#got that from will

[episims]

Do you ever see lucid dreams?

Well... @themeasureofasim and @persimmonsimmer lured me to post something about Foxfire. Yes I'm cowardly blaming them.

I wrote this short story recently, mostly because I miss my sims, some to practice writing in English, and a bit because I just sometimes need to write.

No pictures, only prose. Warnings: poor grammar and lacking vocabulary.

Felix knew it was a dream. He had seen it many times before.

But as he stood here on the shore, the moist night breeze wiping his face as he watched the pale shine of the moon disorienting on the lake’s uneven surface, it was too easy to forget that it wasn’t real.

At another time, he had licked the salt off his lips after diving into that chill water and shrieked at how the hot, coarse sand tingled his back as he threw himself on it. He had scratched his hands trying to prove to Sara he could climb a palm tree and helped Hugo build sand fortresses with moats at the waterfront.

Felix sighed – did he sigh in his sleep? – but the dream wasn’t going to end by doing so. Surrendering to the part he was playing in it, Felix turned his back to the lake.

As he had expected, Dari stood on the shore, just out of Felix’s reach. They had played here as children and hung out by the lake as teenagers, but this version of Dari was a grown-up man, with a stronger jaw and wider shoulders than Felix remembered him to have. His posture was relaxed, with his arms resting on his sides, and the moonlight painted his figure with a silver tint, dimming the redness of his hair and the warm tone of his sepia skin.

He should be transformed at this hour, Felix reminded himself, battling the dream logic. But Dari remained in his daytime form, only his yellow eyes that glowed in the dusk hinting about the duality of his existence. 

Dari smiled at him. It was a rare expression for the grumpy werewolf and Felix would have blamed it on the dream too if he hadn’t seen that smile before. It was a soft, shy smile accompanied by unusual tenderness in Dari’s eyes; Felix was fairly sure it only occurred when Dari didn’t realize he was smiling.

It was probably only in a dream Felix could ever see that smile again.

He didn’t dare to move and neither did Dari. But what meaning did place and distance have in a dream, anyway? The sand stretched under their feet and the night air pushed them closer, gently but surely, until their noses nearly touched and the warmth radiating from Dari’s body tensed Felix’s senses.

“I missed you,” Felix mumbled, studying the details of Dari’s face. It was all too familiar, his strong eyebrows above deep-set eyes, prominent nose with a perfectly round tip, and full lower lip with a little bite mark at the other side.

“You just say.” Dari’s yellow eyes glinted as he rolled them but his tone was amicable, and he placed his hands on Felix’s shoulders as he spoke.

Felix pressed his forehead against Dari’s and felt the soft touch of Dari’s fingers on his neck. He inhaled slowly, he wasn’t sure if he really needed to breathe in a dream but he wasn’t trying to fill his lungs. The scent was just how he remembered it: a mix of antiperspirant and musk and morning dew and little nuances he didn’t have words for but all of which he had memorized.

He wished he could have frozen the dream at that moment, wished it so badly that it hurt. But, as it was doomed to go, Dari abruptly slipped away from his arms.

A twisted, hollow feeling spread within him as Felix raised his gaze. Dari was standing further away again, now fully transformed, the smooth red fur covering his arms and framing his face. It was only natural to see him appear as he should during nights, but the tenderness in Dari’s eyes was long gone.

“What are you doing?!” Dari snarled. As he spoke, his upper lip raised, revealing his canine tooth.

“You were the one who started it!” Felix insisted on the urge, even though he doubted his own words. It was all the dream’s fault, forcing them to go through this stupid misunderstanding, but somehow, Felix wasn’t able to say that. He never was.

The snarl evolved into a low growl deep down Dari’s throat. He pulled his shoulders back and lowered his stance, bending his fingers. The sharp, black nails he had in his night form gleamed in the moonlight; a perfect weapon to slash Felix’s throat open.

“You fucking imagined it.”

He’s going to attack, Felix knew intuitively and the terror of the thought covered him in a cold sweat that reeked fear. He squeezed his hands into fists, he had recently broken his pull-up record but was muscle power enough to fight a werewolf? He didn’t want to hurt Dari, either.

With his limbs feeling heavy, Felix closed his eyes, preparing for the inevitable. Was this how the dream was supposed to end? He couldn’t remember.

“Felix?”

The silky voice calling him wasn’t Dari’s. Felix opened his eyes and instead of the furious werewolf, he saw Shay standing where Dari had been just seconds ago. Felix didn’t know why but the witch had a golden aura around him, making Shay’s curly hair and dark skin race the moon like a mirage of the sun. 

“Are you alright?” Shay asked with a hint of worry, his blue eyes locked on Felix. 

“Yeah… I think so.” Irrationally, now that Dari wasn’t here, Felix wished that he was. Nevertheless, Shay’s presence was comforting. His arrival had changed how the shore smelled; it had fresh herbs and incense and something that reminded Felix of thunderstorms. 

It was a pleasant scent. Shay looked stunning too, he always did. “It’s good to see you.”

Shay must have heard him but his expression was impermeable, and he didn’t answer or move. The lack of response made Felix uneasy; he wanted to touch Shay, grab the man’s hand, or caress his cheek, whatever to make him react.

But as Felix was about to do that, he realized he couldn’t move forward. By some quirk of the dream, there was an invisible barrier between them, and the harder Felix tried to push against it, the further away Shay appeared to stand.

Shay quietly followed Felix’s vain efforts to reach him but there was sadness in his eyes. His golden aura was diminishing, and along with it, Shay seemed to be fading away too.

“Can’t you cast a spell or something?” Felix groaned to Shay out of frustration. The details of the dream were becoming harder and harder to focus on.

Seeming discouraged, Shay shrugged and averted Felix’s gaze. “You should wake up.”

---------

Felix snapped awake, gasping for air. The soft surface he was lying on was disgustingly cold and wet and smelled stingy.

Sweat.

It was almost pitch dark. Felix turned his head and squinted his eyes; unanimated figures with wide bodies and sharp corners towered around him, as they had been watching his restless dreaming. He didn’t recognize them, or the room he was in.

The cold sweat was pushing to Felix’s skin again and his heart raced inside his chest. He tried to stop the panic from taking over, counting to four as he breathed in. He had been on the shore – no, that was a dream. This is my new room. We moved in with Sara just yesterday. 

Of course. The weird figures were cardboard boxes still waiting to be unpacked.

Felix sighed and shook away the remnants of sleep. The blanket tangled with his legs was just as sweaty as the rest of the bed, so he kicked it away and pushed himself to sit. He leaned his forehead to his knees and pressed his temples with his thumbs, rubbing the damp skin.

If I don’t think about it, I’ll forget faster. 

He hoped he hadn’t made noise in his sleep; Sara’s room was right next to his, and they didn’t have experience yet on how good the sound insulation was. Hugo had never mentioned Felix talking in his sleep when they shared the room but then, Hugo wouldn’t probably wake up to a car crash under his window. 

Felix needed a shower no matter what but reached for his phone on the night table anyway. The screen illuminated with a faint light as he raised it and the text on the screen announced it was 4:17 AM. He stared at it painfully aware that the shower was only going to wake him up more. 

He wasn’t even sure if he had another set of sheets packed somewhere. The plan had been to buy new ones eventually. 

With his muscle memory working faster than his hazy brain could keep up with, Felix opened the phone’s lock screen and tapped the messaging app open. At the topmost were chats with Sara and Hugo, right after them was the team’s group chat, then the private one with the team’s manager, then Paige… he swiped up to see older chats.

The one with Dari had a blank icon. Felix knew by now it meant Dari still hadn’t unblocked him.

Felix dropped the phone back on the night table and swung himself up from bed. Since he was awake and stinking, instead of hitting the shower right away he could go on a morning run just the same.

[eruditetyro]

good morning let’s hear it for Mildly Cool Outside a round of applause for Mildly Cool Outside

[steviecrowdude]

love is in the air? wrong. evil skull

[hinamie]

newest issue of first years fashion just dropped

[hansoeii]

only you.

[keymintt]

projection

[atissi]

locked the fuck back in

[druid-for-hire]

There's this sort of anthropomorphizing that inherently happens in language that really gets me sometimes. I'm still not over the terminology of "gravity assist," the technique where we launch satellites into the orbit of other planets so that we can build momentum via the astounding and literally astronomical strength of their gravitational forces, to "slingshot" them into the direction we need with a speed that we could never, ever, ever create ourselves. I mean, some of these slingshots easily get probes hurtling through space at tens of thousands of miles per hour. Wikipedia has a handy diagram of the Voyager 1 satellite doing such a thing.

"Gravity assist." "Slingshot." Of course, on a very basic and objective level, yes, we are taking advantage of forces generated by outside objects to specifically help in our goals. We're getting help from objects in the same way a river can power a mill. And of course we call it a "slingshot," because the motion is very similar (mentally at least; I can't be sure about the exact physics).

Plus, especially compared to the other sciences, the terminology for astrophysics is like, really straightforward. "Black hole?" Damn yeah it sure is. "Big bang?" It sure was. "Galactic cluster?" Buddy you're never gonna guess what this is. I think it's an effect of the fact that language is generally developed for life on earth and all the strange variances that happen on its surface, that applying it to something as alien and vast as space, general terms tend to suffice very well in a lot more places than, like... idk, botany.

But, like. "Gravity assist." I still can't get the notion out of my head that such language implies us receiving active help from our celestial neighbors. They come to our aid. We are working together. We are assisted. Jupiter and the other planets saw our little messengers coming from its pale blue molecular cousin, and we set up the physics just right, so that they could help us send them out to far stranger places than this, to tell us all about what they find out there.

We are assisted.

And there is no better way to illustrate my feelings on the matter than to just show you guys one of my favorite paintings, this 1973 NASA art by Rick Guidice to show the Pioneer probe doing this exact thing:

"... You, sent out beyond your recall, go to the limits of your longing. Embody me. ..."

Gravity assist.

[aropride]

a character who isn't used to being cared for or treated kindly being gently and tenderly cared for for the first time in years or maybe ever. save me

[pouletpourri]

"You just have to look closely."

[orangepenguino]

x

[unsung-idiot]

always watching 👁️🦋

[doodleswithangie]

headcanon that stan hates wearing glasses (for many reasons) and went without them for years until he really needed them

[Image Description: Comic of a younger Stanley Pines from "Gravity Falls." Alt text is provided and copied below the cut. End ID]

A younger Stan squints at his blurry reflection in the mirror, leaning in really close to see himself clearly. He sighs and grabs a pair of Ford's glasses on the dresser. Putting them on, he stares at his reflection. "Welp," he says, "this is unsettling."

He turns away from the mirror to adjust his tie, saying, "But it can't be helped." His reflection is now a disheveled Ford, mirroring Stan.

[complete-clownery]

Okay guys

INPRNT!!

[butchfalin]

the funniest meltdown ive ever had was in college when i got so overstimulated that i could Not speak, including over text. one of my friends was trying to talk me through it but i was solely using emojis because they were easier than trying to come up with words so he started using primarily emojis as well just to make things feel balanced. this was not the Most effective strategy... until. he tried to ask me "you okay?" but the way he chose to do that was by sending "👉🏼👌🏼❓" and i was so shocked by suddenly being asked if i was dtf that i was like WHAT???? WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY TO ME?????????? and thus was verbal again