#Not to bring the Sacred and the Profane back...

[tio-trile]

I watched the show first, and then the book, and I have to agree about the dove.

Like Show Azi is such a lovely soft character and then that last episode hits, and he's gonna kill Adam? Huh?? This guy ???¿?? I was gobsmacked, it made no sense at all. But it was also only one part and all's well that ends well, so I didn't question it.

Then I read the book. And Aziraphale is. Well, he's trying to be nice. He gives away the sword and he's polite to everyone. But the people who menace his shop disappear, and he's very comfortable with lying, and making temptations, and he kills a dove and doesn't even care. Ah, yes. This is someone who would consider killing Adam to save the world. He'd feel so bad about it! But he absolutely would. Hot take: Aziraphale would've thrown the basket.

Oh yeah, it makes way more sense for Book!Aziraphale's character, because show!Aziraphale has always been so soft and so good. I hadn't thought about how someone who watched the show first would react to that before, haha! And yes, you are correct about book!Aziraphale. That bastard.

[emmaofnormandy]

Imagine you and Aegon find comfort in each other.

Warnings: mediæval like; canon divergence with the series; Y/N’s plot is loosely inspired in (TV Show’s) Helaena’s; drama; smut.

***

• (I)

You have dreams. What do you know about them? They come true, that is what you understand. Whatever colours they are painted of, they come true. Mostly they show you the past, but every now and then… these dreams show something beyond your historical comprehension.

“Y/N, my dearest”, the queen calls you out, bringing you back to reality. You raise your eyes and spot this red-haired woman dressed in fanciful green robes eyeing you with a maternal, yet distant care. “There is something we must speak of.”

“What is it?”, you remember your filial duties. Leaving aside your books, you concentrate on what your often absent mother has to say.

“By any means I mean to bring to you a subject that makes me uncomfortable in speaking of”, the Queen forces a smile, but you can tell by the awkwardness in her eyes that she wishes to be elsewhere. “You are soon going to be married.”

“To Aegon”, you observe, resigned. “How could it be otherwise when he’s the heir?”

For someone so young, your tongue can be sharp whilst your eyes give tons of liveliness not afore perceived by your mother. An awkward silence hangs in between the two of you.

“Yes, to him. This will not happen soon, though.”

“But from now on my lessons will change. I am aware.” And you smile to break the sudden tension. “Fear not, mother. I think Aegon and I will be… in good terms.”

She doesn’t know how you can be certain, but the Queen is relieved for delivering at last what she formerly thought to be dreadful news.

***

• (II)

“Marriages are alliances that must not be focused in sentiments”, instructs the Queen. “These must be placed aside for the sake of duty.”

“Is it not commendable to have some degree of affection between the parties?”, asks Aegon, somewhat confused with where this is going.

His mother gives him a look, deprived of comprehension: how could she, when she married his father by force, never nurturing any affection for this man?

“Nay. The Church strongly discourages affection on both parts, for otherwise marriage, sacred in its end for the purpose of continuing the lineage, becomes profaned.”

Aegon sighs heavily. It is worthless to discuss with his mother, he knows it well. This is a matter that women are better familiar with, for, like his grandsire likes to say, it is linked with a feminine world of which men have little doing in it.

According to the old Valyrian tradition, the heir to the throne comes to understand that he’s to marry his younger sister, Y/N. The young man closes his eyes, at first not really excited about making you his wife.

“I shall do as my lady mother commands”, says he in a mechanic tone, eager to leave the meeting.

Must it be constantly uncomfortable every time they gather together?

A question the Queen sees unposed in her boy’s eyes. One of the kind she wishes she could answer, but trapped in her own ambitious web, all she does is eventually dismiss his presence of her.

And serve herself some wine, naturally.

***

• (III).

Aegon watches as you sit by the fountain. Years gone by since you and him grew up and were forced to marry. The union has been consumed, but you have been avoiding each other’s presence ever since.

However, for some inexplicable reason, here he stands, watching you absorbed in your usual reading. The book is black velvet with golden pages, but judging by the content that has you frowning your eyebrows, Aegon believes it not be of religious type.

He hesitates at first in how to come at you. There had seemed to be an unspoken agreement between both of you since that unfortunate day that once consumed, the marriage would remain as void as possible.

Duties were performed, of course. However, ever since Prince Jaehaerys came to pass, a victim of the Summer Fever, neither could console the other properly. As a result, Aegon produced bastards… but never a legitimate son to continue the line. Perhaps this was arranged, albeit unconsciously so, between him and you against Queen Alicent’s and your grandsire Lord Otto’s ambitions.

But now… Aegon cannot handle his demons alone. Out of his siblings, you are the one whose nature somehow… does not mirror others or his own.

Sensing the weight of his stare, you lift your gaze only to be caught off guard by your estranged husband’s presence. You quickly stand, somewhat fearful he might be here just to scowl at you for failing your duties—something that you’ve seen in others’ eyes.

And even though you’ve been having odd dreams where Aegon and you get along, overcoming these initial struggles that a forced match put you through, you are somehow faithless in this. In addition to this, there’s the fact neither speak to the other since your only son’s demise.

“I do not fault you for his… premature departure of this world”, says Aegon, not needing too much to disclosure the reason why there’s a distance between both parts, under covered by a mutual distrust. “His suffering was short.”

“‘Tis part of our position to accept that what the Lord gives, the Lord takes.” You muse thoughtfully.

Aegon glances away. Religiosity has never been his best, even if he’s forced to play the pious.

“Ours, however, has been unnecessarily prolonged.”

The silver haired prince, who wears court garments today, looks like an empty vessel when these words reach his ears. You hope to reach out for him, but…

“Pardon?”

So close, yet so far.

You are dressing a cream silk gown with details in green and pearls. Aegon notices the result of the embroidery you’ve been working, particularly focusing at the dragons that have been so perfectly woven in the cloth.

“I’ve only meant to say…” You sigh, shaking your head as you quit. “Never mind. This battle is lost.”

Aegon scoffs at your behavior, but in retrospective could you be the one to blame when he walked away so easily?

Biting down a bitter answer, he looks down at his feet before saying:

“May we… walk around the gardens? I think we must speak.”

You cast him a long look.

Could this be?

But when this pair of lilac irises encounters yours, mirroring each other’s soul deprived free will—for where hast it been put if not casted upon the creature done in the similitude of its Creator?—it as if the divine ire has been placated at last. As if little by little all is starting to settle.

Almost if there is hope.

“Aye, lord. I do not see why not”, and when you smile, Aegon realizes this is no time to winter, but to spring. “It has been too long since we last spoke.”

So too he smiles, charmed by this woman whom he neglected by force of pride, weakened in flesh and spirit as he knows.

“True.”

In his own way, Aegon and you begin to gravitate towards each other. Thus the dragons dance.

***

• (IV)

“There is a sadness behind your eyes I cannot decipher”, Aegon muses.

You are lying on his lap. The two of you are found at the gardens in this cloud day. You like how he strokes your hair, careful, tender. A positive change in his manners in these weeks which you gladly welcome despite the early distrust.

“I think I might when I come to think about it, but I fear to dig into it…”, he proceeds. “It makes me want to demove it out of you.”

“That is kind of you, but some people are born with it, I guess”, you close your eyes, unsure where these waters are leading you to.

Though your dreams, green they might be, show you facts that come to be true, you are still frightened by them. Some of them brought you to this very moment in spite of your reluctance to it.

Here you are, though.

“I think we are rather creatures of it”, says Aegon. “And I fear that I am one of the reasons why melancholy has found solace in your heart.”

You carefully rise and contemplate your husband. Your eyes scan his handsome features, part of which mirrors yours. Lilac eyes and silver locks, but a nose and a mouth that certainly take after your mother.

Pulled by strange strings that come from above, you are reasoned by the certainty of being pawns of the gods. Regardless of never answering to them, these never answer to your family either. The clash of mortality and immortality often results in misery.

“Pride is our fall”, you muse, able to see so many tragedies in the past that lead to this current one. “It is only equaled by selfishness. We are all doomed in the end. ‘Tis the nature of us all.”

“I often wish I was worthy of being loved, made different by the divine”, so much being brought out by words and yet you are drawn by them.

“No, my dear lover; my sweet brother, we are all capable of loving… and being loved”, you tell him, capturing his face with your hands.

You rest your forehead against his. Aegon closes his eyes, swallowing the tears he’s been ashamed to keep when darkness rises.

“I am not. And I lament with the depths of my soul for it.”

“Shush now. Quiet the riots of your heart, for we are neither too pure nor too profaned, despite being creatures of sin. We can be light when there is darkness.”

“You are too pure for this world.”

Oh, the anguish. The atonement behind words that hurt like knife, so vicious is the pain these cause.

And yet your lips seek for his in attempt to mend it. Aegon is surprised by your pursuit, but he doesn’t shy away. He welcomes gleefully the sweet taste of your lips.

For the first time in a very long time, pain is left aside by another sentiment, to both of you unknown. What is this? What is this if not the spark of joy? The start of something new, where no words are sufficed to translate.

“I want you”, he whispers like a pained lover, realizing a little too late how his prideful heart and doomed soul stole him away from you for too long.

Whilst his tongue mixes with yours, you succumb to the power of gravity. Like the planets attracted to the sun, so is your heart to his. And you want to steal his misery, you want to be desired as much as you want to love this man.

Half of your soul, your other half.

“I am yours, Aegon”, you bite down his lips, letting him have his way to you when lying down the grass and pulling him over you. “Reclaim me, I beg of you.”

“I shall do as my damsel commands me to”, he gasps, breathless.

Where there was cold, there is now fire. Two dragons, two sides of the same coin, about to get burnt.

He kisses you hard, famine for your affection, desperate to reach out for you and you lift your legs to tie him in between all the whilst returning his fierce kiss, hands gripping his hair, making a mess with his silver locks.

And then…. His lips comes to your neck, biting and leaving bruises, pleased to hear small sounds out of your mouth.

His eager hands start to work on your gown, unlacing it eagerly, digging his hands possessively against your back, very clear in his selfish gesture.

“Mine, mine lady”, Aegon whispers against your chest, pausing breathlessly to contemplate the mess you are now.

Your eyes are partially closed; your red-ish lips are open in a small “o”, wanting for more, releasing these desires for so long repressed, for years repented as wrongs that should be cleansed of your soul.

“Mine lord”, you sigh in content.

And looking down at his face, you see a smile crawling over his lips, which rises to his eyes. Your heart melts and you smile too.

“I exhort you to give me a precious gift”, and you lift him so you steal a kiss out of his lips. “Your heart, your soul… I cannot sleep well at night knowing my lover is not well. Let me be your healer as Venus healed Ares when he was in his worst. For I’d go to hell and cross through damnation to save you.”

“Lady, profess naught these words, I forbid you”, and he kisses you in turn. “Unworthy I am of this gesture, this affection! I shall guard, however, your heart as the great treasure to me sent by the divine. Sinful and doomed I may be…”

“I will redeem you if you let me.”

You shush his uneasiness with another kiss. Now you lay him down, taking control of the reins. You reclaim him like he did to you, except the dragon fire makes you bolder this time.

So your kisses do not concern his lips alone: your hungry mouth captures his neck and his chest… all the whilst you unlace his pants. Starving for affection, one needs the other; a need released after being repressed under the guise of good behavior and social rules.

Oh but where’s the etiquette when your hand grips his manhood, taking it the way he likes—oh you still remember your first night together, when even under the effect of alcohol he was excited to teach you the way it’s done.

Bearing this recollection in minds, Aegon throws his head back and lets out a loud groan.

“Heavens! Oh, my lady! Never before so fair, my leof!”

His chest growing heavy, Aegon’s body is instantly warmed with fire. Eyes rolling in the back of his mind, he’s about to come undone, but not wasting his seed, he turns tables and soon you are no longer the hunter, but the prey.

That in finding pleasure you are able to bury scars of cloud days formed through pain is to delight yourself in these marital activities you and Aegon prevented each of the other in the past years.

Now he’s sliding his manhood into your core after locking your hands above your head, you comprehend at long last what these dreams are about.

Your promise prince. The hope of a yet to come spring.

‘Tis the way upon which salvation is craved: when hearts are blended and bodies are intertwined, when parted souls are one united.

***

• (V)

Politics are not the world you were educated to be part of, which is something you are content about. Unlike your mother, the former queen. This is not a field where you intend to seed your ambitions.

To many, you are content with the role delegated to you, and this isn’t completely untrue. But there are times where nights are dark…

…and full of terrors.

“Aegon”, you whisper his name, but he doesn’t respond; his snore tells how asleep he is. You sigh, but you don’t call him again.

Untangling of his arm, you roll out of bed, anxious. Another dream comes to take your peace… something no one knows, no one’s understand.

You walk barefoot towards the window and there you stand, watching through the glass the darkness above. You can still hear the screams in the back of your head, accusations, the sound of blades…

War is coming.

What is there to stop it? The ambitions of the men are seed to the inevitable. Even so, the scenes are hard to unsee.

Lost in your world, you miss Aegon’s groaning when noticing the cold you left your side of bed and not much time after coming for you.

“Y/N”, your husband snakes his arms around you waist, resting his head on your shoulder. “You look pale. Are you unwell?”

You chew your bottom lip, a sign of distress that Aegon’s familiar with. He suddenly recalls the reason why you and him were never close throughout your childhood and subsequent early adulthood: the fact you were always stuck in your own world.

A reason there was to it, but he was afraid to figure it out then.

“What bothers you, my sweet?”

As you slowly turn at him, Aegon spots tears forming in your eyes.

“You’d not understand.”

“Try me.”

You hesitate, fearful of losing him. As if he could read your thoughts, Aegon cups your face and rests his forehead against yours.

“I shall not leave your side, regardless of what it is that daunts you so.”

“You may call me witch for what I am about to tell you…”

The king chuckles.

“Hardly.”

He waits, aware that this is where you open yourself to him. Aegon can tell, by the looks you cast him, how important this is, a test of trust that will rely on his reactions.

Eventually though, with little need to reassure you that whatever that comes out he will not leave your side, Aegon holds your hands firmly and says:

“We have been under neglect for so long. We were not taught affection nor approval, or any of the values our mother praises in public. And yet here we are with the crown over our heads.” He kisses your cheek, there staying for a while. “We cannot be faulted for the sins of our parents, my wife. We are of the same blood, but we are more than that.”

It is only then you finally grant him entrance to a world where none had dared to do so. Aegon is thus told that you have inherited an ability few possessed in the Targaryen dynasty: the one of having green dreams.

Even so… here it is where one estranged couple gets intimate in the most blessed of forms: by trusting each other and overcoming former difficulties.

Indeed, a victory to the Cupid… or the Virgin Mother who brought harmony to two troubled souls.

***

• Epilogue.

War eventually makes its way to the realm. But when it does, all is settled.

“I must lead my troops against this pretender to the throne”, says Aegon in reference to their sister, Rhaenyra, who never entirely accepted to be cast aside in favour of her younger brother.

“Be mindful. She has Lord Daemon by her side”, you advise him.

“But we have Aemond by ours”, Aegon smirks at you.

As you two embrace, Aegon places a kiss on top of your forehead and a hand over your growing belly.

“Beware, my love”, says he, and you detect concern behind his eyes.

But you sweep away his concerns when you smile the brightest.

“No need to worry. You shall come back to my arms and I will perform my duty accordingly. Dare I say that more children will come in due time!”

Aegon chuckles quietly. When he smiles, no beautiful sight could have warmed your heart like this.

“Aphrodite blessed me indeed!”

He takes your hand to his lips before leading you both to the court where he expects to part with his men soon. Aemond soon comes, joined by Lady Alys, his wife.

Even though this is an unusual union for the time where low born are hardly married into high born houses, you and her got along just fine… and she’s been a good help with the dreams you have.

“This shall not be a farewell!”, says Aegon before all, in a ceremony that you are the protagonist of it. Oh, courtly nonsenses, you know, but here are the perks of being queen. “For the divine calls me to take in arms with the one who, as the same blood of ours, has been conspiring with violence and never befriending with peace!”

“The Fortune has set the path to you, my king. Be merciful, I ask.”

Aegon nods his head regally, every inch a king.

“I will keep your request in mind, my damsel!”

And to prevent a civil war, he goes, mounted in his golden horse whom he calls Sunfyre.

***

However, women are not prevented to fight their own wars even if their victories in childbed are not sang nor praised by poets and bards.

Surrounded with the women of your trust, you are now closed to a feminine world where men take no part. Curious to notice that where Aegon fights for the survival of his dynasty, you too take a similar part in delivering its success.

Amidst pain and blood, though, you perform your duties accordingly. Most would applaud your bravery in facing the process with no tears and few screams.

I am as Targaryen as any of them.

A pair of twins comes to breathe the air after the process is done. You opt to name the male after your husband, Aegon, and the female after Rhaenys. It is only fair since you come after their line.

“How is my queen doing?”, Lady Alys asks you once the labour comes to an end and the babies are taken to be cleaned.

“Good”, you smile at her, taking the hand offered and giving a slight squeeze. “Thank you.”

“More will come”, she whispers.

Your smile spreads fully.

“Oh, indeed. A victory granted by the Divine.”

“Even if the Targaryens answer to no men nor Gods”, says Alys.

Both of you chuckle.

“It is what it is”, you give your motto to your sister in law.

Towards the end of the reign of Aegon the Wise, the chronicler writes how you, successfully known as the peacemaker, set the path to other queen consorts in your queenship. Popular throughout the Seven Kingdoms, your hand extended where your husband’s could not.

For example, you helped arranging the marriages of your third child, Rhaella, with Rhaenyra’s son, Jacaerys, as well as your fourth, Hughes, with Visenya. That way you brought Rhaenyra closer to your family instead of instigating another possibly revolt. Such matches pleased her.

It all ended well.

As for you and Aegon, no successful match has been seen since King Viserys wedded Lady Aemma.

You and him found solace in each other and would remain so until the end of your days. There’s a saying in King Aegon III’s reigns that you and your husband’s bond was so strong that both of you were found dead sleeping in each other’s arms in an advanced age.

[kiyosbrokenmirror]

I should probably post this on ao3 but I feel a bit embarrassed to reveal my account here

> Gonta starts thinking he is not enough for Korekiyo, Korekiyo shuts that down

(all while simping)

Implied abuse on Gonta's part, and if you know anything about me, also on Kiyo's but it's not explicit in the fic

If there was heaven, Korekiyo would suspect this would be it, being with his dearest in his room, the lights dimmed, a book in one hand while the other mindlessly focused on tangling and detangling his Gonta's hair.

That simple mundane act of playing with his lover's hair becoming Korekiyo's own notion of heaven, the sacred and the profane becoming one and the same, betraying ideas that Korekiyo has studied.. While yet still being beautiful in its conception

But perfection can sometimes be nothing but an illusion - Korekiyo has learned that not from books and studies, but from raw unfiltered heartbreak, - and the unusual stiffness and lack of affection from Gonta brought him back to reality

Gonta muttered his name, it was quiet... as if he didn't want Korekiyo to hear, quite unusual, when they were alone Gonta wasn't usually shy, overly polite? Yes. But not shy, never shy.

Korekiyo quietly noted, worried, yet curious of what side his lover would bring this time.

"Yes dear?"

He put down his books, deciding that his attention would be on Gonta and Gonta only, ah, as if any books could ever compare to those magnificent red eyes coming to meet his own anyways.

Even when startled his angel was still so beautiful, how could Korekiyo ever tire of him?

"Ah! Nothing Kiyo, don't worry, it was just something stupid that came to mind! , Kiyo can continue with his book if he likes"

Gonta closed his eyes - Korekiyo repressed the need of making him look at him, let him see how much Korekiyo loved him.

But he refrained, not the time, his love was once again locked in his heart, one day Korekiyo will let it all free, break Gonta's conviction with all of its might, but today, his usual facade shall take its place.

"I am afraid I found myself a much more interesting subject to study for the night dear, so just quench my curiosity and tell me what's on your mind hm?"

- or not, his flirt was effectively very noticeable, but he couldn't bring himself to care when he could see Gonta's delicious blush from the corner of his eyes.

Was he Embarrassed? Ashamed? Flustered? So many hypothesis and only one true answer....

"Just.... Sorry- Kiyo really loves humanity and Gonta really likes how passionate he is about it, but Gonta just wonders sonetimes-"

He stopped from a second, and Kiyo recognized immediately his attempts to hide... Using his long wavy hair as a shield against Korekiyo's possible judgements, the slight tremble making it obvious Gonta was about to cry.

(ah so it was shame after all.)

"Why, does Korekiyo stay with Gonta when Gonta barely acts like an actual human being should?"

There was some conviction in the way he said, as if Gonta has already made up his mind about what Korekiyo thought, and Korekiyo's heart ached, he could tell him every reasons he has for loving him, he could even tell him a thousands and thousands of times.

Yet there was a slightly more pressing matter, Korekiyo gripped his heart to stop it from bleeding all over Gonta's beautiful face and instead focused on that question running in his mind.

"Care to tell me how a human "should" act?, I believe we should make that clear if we are to have this conversation"

Gonta moved from that spot on Korekoyo's lap, still trying to hide, still trying not to burden, facing away from Korekiyo, as if Korekiyo's gaze could burn and perhaps in that moment for Gonta... It could.

Korekiyo was aware of Gonta's Complicated... history with his family, how they had mistreated him and treated such mistreatment as discipline, so in that moment, Gonta probably felt as if Korekiyo wanted to do the same as they had done to him time and time again.

(and Korekiyo hated to put his own moral judgements into his view of humanity, but when he saw Gonta being so scared of him, how could he not hate even a little the people who made him feel that way? Ah the power of love....)

"Gonta saw someone say that intelligence is the most important quality that distinguishes us from animals...Gonta-"

"That's a fallacy and you know it"

Korekiyo said that without thinking, his tone was blunt and he saw his love jolt, though he had to admit hearing that statement from Gonta was... Sincerely out of character...

"You study nature don't you? You would certainly agree yourself, that intelligence is present in almost if not all animal species, it's not specific to humanity"

he switched to a more sympathetic tone, reminding himself he was effectively here to comfort him not to argue, "My love, we have argued about this plenty, you were the one to taught me about how intelligent even those... Insects... Are"

(he hoped the disgust in his voice at thinking about bugs wasn't noticeable, it probably was,)

"So what is this really about?"

Gonta stiffened even more

Korekiyo's heart was burning and he hated how much seeing Gonta like this scared him.

(it wasn't Gonta's fault, no never, old scars don't tend to fade away quickly)

"Gonta just-" He closed his eyes, Korekiyo knew he was trying to find the right words, words that will not make him sound stupid in front of someone he thought so high of.

But Korekiyo didn't care, he never has and never will, he just wanted- no needed to know what was on his mind right now, and if he could do anything to fix it

"He just.... Doesn't know how to communicate with other humans being, he doesn't feel like he knows how to act like others do, and he feels lost everytime he tries... Gonta just wonders if Kiyo would like someone who understands how to be human better than Gonta does"

Korekiyo always thought that Gonta's biggest problem was any lack of understanding but rather a presumption that he was inherently a failure, Korekiyo wanted to tell him he could teach him, that they could travel together and figure out how human customs, values, languages, vary and how they work, and he would welcome any confusion, thought and feeling Gonta might have.

And even that he would find his perspective to be beyond beautiful.

Yet before he could, Gonta spoke again.

"....Gonta just wishes he knew, what he should do to make others treat him like a human being..."

There was a small glance, an attempt for Gonta to try and understand Korekiyo's thoughts, but luckily for him, he didn't have to wonder for long, as Korekiyo's answer was quick and instinctive

"You don't know simply because there is nothing you can do my dear"

Such an assessment wasn't something Korekiyo had said to be cruel, and it took him how the other sobbed to realize what that had implied.

"And no, my love, not because of any inherent imperfection you think you might have" Korekiyo's bandaged hand dared to meet Gonta's calloused warm one, united at last

"While I don't believe one of my spiels about Anthropology would comfort you right now, I believe I need to make something clear" Gonta looked at him, his eyes threatening to make Korekiyo fall apart just at the sight of, but he needed to continue

(you mustn't waver, you mustn't lose composure, you mustn't become flustered, not now, not ever)

"A lot of what we consider to be acceptable behaviors, are nothing more than a result of the specific circumstances that brought our culture to value those instead of others. Its wrong to consider those as the essence of humanity itself, because they vary immensely, and are not an immutable and inherent part of our culture to begin with"

He glanced at Gonta, there was an hint of interest, an hint of curiosity, a need for Korekiyo to continue, to confirm that under all this, ultimately Korekiyo still wanted to be with him

And he did.

"I don't believe that the responsibility of others refusing to see things beyond their own sphere of understanding should befall onto you."

"Kiyo is right, Gonta didn't mean to dismiss the work he does... Gonta just wishes.. He- no, people were kinder"

Gonta tried wiping his own tears, but Korekiyo quickly replaced his hand with his own, even with his bandages dulling the sensation, Korekiyo could still feel the warmth of Gonta's cheeks and tears, it was heavenly still.

"Yes, but i insist we return to the topic you initially brought, your claim my love for you should be dependent upon you acting as a "human" should."

The shame returned once again, and Korekiyo fell in love further, all of Gonta's emotions were his, his to witness, his to study, his to love, oh, he wanted to kiss him, bring him close, without any further words, just being able to pour his love for Gonta in every part of him would have been enough

His heart needed to be still, he must not waver.

"You are aware that what I love the most about humanity is its incredible diversity yes?" a small nod, Gonta remembered, of course he did

Insecurity could mull every sort of knowledge after all

"Gonta knows! He is sorry, he knew it was-"

Korekiyo kissed him, it was chaste, but he needed him to know

A kiss itself it's not the only cultural expression of love, it's one of the most well known,but certainly not one everyone valued the same, yet in that moment it was all Korekiyo thought to do to show even a small percentage of the love he deeply felt.... If he could, he'd show it in every way he knew how, but this needed to be quick, to be immediate, lest it'd overwhelm Gonta.

His Gonta, who currently was blushing up to his ear, his Gonta that was insecure, lonely but oh so lovely,his Gonta that has shown him kindness and love so selfless, his Gonta that almost made him like bugs just because of how deeply passionate he was about them.

His cute angel, his darling, his honey...

His dearest love.

Who was clearly staring at Korekiyo's lips clearly wanting more, how unlucky he will have to wait, just a little longer.

"Ultimately, I love you because you are you."

The dam broke, Gonta's cries began once more, and this time, Gonta kissed him, Gonta touched him, his hands holding Korekiyo's waist, whispering at times small words of appreciation - of love, seemingly nonsensical and detached from each other, Korekiyo was almost.... Overwhelmed by such grand affection

If heaven was real, this would certainly be it, being beneath his lover, touching his hair and caressing his back, as he kisses you and loves you, over and over again, how beautiful it is to love and be loved in return, without any expectations nor rules, just the two of them,in their heaven, forever more.

[lxveuntold]

descent to depravity | psh, cs (m)

summary: just when you think you have convinced yourself that the sinful creature who visited you all those nights ago was merely the product of a vividly erotic dream, he returns to you — and this time, he is not alone...

pairing: seonghwa x fem reader x san

genre: fantasy, smut

word count: 8.1k

rating: mature (18+)

warnings & features: part two of these wicked delights; incubus!seonghwa; incubus!san; profanity; supernatural elements; slight religious elements; graphic sexual content; dubcon; d/s roles without proper safety or aftercare; threesome; dirty talk; oral sex (f receiving); unprotected piv sex; multiple creampies

author's note: rewritten for ateez and reuploaded from my old blog. meant to upload this on halloween but oh well. heed the warnings and enjoy y'all.

{ click here if you prefer to read on AO3 }

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It all ended in a dream.

Because it was never real. Of course it wasn’t. It was merely a strikingly vivid dream.

It had to have been.

That’s what you have been repeating to yourself in regards to the bizarre — and erotic — encounter you’d had with the mysterious, otherworldly creature months ago. It was both easy and difficult to write the experience off as some sort of demented fantasy brought to life during the worst dry spell you’ve experienced. After all, the dream has never once revisited your sleeping mind, despite plaguing many of your waking thoughts.

So when a wave of foreboding pinpricks trickles down your spine, paranoia makes you twist away from the bathroom sink to look behind you. Nothing seems out of the ordinary in your bedroom, however. There is no visitor sitting on the bed, nothing has been disturbed.

You close your eyes and shake your head, then resume brushing your teeth. But the tingles that linger at the start of your spine are just so familiar…

After you finish rinsing your mouth, you turn off the bathroom lights and shuffle tiredly to bed. Just as you pull back the covers to slip under them, you catch sight of two circular, red lights in the window from your peripheral vision.

It’s him, those are his eyes!

When you lift your head to get a proper look, the red glow has vanished. You step around your bed and up to the window to peek through the blinds, but the only lights to be found are the one reflecting off the rotund moon and the ones from the street lamps. There is nothing and no one to be seen — least of all a creature with eerie crimson eyes in the guise of a humanoid body.

You decide it was probably just some passing tail lights from a car and remove your fingers from between the blinds.

Switching off the bedside lamp, you do your best to push away the thoughts of the demonic being from your mind as you snuggle into your pillow. Your breathing and heart rate slow as you relax, lulled by the chirping of crickets and the occasional hum of car tires rolling by outside.

Just as you are finally sinking into slumber, something suddenly brings the hairs on the nape of your neck to attention. The pinpricks from earlier ripple over the entire expanse of your skin with greater force. Before you can roll over, your muscles are stiffened to total ineffectiveness, though the sound of his haunting voice would surely have frozen you just as effectively.

“Hello again, pet…”

The dehumanizing way in which he greets you is chilling, but you cannot shiver.

This is just a dream… you repeat your sacred mantra silently because your lips are sealed tight. This isn’t real…

“Ah. You wound me, child,” the creature laments in response to your thoughts. “I did not think it too terribly narcissistic of me to expect a warmer welcome, hm?”

“She is afraid,” drawls a second male voice, every bit as melodic as the first, “but not of you. Not directly. She is afraid to admit how much she truly enjoyed your last visit... and she is wondering who I am.” He reads and voices the question in your mind before it can even fully form.

“I have brought another of my kind to accompany me tonight, my pet,” the first one explains to you. “Think of his name as ‘San.’ Do you remember my name, child?”

You flinch again at the way he thinks of an adult woman as a child compared to his innumerous years, but not before your mind recalls the answer to his question.

Seonghwa…

He hums, seemingly pleased.

“You were right about this one being a desperate little thing,” the one named San muses. “The vibrations of her lust are remarkably strong for a human. I am curious to know if she is truly as sweet and supple as you claimed, Seonghwa.” The tone he accentuates on the name sounds like a tease, if you are not mistaken.

“You will still address me respectfully, novice,” Seonghwa bites back. “Especially if you wish to discover her sweetness for yourself.”

San does not seem to have any comeback for that and remains silent.

“I can sense that others of her kind have done the same in the time since I left her,” Seonghwa goes on. “There is a lingering stench on her skin that is not hers. Faint, but there, particularly between those supple legs.”

You feel your face heat up at the memories of your recent, meaningless hookups. You had been relieved to have finally quenched that previous dry spell with tangible encounters with real people, but the powerful creature’s tone fills you with a surprising sense of shame.

You try to gather your thoughts to form some sort of defensive explanation, but Seonghwa cuts you off.

“I am not upset with you for attempting to fill your baser needs, child,” he tells you almost soothingly. His voice is so sweet, so beautiful. “In truth, I am partly to blame for that. I told you our time spent together would take its toll, did I not? Our encounter has fueled the carnal desires I meant to sate, and now it is nearly impossible to sate them, isn’t it? You crave more and more. That is why I have returned and brought along another. Though San is younger and less experienced than myself, he is quite… voracious. And a quick learner. Between the two of us, you will never need to seek a lesser form of pleasure ever again.”

“Shall we begin, little one?” San asks without missing a beat.

A weight presses against your shoulder through your blankets, and you assume it is a hand. San’s hand, from the proximity of his voice. All of your movements and sounds are still constricted by the foreign yet familiar force held over you, however, and you are still rendered blind.

“She will not deny us, hyung,” the newcomer tells Seonghwa knowingly. “I know you can hear the blood thrumming in her genitalia. Her body is screaming for us to ravish it; there is no need to keep it bound. Release her. I want to hear her proclaim her wanton desires with her own tongue.”

Surprisingly, Seonghwa obliges the request, and a baited breath rushes past your lips the instant they loosen. You blink your eyelids slowly to allow your pupils to adjust to the scant light in your bedroom.

When you shift and look up, you recognize Seonghwa’s towering form standing in the shadows several feet from the foot of your bed. His black hair is swept back from his forehead, giving you a clear view of the eerie ruby eyes set in his ivory face, calmly observing you.

Next, you turn your head to the side to seek out your other ‘visitor.’ Your gaze first falls on the claw of a hand still resting on your covered shoulder. The fingers are slender and knobby at the knuckles; the nails are black and pointed. You feel heat swirl in your lower belly when you suddenly recall the way your inner juices had shone on Seonghwa’s fingers during your last tryst.

A hum of amusement draws your gaze upward to properly see the demonic figure looming over you, and you gasp softly at the sight of him. The fringe of his blond hair dangles into his crimson eyes; the orbs are a lighter, brighter shade than his elder’s. High cheekbones jut sharply out of alabaster skin. A tendon in his creamy neck flexes under your scrutiny. The thought that this could be Satan himself briefly flits through your hazy mind.

It is impossible to discern which of the two creatures is more beautiful.

San chuckles to himself whilst reading your mind, and the abyssal timbre of the sound — almost like music — makes you shudder.

“My companion is quite proficient at hearing unspoken thoughts, but he wishes to hear you speak your desires, pet,” Seonghwa says to you. “So, go on and tell us how desperate you are for us to use your body for our pleasure as we give you yours.”

“We cannot guarantee we will be gentle,” San inputs as a warning, “but all parties shall be sufficiently satisfied in the end.”

You look back and forth between the two hellish beings — taking a quick second to be thankful for having control of your body, unlike before — as you contemplate the situation. If these were normal men, there is no chance you would agree to this, no matter how good-looking they were…

Would you?

The mere presence of these beings makes you question your reality and your morals.

“Why does your mind dispute your body’s wants, little one?” San wonders aloud. He sounds genuinely curious. “Would you truly rather return to a slumber filled with fleeting, unfulfilling fantasies than have us drive you to the brink of madness one orgasm at a time?”

How easily your morals crumble from one salacious promise.

“Please...” you finally croak weakly.

San’s fingers tighten in the sheets. You wouldn’t be surprised if he has punctured tiny holes in the linen. “Please what?” he presses.

You lick your lips and utter, “Fuck me,” in a voice you can barely recognize as your own.

San finds something funny with your words and laughs darkly. “So crass,” he tsks, but sweeps the sheets from your body nevertheless.

In two swift, easy motions, he slashes your sleepwear to shreds, rendering you nude. The action startles you, and you automatically curl in on yourself out of sudden shyness.

“Ah, ah, ah,” Seonghwa tuts in disapproval. “Do not make me restrain you again, child. Be a good pet and let your master look upon what is his.”

He steps closer and coaxes your legs apart, not with unseen force, but with a manual graze of his large hands along the flesh of your thighs. His touch is light and frigid, and you shiver as you let your legs fall open. Once your center is visible to him, he traces the pad of his thumb along the outer circumference of your folds. There is a sort of reverence in his gentle touch.

From beside you, you notice San craning his neck to glimpse the view his elder is enjoying.

“San,” Seonghwa calls softly.

San obeys the unspoken command, moving to sidle beside Seonghwa in a motion so seamless he almost seems to glide across the floor. Your nerves tingle when both of their red gazes are fixed so intently on your naked pussy.

“You may proceed in discovering how sweet and supple our little pet is,” Seonghwa grants him, as though your body were his personal property to give away as he pleases. And of course he hears your silent (and justified) protest, because the next thing he says is: “Your body is my property, child. When I am here, I am the master, and you are the pet. My cohort and I will give you more pleasure than could ever be found behind Heaven’s gate, but on our terms. You must comply to our every whim because you are not in charge here, not even of your own body. Am I in any way unclear?”

His voice booms deeper on the last sentence. You meekly shake your head no.

Seonghwa hums and pats your thigh approvingly. “There’s a good pet. You may proceed, San.”

A wide, wolfish grin appears in the darkness below San’s glowing eyes. “Gladly.”

With that, he becomes a blur of motion from how fast he kneels to dive between your legs. His wide shoulders knock against your knees, and his fingers roam up your thighs to replace Seonghwa’s with a strong grasp. He drags you downward until your ass is even with the edge of the bed. When his nose nudges the folds of your cunt, he takes a moment to breathe the scent of you deeply, and your face burns hotter than you thought possible.

“Intoxicating, no?” Seonghwa asks as he moves out of the younger’s way.

“Indeed,” San agrees. His lips are cold but his breath is steaming hot as he ghosts over your sensitive skin.

Not another second is wasted before he pokes his tongue out to take that first anticipated taste of you. The muscle feels scaly and clammy, precisely the way you recall Seonghwa’s tongue. It is not entirely unpleasant, however — especially when it drags upward from the bottom of your slit to fit itself snugly between your petaled lips and inside your hole. The walls of your pussy instantly clench tighter at the sensation of being filled by the inhumanly long muscle.

“How is she?” Seonghwa — who has wandered up the side of the bed to stand at your side — asks. He busies an idle hand with one of your breasts, rolling and pinching the nipple almost absentmindedly. You automatically arch into his touch, and he smirks down at you crookedly.

San has to withdraw his tongue from your insides to murmur his response, “Even sweeter than you led me to believe, hyung. This one is quite a treat indeed. A sweet little flower.”

You can’t help but feel flattered by the compliment coming from the ethereally beautiful creature tonguing you in the most intimate of places.

Seonghwa grunts in satisfaction — and perhaps also a sense of validation — at his companion’s apparent enjoyment. The accompanied pinch he gives your peaked nipple sends a twinge of pain and pleasure straight to your core, and you are sure San is aware of the increased wetness pooling into his mouth. He starts licking wide stripes along your opening; back and forth, up and down. His actions are not done with much finesse, and the slurping sounds he is creating are more than a little lewd, but he does seem to be enjoying you, and having someone eat you with such gusto is a turn on of its own.

“Is he making you feel good, my pet?” Seonghwa asks, switching his ministrations to your other breast.

You nod and moan a breathy, “Uh huh.”

San seems to gain encouragement by your answer and begins mouthing at your pussy faster. His lips sweep against yours while his tongue digs deep. His actions are undeniably pleasurable, but you soon realize it isn’t enough when your clit is being neglected.

Seonghwa senses your mild frustration and speaks up on your behalf. “San, you selfish glutton, be sure to administer to her clitoris as well.”

“Her what?”

“Do you not remember? It is the small nub at the top of the human female genitalia that gives them great pleasure.”

San pulls back to study your pussy again. He quickly finds what he is looking for and brushes his thumb against it experimentally. You gasp and writhe your hips appreciatively.

“My apologies, little flower. Is that better?” he asks you in a tone both impish and honeyed.

You nod again and squeak out a tiny: “Yes.”

He directs his next words to Seonghwa. “Are you always this attentive to your pets’ desires during your time with them, hyung?”

“Of course. This one climaxed thrice when I last visited upon her,” Seonghwa says matter-of-factly.

“Hm. Well, we can easily reach that number with the both of us here,” San says. The circular motion of his thumb does not falter while he holds the conversation. “In fact, I am certain we will. My favorite part is watching them come undone and cry out for me as though I am their savior, after all.”

“It seems you still have quite some work to do on our little pet, then,” Seonghwa spits.

San grunts at the criticism, but rather than biting back, he returns his full attention to the task of undoing you. He bends to plant a rather kittenish kiss on the hood of your newly-found clit, then latches on to suckle at it. The graze of a sharp tooth elicits a gasp from you, and a succinct shiver courses throughout your body from the danger of having his fangs in such close quarters with a sensitive place.

“Mm, do not fear, little one. I wish to unravel you, not harm you,” San purrs. “Now let me hear those lyrical sounds spill freely from your lips.”

A whine issues in your throat at his words, but it is quiet and pinched. Hardly ‘lyrical’ at all.

“If you want her to sing for you, you have to make her,” Seonghwa says, unimpressed. He removes his hand from your chest to shove the younger demon’s face tighter against your center. His fingers twist in the blond hair. You can tell the action is far from tender.

As though a whip has been cracked, San groans and redoubles his efforts to gain the noises he so craves by adding a slender finger knuckle-deep into your dripping cunt. He curls it in slow but unmistakable ‘come hither’ gestures. The scratching of his jagged fingernail along your most delicate skin should by all means be painful, but it isn’t. Not in the least.

And you are by no means complaining.

“How did you ever fit inside of her, hyung?” San asks. “She is so tight around just my finger.”

“You will learn more of her tightness yet,” promises Seonghwa.

It does not take long for a trail of fire to ignite your nerves, sending your limbs twitching with pent-up energy and rising pleasure. The embers in your blood bring forth a thin layer of sweat onto your skin. Your breath comes and goes in shallow puffs as if your lungs have suddenly lost all holding capacity. Every hot, wet lashing the unholy creature’s tongue gifts you is a step you take closer to the brink, and the brink will soon be within tumbling distance.

Seonghwa, however, seems displeased by the rate at which San is building your climax.

“Do you consider this to be ‘unraveling’ her?” he hisses, fisting his fingers even tighter against his companion’s scalp.

San whines at the physical assertion bestowed upon him, and the vibrations of his sound travel through your center, all the way to the polar ends of your toes and fingertips.

“She is so easy, yet you are having to work so hard,” Seonghwa taunts. “Do better if you wish to achieve your own release tonight.”

The blond growls in determination. His response to his elder’s words is to bring the total number of fingers in your cunt straight to three. He does not push the additional two fingers in one at a time, but rather in a single forceful thrust of his hand. A shriek escapes you at the sudden stretch to your walls, soon followed by a long, low moan at a particularly powerful swipe over your pleasure point. Both demons hum, deep and satisfied.

“She sounds as heavenly as she tastes, does she not?” Seonghwa says, seeming much more proud now.

“A perfect choice of word, hyung,” San agrees with his tongue still around your clit.

“Keep going, just as you are,” Seonghwa urges, though it seems San has no intention of doing anything to the contrary. You can’t take your eyes off the crown of his head between your legs as he licks and sucks and flicks and strokes you into a frenzy. Your fists repeatedly clench and unclench in the sheets around you as every thought in your mind concentrates on that looming ledge.

“It’s ecstasy, isn’t it?” Seonghwa whispers to you now, and you whine something incoherent in response. He cards the fingers of his other hand through your hair as well, then fists them right at the scalp with a firm tug, just as with San’s. Except instead of pushing, he pulls your head further backward on your pillow to tilt your gaze up to his. His eyes are daggers under a coat of blood. “Isn’t it?” he repeats. His voice is not particularly loud, but the power of the question reverberates against the walls all the same.

“Y-yes, it f-f-feels so good,” you whisper, not daring to break eye contact.

“Mm, yes, I know it does. San is working diligently to prepare you for me, isn’t he?”

As though to verify Seonghwa’s claim, San thrashes his face back and forth in the juncture of your thighs with animal-like fervor. Seonghwa’s arm shakes along with the motion from where he still has a grip on the demon’s scalp.

“Such a good pet. A pretty little lamb, so willingly being devoured by the ravenous wolf,” Seonghwa coos at you, syrupy-sweet. “Let yourself come undone for him, pet. Give San what he so desperately craves. Come in his mouth.”

The casual yet inherently filthy way he uses the terms ‘come’ and ‘in’ is all it takes to fling you off the ledge and into your climax with eyes shut tight and a loud cry. Every muscle in your body pulls taut as a bowstring, and San opens his mouth wider just in time to catch the gush of wetness that bursts forth. The steady rumble of his groan — along with some softer strokes to your g-spot — helps your high taper off into a shaky yet satisfying finish.

“Oh my god,” you whisper under your breath when San finally removes his fingers and lifts his face away from your quivering, sensitive core. He looks downright devilish as he tongues his inner cheek with a smug smirk and hooded eyes. He seems proud of the mess covering his chiseled chin and cheeks, and he is looking at you as though he could devour the rest of you whole.

“God? He would never give you this much pleasure, little one,” San purrs.

Seonghwa chuckles and scratches the top of San’s head, equally proud of him. You vaguely register the tickling of his fingernails on your own scalp before he pulls his hand away from you to grab San’s — the one dirtied with your juices. The raven-haired demon takes the blond’s slick fingers, brings them up to his lips, and slips them inside with slow purpose. San does not resist the intimate act. On the contrary, you can just barely see the way his wrist moves with the way he presses his fingers back and forth against Seonghwa’s reptilian tongue.

Your mouth falls open at the display of pure eroticism, but you cannot find enough humility within you to close it again — especially when San pulls his fingers back with a wet slurp and pops his thumb into Seonghwa’s mouth next, unprompted. The two hellions lock eyes until Seonghwa has apparently sucked all the remaining residue from San’s last digit.

Only when Seonghwa finally looks back to you do you snap your jaw shut. He sneers at you and drawls, “Just as I remember: sweet as nectar.”

“She has had her pleasure. I want to take mine now, hyung,” San declares. You watch him reach down to palm at his genitals, and your eyes widen at the sight of his erection standing proudly out in the open. “I need to feel her wrapped around me.”

“You will...” Seonghwa sighs. He curls a hand around the back of San’s neck in a seemingly tender gesture, then uses his other hand to shove San away with impressive force. “...but not until after I have taken my fill of her, you selfish, impatient glutton.”

San rolls his neck and peels his back off the wall, staring coldly at Seonghwa. He does not argue, however. He just wipes the rest of your wetness from his face with the back of a hand and stalks over to wait at your side.

Meanwhile, Seonghwa takes up San’s previous position at the foot of the bed, and you shift upward on the mattress to prepare for his next move. He kneels onto the bed to follow your movement, then presses a hand onto your stomach to stop you when he judges you’ve gone far enough. His touch feels solid, but the mattress does not creak under his added weight the way you know it is prone to do.

“Not another inch, pet,” he murmurs. “Stay right there, just like that.”

He pries your legs apart again, and the tip of his sizeable cock prods against your inner thigh as he situates himself. The burn of his rigid flesh feels like a brand on your skin. You hiss when he lines himself up with your pussy.

“This may be easier than last time, but still painful, despite how drenched you are,” Seonghwa warns.

You nod in understanding. When he lifts one of your legs to wrap it around his slim waist, you take in a breath and hold it.

“Exhale, child,” Seonghwa guides you as he begins to ease himself inside.

You try to let go of your breath, but the reflex to hold it to cope with the stretch of his burning shaft is too much, and you end up gasping instead.

“Relax, little lamb,” San murmurs from your side, adopting Seonghwa’s new pet name for you. He returns his hand to your shoulder and squeezes. “Hold on to Seonghwa-hyung and breathe.”

You lift your hands up at once to find purchase along Seonghwa’s wide shoulders. His skin is buttery smooth, but the muscles beneath are rock hard. You were unable to touch him like this — or at all, actually — the last time, and you find your fingers roaming greedily. It is a good distraction from the pain coming from below.

If Seonghwa is bothered by your wandering hands, he does not show or comment on it. He simply continues feeding his cock into you, inch by inch, until eventually he can go no further.

“How does she feel?” San demands to know before anyone can do or say anything else.

“Like silken bliss,” Seonghwa answers, to which you tuck your head down shyly. One of his fingers hooks under your chin to lift your face back toward him so you can see his wicked grin. “Such a shy little thing. And yet here you lie beneath me, penetrated by me, desperately wishing me to pound you into this flimsy piece of furniture.”

“Yes, yes, I can hear her wishing that very much, hyung,” San says excitedly. “Are you going to oblige her?”

Rather than verbalizing a response, Seonghwa sways his hips backwards to withdraw a portion of his girth from you, then surges forward again. You barely have time to register the sensation of the jostling motion before he repeats it with a distinctly sharper snap. The wet slapping sound of the movement is every bit as erotic as the friction being created. His length easily reaches places inside you that other lovers can only aspire to. Every ridge of his bare shaft pulses tightly against your walls, making you mewl and squirm in no time.

“Don’t tear up our pretty pet before I have had the pleasure of her,” San adds. It sounds like a warning, a tease, and a whine all at once.

“I have not even started on her yet,” grunts Seonghwa. He peels your fingers off of him, and as he moves to pin your wrists above your head in a tight grip, the weight of his solid torso settles squarely upon yours. His skin is cool to the touch at first, but soon warms as it absorbs your heat. The movement of his hips has altered from jarring snaps to a deep, continuous roll. It feels as though his cock is quite literally stirring a second orgasm within you.

All the while, the unnatural creature keeps his deep ruby eyes on yours. It seems he wants to witness the exact moment your orgasm boils over, and you are certain it will not take long. The close proximity of his beautiful, marble sculpture of a face alone is enough to set fire to both your cheeks and your loins, as well as tug the knot in your lower belly tighter.

“She enjoys this angle, hyung,” San comments. His palm manages to slide its way flat against one of your cheeks, and his cooled touch is most welcome on your sweaty, burning skin. “But I can barely touch her when you are draped over her like this.”

Seonghwa smirks and says, “We can remedy that, if you are truly so impatient to join in.”

“Please. At least allow me to touch her as much as possible while you are tearing her apart.”

“Very well, but I will not cease taking my own pleasure for a moment.”

That is the only warning you receive before Seonghwa hoists you up with him. He stands at the foot of the bed again with his cock still sheathed securely inside of you. Your arms and legs reflexively wrap around his muscular body to keep yourself from falling, but his strong hands — and whatever otherworldly force he wields, perhaps — are more than enough to keep you upright. He uses those hands and that force to set you to moving along his turgid cock.

The shift in position does nothing to lessen the depth at which his cock reaches; if anything, it feels as though he is hitting even further inside of your soaked, narrow tunnel.

After only a few bounces, you feel San’s hands press firmly against your back and push you even closer into Seonghwa. His shove also forces Seonghwa to step backwards until it is his back that meets the wall this time, along with your crossed feet on the small of it. Immediately after Seonghwa connects with the wall, San connects with you, effectively sandwiching you in the middle of this most unholy union.

Seonghwa does not stop moving you up and down his cock. He keeps the pace he has set against your g-spot evenly. A wanton moan breaks through your throat at the sensation of all the sinewy skin and rippling muscles covering you front and back. San’s erection twitches against your lower back, giving away his own excitement at the situation.

“Mm, she likes this position even more, hyung,” he purrs against the nape of your neck. His hands circle around to trap your breasts in a tight grope. He pushes them close together, pulls them apart, tweaks your pert nipples; every fondle takes away just a bit more of what little breath you have.

Eventually, San’s fondling fingers slide their way down from your breasts, across your stomach, along your hips, and finally around to your backside where they help hold what flesh of your ass Seonghwa’s hands are not already covering.

“I know, I can hear her, too,” says Seonghwa. “Her other lovers are not able to ‘fuck’ her in this fashion, so it arouses her even more. I can feel her getting even tighter around me with every stroke.”

“Even tighter, hm?” San gently nips his razor teeth into your shoulder, and you can feel his lips curl against your skin. “That is because you like being stuffed full, don’t you, little lamb? Seonghwa-hyung’s cock is filling you up so well, isn’t it?”

It is all you can do to bob your head in agreement, since it seems your voice can only be used for moaning while you are pistoning up and down Seonghwa’s cock through no effort of your own.

“Your sweet genitalia is not the only orifice that can be stuffed full,” San goes on. “I have always wondered just how tight the hole on the other side is…”

For a brief second, you fear he will attempt to shove his well-endowed member up your ass with no further warning, but his hips do not move. Instead, he takes you by the chin and turns your head until you are facing him as much as your neck will permit with the angle, then taps against your lips with one of his fingers. You grant him entrance, and he lies his finger flat against your tongue.

“Lubricate it well,” he instructs into your ear, then licks the shell of it as though to demonstrate exactly what he wants you to do.

You dutifully flick your tongue around his finger, sucking on it until all you can taste on it is your own saliva. Only then does San retract his hand to drop it down below and probe between your jiggling backside where you cannot see.

In the midst of his thrusts, Seonghwa adjusts himself to stand straighter against the wall, then uses the full grip he has on your ass to spread the cheeks further apart and allow his companion better access. You hiss in a sharp breath when San hits pay dirt directly on the ring of your smaller hole.

“Breathe, little lamb. Just as before,” he whispers next, lush lips still caressing your ear.

You slowly let go of your breath, and San begins to push his finger past your rim. The continued up and down movement of his target does not deter or hinder him from plugging your anus. He wags his spit-slick finger back and forth inside your clenched ring of muscle as he goes. The stretch of it stings, but it is not as uncomfortable as the initial pressure of Seonghwa’s cock had been a moment ago.

In fact, you have never felt more lust-frenzied, mind-hazing pleasure all at once than you do right now, with a pair of strong hands cupping your ass, your thighs wrapped around a sturdy waist, a thick cock plunging through the walls of your cunt, a silky pair of lips trailing down your neck, another cock poking into your back, and the feeling of damnation in your puckered hole. Every nerve ending you possess has been ignited to an unquenchable pyre.

“The flower between your legs is tight, pretty pet,” San breathes, “but this sphincter of yours is at least doubly so. And hotter, too. It is a shame it is not also self-lubricating.”

An ambiguous-sounding groan rumbles through you, but every fiber of your being is in agreement with his words and actions, and San knows it.

Seonghwa knows it, too. Your eyes fixate on his beautiful lips as he drawls, “Yes, you like being penetrated front and back, don’t you, pet? Speared by my cock and skewered by San’s finger simultaneously?”

At Seonghwa’s words, San drags his finger down to tease shallow circles around your opening, then wiggles all the way back in to his knuckle. “She is loving it, hyung. Just listen to her trying to form a coherent thought right now; she cannot.”

Seonghwa hums in agreement. “Yes, she is so close to unraveling again. Just a few more thrusts against this sweet spot inside of her… and a little stimulation on the nub between her soft legs…”

San brings his other hand around to take care of the latter, tickling the swollen point between your legs the way he learned earlier as best he can while you continue to jostle up and down against Seonghwa’s hip bones.

“Are you going to release soon as well, hyung?” San asks. “Are you going to fill her?”

“Mm, yes. I suspect I can time it perfectly with our pet’s release,” bets Seonghwa. “It will not be long. She has just gotten even tighter again at the thought of being filled with my seed.”

He has barely finished calling you out before your orgasm hits, and it hits you like a freight train. Your toes curl and every muscle in your body clenches as a shockwave of pleasure detonates in your core. Your holes clamp down on the cock and the finger inside of them as you let out a shriek, sinking your fingernails into Seonghwa’s broad shoulders as he brings your body to a halt at his hilt. He lets out a booming moan of his own as his cock swells even more and erupts. A copious amount of hot liquid squirts against your cervix and lines your walls. Some of it leaks down around the plug of Seonghwa’s still turgid dick from the pull of gravity.

You let out a pinched moan as your climax spikes to its peak, then fall limp as a rag doll against Seonghwa’s frame with your forehead against one of his shoulders. San does not remove his fingers from your clit until your legs begin shuddering violently from the overstimulation.

“That’s it, my pet,” Seonghwa praises at the same moment San coos, “Such a good little lamb.” Both demons caress you as you pant heavily. Seonghwa’s hands massage your butt where he is still holding you up. You had almost forgotten San’s finger was embedded in your anus until he withdraws it and rubs your shivering spine.

You lift your head off Seonghwa’s shoulder, suddenly curious to see if he is any worse for wear than you are. He has some markings of being fucked-out: some strands of his hair have fallen out of place, and his hairline is slightly sweaty, as is his neckline and the cleavage between his pectorals. But he does not appear the slightest bit breathless, even after all his exertions in giving you the ecstasy you just experienced.

While you are still coping with the sheer amount of beauty before you, you are suddenly torn off and away from Seonghwa and tossed back onto your mattress by San. He retakes his earlier position kneeling at the foot of the bed. Without physically touching you, he drags your body down the mattress until your used pussy is inches from his face, then spreads your legs wide with firm hands. You clumsily prop yourself up on your elbows, scrambling to see his next move.

“You made quite a mess of our pretty little flower, hyung,” mutters San, cocking his head as he studies your sullied and swollen cunt. He sounds far from upset over this observation, however. In fact, you might even say he looks awed by your condition.

Seonghwa steps to the side of the bed and watches on as his companion appreciates his handiwork. Wordlessly, he dips a hand in front of San’s face and drags two slender fingers along your slit, and you shiver from sensitivity.

“So I have,” Seonghwa muses, unapologetic. He lifts his fingers to examine the tips of them shimmering with a pearly mixture of your cum and his in the moonlight. When he rubs his thumb against them as though to test the consistency, you are certain you have never felt more aroused in your life.

Thankfully, you do not have to voice your most vulgar, hedonistic desire in the moment, because Seonghwa hears you loud and clear. With a lopsided grin over your shameless thoughts, he brings his sticky fingers to your already parted lips and settles them directly on your tongue.

“So foul,” San breathes, sounding more reverent than appalled as he watches you suck Seonghwa’s fingers clean of your own free will. “Our sweet lamb will be wholly corrupted yet.”

Seonghwa draws his fingers from your tongue and slowly, so slowly runs them over your lips. You try to chase and recapture them, but he grabs your chin roughly. You flick your eyes to meet his, and his bloody stare sears you, body and soul.

“Take her,” he commands in booming bass.

The younger hellion is over you at once, pinning you to the mattress and feeding his steely length into your sloppy cunt in one smooth thrust. He grunts as he makes his entrance and bottoms out within the same second.

The cum inside you has barely had a chance to cool before it begins frothing from the incessant withdrawing and plunging of the new cock assaulting you. The excess leaks down your ass crack, but any discomfort you may feel from the unpleasant stickiness is overridden by the sparks rekindling in your blood.

From the pulses coming off the veiny shaft inside you, you get the impression that San’s blood may also be boiling. The notion that his riled-up state could be caused by you and not just a primal, carnal instinct makes your core throb tighter, however far-fetched it may be.

“He enjoys you,” Seonghwa confirms for you, tracing his thumb along your jawline. “He enjoys your scent, your taste. Right now he is swearing that your cunt is the tightest he has ever felt in his long life.”

San groans in agreement. His pace momentarily stutters as he redistributes his weight over you, and you marvel for a quick second at a bulging vein in his neck when he leans closer. “How is she still this tight after taking you, hyung? The pressure is divine. It makes me all the more eager to penetrate and get a proper feel of the vise that is her other hole, but I realize now that it would be excruciating for you, little one. Your wet little cunt will have to do for now.”

You give a silent prayer of thanks for the surprising consideration for the sanctity of your asshole. San chuckles lowly when he hears it but provides no further comment.

One by one, he takes both of your hands in one of his to lift your arms up from your sides and pin them over your head exactly as Seonghwa had done earlier. Without being prompted to, Seonghwa takes that hold on your wrists out of San’s grasp and into his own, leaving San’s hands free again to prop himself up and hover above you. The fringe of his blond hair bounces to and fro with every thrust of his hips. His eyes are cast down at your heaving breasts. His perfectly pink lips glisten with a clear coating of spit applied by a swipe of his lolling tongue. A muscle near his jawline briefly pops as he concentrates on achieving the release he has patiently awaited.

You long to stare at the heavenly yet sinful feast before your eyes forever, but your eyes are gradually rolling back into your head from the onslaught of his flared cockhead against your cervix.

Suddenly, San stops his hips altogether and pulls away to straighten his back. You roll your eyes back around in time to watch your feet hike themselves up into the air and onto his shoulders by his mystical power before he leans in closely again, essentially bending you in half as his torso presses into the backs of your legs. Your muscles burn with the unaccustomed stretch, but the languid roll of his pelvis against yours is all that is important. He grinds against your clit and your g-spot simultaneously, much to your mutual pleasure.

You arch your back at an especially deep press, but Seonghwa’s grip on your wrists keeps you from going too far. You turn your head to look at him and find him looking right back at you. He cocks his head and smirks when he listens to you wonder if he is enjoying simply watching the ‘show’ without participating.

“I do enjoy watching you, pet, but fret not; I will participate again in some capacity before the night is over,” he promises.

San pays no mind to your short conversation; he continues rutting into you, but his speed is not as frenzied as his pace from just a moment ago. The angle allows him to hit your inner pleasure point with ease, however, and he is keen on hitting it with each and every plunge.

You would say it is hard to tell which of you is closer to the edge… until all of a sudden, San lets out a bellow of a moan a mere second before his cock throbs even harder and discharges a long stream of cum, then another, and another, until the heat of it can be felt down to your bones.

He continues to grunt in deep baritone as the last of his impressive release dribbles out of him and into your clenching pussy. He gives a few last shallow thrusts, and as soon as his cock withdraws, his cum — along with whatever is left of Seonghwa’s cum combined with yours — trails out of you and onto the sheets.

The blond sighs in satisfaction and slides his fingers through his hair as he pulls away. Your feet fall from his shoulders and your legs slump to the sides. San closes his eyes and bites his lip as he recollects himself; he does not seem nearly as coolly composed as Seonghwa was after his climax moments ago.

By now, you are feeling much too exhausted to care that the two creatures did not bring you to the predicted three orgasms. Your body is a little numb, your vision is slightly blurred, and it feels like there is barbed wire in your head.

“Mm, you are a revelation, little lamb,” San murmurs huskily, breaking into your thoughts. He reopens his eyes to peer down at you, and when he finds you staring back at him, he grins and licks his lips again. One of his hands comes down to cup your chin and cheeks. He tilts your head back and forth, side to side, as though determining whether or not you are the one who is truly real after all this. Then he runs his fingers down the slope of your neck, between the valley of your breasts, over your belly button, until he reaches the mess between your spread legs and stops. The sharp tips of his fingers edge around your sticky, swollen folds.

“You have sullied our flower as well, haven’t you,” Seonghwa speaks up. It is more of a statement than a question.

Without waiting for a response, he releases your wrists and glides beside San to see for himself. His eyes drop down, and for the second time tonight, both demons are staring at your bare sex — except this time, it is in a much different state; the ���after’ depiction in a set of ‘before and after’ pictures, you imagine.

San snickers at your crazed thoughts and latches his thumb onto your clit. “You make for a pretty picture, even in this state.”

“Especially in this state,” Seonghwa emphasizes.

“Wrecked...”

“...ruined...”

“...corrupted…”

“...debauched…”

“...depraved…”

Your mind flutters between a state of conscious and unconsciousness with each blasphemous word they spit your way. Your eyes fall closed as San accelerates on your slippery bud, rebuilding the pleasure he failed to bring to fruition while inside of you. But just as he reaches a tempo that will have you cresting in no time, his thumb is replaced by a pair of lips. You cannot bring yourself to see whether they belong to San or Seonghwa; your eyelids are leaden, and so is the rest of your body.

A couple fingers enter your weakly clenching core as a wicked tongue flits intricate patterns onto your clit. Hands roam along your thighs and hips; one of them reaches up to contour around your throat.

“Let go for us, pretty pet,” purrs San. His voice sounds faint and distorted, like your ears have been submerged in water, but you recognize that it comes from above you, not between you. “Let it all go...”

He sweeps that sweet spot at your center, and Seonghwa gives you one last suck to pull you over into the abyss. If you had any control of your limbs, you would clench your fingers in the sheets and curl your toes again, but you don’t. You can’t. You remain stiff as a board as a final row of pleasure washes over you. A moan swells in your throat beneath the fingers around it when it cannot pass your clamped lips.

Your mind is much nearer to the side of oblivion than wakefulness when you vaguely hear San ask, “Is there any hope left for her soul, hyung?”

The mouth leaves your quivering pussy with a parting kiss.

“For this one?” Seonghwa whispers with a light smack of his lips. “No, I am afraid she is beyond redemption.”

---

copyright © 2023 by daizymax / lxveuntold. all rights reserved. part one | back to masterlist

[hymnsandhauntings]

“Tulsa Jesus Freak”: Lana Del Rey and the Theology of Want

Lana Del Rey doesn’t just write about love - she excavates the rituals, ruins, and relics it leaves behind. “Tulsa Jesus Freak” isn’t merely a song about a man. It’s a confession, a doctrine, and a slow-burning sermon on what it means to want someone so badly, you let them become your belief system.

It’s Southern Gothic for the iPhone era. All cigarette haze and Bible references - but filtered through the gaze of a woman who sees myth-making as a kind of personal survival.

A uniquely American haunting

To understand Tulsa Jesus Freak, you must understand Lana’s America. It’s not the flag-waving, billboard version — it’s the internal one: motel rooms, church basements, gas stations at midnight. It’s an America where faith and failure are two sides of the same coin, and where women are raised to see sacrifice as second nature.

In this sense, Lana taps into the lineage of Southern Gothic not just aesthetically, but philosophically. The genre has always been about tension between beauty and decay, salvation and sin, the sacred and the profane. Tulsa Jesus Freak embodies that perfectly. The romance is devotional, but never clean. The man is a “Jesus freak,” but he’s also probably not coming back. The woman waits, and drinks, and prays, and burns.

It’s Flannery O’Connor in a mini dress. It’s Tammy Wynette with a theological complex.

The title: “Tulsa Jesus Freak”

The title alone is doing heavy lifting. “Tulsa” brings with it a Southern weight — not gothic in a theatrical sense, but humid, small-town, ghosted by faith and folklore. It’s a place where stories rot in the basement. Where everyone knows everyone’s father and what happened to their church.

“Jesus Freak” - usually a term of derision - becomes almost romantic. It’s not a parody. It’s about that kind of person. The one who feels everything too much, who throws himself at whatever offers meaning. Sometimes it’s God. Sometimes it’s the girl in the second-floor flat.

Faith, femininity, and fixation

Culturally, this song speaks to a broader generational shift in how we relate to love and belief. Women, particularly online, have been re-evaluating what we were taught to romanticise - the brooding man, the unreturned call, the emotional labour passed off as loyalty.

But Lana isn’t critiquing that trope directly - she’s preserving it in amber. Holding it up for examination without judgment. That’s what makes the song so potent: it’s not a rejection, but a reckoning.

You can feel the quiet feminism here, not in rebellion, but in recognition. In the self-awareness of a narrator who knows this is not healthy and sings it beautifully anyway. Because sometimes, naming the obsession is the freedom.

Desire as doctrine

When Lana sings “Sing me like a Bible hymn,” it’s not about being adored. It’s about being interpreted. Poured over. Treated like something sacred - but more than that, something known.

And isn’t that the heart of it? This kind of desire doesn’t seek comfort. It seeks recognition. To be sung like a hymn is to be memorised. Lived with. Carried. That line captures a whole psychology of love as belief: not transactional, not aspirational, ritualistic.

White-hot forever: the eternity of intensity

There’s something quietly devastating about the refrain “we’ll be white-hot forever.” On first listen, it reads like a promise - something romantic, even mythic. But the brilliance of the phrase is in its contradiction. White heat is the most intense form of burning, but it’s also the most fleeting. It’s not a slow smoulder - it’s incineration. It’s love as combustion. Unsustainable by design.

By repeating it like a mantra, Lana isn’t offering comfort - she’s foretelling collapse. And she’s at peace with that. To be white-hot forever is to burn, beautifully and unapologetically, even if it leaves nothing behind but smoke.

It’s no accident that White Hot Forever was once the working title for the album that eventually became Chemtrails Over the Country Club. That alternate name lingers like a ghost throughout the record, a spiritual thread of recklessness, devotion, and surrender. It was never just a placeholder. It was a thesis.

White Hot Forever is Lana’s version of forever — not peaceful, not pure, but possessed. It captures the desire to live inside the moment of intensity, even when you know it can’t last. Especially because it can’t last.

In a culture that constantly tells women to self-regulate, play it cool, be chill, this kind of poetic emotional maximalism is radical. Lana doesn’t temper her feelings. She canonises them. And for those of us who’ve ever wanted to be remembered more than we wanted to be safe, white-hot forever is gospel.

Final thought

Tulsa Jesus Freak is more than a story of one woman, one man, one second-floor flat. It’s a meditation on belief in a faithless world. On what it means to want, deeply and destructively, and to call that wanting divine.

It’s a love song dressed in scripture. A prayer with chipped nail polish. And it lingers, not because it solves anything, but because it doesn’t try to.

[janhooks]

i'm very curious about your interpretation of harvey's "final words" being the same as john's wedding vows in look at the princess

Well this scene is preceded by two relevant ones between John and Harvey, the first where Harvey tries to convince John to kill Scorpius:

JOHN: And what would you have me do? Whack him straight away?

HARVEY: Without hesitation.

So here he means those words pretty straightforwardly. “Kill him without hesitating.”

Then there’s the scene where John is talking to Aeryn in the cooling room and Harvey starts appearing to him as some unholy combination of Aeryn/Scorpius and starts explicitly comparing his relationship with John to John’s relationship with Aeryn:

HARVEY/AERYN/SCORPIUS: Why won’t you just let her go? She’s not yours.

[…]

HARVEY/AERYN SCORPIUS: But you’ll never be lonely. Whether I’m here—[taps John on the forehead a la Scorpy] Or here—[taps his/her own temple] or in a grave on Arnessk, or in a cell on Moya, you’ll never be rid of me.

So in Harvey’s last scene of the episode, when John’s decided to “execute” him, after he’s moved through the stages of bargaining, depression, and finally acceptance of his “death”, he says “Without hesitation,” once more before John shoots him. Here he combines the senses of the two preceding scenes. When he says “without hesitation” he means “if you’re going to do it, do it decisively” and he is also evoking his wedding vows from Look at the Princess to remind John that their relationship is and always will be the most intimate and important relationship in his (John’s) life and that this bond can never be truly broken.

And I mean really it’s just another example of the sexual undertones of John and Scorpius’s relationship that have always been there because hello, he’s an alien dressed in a gimp suit, and the idea that manhood counts for nothing in space and a man is just as vulnerable to rape when it comes to interspecies encounters is kind of the classic male sci-fi fear (see Alien, 1979)… (see the flashforwards in Back and Back and Back to the Future)… (see John’s subconscious anxieties made manifest at the end of Won’t Get Fooled Again)… (see penetration imagery with John’s repeated flashbacks to being injected with the neural chip during season 2, which is then repeated in this episode with Scorpius’s jarring and brutal “removal” of Harvey here). And after 3 seasons of metaphorical rape it’s suddenly become brutally literal with Grayza two episodes earlier (and mind you John is NOT convinced that Scorpius had no hand in it) AND THEN Aeryn comes back which should represent a return to safe harbor BUT she brings Scorpius with her AND she makes John promise not to harm him AND she’s dressed just like him AND THEN Harvey who has seemed to be effectively neutered since the beginning of season 3 takes control and starts appearing to him as an unholy combination of Aeryn/Scorpius, telling him he should let them both die and accept him as a substitute… Safety and danger, love and hate, tenderness and violence, hope and despair, the sacred and the profane have gotten intolerably mixed up. He’s impotent to do anything about Scorpius, the only way he can take back any sense of control is to kill the bastard lovechild. So perversely to his only way to regain a semblance (really nothing more than a semblance) of control is to hand himself over vulnerable and unarmed to Scorpius so that he can inject… something into him and trust that the man who turned his life into a horror is telling the truth when he says it’ll get rid of Harvey…

So anyway Harvey’s line is just another one of life’s little perversions in the Uncharted Territories, where dreams become nightmares, sex becomes rape, your lover looks like the man who split your mind apart, vulgarity is exalted, the lofty is debased, and the bond between host and parasite is as sacrosanct as the bonds of matrimony.

[speaker-of-the-void-cats]

"We are unique emanations of the same shared Light."

Collective unconscious refers to the unconscious mind and shared mental concepts. It is generally associated with idealism and was coined by Carl Jung. According to Jung, the human collective unconscious is populated by instincts, as well as by archetypes: ancient primal symbols such as

The Great Mother

The Shadow

"Shadows were cast here. History made.”

“Am I to cast a Shadow?”

“Yes. You were bred to be a sorrow-bearer. I seek a Hive commander, but those are not so readily available. So I made you.”

"The shadows, showing the truth by their casting."

The Tower

Water

"...wellsprings and rivers..."

The Tree of Life

Jung considered the collective unconscious to underpin and surround the unconscious mind, distinguishing it from the personal unconscious of Freudian psychoanalysis. He believed that the concept of the collective unconscious helps to explain why similar themes occur in mythologies around the world.

O: [sighs] I do not fully understand what I saw, and for a Human to understand a Hive mind... How many legends of katabasis do we have, Ikora?

I: We currently have dozens of stories about descending to the realms of the dead, though research has indicated many more must have existed, lost in the layers of Human history we will never lay eyes on. Mathematically, there were likely hundreds.

I: [pauses] Inanna and Dumuzid and Geshtinanna, Orpheus and Eurydice, Izanagi and Izanami, to name a few. Gods and goddesses, mortal and immortal lovers, always seeking to descend and return with the lost.

O: And neither the lost nor those who searched for them were ever returned the same.

He argued that the collective unconscious had a profound influence on the lives of individuals, who lived out its symbols and clothed them in meaning through their experiences.

"They evidently live and function in the deeper layers of the unconscious, especially in that phylogenetic substratum which I have called the collective unconscious. This localization explains a good deal of their strangeness: they bring into our ephemeral consciousness an unknown psychic life belonging to a remote past. It is the mind of our unknown ancestors, their way of thinking and feeling, their way of experiencing life and the world, gods, and men. The existence of these archaic strata is presumably the source of man's belief in reincarnations and in memories of 'previous experiences'. Just as the human body is a museum, so to speak, of its phylogenetic history, so too is the psyche."

Ego | Shadow

Sacred Progenitor | Tyrannical Progenitor

Old Wise Man | Trickster

Animus | Anima

Meaning | Absurdity

Centrality | Diffusion

Order | Chaos

Opposition | Conjunction

Time | Eternity

Sacred | Profane

Transformation | Fixity

Light | Darkness

"And the essential thing, psychologically, is that in dreams, fantasies, and other exceptional states of mind the most far-fetched mythological motifs and symbols can appear autochthonously at any time, often, apparently, as the result of particular influences, traditions, and excitations working on the individual, but more often without any sign of them. These "primordial images" or "archetypes," as I have called them, belong to the basic stock of the unconscious psyche and cannot be explained as personal acquisitions. Together they make up that psychic stratum which has been called the collective unconscious. The existence of the collective unconscious means that individual consciousness is anything but a tabula rasa and is not immune to predetermining influences. On the contrary, it is in the highest degree influenced by inherited presuppositions, quite apart from the unavoidable influences exerted upon it by the environment. The collective unconscious comprises in itself the psychic life of our ancestors right back to the earliest beginnings. It is the matrix of all conscious psychic occurrences, and hence it exerts an influence that compromises the freedom of consciousness in the highest degree, since it is continually striving to lead all conscious processes back into the old paths."

Every weapon wielded and scrap of armor worn, every place visited, person met, symbol seen and pondered, every thought formed and lost and formed again... each one has a place in this story. Haven't you ever wondered what it all means? Where the path leads? Many have followed it before, countless numbers. And soon, it will be your turn. To walk. To see.

To understand.

A dream of a metaphor made starkly, an allegory discussed in study of ontology, in Darkness not unkind. It leaves behind a warped, barely-real data fragment to mark its passing. There is a voice that echoes across the Darkness, and it asks this question: what is the purpose of it all? And there is another voice that calls back and says: listen, I will tell you a purpose. I will tell you of a Final Shape. Look: there are a hundred gildings for this story. It comes down to one key matter. Beings in suffering crave purpose to carry them through. The tyrant consumed by ennui or the disenfranchised struggling simply to survive—it is the state of mind, the pain which cries out: give me a reason I should suffer so! Let us speak of power and choices. A man comes to a crossroads and asks of the sky, "Which road shall I take?" There is no answer from the sky, nor the wind, nor the earth beneath his feet. But another wanderer on the road, coming from behind and hearing the question, says, "I know the way. You should take the dexter road." If the man agrees, he puts himself in the wanderer's power, ceding his own choices for the implicit promise that this is the correct road, the safe road. And if he disagrees? Let us say that the wanderer draws a knife. The man may therefore be made to take the dexter road. But now if the knife goes away, the man will certainly flee. And perhaps even if the knife remains, the man may tire of being threatened and decide the risk is worth fleeing. In this way, the wanderer erodes their own power. If the wanderer says, "The wind has said that you should take the road of my choosing," will the man accept the choice made for him? And if the wanderer says, "Behold, I have seen that the meaning of suffering lies along the dexter road," will the man give away his own power for longer? Is it not easier to accept the guidance of a stranger when the path ahead is unknown?

And day dissolves into gold Night beckons and calls Night turns white with grief I can’t sleep

Whispers of the past Memories of yesteryears The things that did not last I recollect the tears

My love hold me tight There’s a haunted moon tonight Withered flowers never lie In midnight hours and numb goodbyes

Whispers of the past Memories of yesteryears The things they did not last I recollect the tears

Whispers of the past Memories of yesteryears The things they did not last I recollect the tears, the tears

[lumi-waxes-poetic]

House Beneath A Withered Star

By the tomb of Liberty, in midnight's mournful shroud, Where silence tolls like iron bells, both bitter, black, and loud, There stood a House—a grand façade—beneath a dying star, Its banner torn by wicked winds that whispered from afar.

Its gates were once of oaken pride, its spires kissed the sun, And though it bore a wounding past, its promise had begun— To rise above its grievous sins, to forge a brighter flame, To write, with blood and trembling hand, a nobler kind of name.

I loved that House, in younger days, though clouded it had been, For even rot within the beams could be excised and cleansed. I loved it not for what it was, but for what it might yet be— A bastion strong, where justice sang and bent not to the sea.

But twilight came not from abroad, nor from some foreign shore, It rose within, like poison gas beneath the cellar door. A serpent crowned in citrine hue, with mouth of filth and flame, Spoke honeyed lies, sowed fear and rage, and smiled without shame.

His tongue was forged of false reality, his soul a shrieking void, And those who drank his venom deep rejoiced at what they’d destroyed. They wore their hate like gilded chains, mistook their bile for grace, And built an altar to their spite, in Reason’s sacred place.

The gatekeepers, once stoic-eyed, now knelt in craven glee, They kissed the fang, they blessed the rot, they fed the gallows tree. And in the courts, black-robed and cold, the serpent placed his kin, Not blindfolded, but staring wide with hunger deep within.

These judges carved in permanence the blasphemies he wrought, Their hammers echoed through the land: Obey, forget, be taught. Their rulings, etched in acid script, bled freedoms into dust, While golden idols grinned above and mocked the people's trust.

No storm without could do such harm as hands from deep within— The House devoured its very soul and praised it as a win. And through its halls the laughter rang, unholy and obscene, For tyranny wore freedom’s mask, and lies were washed clean.

I walk now through that hallowed wreck, a pilgrim made profane, A patriot turned pariah, burned by loyalty and shame. My love, once fierce as battle hymns, is now a ghostly thing— A banshee bound to cursed ground, too hollow now to sing.

I sought a way beyond the gates, to lands of gentler laws, Where conscience still had sanctuary, and men recalled the cause. But none will take a branded soul, marked with a dying name, And I, too broken, bring no gift but sorrow, scorn, and blame.

The stars across the northern sky—how distant they appear! And Europe, old and weary-eyed, now gazes back in fear. For what was once a guiding light now flickers in the storm, And all who flee its ashen glow are judged by where they're born.

My body, frail, ailing of line, could never pass their gates, And though I knock with earnest hand, they leave me to my fate. They see not me, but what I bear: the sins of kin and land— A burden not so easily dropped nor swiftly turned to sand.

And so I dwell in exile still, within the House’s frame, My footsteps soft on broken glass, my whispers laced with blame. I watch as tyrants come and go, as zealots grin and gloat, And every hope I dared to keep now lodges in my throat.

If wiser hands should wrest the helm, and steer this ship once more, I wonder if the keel remains, or if we rot to core. Can trust be mended, flag unsoiled, once treason wears a crown? Or must the temple first collapse to build on solid ground?

O House beneath the withered star, thy windows black with smoke— Will time restore thy hollow bones, or was this all a joke? A jest divine, too cruel to laugh, too true to disbelieve— That love for thee would be my grave, and grief my last reprieve.

Thy clock strikes twelve with shuddered breath, the raven waits outside— And I, the fool, still pen these lines where liberty has died. Let others dance upon the bones and toast to fleeting grace— I’ll keep my vigil in the dark, and curse this haunted place.

[grandturtleperson]

gimme danger, little stranger

But a contemporary novelist who aspires to "maintain the right conditions for a story of passion-love" confronts a challenge, for we live in a shameless society. If "love require scandal," and nothing scandalizes us any longer, how is the novelist to cast lovers beyond the bounds of respectability, which is to say, how is the novelist to render lovers at all? (p.250) In Eroticism, published in 1957, the philosopher Georges Bataille suggests that eroticism is a question of the violation of social prohibitions. If everything is permitted, then nothing is perverted... Without violation, there is no rapture; without taboo, there is no violation; and without restriction, there is no taboo. In Bataille's terms, "the sacred" - the erotic, with all its attendant dishevelments and divestments of self - requires "the profane," the mundane mores constraining our everyday behaviour. The profane is less exalted than the sacred, but it is equally necessary: each perfects the other. A curious consequence of this view is that the more repressive and puritanical a culture, the more considerable its erotic potential. The best sex, probably, was the sex people had when they really believed they would go to hell for it - but craved it so badly that they had it anyway. (p.251)

Rothfeld, B. (2024). All things are too small: essays in praise of excess.

This must be a real dilemma for contemporary novelists. When in bygone times a glimpse of bare ankle was considered titillating, how do you recover that frisson in a romance set in modern Western society? Rothfeld goes on to mention bringing back restraint as a way of recapturing eroticism. I think fantasy/sci-fi is another good workaround because you can just invent whatever social taboos or world-building barriers you like to create the conditions for eroticism. Just make the lovers hail from the Order of the Quantum Crustaceans from Planet Abio-Gentian where fraternization between acolytes is verboten and Voila! Sexy days are here again.

[tio-trile]

I've been a Aziraphale / Crowley fan since first reading Good Omens in 2011. I loved the small but ardent fandom that we had. Back then, Aziracrow fanfiction and fan art was fun, and had such a Pratchett humanist feeling. A part of me feels wistful for those days. Since the TV adaption, and especially since season 2, Good Omens fandom feels heavy, exploring angst, these black and white Heaven v Hell themes (that feels very Neil Gaiman). Do you feel the same way or am I just old?

I feel the fandom has actually always loved and explored angst as a genre since the very beginning because, let's face it, the setup for Good Omens has some great angst potentials -- and that's totally fine, I love angst, and it was a different time and feeling because the CANON was always fun and humanist. It's something else when the adaptation that people watch as "canon" goes against the main message of the book.

[devouredbyflame]

Drawing Closer to the Divine

A common misconception about the Divine in today’s world seems to stem from being unable to define what kind of role They often play in our day to day lives. The debate of their role being whether or not they tolerate us, put up with our shit, use things to Their advantage, and take what’s theirs and give nothing back. We tend to have this issue as a rollover from Christianity which then tends to bleed into our thinking and change the way They actually go about Their doing their work and making us whole and complete within ourselves and with them.

I have realized in my work and time with my Deity that They, too, have a horse in this race just like we do. We are not Their means to an end, but rather, we are Their means and They are the end. We are what brings the Divine to us, and whether or not we believe that is possible isn’t for us to fully comprehend. I don’t have an answer to physics or science or theology, I just know what works. We can debate all we want about what’s possible but you don’t really know what’s possible unless you understand the barriers and the framework built around our understanding.

So in order for me to properly explain what it looks like when we are closer to the Divine, I’ve made it my goal to work with my Deity to listen and figure out what it means while separating the common misconceptions of the day with what it looks like in other cultures, what it looks like now, and what it could look like in the future. This personally took a toll on me which inevitably meant pulling myself out of the reach of the community and taking a look from the outside, inwards, while making changes to my practice and my work by using His guidance, my intuition, and combining the sacred with the profane.

Many people would probably have issues with the way I go about things and that’s fine. They’re allowed to have their opinions but it won’t change mine because I believe it actually works. I don’t personally align myself with any specific path at this time, I just align myself with Him and what He needs me to do in order to draw nearer to Him and do the work in front of me.

So I guess the only thing left is to note that the next several blog posts will be mostly about taking these ideas out of the context of our westernized, modern religion and rearrange our thoughts and assumptions, to then replace them with new ideas and changes to our ways of thinking. It might take a while for me to fully realize this in a blog but that’s why this is going to be several parts of a series rather than just one long ramble and eventually it will be formatted to fit an entire book or book series, rather.

You can find the entirety of the series as it’s published here:

[dreadfutures]

apropos of nothing here's something I wrote for an original fiction project aka first original IP thing I've written in. years.

"Tane," she says, and his hands fall still on his sword.

In the polished steel, she looks down at him with brown eyes so warm they would surely catch fire at the slightest prompting. There is a brittleness there, too; he can feel how she has hollowed herself, carved up her insides to muster the emotion with which she spoke his name.

His name. A most precious secret, and, he now knows, a potentially deadly one. She could bind him with that name or command him to demonstrate his godhood on her enemies.

Enemies she does not have.

He does not worry that she will use his name for such profane acts, nor does he worry much that through her his name will fall into the wrong hands. Even now, he does not doubt that he was right to tell her his truest name, though she has no way of knowing the weight it carries.

To her, Tane is her assigned protector, a fixture of her life furnished by the Temple just as much as the table she studies at or the bed she sleeps in. Tane is an unknowable, alien presence in her mind; he can feel the shape of himself in her thoughts and in her heart, and it is like a gift to him--this precious knowledge she has, that no other god or creature ever before possessed.

The god disguised as a boy turns his face up to the Kindled Girl as the flower does to the sun. He does not smile, but he blinks slowly, basking in her attention. Whatever has preoccupied her so much to bring her out of bed at this hour is serious, but nevertheless it has brought her to him, and he is more pleased than he wanted to admit to have her by his side.

"What stirs you, Ember?" he asks.

She looks away briefly, her nose scrunching with annoyance, then looks back at him with a blush rising to her fair cheeks. "I cannot stop thinking of those stories," she says. "Of what happens to all the maidens like me."

His interest mounts. "The stories from other lands?"

She nods and fists her hands in her nightgown. Her lip is clutched a moment between her teeth, and that moment lasts longer in his memory than it should. He settles his eyes responsibility on hers instead.

"I know they are allegories, but. I need to know," she says hesitantly. "Why...that? How many layers of allegory are there to their fates, before it is simply a fact of the world that we--that they--are simply devices to be used and acted upon?"

"Do you feel so disenfranchised?" he asks. He is curious to know if it is empathy for the girls in his stories that has moved her, or if she has awakened to the prison walls around her at last. The Greeks, the Romans, and countles others held their women in two opposing hands: the sacred, the sullied--all sacrificed, just as she would be one day. He told her the stories because they were entertaining, and she had asked for stories of adventure in the world outside. But he had also told her the stories because she was in so many of them.

She is still chewing her lip. It is chapped, snd soon it will bleed if she does not relent.

"How could I be?" she shrugs, snd suddenly turns her face away. "No cruel god will come to ravish me out of some jealousy for my lover's heroism and glory. And I know that any would-be conquerer would hardly make it past your blade long enough to lay eyes upon me, let alone touch me. I will never have a lover, and I will be the one to deliver myself to the pyre...as you know."

Her voice has quickened, a tinge of sarcasm bleeding in as she tried to mask her embarrassment, and Tane wonders for a moment if the security he has given her by being her Protector has actually strengtheners the walls of her cage rather than poke holes in it.

But then she glances at him, and there is s strange kind of panic in her eye.

"What I mean to ask... What happens to them... The act itself. The way they are claimed...? It is something many people do, and the need has driven men to madness and women to desiring despair, but..." She is wringing her dress now in both hands, wrinkling it irreparably; her cheeks are so red he could nearly feel their heat. "Is it always a violent conquest? A domination and an acquiescence?" She seems to grow more troubled with each spoken word, and she grimaces, bracing herself for her final question. "Does the world think claiming a woman brings them power, and status, and...? Is that all my life would be good for, if it were not my fate to burn?"

To burn, to bring power and status to a greedy soul? Tane thought wryly. But he also thought, with a sudden blinding warmth: Your life will be good for much more than that, when it is directed by your own hand. It is a promise burning in me, and one day it shall warm you.

Instead, Tane says, gently: "Oh, Ember."

He lays his sword aside and stands, and it saddens him some how she deflates in his presence.

"To some, to a not insignificant number of men, the answer is yes," he says, still gentle in voice and mein. "But 'tis not always so. The act itself can bring true pleasure between kind partners, giving to one another as united equals. Love is as real a force in the world outside as it is here."

Her lips part, breathless as his words envelop her. When she looks up at him, there is both fear and awe in her gaze.

"Is... is there love here?" she asks hoarsely, a voice barely above a whisper.

The question grieves him more than he expected it to, but he immediately knows the answer. God he may be, but to a god, knowing the depths of his unfathomable self is a trivial thing. The very moment he considers it, he knows the truth.

He loves her. More than any mortal could comprehend.

Tane raises a hand to her face, tucking a strand of hair that had come loose in her restless slumber behind her ear. Then he allows himself to cup her round cheek fully in his palm, and he marvels at the softness of her skin as he brushes his thumb near the corner of her mouth.

She hardly seems to breathe as she stares up at him. The fear has grown in her face with every moment that she waits for his answer.

But he has a question of his own, now. He had not cared to ask it before this moment, for he had not realized that the strength of his affection was not merely due to proximity and familiarity. Now, however, he is interested. Has the precocious crush of her childhood grown beyond the yearnings of adolescence?

"Do you love me, Ember?" he asks.

How can she know if she loves him?

"I don't know what love is, I think," she whispers as unshed tears burn in her eyes. "Tane... I... If you were... Would you show me?"

He considers her wide-eyed countenance a moment, how she trembles beneath his touch

Perhaps he had been showing her all along. But of course, she did not know what she was truly asking.

Tane bends, a flame pushed by unseen winds, and rests his forehead against hers for a moment. She is scalding hot, from her skin to her breath against his face, and he is hopelessly drawn to be closer and closer to her.

"I would like to, if that is your wish," he murmurs, and before she can voice her reply, he closes the last distance between their lips in a kiss.

She does not know how to respond at first, though she grips his wrist and his shirt tightly to make sure he doesn't pull away. He has all the time in the universe to wait, and he hardly needs to breathe, and the taste of her lips is sustenance enough that an eternity sipping at them would be quite acceptable. Sip he does, lips parted just enough to invite her closer, to taste, not simply to feel.

His eyes are closed, but his other senses have ignited.

The moment he touches his lips to hers, he feels every inch a god, but not in the haughty way he has so often carried himself. No, this kiss has nothing to do with power or superiority or even experience. It is about domain, responsibility, kinship--an indelible bond between devotee and their focus, mirrored across a veil of Belief.

He believes in her, and he knows he will die if she does not believe in him. In love, in freedom, in choice, in pleasure.

[odettecarotte]

Pride is a Dangerous Word: And Other Thoughts on Action, Passion, and Imagination

by E.Y. Washington

1. If your queerness isn’t a call to action, is it even queerness at all?

2. Impelled by a sense of difference and driven by a desire to escape, you venture toward vibrant alternatives and embrace their uncanny consequences.

3. Without warning, you emerged from the magnitude of a strange inheritance that blooms with variety, fragrance, color, and contradiction. This utopia floating down the street is your heritage.

4. No.

5. Pride is a dangerous word.

6. Eden is already here. Didn’t they tell you? Queer sexuality is a living, breathing garden. It runs between your legs, beats inside your ribcage, and rests between your ears. Who will tend and defend it?

7. Y-o-u.

8. At the behest of the sacred and insistence of the profane, you are responsible for keeping this complicated oasis safe.

9. Wake up, sweet one. There are wings on your back and a sword in your hand for a reason.

10. Didn’t a poet say the sword is aflame for you?

11. Beloved, you are cherubim, guarding the path to life, knowledge, good, and evil.

12. Where Adam and Eve failed, you will succeed.

13. Don’t doubt the power of your resolve. Call it flimsy in comparison to your forebears and risk cursing the very thing you’re trying to bless. "When my brother fell,” poet Essex Hemphill wrote, “I picked up his weapons / I didn’t question / whether I could aim / or be as precise as he / a needle and thread / were not among / his things / I found.” Aim with words, shoot with actions. Leave your sewing for leisure.

14. The poet’s name is Agha Shahid Ali.

15. Your marching orders come from your forebears. Suspect memorialization, they might say, it’s merely an invitation to mollify.

16. Then deify.

17. Mollification quells anger, deification quells action.

18. As beautiful as it seems, memorialization can’t save the living or bring back the dead. Fighting, at least, ensures the former. Artistic intervention mimics the latter.

19. Even now, you find Hemphill’s commentary on AIDS all too relevant. He could have written it yesterday; you could have read it today. “It’s too soon,” he wrote, “to make monuments / for all we are losing, / for lack of truth / as to why we are dying, / who wants us dead, / what purpose does it serve?” By killing you legally and illegally, your murderers reify a lie: Queer realities don’t exist, queer realities can’t survive.

20. And yet, through hell and high water, here you fucking are.

21. Please don’t let words like paradise, Eden, and utopia fool you. Loss and its consequences are your inheritance, too. Frankly, “our loss,” Hemphill wrote, “is greater than all the space we fill with prayers and praise.” Your therapist wonders how you have been seasoned by loss and Christianity. You tell them Jesus is walking on the water; You tell them He’s taking you home.

22. Honestly, loss is like a sanctuary; grief makes you holy.

23. Somewhere between back then and right now, you thought lust was enough to satiate you. Lust isn’t enough to absolve you from the systemic oppression of it all.

24. Listen, baby. “[T]he simple spilling of seed,” Essex wrote, “would not be enough to bind us.” Erections won’t keep the garden together. It needs action, imagination, and passion to flourish and thrive. We have a sword in our hand for a reason.

25. Joy makes you holy, too.

26. How to legitimize queerness? Fuck if I know. Try this?

27. Stay in tune with your sense of difference and entertain your desire to escape. Together, they agitate you until you come into more agreeable ways of being and knowing.

28. What is being and what is knowing if not another queer inheritance?

[yhwhrulz]

Worthy Brief - May 7, 2025

A covenant of fire, mercy, and promise!

Genesis 15:6 And he believed the LORD, and he counted it to him as righteousness. Genesis 15:17-18 When the sun had gone down and it was dark, behold, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces. 18 On that day, the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, “To your offspring I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates,

In the stillness of a desert night, surrounded by cut offerings and the lingering scent of sacrifice, Abram beheld something utterly sacred -- God Himself, in the form of a smoking oven and a burning torch, passing between the pieces of a covenant. It was not Abram who walked through the blood-soaked path. It was God alone. And that changes everything.

This act is one of Scripture's clearest pictures of divine grace. Covenants in the ancient world required both parties to walk through the cut pieces, symbolizing mutual responsibility. But here, only God passes through, taking full responsibility for fulfilling His promise. He binds Himself unilaterally to Abram and his descendants—Israel. The land promise, the coming redemption, and the future inheritance were not based on man’s faithfulness but on God’s unbreakable word.

Yet the scene also shows a battle in the waiting. Before the presence of God appears, vultures descend—unclean birds seeking to steal the sacrifice (Genesis 15:11). Abram drives them away, foreshadowing every believer’s struggle. We offer God our worship, our lives, our praise—but the enemy comes, trying to rob us of our faith and steal our promises. Like Abram, we must rise up, stand guard, and fight to protect what God has spoken. Let us not passively watch while doubt, distraction, or discouragement pick apart our altars.

The symbols that appeared—smoke and fire—are rich with meaning. The smoking oven speaks of judgment, refining, and awe; the burning torch speaks of mercy, light, and hope. Together, they reveal the character of the God of Israel: just and holy, yet merciful and near. In Messiah Yeshua (Jesus), we see both realities embodied. He is Zion’s salvation that burns like a torch (Isaiah 62:1), and He is also the one cut off for the sins of His people (Isaiah 53:8). He walked between the pieces, taking on the burden of blood so that we could walk in the freedom of grace.

Yet, this covenant speaks beyond the personal—it is national. God's promises to Abram include a literal land for his descendants, and Scripture affirms that this land promise is everlasting (Psalm 105:8-11). The modern restoration of Israel in 1948 was not the result of mere human determination—it was the unfolding of God’s unbreakable covenant. Even after dispersion and judgment, He has remained faithful.

Ezekiel 36 gives voice to His divine intention:

“… It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake of my holy name … And I will sanctify my great name, which was profaned among the heathen… and the heathen shall know that I am the LORD… when I shall be sanctified in you before their eyes. For I will take you from among the heathen, and gather you out of all countries, and will bring you into your own land. Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you… A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you…” (Ezekiel 36:22–26)

From the beginning, God’s plan has echoed with both physical return and spiritual awakening, calling His people back to their land and stirring their hearts to return to Him. His promise was never just to bring them home, but to cleanse them from defilement, ignite them with new life, and fill them with His Spirit through their Messiah. The exile is ending. The restoration has begun.

This is the same God who calls to us today. He still walks between the pieces. He still sanctifies His name through mercy and judgment. And He still offers to remove hearts of stone and replace them with hearts of flesh. In Yeshua, we become part of this redemptive story—grafted in, renewed, and rooted in eternal promise. (Romans 11:11-32)

Pete, so rise up, and stand your ground. Bring your offering of praise with boldness. Guard the altar of your heart—drive away every vulture that dares to steal what God has spoken. Trust the One who walked the blood-stained path alone. His fire has not gone out. His torch still blazes in the darkness. And His covenant promises remain unshakable, eternal, and true.

Your family in the Lord with much agape love,

George, Baht Rivka, Elianna and Obadiah (George, Baht Rivka & Obi - Baltimore, Maryland | Elianna - Married living in Missouri)

Editor's Note: Feel free to share any of our content from Worthy, including Devotions, News articles, and more, on your social platforms. You have full permission to copy and repost anything we produce.

Editor's Note: During this war, we have been live blogging throughout the day -- sometimes minute by minute on our Telegram channel. https://t.me/worthywatch/ Be sure to check it out!

[theprayerfulword]

February 28

Psalm 91:4 [The Lord] will cover you with His feathers, and under His wings you will find refuge; His faithfulness will be your shield and rampart.

Matthew 24:6 And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet.

John 14:27 Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.

Matthew 22:37 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind

Hebrews 12:2 …fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

Ephesians 4:16 From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.

May you realize, and rejoice in the fact, that your High Priest is stationed in the heavenlies above all powers or events that would attempt to entangle or prevent Him from carrying out His calling of making intercession for you as your Advocate to the Father. Leviticus 22

May you bring to the Lord the gift of your heart, complete and entire, not missing any parts that are held back for yourself, or with pride of accomplishments and men's testimonies added, simply as you are, understanding that the Father knows you for who you are. Leviticus 22

May you obey the Word of God, following the leading of the Spirit, that both your words and your deeds will acknowledge the Lord as holy, and His name, which you bear, will not be profaned, for He is the One Who has set you apart for Himself and brought you out of the world's system and lifestyle to be your God. Leviticus 22

May you find joy and rest in celebrating the Lord, whether it is when you step apart privately as He draws you to Himself, or on the occasions when you join with others in solemn and sacred assemblies, for these are the Lord's appointed feasts and His holy convocations. Leviticus 23

May you make the Lord the starting point for all you are and all you seek, giving Him the first of your day, your strength, your thoughts, your plans, seeking His wisdom, understanding, and direction by placing Him first in your life in all you do. Leviticus 23

May you show mercy to others in the affairs of your life, giving generously and not grasping greedily, acknowledging that the Lord's unfailing abundance is your source and not your skill or your strength. Leviticus 23

May you wear the world loosely and sharpen your spiritual senses, that through the humbling of repentance of sin and acceptance of the peace of salvation, you may know the direction of your pilgrimage as you more clearly hear the trumpet call of the Spirit's voice in your heart bringing joy and gladness. Leviticus 23

May you endure hardness for the sake of the gospel as you labor in the harvest, knowing the joys of the heart and the comforts of the spirit that will be yours at the in-gathering, that the Lord may have all the glory from any mercy that is completed. Leviticus 23

Do not feel overwhelmed by your perceived shortcomings or faults in the face of your present troubles and trials, My child. My love covers a greater multitude of sins than you can conceive, and I am just, willing to forgive and cleanse you of all you sincerely confess and turn from. I have already paid the price for you, My little one. Why would I withhold that which is already yours? Come to Me, My love, with all the grime and dust and stains that have accumulated that I may give you the refreshing of My Spirit and the renewing of My love. Do not be distracted by notions of how to “earn” My acceptance or to “make” Me love you more. Simply run to My arms now and be reconciled, leaving behind those tormenting “bullies,” those thoughts that continually belittle you with lies about yourself, causing you to stop thinking of Me. I am the One that you are to think on, for I am honest, just, pure, and lovely; where else will you find the Source of good reports, virtue, and praise? Let My peace guard your heart and mind as you put into practice all that you have learned and received and heard from Me, for I will be with you, both now in your present sorrow, and through eternity with joy beyond measure.

May the Lord draw you away to Himself and teach you what you need. Mark 9

May you remember that whenever Jesus spoke of the suffering and pain that was to come for Himself as well as His followers, He always spoke of the overcoming of the enemy and the victory that would emerge from what the eye of man would consider defeat, because the Spirit that is within you will always be greater that the spirit that is in the world. Mark 9

May your desire to be the first and the greatest lead you to press through your pride and serve all in the humility of the Father's love, and in gratitude for the second chances you have been given by His grace. Mark 9

May you accept with fellowship and grace each one who honors the name of Christ in word and deed, for in spite of outward differences or insignificant details, no one who walks in the faith of the Word, bears the fruit of the Spirit, and gives glory to God through the power of Jesus' name can soon, or easily, speak evil of the Lord. Mark 9

May the fire of your trials reveal the glory of God's eternal nature as your carnal nature is consumed, and the savor of grace with the salt of trust be pleasing to the Lord. Mark 9

May you cling to the truth of God's word so that you may receive the promises of His Spirit, for where He directs, He makes a way. Mark 10

May you press into the presence of God, learning the truth of His ways so that you can discern the traditions of men and see more clearly where they have added to, and taken away from, His ways and His will. Mark 10

May you not trust in your skill or strength to bring you victory, but in the Lord, your King and your God, through Whom you push back your enemies, and through Whose name you trample your foes, for He gives you victory over your adversaries, whom He puts to shame. Psalm 44

May you make your boast in God all day long and praise His name forever. Psalm 44

May the Lord's right hand, His arm, and the light of His face drive out the principalities and crush the powers which oppose you so that you may be planted and made to flourish, all because of God's bountiful and limitless love for you, and so that those around you will know the testimonies of the Lord. Psalm 44

May you have the wisdom to know when to hold your tongue, and to speak only what you hear the Father saying, for when words are many, sin is not absent. Proverbs 10:19

[innominatadea]

Work Day Prayer

Oh blessed Goddess,

All-mother to creation. Arbiter and psychopomp to the cycle of birth, life, death and rebirth. Judge of souls. Maiden of spring, mother of summer, grandmother of autumn and crone of winter. Sacred emergent divine spark.

Please bless me with your presence as I labor this day. May my words, actions and behaviors bring a smile to your unfathomably ancient eyes. Bless my back with strength, my countenance with patience and my mind with peace. Remind me to be understanding and deliberate in my interactions with others and fill my veins with zeal for whatever tasks I must do this day. Teach me to interact with my fellow denizens of your wardened world with kindness and understanding. Let me act as a benefit to those around me, and not act as a profane parasite, who refuse to work for their keep and instead steal from others.

Forgive me the offerings I must place at the altar of Mammon, the great lord of parasites, in order to function in a world that has so long forgotten your name. Forgive the other members of my species for the reckless way they waste what life has so freely given them. Judge them not too harshly for their excesses, they know not the sins they commit.

Keep me under the watchful eye of your emissaries and let me return to my hearth and home weary from my labors, but whole and free from the infection of the hated parasites.

Your protection I request. Your blessing I seek. Let me stride forth with zeal. Let not my soul become heavy with my sins. Let me not waste.

In your forgotten name,

Innominata Dea