can seem undefeatable. As a young adult I lost control of my emotions quite a bit and I was a bit all over the place. I didn’t recognize why, or even see it as a problem. It was just me. I would have outbursts of anger at others, at myself, at friends, and at family. Relationships would seem to be crashing to me when others had no clue what I was even focusing on. I would sometimes just stay quiet and disappear. I remember that was my way of quitting bands or quitting jobs… I would simply stop showing up, stop answering phonecalls, and just cease to exist. I would back out of relationships rather than face the conflict of admitting that perhaps it was time that I moved on.

I didn’t want to face the conflict in person, eye to eye. I didn’t want to let anyone down. I truly wanted to give my all to make everyone happy, but at the same time, a part of me was dying inside by continuing to be fake. I felt like an actor. I felt like I couldn’t simply stand up sometimes and say “this music we are making isn’t what I want to make” and walk away. I wanted to be in control of the writing and creative process but instead I would remain silent in the background playing drums and flexing to keep others happy. All the while, my unhappiness was boiling over and being exhibited through my avatar (as I have come to call my body) in silence and palpable disconnection. Where other people wanted to make music to make crowds of people think they were cool, I wanted to make music that connected spiritually with myself. Sometimes my peers would view me as a weird guy just wanting to make weird music for the sake of being different, a cry for attention perhaps. That wasn’t the case. I wanted to write the kind of music that truly expressed how I was feeling.

I wanted to the go on to perform that music on my own terms in my own way for others to either appreciate or reject. I longed to connect to others through that music, but if they couldn’t appreciate it that was okay too. I felt disconnected from my bandmates who simply wanted to perform a couple of cover songs for a room full of drunks. I was not there to entertain, I was there to teach and experience. That is what interested me and ultimately why I wanted to quit every band I was ever in. I have not been able to find another person who feels the same way, of wanting to create something that we can all connect on at a visceral level.

I would give my all to writing and performing drum and vocal parts for some of the bands I was in over the years. I would try to contribute my musings through ironic lyrics and nuanced drum fills. All the while I felt underappreciated. I felt like I was just a guy who was there to fill in where any drummer could just sit in. I felt that my views on the world and lyrics weren’t taken seriously, as much as they were written in satire, that is the seriousness that I intended. To satirically point out the ridiculous nature of heavy metal’s backbone which is isolating and pushing people away more and more as they seek the next “legit” band and scoff at “posers.” I wanted to bring these people together and give them a sense of “maybe we’re all in the same boat and we should just have a good time” rather than worrying about how freaking gay breakdowns and hardcore dancing was.

I lost music somewhere along the way because I could never find like-minded people to play it with. I wanted to simply connect. I wanted to make music for the sake of music, connection, love, solidarity, and to express our feelings with the human experience. I didn’t want to replicate what other people were already doing. I didn’t want to entertain a room full of people on a Friday night. I didn’t want a free bar tab or a backstage pass. I didn’t want paid for a single gig. I just wanted to see who else was feeling what I was feeling. I still want that, but I don’t know where to look.

Moving on, ultimately, I went on to end my first marriage and I had reasoned that there was just too much damage done and that there was no way to mend from the amount of times I had pushed and pulled this girl. I also had begun falling in love with another girl who happened to share many personality traits with me: the aforementioned twinsie. I finally felt that deep connection with another human being that I had been seeking for so long, and it was on the tail end of me trying to come to the conclusion that I was in fact not human refuse.

That connection that I mention is a key part of my personality. It is central to my sense of well-being that I be understood, appreciated, and loved by someone else. I never recognized that before. I was so caught up in self-loathing that I honestly believed that I was not worth loving. I have read that this is common in those with BPD. A sense of being the one person that cannot be loved, appreciated, respected, or connected with has become central to many of us. We have developed maladaptive personalities as a response to absurd stimuli in the setting of distinctive genetics.

Western society has us filing through as caged animals. We are in fact mammals. We are designed by nature to eat, sleep, reproduce, and dominate. We have done a good job of dominating our environment. We are now at the top of the food chain on this planet, Earth. We human-beings are the apex predators and because of that we sometimes lose touch with our true inner animal. It is like the alcoholic who is 10 years sober who has that one drink, he is suddenly rushed back in to that cycle of drinking. Day after day and starting over at square one.

Human beings are complex social creatures. We thrive in settings of love. True love and empathy are the only ingredients necessary to produce positive results. We must love our children and nurture them. We must find ways to break down their walls and get through to them and let them know that we truly love them no matter what. That is the only ingredient needed for a successful life. Love. We must support them and bear with them as they learn this process of living.

I now realize that I am a valuable human being and that I do deserve to be loved. Unfortunately, it took me a very long time to realize this. It seems so simple, and on the surface, it is. But even with all of the logic in the world, my emotions would never allow me to love myself. I could have come in with this first, but it may have poisoned my understanding of life. I may have not gained the knowledge and insight that I have had I not suffered.

The worst decision I could have made in my life was to begin using chemicals to “shut my brain off” as I always called it. I began drinking heavily or taking sleeping pills to just go to sleep at the end of the day. The constant struggle of never feeling good enough or worth living. Studies clearly show the prevalence of alcohol and drug abuse with BPD. For me it was the option to turn off the torture generator in my head to drink enough alcohol to sleep. I wasn’t doing this to destroy my marriage, my career, or to hurt anyone. Ultimately it did cause a lot of strain and did cause stress on the things I valued. I didn’t choose alcohol over life, I chose shutting off painful thoughts over suicide. I was just wanting an off switch from the reality that I was interpreting as so painful. People don’t realize that. I feel sorry that people view it as a personal attack when I say reality hurts. I don’t mean it that way. I also don’t mean to ask for their sympathy. I simply want to live and let live. I will get by, I am strong, I have faith in me and I want others to have the same.

I was able to stop drinking alcohol and focus on myself early in 2018. But at that time, I was not really even thinking about the BPD, I was more focused on depression or bipolar disorder. I stopped drinking and started really focusing on myself through exercise and diet. I wasn’t aware of how my personality disorder played into my mood disorder. It was a chaotic dance of sorts. There were nuances of mania and depression rearing their heads with this an almost flat affect I had developed. I found everything in life to be absurd and treated life as though I were a stand-up comedian just musing on my observations. I kept a straight face. Only the most extreme things could cause me to truly laugh. I somehow inappropriately (or maybe appropriately, this is subjective) attached laughter with absurdity.

I was able to see the humor in everything. There was absolutely nothing off limits. My extreme personality allowed me to explore extreme topics. I had watched clips of people being hurt and killed and essentially found the ridiculousness of it all to allow me to laugh. My brain had seemingly wired a circuit to find absurdity funny, so I could escape the true pain that it was causing me. We see people get kicked in the scrotum on MTV all day and laugh at it, this is a light version of what I am describing. Having access to all things human via the internet I desensitized myself to the most extreme of human behaviors. I have seen video footage of a man being beaten to death with a hammer. I have seen a chainsaw beheading video. Even worse, I have heard a chainsaw beheading video.

When I honestly put myself in that man’s shoes whose lifeless body is gurgling for wind from some prehistoric reflex I feel the pain of the human condition. I am able to know that I am mortal. I will die. I will cease to exist in the form of Ernie one day. I have been face-to-face with death as a young child raised by elderly distant relatives, and I have watched other human beings take their last breath as a hospice nurse. I have hunted deer and geese. I have taken the life from a dove and consumed her flesh. It is a chaotic balance of energy that I have been a part of in this very real chain of events.

The will to power, the longing to be in control takes a darker turn at times. So for me to make the decision to take another sentient being’s life in order to eat, I now must question what that truly means. As a 33-year-old white male in America I am surrounded by meat and cheese. Lives lost for the sake of contributing energy back into the circle of life. It all comes back to me and I can feel so clearly the morning I first took the life of a white-tailed deer.

I was camped out in my tree stand. I was dressed like a redneck in camo and I had hiked into some fall scenery right out of a Mark Twain novel. I was sitting silently and waiting for motion. When I finally heard the crushing of leaves my heart began to race. This is it. This is the moment I have been waiting for. To kill this sentient being. The hunt was on.

I saw two does playfully wondering through a sparse patch of thin trunked trees. The leaves were golden and red. They were almost dancing with one another. They hadn’t noticed me but I watched them come into my field of vision. I moved and one of the does looked up. She made eye contact with me. Her tail flipped up. White flag! She was ready to run. She was afraid. I drew my bow and let loose an arrow into the distance.

There was a calamity of hooves and cracking leaves. My heart was racing and there was sweat on my brow. I could smell autumn. I was one with the nature scene I had very realistically painted myself into. I rushed down from my latter clumsier than I would like to admit and began taking large gallop-like steps toward a creek bed. I could see a faint trail of blood on the ground guiding me to where this injured creature must be. It was like I looked up and there she was. Right in front of me. I was on top of her and didn’t even see her. She appeared out of nowhere.

She was lying in a shallow creek bed making labored breaths. Begging mother nature for her life. I pulled my 9mm side arm from my waist and did what I thought was the right thing at the time. I mercifully killed her by shooting her in the head. To end her suffering. My adrenaline was coursing through my body and I could not imagine what my next move was. I picked up the lifeless doe that was once dancing with her friend and threw her over my shoulder like a sack of potatoes. I carried her out of the woods like a “real man” and disrespectfully threw her body in the back of my hatch back ford focus. Her eyes were glazed over and her tongue fell out the right side of her mouth.

I brought her to my home and removed her skin. I hung her from her hind legs in my shed with some bailing twine that was laying around and I opened YouTube videos on how to butcher a deer. I called my friend Gabe to see if he had a knife, he was too drunk to help me dress my kill.

I began hacking parts off of this majestic creature’s body with an axe and a dull kitchen knife. I had already purchased butchers paper and I broke down the meat the best I could with the guidance of Youtube. I turned on a death metal album by Cannibal Corpse to get me in a disgusting mindset as I butchered away. I needed the distraction in order to complete the job. My now ex-wife came home to find blood on the back porch and door knob and she knew “Ernie got a deer.” What the fuck does it even mean? I got one.

We went on to incorporate this fresh meat into our cooking for the rest of that year and I even tried to consume the organ meats with Gabe as to not waste any of the animal. Looking back it seems so barbaric and out of character for me. I don’t think I could ever pull the trigger again or let another arrow fly. The sanctity of life is not something that I wish to choose when it shall end. All life is sacred in This consciousness. That is what I have come to appreciate. I know others struggle with it and take it lightly, but I have intimately been there. I have danced with death and I know every callus lunge.

To me, now, the thought of being able to obtain a permit to hunt and end a life is absurd.  Of course, creatures need to eat. But I am looking at this planet as a whole. How can human beings simply choose what life is sacred and what life is not? We fish the oceans dry. Why must we consume those things with sentience in order to survive? I don’t believe it is necessary at this point. That seems a bit misguided to me to think that it is entirely just sack after sack of matter and therefore vitamins and nutrients. Sure, I have stomped out an ant hill, I have crushed a fly. But what gives me that right? I believe as a human being we are blessed and cursed to know that life is finite. I do not wish to be a god amongst plebeians.

Knowing that my true moral code is to love all life and to appreciate it and hold it in high regard is paramount to my existence. I can then, unfortunately, explore the very opposite of this notion. That life is not sacred. That this existence is pointless and meaningless. That we are simply chemical reactions. The view of materialists is that we are a complex series of reactions. While I don’t believe this to be accurate, I have had my brain chemistry altered to the point that I almost believed it.

I had a short stent of taking the drug Abilify for an episode of mania and panic. I was started on this in-patient and continued it for about a week after hospitalization. Honestly, within a few days of being on the drug I felt no emotional attachment to my wife of so many years. I also believe, however, my true emotional attachment to her had waxed and waned over the previous years as my personality disorder pushed and pulled my life. While on Abilify I was able to make cold and rigid decisions without any emotional repercussions. I truly feel I could have strangled somebody to death and not felt any remorse on that medication. Is it simply the neurotransmitters in our brains that regulate our sense of right and wrong or are we tuning into something greater like a collective consciousness?

Through the years professionally and personally I have chronically had angst about my performance or accomplishments. I would always immediately downplay my performance and know that I could do better. Until I drastically modified my lifestyle and stopped drinking alcohol I was headed toward self-destruction. Having our neurotransmitters out of balance is like tuning a piano with an out of tune reference. I don’t know how to better describe it. It is like interpreting the world through a faulty interpretation device. Nature provides us the tools to perfectly balance and calibrate our interpretation device if we are willing to take the time and effort.

In this eastern society it does take time and effort to calibrate your device. In the wild it would not. You would not worry about being depressed or manic in the wild for a number of reasons. The cycle would have simply played out as it should. In our artificial reality that we have constructed with these cities and roadways, we have to take the time to get back to nature if we want balance. We need to re-calibrate our brains. We need to balance our neurotransmitters.

Our neuro-endocrine systems naturally produce everything we need if they are functioning properly. In order to function properly they need the correct environment. Our biology is specifically fine-tuned to allow us to thrive in whatever given setting we happen to arise from. We are at a point in which we are modifying our environment faster than evolution can catch up with and thus we have the central disconnected feeling that comes out as angst and turmoil. Identifying this and utilizing our strengths to fit into our own lives on an individual level is the prescribed treatment. There is no one size fits all plan.

Neuro-endocrinology functions optimally when given appropriate ingredients and in human beings those ingredients can be obtained from plant sources, water, and of course love. In order to best fuel our bodies optimally we should be eating a vegan diet which is free of processed foods, hormones, antibiotics, and suffering. When we eat food, we are eating the building blocks of our body and mind. Food is information essentially. What we take in builds what we are. This is important. The fuel we run on is central to our functioning at our best.

Looking at myself now, I am obsessed with telling the truth and being accurate. I want to live a life that I am proud of and therefor hold no secrets. I want to connect with another human being on an intimate level in which I tell her no lies. I want to be as open and forth coming as possible. The ultimate vulnerability. The payoff, is the ultimate relationship. It is important that we all begin to shift our culture to a culture of openness. We should be proud of who we are. We should be able to express our deepest desires and interests freely.

If we have something to hide, it is likely leading to negative karma. This is how I weigh my karma. When I do something I ask myself, “Is this something you would feel proud to tell everyone in this world?” If it is not, there is a better option. It is important as a species as we continue to evolve spiritually and emotionally that we understand this internal compass and respect it. We need to always bend to the will of the internal compass and listen to it in order to have the most fulfilling lives. If your gut tells you not to do something, you seriously need to stop and reconsider that decision. Take time. Make the right choice. To truly work through this process is grueling but it will lead to the ultimate transcendence.

The ultimate will to power is to give up complete control. Give your life over to the laws of the universe. To love without questioning “what is in it for me?” to give without wondering “do they appreciate it?” to teach others to better themselves and stop judging them for what they aren’t. Start seeing human beings for their potential. To push forth and get every bit of positivity out of our fellow-man’s soul. To not wonder “how am I going to get by” and just wonder “how can I help someone else get by.”

That is what I am striving for. I will post this long post for free, relatively unedited, though it feels like it should probably be in some sort of BPD and spirituality book or something. I know that in my life the Universe will provide for me food, shelter, wisdom, and love if I stay on the right path. I have that faith. I am following it with open mind, open heart, and open soul.

[juliekerrrvt]

Locum Adventures: Transitions Lead to Fulfillment

What does it take to truly appreciate the challenges inherent in making transitions? For me, finishing two months of contracts and leaving the ocean behind to travel to interior British Columbia is doing it. Arriving at the beginning of an extreme heat event with temperatures soaring above +45C (113F) for multiple days is really underscoring the extent of the challenge. Like so many of the challenges I’m facing as I learn to locum – I don’t know exactly how to deal with this.

It is interesting to me that while many things should translate over smoothly: for example, placing an IV catheter is the same no matter what clinic you are in, yet every time I newly arrive at a location, I have a few moments to struggle through until success is regained. (As a side note, it really does make a difference what IV tape is available). A few transitions in and I am recognizing this pattern: that even if I was successfully doing task A at clinic A only days before, that when I do task A at clinic B, I may not be immediately successful. It seems that the stresses linked to a new job – where are the supplies, what tools are standard here, combined with my own initial self-consciousness with new teams, build to create a mountain of stressors, impacting my performance in the short-term. Ironically, the only person judging me on my perceived shortage of skills is me: during transitions, I am my own worst enemy. Happily, now that I’ve recognized the pattern, I can put my energy in to shortening my transition time and moving past the roadblocks I am determined to put in my own way.

Why then, would I put myself through this cycle of perpetual new job? Transitions are hard, scary and challenging; travel is tiring. To locum is to put myself out there, to meet new people, learn new systems, equipment, protocols, culture and expectations. Why would I do this and go through this repeatedly? Here’s the answer: I make a difference. In fact, I am making a significant difference. Vet clinics will still do all the things that need to get done, whether I am there or not, but when I am present, people get lunches, go home on time more often, and smiles abound in response to my energy. Also, client wait times are reduced and patients get treatments sooner.

Left to Right: Providing charcoal treatment to a poisoned patient. Post surgical monitoring of a kitten.

Professionally, I get deep satisfaction in providing those things. My level of professional fulfillment is currently phenomenal. When I considered locuming as a career pivot, I considered my needs – I need to get back in to clinical practice, I need to maintain hard-earned boundaries, I need to provide support...I didn’t stop to consider locuming from angles other than my own, nor did I consider the benefits to others, which have been profound. Wow. It’s wow. Routinely, I am stopped throughout my day by colleagues, at every clinic I assist, who say “I’m so glad you’re here”. “Thanks for being here.” “Thanks for being cheerful all day on such a crazy day.” “Thanks for the simple pick me up note or statement you gave me.” “My holiday was great!” “I feel impacted by the conversations you and I have had.” The list goes on.

Coming to clinics to locum, working hard with the teams and sharing my journey is just my path and I am simply one person – but it’s having a larger impact and starting conversations that I hope will continue after I leave each clinic. That is powerful. That provides meaningful professional fulfillment to me. I am proud of my accomplishments and the support I am providing to my colleagues in this industry. From vet assistants to CSR’s to RVTs and DVMs, the conversations have been similar, meaningful and significant. I didn’t specifically think about the impact that sharing my story, journey and choices would have. Doing so creates a safe space for others to share their own journey and choices and the impact of THAT will become exponential. The best way to effect change is to be the change you seek. It’s pretty clear to me that I am doing just that.

In the face of all that, what’s a little awkward period of transition? What is important is that I show up, be present, work hard, express empathy and model the behaviour and culture in which I want to be involved. I will keep doing this, sharing my journey and being open to hearing of others’ journeys, as I go.

I know that as much as I may feel that I’m fumbling as I transition between clinics, the fact is, I definitely do not fumble when it matters, and it truly makes a difference to the teams, the clients and the patients when I am in clinic, filling shifts and providing relief as a locum RVT. And frankly, my connection to my patients is worth more than I can possibly ever express with words. I may not know exactly how to obtain all the professional goals I plan to achieve, but it is exciting to know this simple truth: I don’t need to know exactly how to do it all. I just need to show up and face the challenges as they come – every single day.

Top to Bottom: The surgical team debriefs after a successful surgery on the kitten. Two weeks later, the kitten and I reconnect during one of her veterinary checkups.

Start at The Beginning