#but also the salmon barely counts

[tj-crochets]

Okay there's more interest in my "how I make patterns" post than I expected (I honestly did not expect any interest). Do y'all want to see me design a pattern from start to finish? If so, what should it be a pattern for? Send me ideas and I'll make a poll

[zepskies]

Smoke Eater - Part 7

Pairing: Firefighter!Dean Winchester x F. Reader 

Summary: Dean Winchester is the cocky, but well-respected Lieutenant at Firehouse 25. He leads by example, but he’s also known to break a few hearts. He’s starting to crave something he’s never had, though. Something stable. Something real. 

That’s when he meets you, on a truly terrible day, trapped in a rickety old elevator.   

🔥 Series Masterlist

AN: So I don't know why it takes me exactly seven chapters to get to the smut, but so far that's three different series where that's happened. 😂 (Never Say Goodbye, Break Me Down, and now Smoke Eater. Go figure! 🤷🏽‍♀️)

Word Count: 6,200 Tags/Warnings: 18+ only! For smutty smut and baking shenanigans, tinge of angst.

Part 7: “Cherry Pie & Lemon Drizzle”

You liked Dean’s apartment. It was on the second floor out of three, and a modest, clean, comfortable space.

Though overall it felt very “dude bro” in décor. You supposed that made sense, considering it was just Sam and Dean living here.

And while you still hadn’t met Sam (he was working late tonight), it gave you a chance to do something you’d been very much looking forward to doing with Dean… 

“Not for nothin’, this is probably one in three of the best things I’ve ever put in my mouth,” said Dean.

True to his word, his mouth was full. You giggled as a flake of pasta spewed from his mouth.

“Oh really? Makes me curious about the other two,” you said mischievously. And you handed him a napkin to blot his face.

You sat across from him in the small dining room adjacent to the kitchen. The table itself was barely big enough to fit in the space, feeling more like a nook than a room, but it sat three people. That was usually enough for Sam and Dean, and occasionally Eileen when she came over.

Dean chuckled, his brows dancing. “Oh, I’m sure you’ll find out.”

Your face warmed at that, despite your amusement. You had made dinner, for which Dean had been more than enthusiastic.

“You mean I get an actual chef making me food? Sign me the hell up,” he’d teased.

Never mind that you weren’t an actual chef. You had focused on patisserie in culinary school. He didn’t seem to mind though, as he’d devoured two servings of salmon and fettucine alfredo, even down to the steamed broccoli. You had to admit, it warmed you inside to see him enjoy your food.

You’d promised to cook for him last week, and he hadn’t let it go until both your schedules opened up enough for you to come over.

He now hummed in satisfaction as he finished off the last bite on his plate and wiped his mouth with the napkin.

“Thanks for this, sweetheart. I needa have you around here more often,” he said, tossing you a grin.

You smiled back. “It’s my pleasure.”

It wasn’t the first time Dean had invited you over to his apartment, but for the life of you, you didn’t know why it had taken you so long to accept.

…Well, okay, you did know why. You were reluctant to leave your grandfather alone, potentially all night. But George had been adamant about you going out for as long as you wanted, on the promise that he’d check in every few hours until he went to bed.

“Okay, ready for dessert?” you asked.

“Uh, yeah,” Dean said. He still thought about those cookies you brought to the firehouse, almost a month ago already.

Damn, has it really been that long? he thought as he helped you collect the dishes from dinner. He followed you into the kitchen, where you already knew the lay of his land.

Sam couldn’t cook for shit, so it usually fell on Dean to be the figure of culinary expertise. But he had no problem making way for you, especially if you were going to look over your shoulder and wink at him like that.

“Good, because you’re going to help me,” you informed him.

Dean’s smile grew. “All right…what did you have in mind?”

While he started on the dishes in the sink, you hauled out even more ingredients from a big grocery bag you’d brought and stored in the refrigerator. He watched you out of the corner of his eye and spotted lemons, among other things.

“Lemon drizzle cake,” you replied. “One of my grandma’s recipes. I just need a mixing bowl and a cake tin.”

“Good, because we’re not very Betty Crocker in this place. Let’s just say my kitchen tools are limited,” he said, raising a brow at you. “You know, if you wanted to bake, I’m sure you’ve got all the proper bells and whistles at your house. We could’ve done this over there.”

You paused to consider the question he wasn’t quite asking, because he had a point. You could’ve invited him over your house instead. You joined him near the sink and leaned against the counter, tapping your nails on the tile surface.

“Well, as you know, I live with my grandpa,” you said.

“Good ol’ George,” Dean grinned. “That guy’s hilarious. Like the fourth Stooge.”

He particularly liked the story you’d told him about the time George had bought you your first makeup palette when you turned fifteen, but hadn’t told you it was face paint…the kind that clowns used.

“And I’d love for you two to get to know each other better. Don’t get me wrong. But barring the fact that we probably wouldn’t have much…privacy,” you pointed out with a subtle smile, trying to ignore Dean’s resulting smirk. Never mind that you two hadn’t needed “privacy” just yet.

“I guess I’m just not used to inviting people over. I’ve been trying to limit the exposure to germs in the house,” you admitted. At Dean’s quizzical look, you had to explain.

“My grandfather had cancer last year,” you said. “He had surgery to remove the mass, and did well, considering his age. He’s in remission now…but I’m still looking after him.”

You’d gone with him to see his primary doctor a couple of weeks ago for that persistent cough. While the doctor seemed to think it was George’s asthma acting up, you’d still scheduled an appointment with his oncologist.

And while your thoughts led you down an all-too familiar path, Dean processed this with a nod of his head. He shut off the sink. After drying his hands, he looked over at you and brushed your cheek with his thumb.

“I’m glad he’s doing better now,” he said. His brows furrowed. “And your grandma passed just a few years before that?”

You nodded, letting out a deep breath. “Yeah. It’s been a long few years.”

So, Dean took an inventory in his mind as he rested a comforting hand on your back. You took care of your family. You could cook. You were beautiful. And still, you kicked ass at your job and seemed to have the rest of your shit together.

He had to admit. The more he learned about you, the more he liked you.

“Anyway,” you shook your head with a smile. “Sorry. Ready to bake?”

Dean’s lips quirked as he followed you to the other side of the kitchen. He stepped behind you and letting his hands fall to your waist. His lips skimmed the side of your head, pressing a kiss there.

“Okay, Rachael Ray,” he teased. “Teach me your ways.”

You were trying to measure out some sugar in the bowl first, but you giggled with a warm blush as he kissed his way down your neck.

“Are you actually going to help, or are you just going to distract me?” you volleyed back.

Dean hummed against the crook of your neck. “Can’t I do both?”

You picked up and egg and raised it level with his face.

“Hmm, should I try cracking this against your forehead?” you pondered.

His teeth playfully nipped your skin in retaliation, making you flinch with a yelp. The egg actually cracked in your hand.

“Shit,” you laughed, and you quickly dropped as much of it in the bowl as possible. But getting fractals of the shell in the bowl disturbed your anal sense of meticulousness. When it came to cracking eggs, you typically had nothing if not precision.

You shot Dean an accusatory look over your shoulder. He just grinned back at you.

“Am I helping yet?” he joked.

You chuckled dryly in response. “Just you wait.”

A few more minutes and “helpful” distractions from Dean later, you successfully had a cake batter in the bowl. You were hand mixing up a storm and sorely missing your Kitchen Aid mixer. Dean was right though; his cupboards had little more than one cake pan, one mixing bowl, and one wooden spoon.

At home, you had a modest collection of cookware and bakeware that rivaled Williams & Sonoma. Though that had been a gift from your grandparents, when you graduated from culinary school. (Your grandma had picked them out before she passed.)

“What’s your favorite dessert?” you asked Dean. You were pretending not to catch him sampling the batter with a finger while you buttered the cake tin.

“Ever?” he asked, rubbing a licked finger on his jeans.

“Yeah. Number one top favorite.”

“Hmm,” he contemplated with a cross of his arms. “Pie, I guess.”

You smirked. That explained his little man-child display a few weeks ago, when you’d tried to share his blueberry pie on your second date.

“What flavor?” you asked.

“I dunno. I’m not real picky,” he said.

“Come on. Everyone has a favorite flavor,” you reasoned. “I’m more of a cake girl myself, but even I love a blueberry pie.”

Dean eyed your teasing grin with a growing smirk of his own. He remembered that day in your office just as well as you.

“Okay, fine. Apple, I guess,” he replied. You gave him a mocking look.

“Really, the most basic of them all?” You tsked at him, shaking your head. “What happened to Mr. Rocky Road?”

Dean chuckled, but he leaned against the counter next to you. Instead of giving it to you right back, as usual, he looked more thoughtful. A gentler look grew on his face. It caught your attention.

“You know, one of my earliest memories…” He looked up at you then, more self-deprecating.

You realized he was about to admit to something, maybe embarrassing, or maybe just vulnerable. Your smile softened too as you paused in what you were doing.

“You can’t leave me hanging on that one,” you said. And you drew closer with a hand soothing up his arm.

He glanced over at you. “I remember being…four, probably. My mom made pies during Christmastime. Cherry, pecan, whatever. But my favorite was her apple pie. I still remember it, because I haven’t had a pie since that tasted like that one.”

Your heart clenched, but your insides also warmed. Not just at the story of his mother, but the way Dean told it, his voice softer, steady, and deep. It told you a lot about him without him having to explain; just like you, he knew what loss was.

You curled your hands around his bicep and pressed a kiss to his shoulder. Then your gaze drew back up to his.

“Have you talked to your dad since the last time?” you asked, a bit cautiously. “About his investigation of the fire?”

Dean sighed deep through his nose. “No.”

But despite his father’s warning, he had spoken to Sam.

“It’s different this time, Sam. The brand marks are the same,” Dean argued with his brother, this time in the living room. He sat on the couch while Sam stood, trying to process everything Dean had just told him about Mary’s potential murder.

“You saw the pictures yourself?” Sam asked.

Dean frowned. “No, but Dad—”

“Dean,” Sam cut him off as he gripped at his temples in frustration. “This is what he does. He sees evidence where he wants to see evidence. I’ve been down this road with him too, you know.”

“Yeah, I know,” Dean gritted out. John had roped Sam into helping him a few times, using his ADA status to look into different leads that ultimately hadn’t panned out.

“They always look like connections to him, but they never end up being anything more than his obsession,” Sam said.

He was firm, and Dean understood why, but his gut was telling him that it was different this time…

Still, he had no choice but to let it go. For now.

Dean shook his head of that memory. Instead, he tried to focus on being here with you. He liked this little yellow sundress you had on, despite the fall chill starting to set in outside. As usual, your hair was clipped up away from your neck while you got ready to put the now full cake tin into the oven.

He came over behind you and freed your hair from the clip, letting it all tumble down. You yelped and glanced over at him.

“Dean,” you chided, even though you were smiling. “My hair’s going to get in the batter.”

“I’ll keep it away, don’t worry,” he said lightly. He curled some of your hair around his hand so he could once again press a tantalizing kiss to the back of your neck. He felt you shiver.

You subtly leaned back against him, even as you whined in protest.

“Can you just let me get this in the oven?” you asked on a laugh. He smirked against your skin. You did manage to get the cake in the oven, but his lips and teasing hands were unrelenting as you tried to start cleaning up.

So you felt you had to take matters into your own hands. A mischievous idea had you smiling. You reached out for some flour that had spilled on the counter.

You turned, and before he realized what you were up to, you marked his forehead with an arch of white against his skin.

“Simba,” you said in a deeper voice, trying to mimic Mufasa from The Lion King.

Dean’s brows rose along with his widening eyes. He’d never seen you do something that childish, but it sparked his competitiveness as he blinked a bit of flour out of his eyes.

“You’re real proud of yourself, aren’t you?” he asked.

Your little smirk was answer enough. You flicked a bit more flour onto his shirt.

Dean chuckled darkly. “Okay, you asked for it.”

Both a gasp and a giggle caught in your throat.

“Oh, no.”

He reached past you for some flour off the counter and flicked it down at you, into your hair, across your face. He grabbed your flailing wrist and marked your cheeks. All the while, his grin grew ever deeper at your shrieking protests.

But you grew devious. You stuck two fingers into the bowl and scraped out a gob of raw, yellow batter. You were fully prepared to fling it into his face, but Dean grabbed your wrist.

“Ey, ey!” he raised a warning finger with his free hand. “You’re about to take this to a new level.”

You met his gaze through your lashes with a playful smile. “So?”

Dean raised a brow at you. He could admit, you had audacity. All he could do was call your bluff.

He took one of your battered fingers into his mouth. Your eyes widened at the feel of his soft tongue swirling around your finger, sucking it clean. All the while, his eyes never broke from yours.

Lord have mercy, you thought. Really, it was the only coherent one in your head.

He soon released you with a soft pop, before he did the same to the second finger.

Your breath hitched, and your blush was a living thing spreading down your neck, even as warmth pooled between your legs. By the time your second finger slid out of his mouth, you had to reach back to grip the counter just to steady yourself.

His arm slipped around your waist, and you reached for his face with both hands, bringing him down for the hottest kiss you’d ever had in your life. Teeth clicking, lips and tongues warring and devouring. Your fingers slipped roughly through his hair, while he gripped your hips and ass with a passion just shy of bruising.

You almost didn’t register the way his hands slipped under your thighs, to then heft you up onto the counter. You gasped into his mouth and clung tightly to his shoulders. He chuckled and positioned himself to stand between your legs.

“What, need a little warning?” he teased. Though he was breathless as your soft lips veered away from his, starting a burning path across his jaw and down his neck. You left the remnants of your lipstick all along the way, but it was the occasional graze of your teeth that had him moaning for you.

“Maybe,” you whispered coarsely against his skin, uttering a small laugh, “Sometimes I forget how damn strong you are.”

He scoffed. “Sweetheart, if I can heft a grown man on my shoulders up a flight of stairs, I can get you up on a little counter.”

You snorted in response. Perks of dating a firefighter.

And you shoved off his plaid shirt from his shoulders. Dean helped you by letting it drop the rest of the way to the floor, followed by his black undershirt.

You couldn’t believe this was the first time you were seeing him with his shirt off. It was a damn shame, really. But you caught the bit of smugness curving his lips at the way you were ogling, first with your eyes, then with your exploring hands over his toned arms and chest, and the solid plane of his abs, all the way down to his belt. You started undoing the clasp.

Dean couldn’t believe he was doing this, but he stopped you with his hands gently curling around your wrists. You looked up at him in confusion. To him, you looked unbelievably sexy then. Thoroughly kissed, hair tousled, a strap of your dress fallen to one shoulder while your lacey black bra peeked through.

Just the memory of having your curves in his hands had his dick hardening in his jeans, but he blew out a breath.

“Dean?” you asked. “What’s wrong?”

His hands tightened on yours as he peered down at you. “Are you sure?”

You blinked incredulously. “Did I look not sure?”

He paused, licking his lips. He raised a hand to hold your cheek.

“I just…you know I’m trying to do this right with you,” he said. “I just want to know…”

He couldn’t seem to finish what he was trying to say, but you thought you understood. You smiled up at him warmly. You leaned up for a kiss, softer this time.

“Dean, I trust you,” you said. And you could finally say it with no reservations. “I think this feels real. More real than anything I’ve had in a long time… What about you?”

When Dean smiled, it was warm, melting away the doubt in his eyes.

“Yeah, me too,” he said.

He seemed sincere. Maybe this man spared few words when it came to how he felt, but you’d seen a glimpse of the deeper parts. He felt things deeply, down to his bones.

His fingers sunk into your hair, and he guided you into a kiss. It was slower, but no less heady and wanting than the first. Your arms wrapped around his middle, letting you flatten your palms against the muscles in his back. But just as you were getting comfortable, Dean broke the kiss. He flashed you a smirk.

Before you could ask what the hell he was about to do, he’d hefted you back into his arms and over his shoulder. You squawked in protest as your whole world tipped over. Your face thudded on his back with a soft oof, your hair loose and falling like a curtain. Your hands accidentally fell against his ass.

“Ooh, someone’s handsy,” Dean teased.

“Dean!” you exclaimed, despite your peals of laughter. “Is this really necessary? I think I can find your room just fine.”

“Call it an officer’s escort,” he supplied.

“That’s for policemen!” you argued.

You couldn’t see it, but you could imagine the way he was grinning from ear to ear as he carried you through the apartment. You never noticed just how long his bowed legs were as he strode onward. But it felt like his shoulder was digging into your appendix.

Grunting in frustration, you slapped his ass again for good measure.

Dean laughed. “Hey, you’re only fueling my fire, baby.”

He slapped your ass right back, since he had an even better vantage point. He even slipped a hand underneath your little sundress and squeezed the inside of your thigh teasingly.

Your answering yelp, and the futile kick of your feet, had him laughing harder. His cheeks were aching.

Finally he reached his room, where he shut the door with his foot. He was gentle as he eased you off his shoulder and laid you down on his bed. You let out a breathless huff once your head hit the pillows. Your face was all red from being suspended upside-down, your hair a mess, and your dress pooling over your folded legs.

You gave Dean a playful glare. “Get over here.”

His smirk deepened, but he obliged you. He chucked his shoes off first, just like you let your sandals slip off the side of the bed.

He soon made his way up the bed, until he was hovering over you with his arms braced on either side of your head. He liked the way you were all laid out for him over his sheets, your wild hair spread over his pillows. He’d pictured something like this before, but nothing came close to having you for real.

He just didn’t know you’d been dreaming of the same thing.

You hadn’t allowed yourself to truly fall for someone, not in a long time. You’d been too focused on pivoting after school, on building your career, on taking care of your family. You’d dated here and there, but nothing had stuck for more than a few months. Even then, you’d never felt half of what you felt right now.

It scared you a little, but it also made you feel alive. Being with Dean made you feel that way.

So you took his face between your hands. His stubble rasped against your palms and the pads of your fingers. You didn’t mind that though. He’d left it a bit long for a shave last week. When you’d mentioned off-hand that you liked the thicker scruff (thinking it made him all the more handsome), he’d kept it for you. 

Now, he seemed like he was waiting on your cue.

You guided him down to you. He kissed you hot and slow, while a hand moved to your waist and clenched in the material of your dress. He slipped a heavy thigh between both of yours. The pressure was welcome, but you wanted friction.

You bunched up the skirt of your dress and aimed to slip it off, but Dean stopped your hands.

“That’s my job,” he teased.

“Then how about you get to it?” you countered with a smile. He rose a brow at you.

“A bit bossy, but I can dig that,” he smirked.

His kisses dropped against your neck, down your exposed neckline, and he peeled down the straps of your dress one by one. Your breathing became more labored as he touched you, squeezing a breast over the bra as he exposed more inches of your body.

Your fingers carded through his hair on a sigh as he made his way further down. Though he finally got impatient enough to work your dress off all the way, followed by his jeans and your bra and matching lacey panties. He lavished attention what felt like all over your body.

Really, he was just strategic. He stopped in places where you lost breath, moaning his name. Like the spot just under your ear, where he sucked hard enough to make you see stars. Or over your breasts, taking a pebbled nipple in his mouth, swirling with his tongue like he had the cake batter off your fingers.

His hands mapped out the soft planes and curves of your body for the first time, sometimes smooth and grazing, sometimes adding pressure that made warmth continue to pool between your legs.  

He went further still, wrapping an arm around your thigh and pressing nipping kisses along the inside. All the while his mouth drew closer to the place you wanted him the most. Even though you still raised up on your elbow and gave him a questioning look.

“Really? You want to…” Your voice came out in a whisper.

Dean looked up at you with puzzled brows. “Why not?”

You shook your head, your eyes widening marginally.

“No reason, I guess. I, um…I’ve never had someone do this for me first.” And certainly not on the first time having sex.

Dean frowned.

“Really?” he asked. “A guy’s never gone down on you first?”

You blushed. “Well, maybe with his fingers, but not…”

He shook his head and let out a breath. You felt it between your thighs, and your core clenched in anticipation.

“Okay, baby. I gotcha,” he said. He guided you back down with a gentle hand. “Just lie back and relax.”

You smiled, despite your lingering blush, and you stroked the hand that rested above your stomach. That hand soon slid down as he once again kissed and licked down your thighs. They quivered a bit as his fingers slipped between your folds.

“So fucking wet for me already,” he said in approval. You peered down at him, unable to help a smile.

“You want a medal?” you quipped.

Dean’s brows rose.

“Oh, I’m about to earn it.” His eyes found yours. “You know what my real favorite pie flavor is?”

Your brows knitted together. “What?”

A familiar smirk crossed his lips. “Cherry.”

Before your choked surprise could be broken with a laugh, he began. 

And he wasn’t lying, about any of it. The pads of his fingers began toying with your clit, and that alone had your breath hitching and your hips squirming.

He held you down with one hand on your lower belly while his tongue joined his fingers, seeking your heat and finding the hot channel where you craved to be filled. You gasped.

“Oh, God,” you uttered. Once his warm tongue began rolling inside you, you almost couldn’t breathe.

He worked you over with fingers, lips and tongue until you were arching off the bed, fists clenched in his hair and in the sheets, releasing broken gasps of his name. He didn’t relent until your thighs stopped shaking around his head. Your knees were damn near pinning him there.

He eventually withdrew, wiping his mouth and nose with the back of his hand. He moved smoothly back up your body and heeded the pull of your hands on his arms, and then his face. You tugged him down for a sloppy kiss. 

“How’s that for a first?” he asked breathlessly. His tone was teasing, but he was half-serious you thought, by the look in his eyes.

You were honest, without a hint of a joke. “Fucking incredible. Just like you.”

Dean wouldn’t admit it then, but what you said warmed him. He looked down on you with a smile.

Your hands caressed his face, down his neck and firm chest, and further still to caress his straining length over his boxer briefs. Dean let out a halting moan at your gentle touch. 

“What if I want to return the favor?” you asked with a smile. He made a sound deep in his throat when you cupped him more firmly, letting your thumb brush over the head.

Well hello, you thought. He was thick, and a bit bigger than your first thought. Your already sensitive core tightened at the thought. 

Meanwhile, Dean squeezed your arm. His hot gaze bore into yours.

“Very, very tempting.” His thumb brushed your lower lip. “I’ve no doubt you’ve got some talents yourself.”

You smiled under the pad of his thumb. Part of you was contemplating some retribution, sucking it into your mouth the way he’d done to your fingers in the kitchen.

“But I’m thinkin’ I want to skip to the part where I have you coming apart all over again,” said Dean. His head bowed near your ear, though his lips skimmed the side of your face. “This time, from the inside.”

His voice was deep and threaded with grit. You bit your lip on a giddy laugh. You managed to nod, sweeping your shaky fingers through his hair.

“Okay, next time then,” you promised and gave him a sensuous kiss. “But first, just want to make sure you’re ready for me…”

You pushed at the center of his chest so he'd let you sit up, so you could lean down to slide his underwear for him, down to his knees. He helped you the rest of the way, kicking them off his legs. When he came back, you soothed warm hands along his thighs. Then you took his cock into your hands. Dean dropped his forehead onto your shoulder with a grunt, again squeezing your arms as you touched him properly for the first time.

Dean had a habit of impressing you, and this was no different. You liked the feel of him in your hands, warm and thick and heavy.

After licking your hand to coat it with some wetness, you experimented for a moment in how you stroked him, trying to get a feel for what he liked just as he had for you. He gasped and jolted on one particular twist, and he finally stopped you with a hand on your wrist.

“Okay, baby. Keep that up and we’re not gonna get much farther for a while,” he said coarsely.

It was satisfying to know you’d made him feel even a fraction of how he’d made you feel.

You pressed a purposeful kiss into his neck. “I told you, next time I’ll take care of you for real.”

He chuckled, cupping the side of your face.

“Oh, you’re about to. Believe me,” he said.

He kissed you long and deep, until you were once again breathless. The two of you were kneeling in the middle of the bed like you had all the time in the world. And yet, you wanted him more than ever.

“I’m on birth control,” you told him between more fervent kisses, hands drifting, feeling skin to warm, dewy skin, breaths mingling.

“And I’m clean,” he said. You nodded, hesitating…

“It’s our first time,” you said. “Condom, just to be safe.”

He hesitated only a beat before he nodded back, agreeing to your request. “Yes, ma’am.”

He broke from you briefly. He turned and dug into his nightstand while your nails drew light patterns down his back. It was distracting in the best of ways. A trill of excitement had his hands moving quickly, ripping the foil packet open and fitting himself with the condom.

When he was ready for you, he turned and hooked an arm around your waist. You twined your arms around his neck, and once again, you let him lay you down. His kiss came first, and then his fingers between your legs, past your folds to stroke you back to life.

You moaned into his mouth and wrapped your legs around his hips. Though he surprised you again by hooking your legs over his shoulders. Your brows raised at him, and he shot you a wink.

“Trust me, you’ll like it this way,” he said.

You did trust him. Your hands caressed down his neck, down his chest, and you subtly urged him with your heels on his back, encouraging him where you both knew he needed to be.

And with one slow push, his cock was stretching your inner walls with slow, delicious friction. You both groaned at the feeling. His forehead pressed against yours. His hand trembled slightly, brushing your hair away from your face. And he began moving inside you in steady strokes.

Dean was putting his all into this tonight. He thought your promises to take care of him next time were as endearing as they were sexy as hell. Even now, you were touching him wherever you could reach, occasionally moaning his name in his ear, encouraging him with every thrust inside you.

Fuck, he was right, you thought. He was reaching places deep inside you, filling you to the very brim. And you were already on the edge of pleasure, brows furrowed, biting your lower lip so hard that your teeth nearly broke the skin…

Your fingers slipped down between you to further part your folds and rub your already sensitive clit. Dean caught the hint and moved your hand to do it himself, as in time with his thrusts as he could. Finally, you unraveled for the second time that night. Your gasp gave way to a moan.

Your tightening walls gripped him like a vice. His release hit him with the same force, choking a near shout out of him. His hand was a bit too tight in your hair, he realized, so he forced himself to ease up.

He petted over your hair instead as he came down with ragged breaths. After he released your shaky legs back to the bed, he leaned mostly on his elbow and thigh instead of sinking all his weight onto you.

You appreciated that. You soothed up and down his back while you panted for breath.

“Wow,” you managed to say.

Dean’s chuckle took him by surprise too.

“Yeah,” he agreed. He turned his head to press a sloppy kiss where your neck met your shoulder.

Just then, a distant-sounding jingle reached your ears. It was familiar…and you remembered it was the alarm on your phone, which was probably in the kitchen.

“Oh shit,” you gasped. “The cake’s still in the oven.”

He blinked. “Well, I don’t smell burning, so we’re good.”

“Dean! You’re a firefighter, remember?” you laughed, but you still tapped his shoulder so he’d roll over. Reluctantly he did, but he still took you with him, even after he’d slid out of you.

You yelped and clung to his shoulders to balance yourself. “I gotta get the cake!”

“Five more minutes,” he grumbled into your neck. He also liked the way your breasts were pressed against his chest.

“It’s going to be so…damn…burnt!” You punctuated each of those syllables with a playful smack on his arm, until he finally released you with a lazy smirk.

You shook your head and huffed in amusement. Sliding out of bed, you searched around for your dress. The first thing you found was his discarded undershirt. You slipped it on real quick and cautiously padded out of Dean’s room. You didn’t know if Sam was back from work, but this was not how you wanted to meet him.

The halls were quiet, so you didn’t think he was home yet. You managed to get to the kitchen unscathed, where you turned off your timer and grabbed some oven mitts. You opened the oven and pulled out the cake, setting it down on the counter. Your eyes narrowed at the almost perfect dome on top.

“What’s the verdict, Chef Ramsay?”

Dean leaned in the doorway, dressed in a pair of gray sweatpants and nothing else. The view was delectable, but you sighed and gestured at the cake with a shake of your head.

“It’s burnt.”

“What? No, it’s not,” he refuted. He joined your side and stared down at the top of the cake, which was half browned. “Looks all right to me.”

“Trust me, it’s going to be dry,” you said, “even with the lemon drizzle on it.”

It was the perfectionist in you that smarted with disappointment. You didn’t want to serve anyone something you weren’t proud of, especially Dean. But he just leaned over and pressed a kiss to the side of your head.

“Don’t beat yourself up,” he said. “I’m still gonna eat the crap out of it.”

You glanced at him, unable to help a small smile. He grinned back.

“Anyway, I think it was worth it. Don’t you?” Dean said. He pulled you in towards him by your waist, and you went willingly, resting your hands against his bare chest. You let your nails drag against his skin a little as you contemplated.

You looked up at him with a grin of your own.

“Yeah. Definitely worth it.”

Dean later sat with you again at the table, this time with your chairs closer together as you each ate large slices of delicious cake (even if it was a bit dry). Out of the corner of his eye, he noted the copious number of dishes still left in the sink and the flour and batter sprinkled across the counter.

He knew Sam was going to have a conniption when he got home (in the morning at this rate). He was probably crashing at Eileen’s apartment tonight.

Good, Dean thought. That meant he’d have the place all to himself, with you.

“You know, I just realized something,” he said.

You knew that look in his eyes. He was about to say something smartass.

“What’s that?” you asked. He reached out and thumbed at your chin.

“I just got my dessert twice in one sitting,” he remarked. “That’s pretty damn good, if you ask me.”

You snorted in laughter. You also blushed, but you were unable to stop smiling either.

You set down your fork and eased back from the table. Your hand on Dean’s shoulder encouraged him to do the same, so you could sit across his lap. He welcomed you with a warm hand on your bare thigh. Already it was creeping under the shirt you borrowed.

You stroked his cheek with the back of your hand and gave him a mischievous smile.

“Think you could handle another serving?”

AN: 🫣 Was it everything you wanted it to be? lol I love me some baking innuendo. What did you like more: eating the cherry pie or making the lemon drizzle? 😏❤️‍🔥

In Part 8, Dean's past comes a knockin'...

Next Time:

While you were getting dressed, a phone buzzed on one of the nightstands beside the bed. It was Dean’s phone.

You went over to it curiously as you fixed the straps of your dress. The screen showed a missed text message from last night, around 10:00 p.m., and another one this morning. You read the latest one with a sinking feeling in your chest.

From Marissa: Surprised I didn’t hear back from you last night. The offer still stands. 😘

Keep Reading: PART 8

Dean Winchester Masterlist

Main Masterlist

Series Tag List (Part 1):

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[houserautha]

These Destined Ends

Part Eighteen

Summary: Jessica fulfilled the wishes of the Bene Gesserits to produce a daughter. You’re now burdened with the task of not only marrying the na-Baron, but also bearing his child — the Kwisatz Haderach. Will you take your fate into your own hands? Or will it always belong to those who control you?

Pairings: Feyd-Rautha x F!Reader

Word Count: 2.8k

Warnings: surprisingly none

A/N: I’ve revised the story a little and I think it might end up being twenty-two chapters. The end is near and I am sad.

Often your waking thoughts, your dreams, are occupied by those that you miss: Asha. Your father. Memories of them that you can’t always decide are real or not. It certainly feels real when you wake, tears fresh on your cheeks.

Other times you see…him.

The one from the desert.

Each glimpse brings him into sharper clarity — fine, delicate features, blue-on-blue eyes lined with coal-black lashes. He looks fiercely determined, commanding in the way he carries himself. At first you think it might be a figment of your imagination, Leto at your age, perhaps, but over time you realize that your mind is playing tricks on you. Just not how you expected.

You are the same. You and him.

Him and you.

You don’t understand how, or why, but every time he appears something inside you stirs with recognition. He never speaks. Yet you think he is trying to send a message to you, somehow, whether it be a warning or not. Sometimes you plead with him to just tell you.

And no matter if you are on the sun-bleached sands of Arrakis or the shores of Caladan, he turns from you and vanishes into the distance.

You wake from another dream of him, frustration unfurling inside you upon opening your eyes. Why did he insist on tormenting you? At least he could explain why. You don’t particularly enjoy him taking over your only moments of peace. Seeking comfort, you inch your fingers across the pallet but find it empty.

Feyd is gone. You frown and pull yourself into a sitting position. Weak light filters through the room. There’s a bolt of pain up one side as you rise to your feet — something about your ligaments straining to accommodate your womb. It takes you a moment to catch your breath, but when you finally cross the room you nearly run into the rigid edge of your husband’s spine.

“Feyd?”

“Someone is here,” Feyd says.

“Who?”

In the distance there’s a group gathering at the base of one of the compacted dunes, far enough away that you can barely make out any shapes. A muscle feathers in Feyd’s jaw. “Let’s find out.”

It’s a slow process through the winding tunnels. An excited energy crackles in the air, alighting over your skin. Feyd walks swiftly in front of you as you get closer, a physical barrier that you’re not sure is necessary. You might have more of a pronounced shape to your abdomen but you can move and fight just as well as before.

The focal point of the Fremen’s attention moves through the crowd like a salmon upstream, visible only by the shifting bodies around them.

A familiar sight fills your vision.

“Gurney?”

You fling yourself at the man. His arms envelope you, beard tickling against the top of your head as a hearty laugh escapes from his chest. Tears brim over, wetting his sandy attire.

He’s another piece of home. Familiarity. A glimmer of hope, one that you can feel anchor you with strength.

“When they said that you were alive, that you were safe…” Gurney holds you at arms length, taking in your features. “I’m so glad that you’re safe.”

“I-I didn’t even think to ask about you. I just assumed —”

“Don’t worry, kid. I was in a secretive operation afterwards, we didn’t want anyone to follow us.”

“Where did you go?” You ask.

Gurney smiles. “We’ll talk later. Anyways, I think we have some introductions to make.”

You realize for the first time that Feyd has become your shadow, hovering just a few inches from you with a stern expression. He does not return Gurney’s enthusiasm.

“Gurney, this Feyd-Rautha —”

“Rabban’s brother,” Gurney growls out.

Feyd lifts a smooth brow. “Surely there is more about me to loathe than just my idiot brother.”

“If I find out that you were any part of what happened —”

You interrupt Gurney. Both of these men are the best fighters you know, two of the only men you have ever loved, and you do not want this to escalate beyond salvaging. “Gurney, Feyd is just as angry as you. He had nothing to do with it.”

“A lousy guard you are,” Feyd replies, upper lip curling, “an entire family dying under your watch. How can we be so sure that you aren’t in the Emperor’s pocket as well?”

Gurney’s face storms over. “Are you blaming me?”

“Depends. Are you to blame?”

“Both of you, stop it!” Anger and shame burns your skin. You glare at both Gurney and Feyd, who barely notice because they’re both sizing each other up. Noting the rapt attention of the crowd, you lower your voice. “It seems we have much to discuss. If you can manage not to kill each other, let’s go outside. Where we cannot be heard.”

Feyd’s dark gaze is the first to cut to you, flaring with indignation. He nods once, blinks.

He would kill for you.

But he would also refrain from killing for you.

A swell of fondness for him presses against your breastbone. Quickly you excuse yourselves from the Fremen and wordlessly lead Feyd and Gurney to your hiding spot. Wind whips mercilessly at your hair, spitting sand, but at least you can guarantee privacy.

You raise your voice to be heard. “Neither of you are to blame for what happened. You’ve seemed to have forgotten who the real enemy is.”

“Him,” Gurney accuses.

Temper flares in Feyd’s eyes but he doesn’t bother with a reply.

“He’s not the enemy,” you say, “he’s been victimized by the Baron as much, if not more, than my family. Feyd is my husband. And he wants to seek revenge, too. Trust me on this.”

Gurney glances from your face to Feyd’s, then back again. The amount of time he spends examining you is not unnerving but rather strangely nostalgic, as if he’s searching for someone that is no longer there. You swallow. A lot has changed since your last goodbye. You’re not sure whether your old friend and mentor recognizes any traces of your former self, and whether or not it’s a good thing if he does.

“I trust you,” Gurney finally says.

Satisfied with this, you dive headfirst into an abbreviated account of the last several months, culminating in the final show off between the Baron and you. The reminder of your failure tastes bitter in your mouth. You hope the Baron is counting his days. You will not fail again.

“We need the Fremen to rally with us,” you end. Gurney pauses to digest everything you’ve just told him, offering the occasional look of concern in Feyd’s direction.

“I am with you, of course. I’ve earned their trust. I will advocate for your leadership.”

Relief crashes over you. “You will?”

“I’ll speak with Stilgar tonight. They’ll want a debriefing of my journey — which, I would like to speak with you in private,” Gurney adds.

“I told you, I trust Feyd —”

“If you desire to discuss what I am about to say, you may later. But I refuse to supply a Harkonnen so freely with vital information.”

A protest jumps to your tongue. I’m a Harkonnen now, too.

The words do not get the chance to leave your mouth, however, as Feyd rises to his feet and brushes off his stillsuit. He wordlessly disappears back into the sietch. He won’t go far, though it comforts you that he’s being cooperative.

The same can’t be said for Gurney.

“What his brother did is despicable, but that does not mean you have to lend the same anger to him. He is not Rabban,” you all but grit out.

“I haven’t forgiven him for taking you away,” Gurney replies.

“He didn’t do that. It was my mother, the Bene Gesserits — both Feyd and I have been manipulated like pawns in their game. They have no compassion for anyone outside of their agenda and that’s why they need to be stopped.”

“I know.” Gurney swallows. “I should’ve done something before —”

“It’s too late for that. Tell me what you know.”

He adjusts his stillsuit and glances once more in the direction where Feyd left before saying, “I went to confirm whether or not the Atreides atomic stockpile was still undiscovered.”

It feels as if all of the air has left your body. “Father brought them with us?”

“He was a smart man, a careful one. The stockpile is still secure, Lady Y/N.”

“This changes everything,” you breathe out.

Gurney nods. “We will have to wait to ensure that no one follows us, but we should be able to retrace our steps and arm ourselves. It’s against the Treaty, of course —”

“I don’t care. This needs to end.”

“Very well.”

“We have yet to muster as much support with the Fremen as we would like,” you say finally, after a pause. This development has given you hope, but you know that hope is a fickle thing. You won’t let yourself cling too tightly to it.

“You don’t have much time. You said that Rabban knows Feyd is alive now. They’ll come for you.”

“That’s why we have to go to them first.”

An easy, comfortable silence descends over you. You figure that Gurney is considering what you've him, that you want him to side with the enemy. You're so lost in your thoughts that when he speaks again, you startle slightly. "I hear congratulations are in order."

"Hm?" You blink.

"They told me that you are pregnant."

"Oh." You smile sheepishly at him. "They're right." A wave of sadness crashes over you. "Leto never knew, won't...won't meet him."

Gurney squeezes your knee. "He would be proud of you. And I imagine quite excited to be a grandfather. I know his work kept him busy, but he loved you dearly."

"I miss him," you choke out.

"As do I."

“I can read lips,” Feyd tells you later, when you’ve reunited. Exhaustion wears at you but you do your best to rally through it. You’re grateful at least not to have to repeat everything Gurney said.

“You still surprise me,” you mutter.

Feyd’s mouth twitches in reply. “If the day comes that I no longer surprise you, I should certainly be dead.”

“Do not speak like that.” You glare at him, then lean into him. He’s warm, steady. Safe. “I worry that we will be sorely unprepared, even with the atomics.”

“Nonsense.”

“The Fremen’s loyalty to us is tremulous, and only because of the promise of our son. Just like Gurney, they cannot set aside our Harkonnen blood.”

Feyd considers this. “Then we must turn from it.”

“What? What are you implying?”

“We become one of them,” Feyd says, his brow furrowing in thought, “if they accept us as one of their own, then they will have no choice but to follow us into battle.”

You withdraw from him slightly, better to gauge his expression, lined with gravity. “You’re serious.”

“I am.”

You inhale deeply, then blow it out of your cheeks. “I have been Atreides. I have been Harkonnen. I do not know if I can be anyone else.”

“You will always be Harkonnen, as long as you are my wife,” Feyd says softly. He brushes his knuckles over the bannister of your cheek. “Your name, your allegiance, does not change who you are. You are my jewel, you shine brightly regardless of the faction that fools themselves into thinking they can claim you.”

“And you? You’re okay with this?”

“I will follow you under any banner. You know this.”

“It’s still nice to hear.” You smile.

It’s easy enough to garner the attention of the more devout Fremen, who practically fall to their knees whenever you pass. The others, though, are less convinced. They look over Feyd’s bare brow and your slightly rounded belly and they only see their enemies, even with Gurney’s vote of confidence.

A few days after Gurney’s arrival, you see the man again in your dreams. But you are him, inseparable from yourself as you know it.

Feyd is not there but Chani is, and Stilgar, the rest of the Fremen. They gift you a sietch name, and you tell them that you wish to be called Muad’dib. This pleases them immensely. An image of a small desert mouse emerges from this dream — or is it a vision? You can’t be sure. But when you wake, you know what you need to do.

It would be more efficient to announce the news of the atomics to all of the Fremen, but you and Feyd set to work whispering it in the ears of anyone who will listen. We're sympathetic to the Fremen cause, you tell them, we're going to use the Atreides weapon supplies to liberate them. Would we do such a thing if we did not truly believe you deserving of freedom?

It does not elude you that this verges on manipulation. You do want to liberate the Fremen. But are you also not entrapping them in your own schemes? You need their support.

“You have much deeper wells of empathy for others,” Feyd says, “I adore you for this, wife, but you will worry yourself sick.”

The guilt only intensifies when Stilgar corners you after a meal, his blue-on-blue eyes shining brightly. “Is it true? The rumors?”

“They are,” you say. “We are committed to the Fremen. We only wish that everyone will be convinced of that, and we will do whatever necessary to make it so.”

“You’ve denounced your Harkonnen name. Perhaps it is time for you to gain your sietch one.”

It happens on an uncharacteristically balmy evening, after another successful attack on the Baron’s forces with the fedaykin. Your small squadron resides under one of the strange, worm-like tents that contains moisture. You’re nestled into Feyd’s side around the fire, his arm holding you protectively. More than just the flames warm you — you have never seen your husband as relaxed as he is now, though it could partly be blamed on the drink.

Perhaps it is the weight of his family name removed. Your husband never had friends before, or at least anything close to it; too busy with his duties, the expectations put upon him. Although he still clearly carries the mantle of na-Baron with him, there is a certain easiness to his behavior.

Feyd sips from his drink now, throat working, and winks at you. Stories of battle and hardship have built a friendship between him and some of the more open-minded Fremen. They shared fighting techniques and strategy, bonding over scars and ailments such as poor knees or broken noses. The gathered fedaykin roar with laughter as Feyd recalls a story from his days of training.

“You fit in well here,” Stilgar says after the laughter subsides, “your strength in battle has certainly proved that. Both of you.” He dips his chin in your direction as well. “I think it is well past time for you to receive your sietch names so that we may know you as our brother and sister.”

“We would be honored,” Feyd replies. The steadiness in his rasping voice reminds you that, no matter how much he appears to drink or how merry he is, he is a diplomat at his core. Always thinking and reconsidering and evaluating.

Stilgar grins. The others lean forward in interest, fire throwing shadows over their brown faces.

“We usually offer the chance to choose your own names,” Stilgar says.

A current of knowing passes between you and Feyd. You’d told him about your vision and together you had planned your answers.

“Akrab,” Feyd rasps into the silence. Scorpion.

The Fremen nod their approval, but it’s clear that they’re anxious for your response. You sweep your gaze over them. “Muad’dib.”

Realization washes over them, first on Stilgar’s face, and then the rest. You’ve just given them the final piece to securing their alliance. Your stomach twists as they consider your name — what if you misinterpreted the vision — but then a cheer goes up and the Fremen chant, “AKRAB! MUAD’DIB! AKRAB! MUAD’DIB!”

Drinks are raised as a toast in celebration and soon you and Feyd are torn apart by the jostling squadron who clap you on the bag and hug you, shouting your sietch names. They greet you for the first time as Muad’dib. You even allow the more pious ones to touch your belly, expressing their gratitude towards you and your unborn child. Feyd presides over this, of course, a faint expression of pride on his handsome face.

The Scorpion and The Desert Mouse. How appropriate. You had laughed over this, pressed close to one another, remembering all of the odds that you conquered together.

Soon you will have to make your move on the Harkonnen and the Emperor, but tonight, you will dwell in this happiness.

Part Nineteen

Taglist:

@moonsoulk @heartarianagran @torchbearerkyle @unicoreads @mamawiggers1980 @jovialeggsbailiffsoul @harkonnin @avidreader73 @unicorntrooper @beebeechaos @kamcrazy123 @wo-ming-bai @m-indkiller @kpopnstarwars @dacreshoney @stopeatread @the-na-baroness @therealslimshady-1 @unnisumi @aoi-targaryen @psychoffin @lauratang @austinswhitewolf @bloodyziggy @aleemendoza2425-blog

[frownyalfred]

20 Questions for Writers

I was tagged by @lurkinglurkerwholurks

1. How many works do you have on AO3? 146! It would be a larger number if I hadn't deleted all of my Supernatural fics back in the day. There were at least 30 of those, maybe more...

2. What's your total AO3 word count?

913,163 - I'm hoping to hit a million soon!

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Batman, Superman, Justice League, Star Wars, Marvel

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos? Take Care of Business Everybody Wants You It Was Always You a sky of honey Anything Like Me

5. Do you respond to comments?

Not anymore :/ I have a really hard time keeping up with writing if I'm responding to comments. I hope my readers understand.

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Hmm. Probably lonely town? Dick is getting de-fibbed in the alley by Bruce, and it's not clear if he's going to survive or not.

7. What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

here as I am is hilarious if you're into jealous!Clark. otherwise the weight (salmon ladder fic) always gets me.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

Yep. Mostly on borderline, but on other fics too. I love how, as I've gotten better at writing, it's changed from "wow this sucks, your writing is awful" to "you suck because you chose to have [character] do this." Luckily I think most of the hate filters over here to Tumblr, where I can happily block and forget. These days, I mostly get people commenting about how I'm wrong about something. Wrong about something I researched and triple checked before posting...

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Yep! All of them, I think? At least, I haven't balked at much yet. I'm not really into the excrement related ones, so I think that would be one of my no-go's.

10. Do you write crossovers?

Yep! bloodletting (Mandalorian/Star Wars and DC Crossover) and a few Marvel/DC crossovers.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Yep, a few times. What I'm more pissed about is all of my textposts being monetized over on TikTok and IG. I could be making bank off of those, considering the reach. And several of them are basically mini-fics.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Yes! Tons. Check them out here. There's also some podfics and related works there.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Not really. I've made attempts but I'm really bad at it. I tend to write spur of the moment and follow my gut on where the conversation/action goes. Planning out a fic with a partner would do them a disservice, I think.

14. What's your all-time favorite ship?

I really love Superbat, but Codywan is right up there with it. Something about Cody being a loyal BAMF soldier and long-suffering big brother gets me.

15. What's a WIP you want to finish but doubt you will?

My vampire AU. Not because I don't want to continue but I cannot decipher my notes as to what should happen next.

16. What are your writing strengths?

I'm very quick, I can type up a full draft in a few hours. I like natural, snappy dialogue and I think I'm good at it. I don't shy away from weird or uncomfortable situations. I'm comfortable with writing a lot of sex/etc.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

I write too quickly, sometimes I get ahead of my plot. My dialogue and descriptions can sometimes be a little too bare, or I overcorrect and become too flowery. My fics take on the tone of whatever I'm thinking about at that time.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

If you're confident in your language abilities, go for it. If you're just plugging it into google translate, consider why you're doing that first. Is the addition of this new language actually something someone would say in that moment? Or are we just using it to signal to the audience that they speak another language? Is there a way to show this without telling? That being said, I love using Mando'a in my Star Wars fic, and I've studied it for a while now to be able to do so.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Supernatural

20. Favourite fic you've written?

Probably borderline or a sky of honey. Both took a ton out of me and I'm proud they're whole and standing on their own right now.

---

I'll tag anyone who wants to play! Go wild.

[sarking]

10 things for 10 people you’d like to know better!

tagged by @serenabenson

last song: Friday is kind of a blur, so I'm not actually sure. On the radio during one of the attempts to get home from the vet, I know I heard a Taylor Swift song from 1989 (or was it Lover? or both?) and that incredibly annoying Sabrina Carpenter song (narrow it down less, I know). I also heard an early 2000s era Fall Out Boy song (not Sugar, We're Going Down, but I can't remember what) playing in the back at the vet's office. I think the Fall Out Boy song was last because I was not in the mood for the radio on the way home the second time. (It's fine; one of the kittens had a vaccine reaction and we were barely home before I had to scoop him up and take him back for some steroids and benadryl.)

last book: The Mermaid of Black Conch. I have been reading it since July 15. So that's how that's going. I should go back to The Things They Carried, which I started reading during the Bush (dubya) administration.

last movie: Does Martha count? And the number of times I think about it every week is not going down. She tries to sell me kitty litter and I think about her relationship with her father. I have to prune my black raspberry bushes and I think about her moving into dilapidated houses. I watch the news and I think about how someone should arrange for her and Hillary Clinton to get five minutes in room with James Comey. I see an add for that Lumi deodorant and I think about her talking about going to the gynecologist before going to prison. Do you see. It does not stop. Martha, Martha, Martha.

last tv show: Did I watch DS9 last night before bed? Maybe? If not that, SVU.

favorite color: Yellow.

sweet, savory, or spicy: Can I mix the sweet and spicy, please? (I had Chili Honey Garlic Salmon Bowls for dinner, except in plate form.)

relationship status: Single.

last thing i googled: The title of the book I read to make sure I wasn't missing a word and Comey's first name, tbh. Before that, AVP to DFW flights.

current obsession: Garak/Bashir. Or more specifically, Garak and Bashir and their parents. How did Enabran Tain and Amsha and Richard Bashir, operating in different cultures and from different motivations, manage to fuck up their kids in such a way that they'd be perfect for each other? How much would they hate it? And can I get 125k of slow burn fake dating to piss off the Bashirs during an unwanted visit, only for Tain to show up on the station and complicate matters dramatically?

looking forward to: The green shelves were outside the home improvement store the other day and had a big "Bonnie plants coming soon" sign hanging on them, so I am looking forward to plants. Also, to the flower on my split rock opening. (I bought it with the flower; I am not good at keeping split rocks alive.) To wearing shorts, or at least not a winter coat and dark colors. To setting up the pool and wearing the bathing suits I got for Christmas, even though I have forgotten what they look like. To the fact it will be daylight even later tomorrow than it was today.

tagging: @malkaleh, @peapods42, @winged-mammal, @momentia, @jesidres, @catelyngrant, @missparker, @funkasarusrex, @programmedradly, @zz9pzza

[gamerbot-22]

Taste of Luxury

Prompt: Takeout

TW/CW: Jade gets pissed at a service worker but it stays in her head (mostly), barely proofread and I appreciate spellchecks!

Word Count: 1,058

A/N: Another ficlet in the vein of "hot mommy character takes a load off in a non-sexual way." Or I guess, like... attempts to take a load off. My biggest gripe with my Kafka fic was that there wasn't any conflict to set it apart so here I am! Fixing that issue, lol. Also yeah the food is technically delivered as opposed to takeout/takeaway but the sentiment is the same!!!

Likes and Reblogs appreciated (reblogs > likes) and Requests are Open! Read this story on Ao3 here!

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She worked two jobs. That was something a lot of people seemed to forget, but it was true. Jade was... maybe half of the line from that one song. And while she did both jobs flawlessly--with barely a hair out of place the whole time, might she add--it was tiring work. Especially in those heels…

So when her blessed day off came, Jade took every chance she could to relax. A sizable hunk of her paychecks went to nice skincare, specialty baths, and the most comfortable robes and pajamas she could get delivered to her atmosphere-gracing flat. And another, slightly less sizable chunk was spent on comfort food, hand delivered to her door with a massive tip for the trouble of braving all those blasted stairs.

And tonight was no different! Well. It was kind of different. She'd just gotten out of her fancy bath and into her nice purple silk pajamas, her face adorned with a nice moisturizing mask, and while it had been as luxurious as it always was, her literal taste was skewing a bit more unique than normal.

Usually Jade ordered some noodles from a local soup place, or a custom sandwich from down the road, but tonight she found herself craving a nice fish meal. Maybe sushi? Maybe a salmon steak? After some scrolling she settled on the latter. A new place had opened recently and while it was on the other side of the city, her delivery people knew to be fast.

So she ordered the salmon steak from the menu, completely disregarding the price, and settled onto her couch to watch some television and wait. If the app was to be believed--and it usually was--she would have her food just in time for the next episode.

So she waited.

And waited.

And waited.

She looked at her phone. It had only been thirty minutes, but a rumbling stomach made that feel more like an hour. Especially when that little progress bar for her delivery had barely moved. Frustration aside, Jade knew that it was a new place, it was probably popular, so the kitchen was just busy.

The TV show was boring her, so off it went in favor of one of the coffee table books Jade had artfully laid out on her glass coffee table. It was one of those architecture books, detailing some interior design set-ups from across the galaxy. She had looked at it... maybe once? Twice? Before it was delegated to decoration. It was nice to look through it again and take in all the glamorous archways and beautiful bedspreads.

As she appreciated a view from some distant desert planet, her stomach rumbled. How long had it been? Another half hour, and the bar still hadn't moved. Motivated by her grumbling stomach, the Stoneheart tapped the "contact restaurant" button and shut her book. Some answers, at the very least, would make this better.

When the line picked up, she was greeted instantly by the sounds of a noisy kitchen. There was sizzling and steaming and the hollow *thunk thunk thunk!* of a knife against a chopping board.

"Whale Island Seafood, how can I help?" half-wheezed the voice on the other line. Jade could see the sweat and frayed hair of this server in her mind.

"Hello." Jade kept her voice measured. "I ordered some food from you about an hour ago and it hasn't arrived yet."

"Oh, yeah! Sorry about that--" the waitress sniffed, probably swiping at her nose. "The kitchen's been backed up for a while now. We weren't expecting to be so busy today." Poor girl had probably been up on her feet all day, rushing back and forth to keep a lid on things. Jade almost felt sorry for her. "What's the name for the order? I can run and take a look at how it's coming along."

"Why, that's so kind of you," Jade hummed, adopting her "work tone" again. She had hoped to not have to do that tonight. "The order is under Jade."

"'Jade,' okay... Gimme just a sec!" The phone clacked down against the table. The girl must be too frazzled to know the significance of that name, Jade reasoned.

The girl was gone for what felt like ages, prompting an exhausted sigh from the Stoneheart. She was near starving now, and not in the mood to wait a second longer. It took every ounce of effort she had in her body to not snip when the girl came back.

"Alright, so I have... some news."

"Oh?" News was never good. Not in that tone.

"So we're actually out of salmon? A lot of people have been ordering it here in person and we haven't had the chance to take it off the app?" That questioning lilt in her voice was like nails on a chalkboard. "We do have some other fish, though, so would you be alright with a substitution?"

Jade rolled her eyes. Her face was brutal, but she kept her voice level. "Yes, that's alright. What do you have?"

"Well, we have a nice tuna! That one's been popular too, just not as much as the salmon. It comes with a lemon sauce thing, it's good!" Did she even know what she was talking about?

"Perfect. Send that instead." Jade reached up to rub her forehead only to be met with the face mask from earlier. Ugh, she'd forgotten to take it off and now it was all dry and horrible–

"Great! I'll make sure that gets started for you right away!"

Jade pulled the face mask off in one fell swoop and tossed it aside. "Will there be any sort of discount for that? I've been waiting an awful long time."

"Uh... I can't do that, but I can ask?"

"Mm. Alright. Thank you very much, dear."

"Uh, yeah!" She’s clearly knocked off balance, but Jade couldn't find it in herself to feel even fake concern. "No problem. It'll get to you soon! Have a good rest of your night."

"Good night."

Jade hung up and sank back into her couch, draping herself across it like those ingénues in old movies. She could feel herself wasting away from the hunger.

The worst part was that after another thirty minutes of waiting, the tuna was just fine.

"Can barely even taste the lemon..."

[cherrezz]

Gojo x fem!reader - the appearance of the sorcerer assistant!

Pt. 1

•—^—^—^—•

You were on a mission. You were ordered by higher ups from Komogi Sorcerer High to spy on the powerful sorcerer that went by the name of Satoru Gojo.

Despite doing the bare minimum of research on the guy you found that he was pretty popular in Japan. Mainly because of his undoubtedly unique beauty. Which made you envy his long lashes and clear pale skin. He was ethereally beautiful—well from the pictures online anyway—it was unbelievable in a way.

This motivated you to take on the mission even more. Handsome men were the goal in this, not some stupid spying.

They higher ups had told you that you’re going to transfer to the school as a teachers assistant. Since you were gonna be new there, it was highly unlikely they’d let someone from an entirely different region of sorcerers train their current ones. But you still prayed that you would get at least one chance to assist this Gojo guy in a mission, since a man is battle shows just how attractive he is.

•—^—^—^—•

When you arrived to the entrance of the school you were greeted by two teenagers, or three, if you were going to count the very quiet emo looking dude that just stood by them.

“Hello! You must be [name], am I right?” The boy with the salmon looking hair shouted with enthusiasm. Which in all honesty made you feel welcomed. Then, the brunette haired girl spoke next, “It’s nice to meet you Ms. [name]. By the way how old are you? If you’re above twenty maybe you could sneak me in some stuff next time you go out? You know…” she winks at you trying to give you the hint of what she’s trying to get at. You chuckle. “I’m twenty-two, but I’m turning twenty-three in a month or two. And no, I don’t think I’d be able to do that legally for you, not only because you’re a teenager but also because you’re a student. So sorry.” You bow apologetically to the girl. You noticed the quiet guys stare and know very well he won’t speak to you, since he was that type of guy.

“Anyway! Would you guys care to tell me your names while we walk to the front office?” You say, walking ahead anyway, slowly enough for the trio to catch up. “My name’s Yuji Itadori! And this is Nobara Kugisaki, and Megumi Fushiguro.” Ah…so he was the talker you’d take a guess, or maybe they just act that way to newcomers like you. Either way, it was a breath of fresh air compared to the time when you were in your old sorcerer school.

•—^—^—^—•

When you seemed to be as organized as a new person could be the trio that had led you before had left to meet up with their sensei. So now…you were stuck all by yourself. In a school that was likely empty, the evidence of its emptiness lying in the fact of how quiet the building was. Which was defiantly unusual for a school as big as this.

And as you spent your time in the teachers lounge sound suddenly echoed through the building. That was when you realized that the students you had yet to meet had finally come back.

You wondered though. Just where has they gone? Perhaps on a mission. That was the best answer you had to the question and chose not to dig any further.

Walking out of the teachers lounge, you spot the very man you had been itching to see just before getting here. Staring into your eyes were bright blue ones as colorful as the sky on a sunny day. It was the Gojo Satoru. Everything about him, looked even better in person than in his photos. You found it hard to pull your gaze from his as students rushed towards to, curious questions filling the hallway you guys stood in.

Even with the abundance of questions filling your head as you answered each one in a fast enough pace to answer the next, you would still take subtle glances at Gojo as he stood leaning against the wall as the group of students gradually got smaller and the questions lessened.

This was now the time he stood from his leaned position and slowly made his way to you as the remaining students left for the day. Your heart pounded loudly, feeling both nervous and fluttered. He was both a man that could kill you in a second or a man that could flirt for hours. You’d much prefer the last one, but beggars can’t be choosers. Hopefully, you would just have to pray internally.

“Heyoo!!” He waves, enthusiasticly, his voice forcing out a higher octave to seem friendly and approachable. “The names Gojo Satoru! I take it your the [name]?” He smiles charmingly, holding a hand out as if asking for it to be shaken. And you happily did, every inch of your body becoming as loose as jelly at the very touch of his skin. It was like an electric shock, but the pain was switched with a desire for the cause of it. You wanted Gojo Satoru, and not a thing in the world would be able to change that in the moment of this handshake. Your lives now seemed to intertwine with the others.

Your words suddenly get stuck in your throat, just nodding when it came to him asking for confirmation of your identity. God, even your name coming from his mouth sounded heavenly. Gojo smiled at you. Noticing your awestruck face, which made him smirk in the most obvious way possible. And that was when you noticed just how long your hands had been holding each other. Causing you to pull back immediately. Blush covering every inch of your face as you now knew he was aware of your fondness of him.

Unfortunately, without any small talk in between, the two of you just introduced a little more about the others life and then went on with the little of the day you had left. Which wasn’t much.

[trahoalai]

everything cool I ate while in canada :0 this pic isn't a body check lolol ik a lot of "what I eat" videos start that way but this is just one of the very few cute things I wore on vacation

yea if u manage to look cute while traveling props to u, I can't be bothered if ik I'll never see those ppl again. anyways starting in toronto, that bald bitch at the pearson international airport should start counting their damn days I don't like how he spoke to my sister. shoutout the lady who told me to lie about my age so I didnt have to pay for transit <3 got this lemon danish at the union station and then some fish and chips while in a traffic jam. maybe this is a me thing but big cities lowkey smell so bad whats that about </3

k time for shameless promo if ur ever in hamilton ontario :00 go to little saigon for viet food it's owned by my mom's friend hehe and while Im influencing u.......bee's boba in clearwater fl is owned by the nicest lady :D I went two years ago fun fact the top in this pic of me I actually sewed myself when I was 15 hehe. it's rlly fucked up my sewing teacher made me rip out the seams and start over like 4 times ig I learned something???? in the last months of school she ended up punching my cooking teacher who is pregnant rn wooo congrats god how was high school even real lol

anyways niagara falls next 💞 our hotel gave me these cookies there were multiple times this trip I was like "damn I wish I was back in the hotel eating cookies" we went grocery shopping and had late night takeout while watching the fireworks :] not pictured but I had a mango slushie it was alright

now montreal......we stayed here the longest how should I break this up hmm. let's start with brunch this smoothie bowl is soooo fucked T_T like idk if u can tell but it was watery soup consistency my milkshake was thicker lolol. this random unlabeled bread loaf my mom got at a marketplace or something was soooo good I think it's sourdough with cranberries and sunflower seeds :DD it would be rlly good with goat cheese and some tea maybe. not much to say about the french toast I don't remember the place srry </3 it was good tbh all the portion sizes I got in canada are huge lol. and it's very pretty

back at our group airbnb I had chicken congee and some sort of che, I think it was canned lychee and agar jelly (matcha, coconut, coffee, butterfly pea flavored???) idk it was nice to sit on the patio and ppl watch, let my hair air dry after a shower. it was a rlly windy week T_T

ngl quebec city was kinda pmo at first it was so hot and crowded and ig it was the point in the trip where I wanted to go home. and these birds eye chili shrimp were soooo lame not even spicy. the place we stayed at was super nice though, I loveee when a spot has as many options for tea as it does coffee :DD look theres even loose leaf, but I could not find a strainer </3 also I kinda wish the containers weren't see through whatever. the cherry blossom one was very good :] then the priciest place I ate at, I got a fish fillet with cranberry compote and sliced almonds. to the left is salmon tartare, and barely visible on the right is elk or venison idkk guys whats the difference :'( not pictured bc I forgot my phone whoops but I went to a theme park of some sort and had like three different types of poutine they were alright

then finally another shameless promo back in montreal theres this spot bonjour pho :00 owned by another one of my mom's old friends hehe. I rlly like the vibe it's so small but dreamy, if it werent for the heat wave I would have loved to eat on the patio hehe. I got the squid curry rice lolol can u tell how starved I was for actual spicy food, I ordered che ba mau too and she was like "u should get that to go con" and I was like ???? alright (by the time I got to eating it the ice had melted </3) but it turns out she wanted to give us free flan, soy pudding, and viet lemonade which is the best bc it's actually made with lime rahhh lime mentioned wtf is an unlikable female character

[aleielle-of-roshar]

5, 11, 19, 22 >:D

(gonna use the few i’m currently fixated on

5:

Imyoren Gwinvenin Lireth: Gwinvenin is too busy isolating himself since he sort of feels everyone who helps him or he cares about dies- very much blames himself 🥲

Kedhur: I mean, Kedhur does technically become a citizen of Dementia after his death if that counts- but otherwise he’s grown too suspicious of such organizations after well, getting beaten up by Solitude’s guards so many times-

Through-Shattered-Glass: ✨Ithelia (er, my au’s version) cult✨

Balance: Tides Wraith! Even though he barely understands what a pirate is the crew makes him feel ‘an odd, light feeling! Like… when Morion floats away in strong winds?’ (Happiness lol)

Ynrur: Also her ship lol-

11:

(Not 100% sure what this means- I’m assuming its like… what people associate with them + aliases?) Imyoren Gwivenin Lireth: … you don’t want to know what house Imyoren called him- 😭. But well, Ja’hrazad (fairly, unlike most things she did-) calls him weird. Samsi called him Ipu’shi (basically an endearing term like… this child is a gift sort of?)

Kedhur: He’s been referred to as a salmon so many times lmao- annnd gwinvenin called him stinky the first time they met 💀. Glory observed him, quite accurately as ‘someone with something great weighing on his heart’. Does ‘Son of Madness’ count? I mean, it’s literally the truth.

Through-Shattered-Glass: scary af /pos frfr. Usually just Glass. Technically her name isn’t what she was originally called, but like.. she took it on after joining the cult? So would that be an aliase? It is her name now tho-

Balance: Not really the crew’s been pretty chill. Though some non crew find it frightening for some reason

Ynrur: sheogorath’s observations I- 💀. But well, people either love her or despise her, so there’s lots. Buut she’s pretty clear on who she is

19:

Imyoren Gwinvenin Lireth: I mean, idk if being a proficient seer counts because he cant control his visions, they hurt like hell, and its always bad things. But! He’s actually pretty good with a spear and traps, learned that from Samsi! As well as basic non magic healing. Oh, and, I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it before but like. He’s very much magic, like, strong too despite being untrained. But not in the normal sense, he can’t control any of it unfortunately- buuuut don’t be surprised if a giant spire of ice pops up around him when he’s having a mental breakdown.

Kedhur: Really stealthy and quick thinking! I mean, takes a lot to survive the elf equivalent of 35 years (probably centuries-) in such a place- 💀. And well, he didn’t learn any of his shouts from word walls, and they certainly aren’t in dovahzul. Don’t… don’t overthink it, he tries not to-.

Through-Shattered-Glass: is it bad that she knows all the weak / most dangerous spots on each race-

Balance: Despite being surprisingly light- bro is strong af- great for keeping morion from blowing away lol- buuut he sucks at sitting so oh well.

Ynrur: Have I mentioned that Ynrur is like an expert mixologist and fisher? Also a sea serpent considers her its mom so ha- but she’s pretty much mastered partial shifting to aid her in specific situations.

22:

Imyoren Gwinvenin Lireth: I feel like, somehow, befriending Darien would do him some good. Idk someone who’s so determined and optimistic no matter how much things go to shit might be able to change his view on things slightly. Buuut don’t let him anywhere near any of the sixth house- ash zombies already scare him enough

Kedhur: can someone please let him visit the graybeards- like, once? Also ngl haskill would just make him upset, ‘glad they never met.

Through-Shattered-Glass: I feel like she’d get along with Zerith-var for some reason- if they can accept worshipping different daedra that is. Buuut she couldn’t tolerate like any of the vigilants of stendarr if she met them ‘FOR FUCKS SAKE MOST OF US AREN’T HURTING PEOPLE-‘

Balance: Truthfully, he’s a hard one- maybe Eveli? (If she showed up past wrothgar then idk) Idk they both seem happy about the world lol and bro would find the jokes and puns so interesting to unravel- just like, don’t let him near sotha sil or divath fyr I’m begging you

Ynrur: Don’t. Fucking. Let. Her. Near. Sheogorath. That’s all. Goodbye

[malbecmusings]

Juneau, Alaska

July 26 & 27 - A warning that was stressed over and over and over by guides we talked to while planning this trip: DO NOT underestimate the bears. A grizzly has a sense of smell exponentially better than a bloodhound. With the ability of said 1,000lb plus behemoth to hit 40, yes f-o-r-t-y, miles an hour for up to 2 miles nonstop, shit could hit the fan faster than you could imagine. The prep we've done, including for a potential unfriendly wildlife encounter could be a book in itself. We're all carrying bear spray; the boy scout and I are each carrying a different type (potency/volume vs range). Everyone is also carrying chest holsters with big bore handguns, and yes, praying we don't have to use them.

My first thought this morning was one of of gratitude for not having any large, nosey critters come into camp in the middle of the night. My second thought was about how good I felt. We spent for-effin-ever trying out different tens, sleeping bags, and sleeping pads before we found a combo that we liked. Although it was in the 50's we stayed warm and didn't wake up feeling like we had spent the night sleeping on rocks, which is exactly what we had done.

Half our party was already up having coffee around the fire when I unzipped the tent to assess the world. The clouds were pretty low so there wasn't a need to get in a hurry. While everyone primarily responsible for flying is instrument rated, meaning we could get up and call for a clearance to fly into Juneau.... why?

Instead of rushing to get everything packed up, we decided to make a big breakfast and chill while we waited for the weather to lift. There wasn't as much concern about cooking this morning because we'd all be up and *might* be able to see or hear something coming. Our resident chefs went wild and made the biggest, best tasting breakfast burritos and pancakes I've ever had. My contribution to the feast was virgin Bloody Marys which were almost as good as the high test variety.

The ceilings lifted by the time we finished breakfast, got everything cleaned up, and the planes packed. We flew upriver in search of more gravel bars to do touch and go's on. I made two full stop landings in a slight crosswind that even I was proud of. It pays to sleep with know a good CFI.

Juneau holds the distinction of being one of only two state capitols that are wholly inaccessible by an outside road system. In addition to being a government town, it's also tourist central, with a yearly average visitor count of more than a million tourists. That's a lot, especially considering the metro population is barely 36K. But, it is stunning. Turn in any direction and you'll find mountains, the ocean, glaciers, and wildlife within arms reach.

We got lucky and found a VRBO big enough to house all of us rather than staying at a hotel. Bonus points for it being close to the airport. Our host was quick to recommend the Salmon Bake for dinner. Her instructions were to dress warm and go hungry. Imagine a rustic outdoor Cracker Barrel buffet. It was a bit very touristy, but isn't that the point? You can belly up to the bar, chill around a campfire and roast marshmallows, pan for gold, shop for stuff (of course), and enjoy an "Alaskan experience" while feasting on pretty decent food. Two tips: get a table by the creek if you can and get the glazed salmon.

Juneau Part II: We had a chill night and crashed early because we had a fishing charter scheduled this morning. Another cool, beautiful but wet morning. To hopefully minimize the risk of a lung issue flareup, I broke out both the layered cold weather and foul weather gear. It took two boats to haul all of us and the better part of an hour to reach the fishing grounds, which looked an awful lot like ALL the water we passed before reaching that spot. Our guides were amazing though. Between us, we caught a literal boatload of halibut, salmon, and rockfish surrounded by some of the most mind blowing scenery imaginable. The guides are going to process everything except what we saved for dinner and ship it to us when we get home.

We were planning to hike up to Mendenhall Glacier when we got back but pulling all these fish up from the bottom of the damn ocean wore us out. Instead we built a fire in the fire-pit, had a few drinks, and enjoyed a chill night. Tomorrow we head north again for another few nights off the grid. Our first stop will be the town of Cordova where we'll refuel and provision before heading to a Forest Service cabin on Hinchinbrook Island.

[celtfather]

Pure Grace, Celtic Instrumental Music #707

On the Irish & Celtic Music Podcast #707. Subscribe now!

Doolin', Austral, Fialla, Flook, The Friel Sisters, On The Lash, Brobdingnagian Bards, The Lilies of the Midwest, Robert Zielinski, Nathan Gourley, Joey Abarta, and Owen Marshall, Albannach,, David Mitchell, Drumspyder, Kevin Meehan

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THIS WEEK IN CELTIC MUSIC

0:08 - Doolin' “Mary’s Jigs” from Doolin'

4:34 - WELCOME

5:46 - Austral “Woodford Nights” from Thylacine

12:38 - Fialla “No Fear No Grace” from A Rare Thing

17:00 - Flook “Koady / The Burning Lion” from Sanju

21:10 - The Friel Sisters “The Queen of the Rushes/Scully Casey’s/McGovern’s Favourite (Jigs/Reel)” from Northern Sky

26:01 - FEEDBACK

28:29 - On The Lash “Dog in the Distance” from Fireside

32:23 - Brobdingnagian Bards “The Salmon of Knowledge” from Another Faire to Remember

36:59 - The Lilies of the Midwest “Rent Charlie’s Cottage for a Fee” from Cat's Ceili

41:20 - Nathan Gourley, Joey Abarta, and Owen Marshall “Bonnie Prince Charlie / Return to Fingal” from Copley Street 2

45:15 - THANKS

47:57 - Robert Zielinski “The Yellow Heifer” from The Day Dawn

51:02 - Albannach “Bare Arsed Bandits” from Bareknuckle Pipes & Drums

55:03 - David Mitchell “Lathkill Dale” from Contours

58:01 - Drumspyder “The Oak and the Ash” from Oak and Ash

1:02:05 - CLOSING

1:02:55 - Kevin Meehan “Borve Castle” from Spanish Point

1:06:27 - CREDITS

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🌿 Celtic Spring Challenge – Walk, Listen, Give Back! 🌿

This April, embrace the spirit of spring with the Celtic Spring Challenge—a simple way to enjoy music, stay active, and help the planet!

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Every year, I take a small group of Celtic music fans on the relaxing adventure of a lifetime. We don't see everything. Instead, we stay in one area. We get to know the region through its culture, history, and legends. You can join us with an auditory and visual adventure through podcasts and videos.

In 2026, we’re traveling to the Celtic nation of Galicia in Spain.

We’ll dive deep into the history and legends of the Galician Celts, uncovering their connections to Ireland, Scotland, and beyond. We’ll walk the same lands where Celtic warriors once roamed, hear the myths passed down through generations, and experience the magic of authentic Galician Celtic music, alive with passion and history.

This isn’t just a trip—it’s a journey into the heart of a Celtic culture unlike any other. Will you join us?

Learn more about the invasion at http://celticinvasion.com/

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  Check out this episode!

[glowstickverse]

Pigeon and The Eyeless Warlock 

for my creative writing seminar i got to write abt my silly lil wizard elf and how he lost his eyes. i don't put a lot of my writing stuff up on here or my main acc, but i had a lot of fun with this piece and also its MY oc blog and i post what i want (*˘︶˘*)

word count: 6k-ish, cw: implied eye trauma

The sunrise was beautiful on the day Pigeon lost his eyes. 

In the morning he was roused by the sound of bustling feet and muffled voices traveling up and down the hall outside his room. This was not necessarily a rare occurrence in the R’adagast household, but it was one that sparked his curiosity nonetheless– curiosity that quickly overtook any drowsiness still lingering in the back of his mind. So he sat up, rubbed his eyes free of the fog of sleep, and headed out into the corridor, still in his salmon colored nightgown. 

Despite dawn just barely beginning to break, the whole estate was buzzing, filled to the brim with servants rushing from place to place, each seemingly fretting over their own equally important task. Pigeon dreadfully wanted to stop someone and ask what all the fuss was about, but decided to keep his questions to himself for the time being, lest he interrupt the workers’ flow. His bare feet padded softly against the carpeted floor and down the wide, spiraling staircase, tracing a hand along the banister as he followed the flow of the crowd.

The height of the activity seemed to be originating not from the main foyer, but from the ballroom. As the group he was trailing after began to trickle through a set of ornate gilded doors, Pigeon gasped at the sight beyond them– the normally barren dance hall dripped with crystal, polished and buffed like he’d never seen it. Large swaths of white and blue roses blanketed the walls and ceiling, linked together with pearly silken ribbons, and long, sweeping tables laid across the glistening floor, each lined with fine porcelain plates and silver goblets. Instantly, the reason behind the morning’s hustle and bustle became clear. 

A sudden tap on his shoulder interrupted his admiration of the elaborate decor. 

“Master Gwydion?”

Pigeon grinned brightly and turned, quickly recognizing the voice. A stout, olive-skinned dwarf in a neatly pressed butler’s uniform stood behind him, wielding a stack of blue satin napkins in one arm and a large bundle of cutlery in the other.

“Good morning, Torsten!” Pigeon greeted them jovially. 

Torsten returned his smile with one of their own, albeit a tad more muted in its warmth. “Good morning, young master. It’s rare to see you up so early. I hope all this noise did not wake you– as I’m sure you can tell, things are a little hectic today.”

“It’s okay! This is much more exciting than being asleep! What’s going on? Is it…” He paused, looking left and right, then dropped into a hushed whisper. “Is it a party?”

“Indeed it is, young master.” Their tone was amused. “I see that your observational skills are as sharp as ever.” 

Pigeon’s smile widened, threatening to split his cheeks; he bounced up and down on his heels in an attempt to curb his obvious excitement. “I thought so! What kind? Is it a masquerade like the one Lady Cersei held last winter? Or is father hosting another diplomat? Oh! Or is it a banquet? I love when we have banquets! There’s always so much leftover food!”

“I’m afraid I’m not privy to exactly what the occasion is, Master Gwydion, as I am currently on table-setting duty,” Torsten responded, chuckling, “But if I was to gander an assumption, I’d say Master Alduin is expecting an esteemed guest of some sort. He usually only orders for the fine silverware to be used if whoever we are feeding is very important.”

As they spoke, they shifted the cutlery they were holding from one hand to the other in order to tuck a stray curl behind their ear. Pigeon followed the movement with his eyes and frowned, his brow furrowing. 

“That seems like a lot to carry, Torsten..” He cocked his head to one side. “Can I help?”

They blinked at him for a moment, the question slowly registering, before their bushy eyebrows raised. “Oh, no, young master– there is really no need for you to exert yourself–” 

“I wouldn’t be exerting myself, honest! It’ll go faster with the both of us working together!” His gaze brightened, his excited bouncing growing more pronounced. “Plus I just learned that cool levitation trick the other week– I can use it to help put up the rest of the flowers! Please? I’ve been wanting to use that spell for ages!”

Torsten took in his look of anticipation and let out a quiet sigh. They shook their head, relenting, their wild brown curls straining to escape the strict bun they were trapped in. 

“If you insist, Master Gwydion. Take the silverware and follow me, then.”

“I do insist! Ah– and hey, you know I told you you can stop calling me ‘Master Gwydion’ when it’s just the two of us. Call me Pigeon!”

Torsten laughed softly and raised a hand in placation as they turned, already continuing on their way to the dining tables. “Of course, Master Pigeon.”

Pigeon puffed out his cheeks in a frustrated pout as he followed behind them, arms now loaded with utensils. The staff that maintained the R’adagast mansion were all very understanding of and receptive to him deciding to go by his birth name, but some of them simply refused to drop the formalities, even when his father and stepmother weren’t around. Torsten was the worst of them all. Every time he asked them why, they told him it was simply because that was his title, and they felt it was only right for him to be addressed as such. He could agree with their logic, but that didn’t mean he had to like it. 

As they worked, dawnbreak crept slowly and steadily over the horizon, tinging the brightening sky a warm, rosy orange and causing ribbons of warm sunlight to cascade across the floor. The rays bounced off the crystalline walls, refracting into thousands of tiny rainbow specks. Pigeon paused in his adjusting of a tablecloth and peered through one of the ballroom’s towering arched windows, looking out over the skyline. Plains of soft wheat danced gently in the morning breeze. The slope of the hill leading to his family’s mansion slid down toward the village square, and beyond that, behind slanted roofs and slightly smoking chimneys, the rest of the world loomed, huge and unknowable and tinted gold by the rising sun. 

Pigeon thought himself exceptionally lucky to behold such a sight.

He moved to return to the tablecloth, and as he did, caught a glimpse of himself in the glass. He met his own eyes– big, bright, with irises of glowing silver; silver like his father’s, and his grandfather’s, and every other powerful mage in his family. He and his reflection stared at each other for a single moment before he smiled and gave the mirror a big thumbs up– and then flinched as the dance hall’s doors flew open. 

Lord Alduin R’adagast strode purposefully to the middle of the polished floor, hands held aloft as he barked orders at a gaggle of servants following in his stead. His voice, loud and commanding, echoed off the marble walls, his perfectly coiffed hair bouncing lightly every time he turned his head. 

“– they go in the ballroom, yes, along with the rest of the floral decorations. And please, make sure there aren’t any more yellow roses, that is most certainly not what I ordered. They clash terribly with the rest of the bouquets; we’re supposed to be respectable, for goodness sake. And another thing, where is that blasted caterer? He was supposed to be here almost half an hour ago! Apparently, not everyone in this kingdom understands that I am not a patient–”

Alduin turned his head, arms still outstretched, and finally caught a glimpse of Pigeon near the window. “–Gwydion, there you are! Finally! What in heaven’s name have you been doing? Don’t tell me you’ve been in here, fraternizing, all this time…!”

Pigeon opened his mouth to answer his father’s question, and then quickly shut it again when he raised an impatient hand.

“Ah, what does it matter, just– come here, now! I need to speak with you about something very, very important.”

As Pigeon made his way across the ballroom, Torsten met his eyes to shoot him a sympathetic look, to which he responded with another bright grin– a grin he quickly replaced with a dimmed smile when he stopped in front of his father. 

“Good morning, father!” he said politely, doing his best to feign as much innocence as he could, “Why’s everyone running around so much today?” 

“That, believe it or not, is exactly what I wanted to talk to you about,” Alduin responded. He took him tightly by the arm and began walking back toward the ballroom doors, effectively dragging Pigeon along with him. “You see, this evening, an extremely important sage, as well as her entire entourage, is coming to visit from the Eastern Shrine. So Cersei and I are throwing a bit of a party in her honor.”

“Oh, gosh– wow!” Pigeon stumbled a bit in his effort to keep up with his father’s long strides. His mind spun with excitement; he hadn’t attended a R’adagast party in years– is that why his father had been looking to speak to him? Would he possibly be allowed to go this time? “That– that’s so amazing, father!”

“Yes, very much so. And what would be more amazing is if the sage is impressed with our family’s prowess and the state of the village and thus agrees to pay us for our magical services. Considering how wealthy she is, that could, potentially, fund almost all our endeavors for the next several years.”

“That would be more amazing! I hope it works out!”

“Hm, yes, so do I. You can imagine I wouldn’t want to take any sort of chance that this night could be jeopardized, thus tarnishing our reputation, yes?”

“Of course, father, we would never want that. That would be horrible!”

“Indeed it would be. I’m glad you understand, Gwydion. In that case, surely you don’t mind making yourself scarce today, do you?”

Pigeon blinked up at him. “Huh?”

Alduin stopped abruptly, turning to give Pigeon a tight-lipped smile. Servants wove around where they stood in the middle of the foyer. “It’s just that this night is so important, Gwydion. I can’t afford even the slightest mistake! And having you around, well…” He gestured vaguely with one hand and heaved a hefty sigh. “We managed to mostly recover from the scandal, but to have that mark on our family’s history be brought to light again could ruin everything. I can’t risk it, not when there’s so much at stake– not just our reputation or our standing, but our future, our legacy, as well. Not to mention there’s that blasted Warlock fellow running around. We’ve already received upwards of a dozen letters of complaint– something about him stealing people’s sight? Ah, it’s all a load of codswallop, but the townsfolk are getting rowdy regardless. I mean, you can see how much pressure I’m under!”

“I.. Ah, but–!”

“Sorry, boy, no buts. You’ll just have to find something else to entertain yourself with today. You’re good at that.” He moved the hand still grasping Pigeon’s forearm up to his shoulder, giving him a couple firm pats. “Maybe the next party, eh?”

Pigeon looked down at his father’s hand. Against the dark brown of his skin, its color was almost reminiscent of milk. He nodded. 

“Yes.. Yes! The next one.” 

“There you go.” Alduin gave his shoulder another pat before walking back towards the ballroom, his attention instantly shifting once again to shouting at the servants. 

It wasn’t the first time his father had given him a speech like that. Pigeon had a feeling it wouldn’t be the last, either. Still, he couldn’t help getting his hopes up a little.

The next one, definitely, he thought to himself as he made his way down the corridor. I’ll definitely be allowed to go to the next one.

There were certainly things that he could do around the mansion that would keep him busy and keep him out of sight, but Pigeon had other ideas for how he planned to spend the day. It wasn’t often he got the chance to wander around on his own; usually he was stuck in divination tutoring or private evocation lessons or helping the staff reorganize the library, things that required him to spend most of his time being trapped in the ivory tower that was his family’s estate. So, whenever he had the opportunity to do what he wished, there was only one place he really wanted to go: into the village. 

He bounded quickly up the stairs to his room, snatching up his favorite yellow cape and worn leather satchel. It was harvest season, and despite the relatively high temperature, the weather was always slightly too unpredictable for comfort. After making his way back down to the foyer and past the ballroom– pausing only briefly to peer wistfully through the gilded doors– he turned down another corridor, then another, then another, finally stopping just before a large, gold-plated painting. He wasn’t positive who the painting was of; if he had to guess, he’d assume it was an ancestor of some sort, but he didn’t recognize them and he’d never bothered to check if he was right or not. In any case, the painting itself wasn’t important. It was simply there to keep the pathway hidden. Pigeon pulled lightly on the portrait’s frame until it swung open with a soft creak, stopping only briefly to check if anyone was around to see him, and then quickly climbed inside. It was a bit of a squeeze, even for him, but he’d been down the darkened passage so many times that he could very easily maneuver himself through with little to no complications, and soon enough he was pushing against a small wooden door and crawling out into the day. The sun beat down, gentle and warm, on his skin, and Pigeon took a moment to breathe in the morning air, allowing it to fill his lungs before letting it out again with a soft sigh. 

“Alright,” he said to himself, brushing stray bits of dirt from his cape, “Let’s go.”

The hill leading to the village was a bit steep, so Pigeon took his time walking down it, making sure to mind his feet. As he got closer and closer to the small brick buildings and faded cobblestone of the town, he felt his steps grow all the more lighter until soon he was almost at a light jog, unable to control his enthusiasm. 

People bustled about the square, some sitting by the fountain at the center, sharing bread and fruit, others just beginning to complete their morning routines. The sound of idle chatter and the smell of baked goods and hay wafted through the air. Pigeon walked slowly, leisurely; he took the time to wave at the townsfolk, said good morning to those he recognized, gave a smile to those who passed him; there was no need to rush, no need to skim past greetings and ‘how do you do’s. The village was so unlike his family’s manor, with its high marble walls, the distilled way they spoke to one another. Here, everyone felt much more alive. 

What to do first? Well, it was morning, and Pigeon hadn’t eaten yet. He figured he’d start with breakfast and work out the rest from there. 

Breakfast was a shortcrust pastry filled with sweet strawberry jam. He chatted with the baker as he ate, asking about her kids and her wife, if business had been good, about what had been happening in the village lately. The conversation was just as light as the pastry, and the baker gave him an extra croissant for the road, to which he bounced up and down and thanked her profusely. 

As Pigeon left the bakery, a quick burst of wind sent a poster flying off the shop’s window. He chased after it, finally catching up after pinning it down with his boot, and went to stick it back on the glass. There was no portrait, just a slightly blurry photograph of a tall, hooded figure leaving an alleyway, a single gnarled hand peeking out from under its robe. 

‘The Eyeless Warlock’, it read, ‘Wanted Dead or Alive’.

He looked at it for just a moment longer before returning it to its place. There’d been a lot of those posters popping up recently. With all the rumors and tall tales flitting about the village, he was surprised his father’s guards hadn’t caught the guy yet. 

The rest of the morning passed in a blink. Pigeon hopped from storefront to storefront, browsing with little intention of buying anything and making light conversation with the shop owners, some of whom he knew, some of whom he didn’t. The sun made a gradual path across the sky, and though its rays were warm, the late autumn breeze kept the temperature down. Pigeon found himself glad he remembered to bring his cape. This proved to be even more true when midday began to turn to afternoon, and clouds started to form overhead. It wasn’t raining quite yet, but rumbles of thunder threatened the inevitable. 

Before he knew it, it was early evening. The sky was beginning to bleed pink at the edges and the clouds that blanketed it grew dark and heavy. Though he was sure the party wasn’t over yet, he could tell the horizon was about to open up, and he didn’t want to risk getting caught in a storm. Pigeon decided it was probably time to start heading back home. If the festivities hadn’t ended, he could just hide in the library until they did.

He made his way slowly through the small, winding streets. The village was much emptier now; it seemed he wasn’t the only one who was hoping to avoid the rain. As he meandered towards the town square, a lone woman in a loose cotton dress rushed up from behind him, almost knocking him off-balance. Her dark hair was wild and tangled, her eyes filled with an indiscernible emotion. She kept her arms wrapped tightly around herself, clearly shivering, and stopped only briefly to apologize before beginning to rush off once more. 

“Wait, ma’am–” Pigeon untied his cape, swiftly pulling it off and holding it out before she could get too far. “Aren’t you cold? Here, take this!”

The woman stared at him. Her expression was guarded, if not fully suspicious. “.... I’m– I’m fine. In any case, it’s yours, I couldn’t… take it..”

“But it’s going to storm! And I have other capes, it’s okay!” He held it out a little further, mentally encouraging her to take the covering. “Please?”

A tentative pause, and then slowly, she reached out, delicately removing the cape from his outstretched hands as though afraid she would damage the fabric of it. Fingers shaking, she draped it over her shoulders. 

“Thanks,” the woman said softly. Pigeon went to tell her it was no trouble, but she was already averting her gaze and rushing away. He watched her go for just a moment before he felt a single raindrop hit the top of his head, and looked up in surprise right as a flash of lightning lit up the quickly darkening sky. The storm had arrived.

Now walking much faster than before, Pigeon hurried down the main road towards the village square, throwing his hands over his head in an attempt to shield himself from the gradual drizzle. The town wasn’t very large, but its streets and alleys were almost labyrinthine in nature, winding around in snakelike circles, and it was easy to get lost if you weren’t careful. Though Pigeon had wandered through the maze of the village many times, he wasn’t good at paying attention to where he was going, and soon, a lot of the houses began to look just a bit too similar. Starting to get a little worried about the impending thunderstorm, he picked up the pace; paused to change directions, turned left and then turned right; passed the bakery and the blacksmith’s house and a feeding trough now devoid of horses; ducked into an alleyway– 

And stopped.

There were other people in the alleyway. Pigeon recognized them both immediately, though he had never seen the taller figure in person before.

It surprised him to find out that the Eyeless Warlock was not, in fact, eyeless. Pigeon could see very clearly that the figure in front of him actually possessed many eyes– many, many, many eyes– in a variety of sizes and colors, hanging from his robe like ornaments decorating the branches of a tree. Some dangled in a bunch from his belt like a bundle of garlic heads, tied together with thick, dark string. He stood statuesque, his stature slim but imposing, and though he’d turned slightly when Pigeon entered the alleyway, his long, thin fingers remained, poised and pointed, over the terrified face of a woman kneeling at his feet– the woman Pigeon had met just minutes before. His yellow cape was still wrapped tightly around her shoulders. Her hands were bloody, as though she’d been clawing at the ground.

For a long moment, no one spoke, and no one moved. 

“.... You’re that bastard child of Lord R’adagast’s, aren’t you?” 

The voice that came from underneath the tattered hood was nothing like Pigeon expected. The stories the townspeople told of the Eyeless Warlock had made him sound much more like a beast than a man, like a monster from eons ago, like a long-dead spirit. Don’t go out at night, they whispered. Don’t look him in the face. If he speaks, don’t listen. He appears where the candlelight is dim. He’ll steal your eyes! He’ll claw them right out of their sockets, and then he’ll leave you blind and bleeding in the shadows of the street!

All those stories had Pigeon made assume that were he ever to meet him, the Eyeless Warlock would growl and snarl, his words coming out in a hiss; that he’d groan ancient, evil spells that could boil one’s brain just by hearing them, but the voice that came from underneath the tattered hood was none of those things. It was soft. Almost lilting, in a way. If it wasn’t for all the stolen eyes littering his clothes, one could even say the Eyeless Warlock sounded gentle. 

“Yes, sir, I am.” Pigeon spoke politely. Surreptitiously threatening or not, he was still to mind his manners when addressing a stranger. “How did you know? I’m not wearing my crest.” 

A pause, and then a raspy laugh came from the shadows under the robe. The Warlock raised the hand that’d been resting at his side– ashy skin stretched unnaturally over bones and cartilage– and gestured upwards. 

“My dear child, your eyes! There’s not one noble family for miles with eyes like those. So unique, and such a beautiful color. They’re a symbol of your magical prowess, you know.”

A rush of joy swelled in Pigeon’s chest. Though he made no attempt to hide his lineage– much to his father’s chagrin– it always made him feel so dignified, so honored to be recognized as a R’adagast. His silver eyes were the one thing fully linking him to his loved ones, the ones who allowed him to live in luxury and prestige alongside them despite his… unfortunate conception. He was deeply proud of his eyes. They were a permanent reminder of the family he loved so dearly, the family he so desperately wished to prove his devotion to.

He fought off the urge to preen with satisfaction and instead stifled his excitement in order to focus on the matter at hand. His gaze dropped to the woman kneeling at the Warlock’s feet, the way she curled in on herself as if attempting to hide away, and in an instant, his mind was made up. He took a step closer.

“I’m going to have to ask you to step away from her, sir.”

The hand hovering above the woman’s face did not move. “I will. But first, she must give me what she owes.”

“What does she owe?”

The Warlock tilted his head to one side, and the eyes attached to his robe seemed to jingle like bells with the movement. “Are you merely curious, or are you insinuating you’d be willing to pay the debt in her stead?”

“I will pay her debt.” Pigeon took another step. “Please tell me what she owes.”

Another pause, and then– though the expression was still shrouded in darkness– the Eyeless Warlock smiled. Pigeon did not see his smile. It was more that he felt it. 

“This young lady owes me her eyes,” said the Warlock. 

The woman at his feet let out a muffled sob. 

“I didn’t have a choice,” she mumbled, almost more to herself than anything. Her cheeks were wet with tears and spit. “We were starving, I didn’t have a choice.”

Pigeon looked down at the rambling woman, his heart hammering, and sucked in a breath, bringing his gaze back to the Warlock’s shadowed face. “I don’t particularly want to give you my eyes. I like being able to see.”

“Most people do.” His voice was laced with amusement. “And I don’t imagine your father would be all too pleased about you losing your family’s mark. You R’adagasts are such a dreadfully proud bunch; always so obsessed with… image. You, however, don't strike me as particularly egotistical. Though, you’re not exactly a full R’adagast, are you?”

A rush of defensiveness, quick and hot, rose like a wave in his stomach, and Pigeon stiffened, crossing his arms. “Are you interested in negotiating your price or not, mister?”

The Warlock seemed to study him for a moment. His fingers, still poised above the woman’s eyes, twitched just slightly, and Pigeon felt his gaze travel slowly over his body, starting from his still bare feet, then making its way to the ornate satchel he carried, and finally coming to a stop on a pack of playing cards just barely peeking out of the bag’s side pocket. 

“Are you familiar with Kings in the Corner, child?”

Pigeon blinked. Of all the answers he was prepared for, that most certainly wasn’t one of them. He adjusted the strap of his bag. “Um, yes. My half-siblings and I played a few times when we were young. Why… Do you ask?”

There was a beat of silence, and then the Warlock lifted his hand away from the woman’s face, raised it above his head, and in a single movement, brought the hood of his robe down with a flourish. Salt and pepper curls hung around a wizened face, and a jet-black eye stared. The other eye was blinding white, the only identifiable color being the strange, molten gold of its pupil. Neither eye looked like it belonged there.

“I have a proposition for you, young R’adagast,” said the Warlock, taking a sudden stride forward. Pigeon fought the urge to flinch. 

“What sort of…. proposition?”

“Let’s play a game. Kings in the Corner. If you win, I will take my leave, and the young lady’s debt will be forgiven.”

“... And if you win? What happens then?”

He cocked his head and smiled a smile that was pervasively passive, as though he knew something Pigeon didn’t. “Then… I take your eyes as payment instead.” 

Easy. Too easy. Pigeon knew that it was too easy, knew that he would be a fool to trust the deceptively serene, smiling figure in front of him. He looked down at the cards tucked into the pocket of his bag, then up at the shaking woman still huddled at the end of the alley. She stared back at him, her face tear-streaked and filled with fear, her hands clutching desperately at the fabric of his hooded yellow cape. 

…. It’ll be alright. Even if things go wrong, it’ll be alright. I’m sure my family will understand, he thought. Besides, it’s just a card game. How hard could it be?

Pigeon withdrew the pack of cards and sat down cross-legged on the damp cobblestone. He met the Eyeless Warlock’s gaze with what he hoped came across as firmness, as determination, as strength.

“Okay. Who’s dealing?”

It took him eight minutes to lose. 

Up until that day, he’d never really thought about what it would be like to have his eyes gouged out. He imagined it to be painful– and it was, unlike anything he’d ever experienced before, but what Pigeon didn’t expect was the darkness that followed, the disorientation that came with it. The way the world didn’t go black, not really, because that wouldn’t be an accurate way to describe the sensation of being able to see one minute and then not being able to the next. It was more like the world vanished. Like everything around him suddenly didn’t exist. He reached his hands out– or at least, he thought he did– and they collided with nothingness. He was still in the alleyway, he knew he was still in the alleyway, but for a long, terrifying moment, it felt as though he was nowhere at all.

He didn’t know where the Warlock went after it was over. The woman was the one to help him climb, slowly and agonizingly, back up the hill to his family’s manor, and with every step they took, she apologized. 

“I’m sorry,” she babbled, over and over and over again. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

Pigeon wanted to tell her it was okay, that she didn’t have to be scared, that the Warlock wouldn’t bother her anymore and she was finally free, but he couldn’t seem to get the words out. His lips were wet with the taste of rain and copper. Each movement he made was punctuated with a deep, white-hot pain that resonated through his entire body, stemming in horrible pulses from his now empty eye sockets. He wasn’t sure how he’d managed to stay conscious all that time, despite the pain and the blood loss– presumably shock? Whatever it was, it quickly began to wear off once they reached the mansion.

He was right when he’d assumed the party wouldn’t be over yet. As he and the woman pushed their way through the towering oak doors of the estate, he could instantly tell that the foyer was still packed to the brim with guests. The screams that rang out were deafening, but Pigeon’s ears were ringing so much that it muffled the sound almost completely. His body sagged as the woman laid him against the cold marble floor. Faintly, as though from a great distance away, he thought he heard Torsten shout something, but it was quickly swallowed up by his father’s voice, thundering above the muted cacophony. 

“Alright, everyone, so sorry, I’m going to have to end the party early! Please make your way out the front, sincerest apologies for this little hiccup–”

The words melted away with his fading consciousness. As his eyes fluttered closed, Pigeon soundlessly wondered how the sunset looked that night. 

He hoped it was beautiful. 

[dragonsfell]

yassarra lore.

PORT NYANZARU / While we generally reject Yuan-ti lore (for obvious Yassarra reasons), most of Chult races actually, and how evil races are treated in Faerun lore; the way that Port Nyanzaru of Chult is described is wonderful, here's the little pre-written opening speech for DMs to read from Tomb of Annihilation

You appear in a tropical city under the blazing sun. The familiar sounds of a harbor — creaking ropes, slapping waves, heavy barrels rolling across cobblestones — mingle with voices shouting and cursing in an unfamiliar language filled with clicks, inhalations, and singsongy words that make it sound almost musical. The aroma of unfamiliar spices and tropical fruit mixes with the wharfside smells of fish, tar, and canvas. Beyond all that, Port Nyanzaru is an explosion of color. Buildings are painted in bright shades of blue, green, orange, and salmon pink, or their walls are adorned with murals portraying giant reptiles and mythical heroes. Every building sports baskets and clay urns of colorful flowers or is draped in leafy, flowering vines. Minstrels in bright clothing adorned with feathers and shells perform on street corners. Multicolored pennants and sun awnings flutter atop the city walls. A crowd of children dressed in feathered hats and capes races past you, squealing in delighted terror as a street performer costumed as a big-toothed lizard stomps and roars behind them. The whole city seems to be bustling, sweating, laughing, swearing, and singing.

the rest of Port Nyanzaru's descriptions are under the cut.

Port Nyanzaru hugs the coastline at the south end of the Bay of Chult. No other city exists in Chult, along the coast or anywhere else, except in ruins or overrun by monstrous creatures. Until recently, Port Nyanzaru was under the firm control of Amn, a foreign nation. Amn was forced to relinquish the city to a wealthy and powerful consortium of Chultan traders backed by the Ytepka Society (pronounced yeh-TEP-kah), or risk a bloody conflict that probably would have ended with the city winning its independence anyway. Seven Chultan traders have since grown into influential merchant princes, enticing folk from up and down the Sword Coast with their wares.

Port Nyanzaru is a bastion of civilization and commerce in a terrifying land. The amount of business that unfolds here and the cash that moves through its counting houses would make any merchant of Baldur’s Gate or Waterdeep jealous. It’s also a colorful, musical, aroma-filled, vibrant city in its own right. Other than trade, the biggest attractions are the weekly dinosaur races through the streets. Locals and visitors alike wager princely sums on the races’ outcomes. The city also boasts grand bazaars, glorious mansions and temples, circuses, and gladiatorial contests.

Enemies surround Port Nyanzaru on all sides. The jungle teems with ferocious reptiles and murderous undead, pirates prowl the surrounding sea, and the mouth of the bay is home to a greedy dragon turtle.

When describing the sights and sounds of Port Nyanzaru, emphasize the heat, the humidity, the exotic sounds and smells, and other unique aspects of Port Nyanzaru. Some of its notable features are described hereafter:

Medium and Large dinosaurs are used as beasts of burden to haul two-wheeled carts, to hoist heavy loads on cranes, and to tow boats along the canals.

Dinosaurs compete in weekly races through the streets. These brightly painted racing dinosaurs are fast, vicious, and barely under their riders’ control.

Flowers, green plants, and vines grow everywhere, seeming to spring out of the building stones themselves. The profusion of greenery needs constant tending to prevent roots and shoots from damaging buildings or tile roofs.

The city’s defensive walls and towers are topped with colorful awnings to shield guards from the sun and rain.

All streets within the city walls are paved with cobblestones or flagstones, and they have deep rain gutters as much as 2 feet wide. Residents of Port Nyanzaru pay little attention to any but the heaviest deluge.

Tabaxi minstrels wander the streets, performing for anyone who tosses them a few coins.

Walls divide the city into districts, and the open archways above the streets are painted with murals of dinosaurs, mountains, and mythic heroes.

Crumbling ancient buildings covered with vines and lichens indicate the city’s great age.

The ground floors of most buildings are made of stucco-covered stone and have tiny windows to keep out the heat at street level. The upper floors have bamboo or thatch walls with enormous windows to let in the breeze, under broad thatched or tiled eaves. All buildings are richly decorated with paint, ivy, and vivid flowers. Some are painted in symmetrical, geometric patterns of straight lines and sharp angles, while others portray animals, monsters, landscapes, and heroes in a stylized manner unique to Chult. Where space permits, buildings traditionally include a walled yard or garden.

All the city’s water comes from rain, so every building has a cistern or wooden barrels to catch water running off the roof. Every public square is built around a fountain or rain basin. With so much water running downhill, Chultans also make excellent use of water-driven mechanical gadgets. Many buildings have water wheels built into their cisterns. Rainwater running through spouts or channels turns the wheel, which pumps water into pools, turns millstones, powers bellows or lathes or saws, or accomplishes any other labor-saving or amusing task Chultan engineers can dream up.

[pcttrailsidereader]

Theodore Solomons -- A Father of the JMT (Part 1)

Excerpted from Michael Hoberman, "Jews in the Wilderness"

This post focuses on the role that Theodore Solomons’ played in the shaping of the nation’s best-loved and most spectacular long-distance footpath, the John Muir Trail. For those readers intrigued by the early history of the JMT, I would refer you to a chapter in The Pacific Crest Trailside Reader: California (2011) written by Solomons in 1940, "The Beginnings of the John Muir Trail."

On July 12, 1895, Theodore Seixas Solomons and his friend Ernest Bonner left Jackass Meadows, a camp 100 miles northeast of Fresno, for an exploratory excursion through California’s Sierra Nevada range. The two men wore felt hats, layered wool shirts, and “shoes with slightly projecting hob-nailed soles.” Their canvas backpacks brimmed with the latest innovations in outdoor equipment: eider down quilts that each weighed four pounds, kola nuts (for headache relief), extra buckskin straps, and 60 pounds’ worth of “ham, canned salmon and corned-beef, flour, white corn-meal, oatmeal, and hominy.” As Solomons recounted a few months later, they were on their way to an area that had been “represented on the map by blank spaces drawn in such a way as to indicate that the topography thus indicated was mythical.”

Bonner & Solomons, King’s River Canyon, Sierra Nevada photographs / Taken by Theodore Seixas Solomons

Theodore Solomons knew what he was doing, even when he didn’t know exactly where he was going. Late in his life, Solomons recounted that the dream of walking the length of the High Sierra had first come to him in the summer of 1884 (a year after his bar mitzvah) while he was out “herding [his] uncle’s cattle in an immense unfenced alfalfa field.” In an essay that he published in the February 1940 edition of The Sierra Club Bulletin, he tried to recapture the moment in which it had come to him. “The Holsteins were quietly feeding,” he wrote, “and I sat on my unsaddled bronco facing east and gazing in utter fascination at the most beautiful and the most mysterious sight I had ever seen.” Mesmerized by the “flashing teeth of the Sierra crest,” Solomons projected himself eastward and upward: “I could see myself in the immensity of that uplifted world, an atom moving along just below the white, crawling from one to the other end of that horizon of high enchantment.”

When Solomons reached the age of 18, with no educational or career goal otherwise occupying or distracting him from his love of the mountains, he made his first trip to Lake Tahoe. His family was hardly thrilled at this fairly unconventional choice of pastime. By the early 1890s, however, his father had died, his siblings had already launched their careers, and his mother, Hannah Marks Solomons had made her peace with his quirky interests. While the family had once known and would eventually regain financial prominence, the period of Solomons’ early manhood coincided with a decade long downturn in their fortunes. Theodore funded most of his youthful mountain ventures through extended stints as a court stenographer.

By the time that he and Ernest Bonner were preparing for their July 1895 expedition, Solomons had spent the better part of three summers hiking through (and, on a few occasions, barely surviving) the rigors of the Sierras. He had thoroughly explored Yosemite’s Tuolumne Valley and had also ventured southward from there to the lesser-known area surrounding Mount Ritter, Banner Peak, and the Minarets (all three mountains now comprise a large portion of the Ansel Adams Wilderness). He had bagged peaks, glissaded down glaciers, subsisted for days at a stretch on berries and mule meat, and been pre-hypothermic more times than he could count. On most of these trips, he, his friends, and his pack animals lugged a large camera, tripod, and several pounds’ worth of glass plates along with them. The archives at Berkeley’s Bancroft Library contain 250 of Solomons’ photographs of the Sierras, all of which he took between 1892 and 1896.

Solomons was also well acquainted with the Sierras’ most famous personalities. John Muir was a generous, if occasionally stern, mentor. Muir’s contributions to Solomons’ knowledge of the Sierras, however, were of a decidedly inspirational, as opposed to practical nature. In a 1935 article, Solomons described Muir as “exceedingly generous” and especially solicitous of “young mountaineers” like himself. At the same time, he judged Muir, “by the standards of the geographic world,” to be “a very poor sort of explorer.” Well past his youth, Muir had been fearless in his forays into the wilderness and indefatigable in his efforts to preserve it. While “he could aptly describe every place he had seen,” Solomons wrote, “you could seldom tell where it was, for he seldom oriented himself in his excursions.”

Solomons’ travel companions belonged to an eclectic group that included fellow Sierra pioneers “Little” Joe LeConte and Will Colby, as well as Leigh Bierce. On one memorable occasion he accompanied a group of four Cal-Berkeley “bloomer girls” on their ascent of Yosemite’s 13,000-foot Mount Lyell. The trip concluded with an exhilarating mile-a-minute glissade down a glacier that it had taken them several hours to climb.

The friend he chose to accompany him on his 1895 trip, Ernest Bonner, was a Berkeley law school associate of Solomons’ brother Leon. On his trips into the Sierra backcountry Solomons also regularly visited and consulted with the Portuguese and Basque sheepherders who brought their flocks to graze in its alpine meadows. His privileged childhood and adolescence in the San Francisco area could have ushered him into an easeful professional or business career. Instead of adhering to that path, Solomons cast his lot with people who shared his enthusiasm for and familiarity with the mountains.

Sources of Middle Fork, San Joaquin River, Sierra Nevada photographs / Taken by Theodore Seixas Solomons, 

Solomons and Bonner came as close to locating the pass as anyone would in the succeeding dozen years, and had it not been for an early season snowstorm that drove them off the peak of 13,558-foot Mount Goddard on July 17, they would almost certainly have found it. In his 1896 report on the trip with Bonner, Solomons described the desperate situation whose onset prevented their triumph: “I had never passed a night at a higher altitude than this,” he wrote, “nor do I care to.” Huddled in the relative shelter of a tamarack grove, the two men managed to get a lifesaving fire going thanks to some “pitch saturated logs.” On the following day, trying their best to maintain the crest of the divide “in a blinding storm” for several hours, they held a course toward the still-hypothetical pass for as long as they could before seeking shelter in “a deep gorge that had captured [their] admiration and curiosity” the previous day from the steep slope of Mount Goddard. Before they made their descent, Solomons had formed as precise an idea of where the pass had to be as anyone could have. “From several heights,” he wrote in 1940, he “could see that at the head of the basin was an easily accessible gap or pass to the highest Middle Fork streams of Kings River.” On the map that he drew immediately following his 1895 trip with Bonner he went so far as to demarcate its approximate location.

Solomons’ and Bonner’s inability to cross over what is known as the Goddard Divide in the summer of 1895 was a temporary, if frustrating, setback to the development of the John Muir Trail. It was also one of several factors that seem to have cost Solomons the recognition he surely deserved—and had already more or less earned—for having been the path’s founder. “Had they not panicked,” speculated one late-20th-century Sierra mountaineer, Solomons and Bonner would most certainly have gotten to the pass. Thanks to Solomons’ thorough documentation of his 1895 trip, his friend and sometime hiking companion Joe LeConte managed to sight and then hike over the pass in 1908, thereby earning a place in the history books as the first person to travel the entire distance between Yosemite and the area around Mount Whitney. In the 1930s, trail builders erected Muir Hut, the only edifice that lies along the 212-mile length of the John Muir Trail, at the 11,980-foot summit of the pass.

When Theodore Solomons died at the age of 79 in 1948, only a handful of his contemporaries acknowledged the role he had played in the trail’s creation. His 1940 Sierra Club Bulletin article had attempted to set the record straight by documenting everything from his 1884 gaze up at the Sierra crest from his uncle’s cattle farm, to his multiple trips through the 1890s (including the 1895 trip with Bonner) to his years of collaboration and correspondence with several other Sierra explorers. Solomons frankly admitted to the many setbacks he had faced along the way. During his lifetime, nothing that he had done or said earned him more than passing references in the Sierra Club’s official history of the trail’s development.

In 1965 veteran Air Force pilot, photographer, and Sierra Club member Hal Roth published a pictorial chronicle of the John Muir Trail called Pathway Through the Sky. The book included a chapter that summarized Solomons’ 1890s efforts to map out the trail. Two years later, the United States Geological Survey’s official designation of the 13,000-foot peak that hovers just to the south of Muir Pass as Mount Solomons helped to shore up the trail-maker’s legacy, at least among inquisitive map-readers. In 1974, Solomons was memorialized with a trail of his own, but even that act fell short of achieving its purpose of raising public consciousness about his contributions to wider knowledge of the High Sierra. The Theodore Solomons Trail is a rigorous 280-mile, lower-elevation alternative to the much more popular and well-known John Muir Trail. It receives comparatively little traffic, however, and, as a consequence, is often difficult to follow and inconsistently maintained. As one 2019 hiker put it, “If my experience is anything to go off of, almost no one knows about the bloody thing.” The same blogger claimed that when he called the Forest Service to request a hiking permit, he was told that they issue about three a year, as compared to the 1,500 or so that they provide to John Muir Trail hikers. To this day the story of the better-known trail’s pioneer remains mostly unknown, even to the hundreds of backpackers who complete its length each summer.

[dogtoling]

adding my actual thoughts on "WHY are you thinking about noseless inklings"

i like the concept of the siphon being the nose. it just makes sense! however i'm thinking about this once again because it's inconsistent in the game itself which is maddening. the siphon itself isn't confirmed to be the nose, the nose in the game is just... kinda there, inklings don't even have nostrils (except for in the art style present in some sunken scrolls and salmon run ads, which i don't count as any type of canon because that art style is clearly there for realism's sake and depicts older inklings as point blank HUMANS with tentacle hair. which is not relevant to speculative biology for obvious reasons)

point being the siphon isn't confirmed to be the nose. the nose just kinda appeared pretty late in inkling evolution, like out of nowhere. we know inklings HAVE siphons, it's been referenced like one time in super niche context that i don't even remember, but they have a siphon somewhere (i know one place where they definitely have one but they would NOT say it in a nintendo IP). the only thing we have confirmation on being BASED on the siphon, not BEING the siphon, but being BASED on the siphon is the octoling's other ear. which is maddening to me because why. but the point of this paragraph is that the siphon being the nose makes sense, but it is not confirmed

to why i'm thinking about noseless inklings in the first place. First of all it's because drawing noses annoys me a lot of the time. Noses are a surprisingly rare thing in the animal kingdom in the form that WE have them (a lot of animals have like, a snout or something similar, not a mostly flat face with a strange protrusion). putting noses on inklings makes them immediately look very human and i often have a hard time making the nose (siphon) look like it's SUPPOSED to be there rather than just kinda being there. On top of the beak. that's strange.

BUT THAT'S NOT THE ACTUAL REASON, the actual reason is that it bothers me to NO END that if it IS the siphon, then inklings are just BORN WITHOUT IT. and if the nose is something so important as the siphon (something they BREATHE THROUGH), it's disturbing to me that it just WOULDN'T EXIST for like the first 13 YEARS !!!!!!! OF THEIR LIFE!!!! because as we know, notably, juvenile inklings DON'T HAVE A NOSE and while it's a cute character design... where is the nose.

now i initially thought it probably makes sense that they wouldn't have one because inklings have very thin skin and juvenile inklings are small, they probably get all the oxygen they need through their skin, which would also explain why the kids in splatoon literally wear barely anything. they need the surface area open to breathe. however it doesn't really explain why they just couldn't have the freaking nose to begin with.

And moving from that issue i also got mad about the Octarians, which i assume are cloned from tentacles and they try to develop into an Octoling-like form, which they mostly do. But none of them have a nose. NOTABLY, none of them wear proper clothing either, so this could be another one of the baby inkling things where they don't need one because again, they breathe through their skin. But why would they not develop a siphon??? Isn't that like a pretty major body part. (I know their mouth is supposed to look like an octopus siphon but that's a character design problem and not a problem with "octolings don't have a mouth like that and they have a nose that octarians just Don't inherit").

Swim forms not having a nose/siphon is something i can chalk down to stylization because having extra tidbits on a model is just pointless if you're doing it for accuracy or whatever. I will still point out that DJ Octavio is in swim form Permanently and he doesn't have a siphon Anywhere. nor a nose. but we don't care about DJ Octavio right now, we actually care about Captain Cuttlefish.

now, I hate that guy because famously he breaks almost every single Splatoon inkling design convention. He has VISIBLE BONES, he has too many tentacles, his fins are disturbingly detailed, in the artbook he had FINGERNAILS which inklings are specifically stated not to have, he also had Teeth in the artbook which they also do not have - at this point it should be stated that these were concept art beta designs - but some of those non-canon traits were carried over into his final design which is why it's agony. So he can't really be used as an example for basically anything canon biology related. He is currently literally a dry, organless, floating squid that should in no way be alive but alas. I will still point out the fact that HE DOES NOT HAVE A NOSE AT ALL. HIS TENTACLES JUST GROW OUT OF HIS FACE AND THERE IS NO WAY THERE IS A NOSE THERE. IF THE NOSE IS A MAJOR INKLING ORGAN THEN HE JUST DOESN'T HAVE ONE.

Moving on from that bastard there's the fact that a lot of early splatband art just doesn't have noses. the icons in the game rarely have noses either?? Splatband art has changed to be less abstract (which is cool!) so the original Lack of Nose can be chalked down to stylization but there's something recurring there that seems like the nose is often omitted from inkling depictions. That plus the fact that Octarians, juvenile inklings or Captain Cuttlefish don't have noses makes the noses just look like an afterthought that's one of those "wait this is going to look really uncanny if they look like humans but don't have noses" things, which I believe it is. So the TL;DR is that i'm thinking about noseless inklings because they literally dont seem like they actually need or should have them... for any other reason than to look like humans, which i'm not trying to do in the first place

As for why i'm not just jumping on it right away. The first obvious thing is that it's because inklings HAVE noses. they are consciously drawn and modeled with noses and just because they seemingly have no purpose doesn't mean they don't actually have a purpose and it's just not been stated because Why Would They. The other obvious thing is that the siphon nose just works and LOGICALLY serves all the things that a nose would normally serve on both a human AND on a squid. It looks enough like a nose to pass as one, it's a way of passive breathing without having to open and close your mouth all the time or even depend on breathing solely through your skin (mollusks typically CAN breathe through their skin, but they don't SOLELY breathe through their skin). Basically Inklings not having a nose works in theory but in practice, it would be really strange that they'd abandon an efficient active respiratory system for uh. Just solely taking in oxygen through their skin and maybe sometimes using their mouth.

So logically you'd want to do a siphon nose which is the best of both worlds and makes sense, but then you have juvenile Inklings which are just missing that major body part until they're like teens. And you can give them siphon noses too (which is breaking the intended design) and fix that problem, and you can ignore Captain Cuttlefish on account of "his design sucks anyway", but then you have Octarians which SHOULD logically also have siphon noses but they just have their disturbing giant siphon MOUTH and no nose. What the hell happened there? The only thing I can think of is that their mouth and nose develop as one thing instead of two separate close canals, but that's really strange. idk. I will keep thinking about the things.

I lied... I'm still thinking about noseless inklings....

[eazy-group]

Quila lost 83 pounds

New Post has been published on https://eazydiet.net/quila-lost-83-pounds/

Quila lost 83 pounds

Transformation of the Day: Quila lost 83 pounds and reclaimed her health. At 25 years old, she faced several serious health challenges, including Fibromyalgia, Lupus, and two autoimmune diseases – Lupus and Sjogren’s syndrome. What kept her motivated? “My kids, God, and Dr Sebi.” She shares how she took action.

Social Media: Facebook: Quila Germany  Instagram: @Divine_Healing_Coach TikTok: Transforminglupus/Divine Trinity Shop

I started my natural weight loss journey after I had my son in December 2018, but my weight journey didn’t begin until after March 2019. I tried to stay on a calorie deficit diet (1500 calories) or sometimes just count my calories to make sure I don’t go over 2000 calories a day. 

I got this far by renewing my mind in Jesus Christ. – Nutrition 80%, Exercise 20%, and Prayer 100%. I’ve been beating all odds in the name of Jesus! And by his stripes, I am healed.

What was your motivation? My kids, God, and Dr Sebi. At the age of 25, I was diagnosed with two autoimmune diseases, Lupus and Sjogren’s syndrome. I was also diagnosed with Osteoarthritis, Fibromyalgia, Endometriosis, Ovarian Cyst Syndrome, Sciatica, Neuropathy, Chronic Pain, Chronic Fatigue, Sclerosis, Scoliosis, IBS, etc.

Going back and forth to the doctors was making me depressed. The medications were making me depressed, and I started to have a dependency on them.

I got tired of going to the doctors back and forth about high blood pressure, heart disease, and having to get injections in my joints. My joints were locking up and hurting very badly. I could barely hold or carry my baby. Being a single mother, I had no choice but to figure it out.

Now I don’t suffer from High Blood Pressure anymore. My pain level decreased, and I’ve learned to manage my symptoms without taking medications.

How did you change your eating habits? I started to get rid of everything unhealthy in my kitchen cabinets, refrigerator, under the bed, etc. I didn’t remove everything in one day but weekly. I would remove one thing at a time and replace it with fresh fruits, like watermelon, which helped a lot! 

I started doing intermittent fasting for different reasons (physically, mentally, and spiritually). I also started eating a whole foods diet, eating fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and nuts. Then I began to remove pork, beef, and dairy products. (I just ate chicken and turkey the majority of the time.) I also used to make veggie omelets. 

Then I started to take breaks away from meat by practicing intermittent fasting. In 2022 I removed all meat from my diet. I also stopped eating eggs. I just stuck it out with Salmon, fruits, veggies, whole grain, coffee, and smoothies with the natural herbal supplements I make. 

Since I’ve changed my lifestyle, I have incorporated a variety of herbs and sea moss. I learned to make my own herbal supplements and elderberry syrup. 

What is your workout routine? I practice yoga for exercise (not spirituality). I do it for low-impact exercise and to build strength. I only went to the gym for about two months in 2019. I lost my transportation, but that didn’t stop me. I bought an Air Elliptical Machine, Ab ProCircle, weights, and more equipment over time. In 2023 I started going to the gym for a little while since I lost most of my equipment when I moved. 

How often did you work out? 2-3 times a week. 

What was your starting weight?  205 pounds

What is your current weight? I got down to 122 pounds, and now I am around 127 pounds.

What is your height? 5’2″

How long did your transformation take? It took me less than 11 months to drop 83 pounds!

Is weight loss surgery part of your journey? No, it was not. Surgery was not an option for me because of Lupus. It could have caused me major problems.

What is the biggest lesson you’ve learned so far? If you mess up, don’t give up. Just start back over. Also, don’t listen to negative feedback. 

What advice do you have for women who want to lose weight? Pray, surround yourself with great support, and join Facebook weight loss groups. Get away from toxic people, and always prepare your food before you go out.

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