#hard to describe. Like condensed black fog?

[koukaaa-descent]

the new guy in my head is kind of frightening but in a good way Help

[charaznablescanontoyota]

as above

The Trench shuddered. That was the only way anyone could think of to describe it. There were voices on the switchboard - excited voices, people screaming about the Crabs coming back, about floods, about the new teams that had landed. And then the whole place shuddered, once, violently, the labyrinthine halls almost seeming to breathe. As though the structure was waking up. As though the Null Team had, for all these years, been living on the back of some unknown beast that now threatened to shake them off. The tremor was over as soon as it started, but lasted long enough to be acknowledged, knocking over players on the field and startling others out of their beds, the ground lurching beneath them like waves on an unsteady sea.

It concluded to nothing but silence. The factions of the team on the field found themselves released by the pull of the Trench, as though it perhaps had better things to do than force them to play the same game of blaseball they’d been playing since the season had started in the Immateria, still tied 0-0. The players all stuttered uneasily to halts, puppets with their strings cut, some lifting themselves from where they’d fallen.

“So what the f□ck was that?” Shaq asked, with no qualms on being the first to break the silence. They were still - maybe growing into wasn’t the right phrase, but their voice had started to change in the way the Trench changed voices only recently, and it still sounded strange even to their own ears. It could have been worse. They kept telling themself that, but it was still hard to make themself believe it.

“Crabs did something.” That was Combs, ascending the steps to the dugout, hair trailing on the ground behind them. “Obviously.”

“To the Trench?”

“Didn’t you hear the emergency warning?” Miki asked. She’d been running to third and had gotten knocked off-kilter in the middle of lowering herself down to slide. Now she stayed down in the dirt, propping herself up on one elbow. “Over under, under over. Whatever that means.”

“Whatever that f□cking means,” Shaq agreed, sullen. Surprises had never sat well with them. The Trench tended to be less full of surprises than real blaseball - but this, this was something else entirely. This wasn’t anything that they had a frame of reference for. And, apparently, neither did anyone else.

It was a small comfort that they could storm off the field. The halls of the Trench had settled, but they felt unfamiliar somehow, like Shaq was navigating them in a dream. Paths they should have recognized dead-ended at doors they’d never seen before, and the crude arrows and words other Null players had etched into the black marble walls were gone, smoothed over and disappeared. The change made Shaq’s throat tighten. Every wrong turn was like a knife in their gut, twisted slowly, and it was all they could do to force their mind empty enough to not think about where they wanted to go, and let the labyrinth lead them to the Hall of Flame on its own.

Derrick was already there - no surprise - standing in the shadow of his own statue. Sebastian was there, too, and Tiana, and Zi, and Stevie, and Kirby, and a gaggle of other faces and names Shaq saw much less of on the regular, all gathered around the large windows that made up one wall of the Hall. Shaq slipped in behind Tiana, jostling her with their shoulder, catching her eye when she looked down.

“What’s going on?”

“The water,” Tiana said, with a slight nod towards the window. “It started going up. Now it’s gone.”

She was right. The glass was wet with condensation and fog, hard to see beyond, but the usual dark ocean that waited just outside was gone. And maybe the Monitor was out there, somewhere, but no one had seen it since the start of the season, so maybe it was gone, too. Maybe the Null Team was alone, more alone than they’d ever been before.

“So,” Shaq said, “are we gonna break a f □ cking window or what?”

The eye of the crowd turned on them, but it wasn’t malicious.

“Sure,” Zi said. “You first.”

Can’t hurt to try, Seb chimed, maybe too optimistically. He was standing next to Derrick - they were holding hands, in fact, but Derrick pulled away from Seb and back towards the statues that lined the sides of the Hall.

“Breaking out of here tonight,” he muttered, just loud enough for Shaq to hear and recognize it, maybe meant to be a private joke between the two of them. Shaq saw Derrick grip the sides of one of the metal buckets of peanuts and understood instantly, took a step back alongside everyone else just seconds before Derrick hammered it against the glass.

The window splintered; no water came through. Derrick brought the corner of the bucket down again once, then again and again in an errant drumbeat, smashing a hole and then smashing it wider, to the size of a person. Still no water came through. Mist filtered in instead, clinging to the skin on Shaq’s arms and the fabric of their uniform, cold condensation that made them shiver. When Derrick stopped to look out of the hole he’d made, Shaq joined him, leaning out as far as they dared - then farther, until Derrick grabbed the collar of their jersey to keep them from tumbling out into the open air below their feet.

And it was open air. Shaq’s breath caught in their throat. They had tasted fresh air again every single time they’d possessed Esme, but they had never tasted it in their own body, not since they’d come to the Trench. The air in the Trench was always stale somehow, but the air that came through the window now was real, so cold and crisp that it almost felt tangible in their lungs.

They were outside. The Trench was outside. What Shaq had thought was mist they now recognized as clouds surrounding the window - maybe the whole Trench, though they could only see what their limited vantage point allowed. They let their toes slip off the end of the window ledge, their heels still planted on the floor of the hall, and a laugh bubbled out from their chest unasked for as a breeze ran through their hair. There was no sun, but they tilted their face up as if to meet it anyway, letting their glasses fog with condensation.

And then they looked down. Or they would have, if there was a down to look at.

Shaq had always conceived of the Trench as a long building at the bottom of the ocean, a singular structure that existed on its own and stretched out for miles. They found now that either things had changed, or things had not always been that way to begin with. The Trench - or the floor the Null Team currently stood on - was one floor of a larger building, a building that appeared to stretch up and down for miles in either direction. There was no ground, just a long, obsidian tower that disappeared into the clouds below, no base in sight.

“Oh,” Tiana said. She had joined Shaq and Derrick at the window ledge, one hand tightly gripping Derrick’s free arm. “Under over.”

“People keep f□cking saying that,” Shaq said. Their glasses were still unusable - they couldn’t see Tiana’s expression, though she turned to look at them all the same.

“Shaq, we’re Up.”

“Oh, f□ck me,” Shaq said. “Under f□cking over, I guess.”

also on ao3!

[yourfaveisyanderematic]

Fight or Flight

Hey, full disclosure: did not realize that second one was asking for HCs and not its own drabble.  So I folded the two together into One Big One to make up for it.

Stress was a fact of life, as intrinsic to a person’s reality as breathing.  Being able to work under stress—to make wise and timely decisions, to keep a cool head, to retain and recall crucial information—is a quality that anyone expecting to survive, much less make anything of themselves, must master.  It stood to reason, therefore, that the childish tendency to freeze under pressure, to panic, to make impulsive decisions (or no decision at all) was a detriment and something to be outgrown as soon as possible.  This was how it had been explained to you.

Knowing, of course, didn’t dispel the panicked fog in your head, or help you understand the stubbornly complicated problem in front of you.  Black printed letters and numbers glared back at you from the crisp page, describing a concept you were supposed to understand but might as well have been in a foreign language.  You felt your pen tremble in your hand.

“Don’t tell me you’ve already forgotten.  We just reviewed this.”

You jumped.  Fugo’s eyes hadn’t left his book, but the room was so silent that he could hear the absence of your writing even from where he was sitting.  He idly turned a page.  It was strange, thinking of him as relaxed, given how he was only a few minutes ago.

Your throat was so dry.  You swallowed heavily, glancing at the glass of water just in arm’s reach.  Condensation on its surface glistened invitingly, but you hesitated in reaching for it.  Doing so required either putting your pen down (not an option), or…

Cold metal gleamed as you stared at the two knives stabbed into the table around your free hand.  One for each mistake.  You quietly, delicately raised your arm past them before leaning over to grip the glass.  

The water was refreshing and cold, but more importantly it was a distraction.  For a moment, you could focus on something other than the chemistry problem leering at you, or the knives counting how often you’d messed up, or…

You glanced over at Fugo and immediately regretted it.  He had abandoned the book entirely and was now staring at you, his expression almost—but not quite—something you could call a glare.

“Entrance exams are timed, you know,” his voice was gentle but still somehow accusatory, “the amount of time you’ve wasted on this problem would have been much better spent on another question.”

Deep breaths.  Deep breaths.  The implied suggestion was to give up and move on, but something in your gut told you this was a trick.

“I can figure it out,” you replied evenly, “this isn’t the actual exam; I should make sure I can do the material rather than worry about rushing.”

His expression barely changed, but you could tell Fugo approved by the brief lightening in his gaze.  He nodded, curt, and silence descended on the room once more as he waited expectantly for you to get back to work.  You looked back at the page.

14mL of water (18.01g/mol) reacts with 3g of calcium, creating…

Damn it all, your eyes were already watering again.  

When Fugo heard you were having trouble preparing for your university entrance exams and offered to help, you were elated.  He was a prodigy, someone able to easily understand and master the material you struggled with so much, and he seemed like a good tutor…even if he did get violent with Narancia once or twice.  

At first, everything seemed reasonable enough.  He developed a strictly regimented schedule of what you needed to know when, and that turned into regulating your sleep schedule and mealtimes to maximize how much information you retained, and that turned into…needless to say, your life became studying.  You ended up just staying at Fugo’s home to keep up with it all and ‘minimize distractions’.  It was getting to the point where the only time you had alone was when you were either asleep or in the bathroom.

Not that it wasn’t worth it!  You said you’d give anything to get accepted into your dream school, and with his help you were pretty confident about your chances.  It’s just that Fugo was…

Intense.  Aggressive.  Violent, at times.

Scary.

He hadn’t hit you—you never would have tolerated something like that—but Fugo wasn’t exactly a patient teacher.  His memory was perfect, and he only allowed a mistake to happen once.  You were too intelligent to get things wrong the same way twice, he said.

It didn’t matter that you tended to freeze when stressed.  This was just another flaw to be overcome if you had any intention of excelling, and you could do it with enough practice and enough pressure.  It didn’t matter that it seemed impossible, he believed you could do it.  You could do it, and therefore you had to.

If he pushed you enough, you would break through.  You found yourself believing it, too, throwing yourself into your studies to please him just as much as you were doing it to pass the exam.  You lowered your free hand, firmly situating it between the knives once more, and got to work.  Fugo made a pleased hum as the scratching of your pen began once more.

“That’s very good.  Keep moving, that’s all that’s important.  You won’t solve the problem by freezing.”  He flipped another page.

One of the numbers in this problem was superfluous.  Was it one of the masses?  The molarity of the product?  Maybe…you looked at the possible answers and back at your math.  How did you get this wrong last time?  

“If you get them all correct, I think you’re due for a reward.  We can go out somewhere for lunch, we haven’t done that in a while.  After that we could see a movie, I’m fine with pushing your anatomy review—“ loud, erratic knocking reverberated through the house, cutting Fugo’s musing short.  He looked at his watch with a frown.

“I hope that’s not a mission.  What bad timing…stay here, I’ll see who it is.”  He got to his feet, pausing by your table instead of moving directly to the door.  You held your breath as he checked your work; not just because you were nervous, but because he rarely got this close and you could feel the warmth of his breath on your cheek.  Glancing at his face to gauge a reaction was tempting, but he was already turning away, walking out the door and down the hall in quiet but quick strides.

“Remember to show more of your work.  I want to see every step of your logic,” he called over his shoulder, and then disappeared from view.

He seemed pleased.  That must have meant you were correct, or on your way there.  You smiled to yourself and began working again, but paused as you finally gave proper thought to something that had been bothering you for a while now.

“What am I doing?”  It was ridiculous how quickly you’d lost control of your life.  Why was Fugo the one deciding when you were ready for a break, or whether you were doing well enough, or when it was time to go to bed?  Why was Fugo the one deciding how far to push you and what you could handle?

Why was Fugo the one who decided when and how often you left his house?

The knocking—that evidence of another person, an intrusion into a world that only held you and him for weeks—was enough to embolden you.  It was time to set some things straight, reign him in, remind Fugo that he was your tutor and not your owner.  You got out of your chair, kicking yourself for wincing at the light scraping noise (why did it feel like you were doing something wrong?) and heading down the hall, wandering the turns and staircases that would take you to the front door, where Fugo had headed.

It was silent, here, silent enough that your footsteps sounded deafening even though you were doing your best to walk quietly.  Your tutor had made several additions to the walls to accommodate your stay; you passed printouts of your schedule, reference sheets for various formulas and several charts of the human body so you could review as you walked from room to room.  Even the quietness of the house was for your benefit.  Fugo really had made you his one and only priority.

That was the problem, you realized as you approached the sound of a quiet but heated argument, he was too invested in this.  You rounded the corner, finally entering the front hall.  Fugo’s back was to you, and he had the door open wide enough to talk to but not enough for you to see who was on the other side.

“…from her in weeks.  Even Buccellati’s getting worried, I can tell.  What are you doing?”  The visitor’s voice was shrill, boyish.  Familiar.  Narancia?

“Just because you never took your education seriously,” you could hear Fugo replying through gritted teeth, even from here, “doesn’t mean she has the same abysmal standards.  This is an important time for her.  Nothing can interrupt it.”

He had been keeping people away?  It made sense, in a twisted kind of way, but the idea still made your stomach turn.  You thought they just knew you’d been busy…

“At least let me see her, damn it!  This is creepy.”  You looked at Fugo’s hand, still on the door, and noticed with vague dread that he was clenching it hard enough to turn his knuckles white.

“Absolutely not.  It’s clearly better to keep you away if you’re just going to be disruptive—“

Narancia must have rushed him, because you watched Fugo suddenly stumble back, flinging his arms forward to contain the other boy.

“Fuck you!  Hey!  Hey!  Are you in there?  Can you hear me?” Narancia yelled, forcing his head past Fugo’s arm.  They struggled for a few seconds, and then he finally caught sight of you, still frozen in the hallway.

“What’s going on?!  Hey, tell me!”

They’re fighting, they’re fighting.  You had to stop them.  Why couldn’t you move?  You couldn’t even open your mouth for words to come out.

“Enough!”

Fugo moved again, leveraging his weight behind his arm and forcing Narancia back a step.  He pulled back and struck a punishing blow, landing a direct hit on the other boy’s head with an almost unnatural force.  You watched his head snap backwards before the rest of him followed, tumbling end over end down the stairs.

Narancia was only still for a moment.  You were still running forward, on the verge of shouting his name, as he began to stand up, frantic concern replaced by a look of absolute murder.  He took a step forward…and stopped.  You collided with Fugo’s arm, thrown forward to prevent you from getting too close to the door, but Narancia didn’t come any closer, just pointed at Fugo accusingly.

“This isn’t over.”

“Yes, it is!” Fugo shouted, and you were finally able to see the fury that distorted his handsome features.  “I don’t care if you’re on my team, Narancia, you try that again and I’ll kill you.  That’s the only warning you’ll get!”  It must have been unusually hot outside, because heat rose from the pavement in waves, warping your view of Narancia’s face.  Blood was streaming down his chin—no doubt his nose was broken—and while his eyes were watering, you didn’t think it was from the pain.

He didn’t say anything more, though, just turned on his heel and stalked off.  Fugo pulled you further away from the door, rougher than he’d ever been before, and slammed the door shut.  He was holding your arm tightly enough that you were starting to lose sensation in your fingers, but loosened his grasp immediately when you tugged away from him and stepped away.  He took several deep breaths, visibly shaking, but you didn’t dare try to touch him.

“…go back upstairs.”  He said in a low growl, after the longest pause.  It wasn’t a request, but you were too frightened to comply.

“I can’t.”

In the past, the glare he gave you would have scared you into immediate compliance.  Now, however, things had changed.  The naked reality of your situation prevented you from playing along any further.

“I wasn’t asking.”  Something—and you say that because it certainly wasn’t Fugo—grabbed you by the shoulder and pushed, sending you staggering back several paces.  What the hell was going on?  

You could hear your heart pounding in your ears now, and the stress made your breath come in quick and sharp gasps.  Fear worked its fingers into your limbs threatening to paralyze you, but you forced yourself to move your legs, to stand taller and meet his gaze even if you knew he was stronger than you.  

Keep moving, that’s all that’s important.  You won’t solve the problem by freezing.

That thought occurred to you first, his words echoing in your head as Fugo took another step forward and grabbed you by the arm once more, pulling you along.  The next thought that occurred to you was the fact that you were still holding your pen.

It was a beautiful thing, an expensive thing, given to you when you first started studying here.  A fountain pen, with an elegant wood case and a razor-sharp nib that fit easily into your hand.

It sank just as easily, you found out now, into Fugo’s arm, the one that was holding you.  He shouted, more from surprise than pain, and reflexively let go, allowing you to pull away from him and run.  You bolted for the front door, wrenching it open, but stopped before you ran through.

The world had changed for you, in a way you hadn’t realized until now.  The distortion you noticed earlier wasn’t because of the heat at all—it was actually quite cool today—but a strange, whitish-purple haze that shrouded the door and front steps.  Your instincts screamed at you to halt, to get away from it, as the withered grass and melted corpse of an unlucky sparrow registered.  You took a step back, but then remembered who was behind you and turned around.  And froze.

“Oh my god, what is that?” you whispered.

It was tall, tall enough that you had to look up at it even from here.  It moved in time with Fugo’s advance, strangely splotched skin fading in and out of view.  It growled, a low ragged noise you were only registering now, even though something told you it had always been there and you just hadn’t noticed it before.

Fugo paused.  Blood had already soaked that part of his jacket, and you watched droplets hit the linoleum as he pulled your pen out, holding it like some would a knife.  He looked you up and down, considering your words.

“You can see it?  Interesting.  I knew you had promise, but I had no idea it would go this far…now I really have to make sure you reach your full potential.”  He stalked forward.

You had nowhere to go.  You didn’t understand what was happening, but the haze was still there, and something told you beyond a shadow of a doubt that going through it would kill you, as easily as it did that bird.

Given the look on his face, though, it looked like Fugo might kill you anyway.

“Since you can see my Stand, it should be easier to explain this to you.” Fugo took a deep breath.  Even now, he was making an effort to speak to you calmly, but you still shrank back as he advanced.

“You have nowhere to go.  If you keep trying to run from me, I can’t promise you’ll be able to attend school in the condition I’ll leave you in.  I don’t care what kind of new ability you have, there’s no way you’ll win against me.”

He wouldn’t hesitate.  You saw it in his eyes, in the advance of the monster next to him, relentless and unforgiving.  Fugo was Death, and who could fight Death?

Panic screamed in the back of your head, but you weren’t frozen anymore.  You stepped towards him, not in defiance but in compliance.  

Submission.

“Okay.”  your voice was a whisper.  As if a switch had been flipped, Fugo’s face brightened, an expression that once made your pulse quicken.  You flinched as he brought his arm close to you, but the monster didn’t move with him, just watched silently as he draped his arm around your shoulders and began leading you up the stairs.

[fireintheforest]

Behind the Blue: chapter 3

A “seedy, slightly grotty, dirty establishment, down deep among the roots of the city, away from any proper law enforcement”* had been how Lillandril had described the Den a long while ago, back when Saufinril’s hair only reached past the back of his neck, his body missed most of the scars he now had and he was two centuries or so younger. And to be honest, he was kind of right. Gambling, card games, liquor, laughter, skeever races, food, people, money, roulettes, chatter, entertainment, smoke, music and seduction was the everyday bread in there. This place felt like home whenever Saufinril travelled from wherever he was living or visiting. Of course, the Whiterun store held another home, and one with heavy sentimental value too. But the Den, where he was at the moment, was something else.

“Three jaggas!” a shrill voice announced the presence of the tiny waitress at the bar, over the noise of patrons, workers and the music being played onstage for the fire dancers.

“Coming up!” Saufinrill grabbed three glasses and placed them at the bar, serving them with the potent liquor and passing each filled one to the waitress that had ordered them.

If it hadn’t been for Lillandril waking him up, he would’ve stayed asleep in the floor next to Rialas, both basked in the golden light of the sun filtering into the apartment, neither noticing when the time progressed to noon. He walked down the stairs, passing his fishtail braid to the front instead of leaving it hanging behind his back, until he was at the first floor of the Den. Once again was the bustle of men and women of all races of Tamriel getting ready. Huuhna with her hair, Amara putting her jewelry-

“Saufinril?”

Saufinril turned, scanning to see who had said his name. When the face dotted with beauty marks and wavy black hair stepped forward to him, his own eyes widened.

“Eramon?” he asked as he stepped closer, switching to Altmeris, “What are you doing here?”

“You told me the closest place to go was Elden Root, remember?”

“One did.” Saufinril cracked up a small smile, “One just…wasn’t expecting…didn’t think…you did say you preferred the road.”

“Yeah well,” Eramon rested a hand on the wall, “I decided to switch up the routine. Otherwise I would’ve left for Kvatch already and well, this pretty encounter would’ve never happened.” He gave Saufinril an easy smile, “Let me buy you something to drink, huh?”

Saufinril blinked fast, an imperceptible gesture as he watched the waitress leave, weaving herself amidst the tables and seats while he took a cloth and wiped some spills of liquid in the bar. The fire dancers got the cheering and whistling of the audience when their number ended, giving graceful bows to the public. The people at the bar either watched the show, focused on their drink, conversed with their companion or in the case of the Bosmer that was burying his face on the fluff of hair of a Khajiit’s chest, were doing…well…that.

It was his first time at The Crown. At their right, the stage had the white-haired Bosmer singing the ballad with her own shrill yet melodic voice, her movements gentle and feminine. Since most of the lights fell on her, the corner where Eramon and Saufinril were huddled in was almost dark. Only a portion of light fell on the others’ faces, highlighting both of their natural skin.

“Hey, I was thinking…” Eramon’s voice lowered as Saufinril felt him grab his hand. He didn’t need light to feel it, but he sure hoped the drums that accompanied the singer could cover up his own hard-beating heart, “after I finish this number I got the night free.” Saufinril arched his eyebrow, so Eramon went on, “I don’t know the city, but I could use a guide.” He stepped closer, and Saufinril let him, “We could continue the conversation we left back at Lympar March. You know, just like that night. Just us, the jagga, one room. We’ll just see where it ends.”

“Just see where it ends?” Saufinril repeated, an amused smile creeping on his lips. A round of applause rose from the public, the Bosmer giving a pearly grin and bowing.

“I mean,” Eramon gave him a cocky smile and leaned forward, his lips close to Saufinril’s ear as his hand slid to Saufinril’s lower back, caressing it with his thumb. Saufinril turned his ear to listen to what Eramon would say while trying to control the shiver that the hand caused, “I think I know where it’d end, if you’re down for it too. I really enjoyed the last time.” He pulled Saufinril closer. Eramon looked at Saufinril for his answer.

“Tempting as it is,” this time it was Saufinril who leaned to Eramon’s ear to talk to him, “one bartends all night. One won’t be able to repeat that night, as good as it was.”

“Well, it can be the morning.”

“Or the morning.”

“You got something else to do in the morning?”

“Sleep, maybe? And one can’t do that with you poking one’s back all day long.” Saufinril (reluctantly, to be fair) stepped back. Eramon let him, but still kept his hand on Saufinril’s back. The back’s owner had no complains about this.

“Well you flatter my stamina- hey where’re you going?” Saufinril had begun to walk to the bar, but Eramon caught him by the hand, “Didn’t you tell me again and again you’d give me your time if we saw each other again?”

Saufinril turned to him, “One said one might give you more time if we saw each other again.”

“Well, are we?”

Saufinril gave him a small smile, “Maybe.”

“Five fish rotmeths.” The waiter said, getting in front of Saufinril. Saufinril at once pulled the glasses and started to serve, taking a deep breath to lower the knot in his throat. The ambience of the Den had changed, from the alluring amazement of the fire dancers to the comedic value of three mini mammoths being paraded around the stage by their handler, who was guiding them into playing ball with each other. The roar of laughter came whenever a mini mammoth did a trick with the ball or, invariably, when they stepped on their trainer’s foot. Saufinril took another deep breath to ground himself in here. He really didn’t need to miss him now. Saufinril slid the drinks one past the other to the waiter, but after the Bosmer caught the fourth, he narrowed his eyes and looked at the Altmer.

“Why the face?” he asked with his nasal voice.

“Headache.” Saufinril replied automatically. The waiter nodded, understanding etched on his face.

“Yeah, I could tell there was something haunting you. And you got that face you have when you have a headache.”

Saufinril turned to him, tilting his head. That’s a new one.

“What? One doesn’t make faces when one gets a headache.”

“Sure you do! You go like,” and the waiter narrowed his eyes and made a grimace-sort of twist with his lips. Saufinril stared back.

“Get your damn rotmeth and get out of here.” He replied, handing the waiter the drink, who laughed and took it. He walked away, heading to the table that was on the further left side of the Den, the one partaking in a dice game and Amara’s services. Another customer, a man with the longest beard Saufinril had ever seen (it was draped over his shoulders and around his back and neck like a shawl- three times) hobbled over to the bar and ordered a jagga, clutching the surface to keep from falling. Saufinril served it-

“Aww look at you.” Saufinril cooed, straddling Eramon and holding his face between his hands until Eramon’s cheeks squished out, both still in the same bed they’d made love to last night. The sheets still trapped that gentle warmth that beds retained all night. Eramon grinned, the early morning light that came from the window on their left touching the sheets, Saufinril’s hands and arms, Eramon’s naked torso and his face. Soft gold touching soft gold. Pastel orange hues versus the baby blue shadows of the white sheets. And those twinkling caramel eyes. Saufinril pinched the cheeks gently, “Squish.”

“What are you doing?” Eramon laughed, making Saufinril’s heart melt with it.

“Who’d know you have so much cheek in there? It’s hardly noticeable.” Eramon took Saufinril’s hands and kissed his palms, then each finger one by one before looking back at him and putting Saufinril’s hands on his chest, his own hands on top of his lover’s.

“I love you.” Eramon whispered. Saufinril leaned and kissed Eramon.

“I love you too.”

“Fuck.” Saufinril muttered, rubbing his temple. The drums, more than mark a beat for the professional mini mammoths, felt like they were hammers slamming his head. He served the jagga to the customer (who drank it at once and fell on his own arse immediately) and just as swiftly set the bottle aside before telling the other bartender to his right, “One is going on break.” The music went on, the customers drank, the Bosmer dug his face on the Khajiit’s fluff, but it all faded away gradually as Saufinril walked to one of the back exits. He couldn’t even listen to his own thoughts, but at the same time the noise was overwhelming.

The door opened to the cool air of the night, the narrow paths between the roots of the Elden Root and the relative silence that the muffled noise and music of the Den and its neighboring businesses could give. Instantly he took a big inhale, as if trying to absorb all the welcoming chilliness, closing the door of the emergency exit behind himself. And just like the others, an unwelcome memory came.

They’d stayed in silence, both watching over the railing at the branch level of Elden Root at all the other houses, businesses and people walking to and fro, the bird-like chirping of Bosmeris. A mere hour ago the rain had dropped down in warm and fat droplets, cooling the heat that the summer in Valenwood often brought, but this meant that the condensation of the water in the soil made the air humid and the water droplets form a mist-like scenery when observing the horizon. It reminded Saufinril of the fog in Lynpar March, the first morning after he met up with Eramon the first time.

“I’m sorry.”

Saufinril, whose gaze had been lost ahead on the treetops while waiting for Eramon to talk, turned to him, “For what?”

“This…” Eramon motioned the air vaguely. He hadn’t turned to look at Saufinril yet, but something in his eyes looked sad, “Everything. I had a big share of blame.”

Saufinril felt a pang of guilt, so he inched closer to Eramon and rested a hand on his ex’s forearm. This was what made Eramon turn to look at him, “It’s not your fault-”

“You’re being too nice, you know it was. I was an idiot and I let you get hurt and then I just kicked you away, but I promise-” Eramon turned to Saufinril fully, looking at him in the eyes and grabbing Saufinril’s hands, “Listen, I have some nerve asking you this. But I, I really love you. I love you so much and I miss you. And if you take me back, I promise I’m going to change. I promise this will be the last time you have to worry about it. It’ll be different.”

“Eramon, I don’t know…”

“It’ll be all the things you love minus all the things that bother you. I had to live for months without you and it was not something I want. You’re the one that makes it all better and without you…I don’t want to go back to that.” Eramon peered at him, “Can you forgive me?

He wanted Eramon to appear again and beg him to take him back. He wanted to go back to Kvatch and say he was sorry, that Eramon was right and he’d been selfish. He also wanted to go back in time and push Eramon down the railing. All he could do was sigh and lean his back and head against the wall. Then he closed his eyes.

“There you are.”

Saufinril opened his eyes and focused them on the root pathway ahead of him, immediately summoning magic. Someone was coming. It took him a second to recognize him (and in that second he’d already thought a million possibilities of who this guy was), but when he did, he breathed out. The black hair reaching his shoulders and tied back in a half ponytail, sharp and slanted red eyes, scar from the side of his jaw to the collarbone.

“Long time no see, Toivon.” Saufinril said as Toivon, a Den regular he’d seen around for the last six or seven years, approached.

“What do you mean? I’ve been here the whole time.” Because that’s not creepy, “You think I can borrow you for a second?”

Saufinril let out a small huff of amusement and annoyance, “In one’s break? Well, one only has ten minutes.”

“Then let me get straight to the point. I got a job I’m excited and serious about. I already enlisted Marcello into this, he’s pretty thrilled as well.”

Saufinril nodded, arching his eyebrows. “Good! Good for you.” He congratulated. Out of politeness, of course. What does this have to do with him?

“Thanks, but I can’t do this by myself. Which is where you come in, because I need your help.” Saufinril blinked.

“One?” he asked

“Yes. I need to ask you the favor of travelling with us to High Rock and attend this high-class party as a guest. That’s it, your job is to attend a party, be pretty, strut your stuff around the room, basically grab as much attention of the people as you can. That’s it. What do you say?”

Saufinril gave another huff, this time of disbelief, “One is sorry but you got the wrong mer. If you want someone to gather a lot of attention, you best ask Rialas.”

“Who’s Rialas?”

“You’ve been to the Den nonstop for the past, what, six or seven years, we’ve spoken all this time, and you don’t know who Rialas is?”

“Should I be bothered? Is he important?”

“Don’t let him hear you say that.” Saufinril looked around the deserted back alley. Both the moonlight and the lamps lit with magic illuminated the alley, making some shadows lurk in corners.

“Come with one.” he opened the door and entered the Den again, heading upstairs with the Dunmer behind him. The music, now a sensual song, wrapped around him again the second he stepped in, and judging by it and the amount of people with their jaws on the ground, Rialas was on the silks. They kept going up the stairs until they were on the second floor, with the lights dim to give a more intimate ambience. Doors could either be open and empty or closed, letting them imagine what happened behind with the moans they gave. Scents of candles and sandalwood, the soft tinging of mini gongs, laughter, whispers, two to more in each room. A door opened to their right and two Argonians, a Nord, a Khajiit and three Orsimer came out. Some talked to each other, others were more focused on the way down. Adriana, an Imperial woman, walked out after the group as she put back on her earrings, arching her eyebrows at Saufinril and the Dunmer behind him. Saufinril went on, ignoring it. Toivon looked back at her but kept following Saufinril. Finally, Saufinril rested against the railing that gave way to a view down the first floor and motioned towards the Bosmer. Toivon looked at where Saufinril had motioned. His gaze landed on the Bosmer with wild red, curly hair that was swinging on silks like smoke amidst trees, like killing intent behind sweet smiles. Saufinril looked at Toivon again, who was eyeing the sultry, erotic number with mouth slightly agape, just like many of the patrons in the Den, regardless of gender, age, size, race or shape.

“Oh he is Rialas, alright. I’d seen him around but never really knew what his name was.” He said, sight lingering on Rialas before turning back to Saufinril (almost reluctantly), “You’re right. That’s just what we need and it’s just what they got. Only one issue: he’s a Bosmer.”

“And?” Saufinril asked, arching his eyebrow, “You said it yourself, he’s got what you need. What does it matter that he’s a Bosmer? Where are you going to find someone better for it?”

“We’re going to High Rock, of all places. Mecca of the Altmer ass-kissing, no offense. He’s got it, but if we’re to catch their eye and have them coddle around someone so nobody’s looking away, it’s got to be an Altmer.”

“It doesn’t have to!” Saufinril frowned

“I don’t make the rules. Bretons have a thing for Altmers. He’s great, he’s fantastic, in any other situation I’d ask him, sadly this is not the case.”

“Well, if it’s like that and Rialas is off the table, Lillandril is another choice.”

“And Lillandril is…”

“Rialas’s husband. One’s patron. An Altmer of high caste back in the Isles, who knows art and high society very well. You want refinement, you want discretion, you want someone that blends in while commanding attention? Lillandril.”

“Where’s he?” Toivon asked. Saufinril peered over the railing, and this time it took him a little longer to find his target. Once he did, however, he motioned to him discreetly with his hand, “Right…there. Shaved head, scar on his eye, looks like he’s having the time of his life? That’s Lillandril.”

Toivon observed the Altmer for as long as needed, with Saufinril observing him back.

“Won’t do either.” came Toivon’s veredict.

“Illustrate one. Why not?”

“Too old.”

“What?” Saufinril peered back at his patron for a second gaze, “Come on, he’s-alright he’s had his years but he’s also had experience. Lots of experience in the field. One can tell you that straight up, firsthand.”

“Would he be up for the job?”

“It’s just going to a party and being the center of attention, you said so yourself! He’s done harder things! It’s a piece of cake. And since you won’t go to Rialas, Lillandril would be perfect. He knows this ambience better than anyone, he’s an Altmer, he can perfectly do something to command attention and help you seize the chance.”

“How do I put this gently…” Toivon put his hands together and in front of his face, letting them tap his chin as his gaze stayed below at the audience gasping and cheering the Bosmer dancer, “People react more positively to youth and beauty. People keep their gazes longer on someone beautiful, and there’s a higher amount of people who will think someone young as someone beautiful, as stupid as it is. Especially the Breton, who spend blasphemous amounts of money on rejuvenating potions that, shockingly, don’t work.”

“You want beauty and youth to command attention, there’s Rialas.” Saufinril extended his hand to the Bosmer that was making an acrobacy where he ended upside down on the silks while people below hollered and hooted at him, “You want an Altmer with discretion and experience, there’s Lillandril. One is not cut for the job. Sorry to disappoint.”

“I’m sure they are wonderful, but I need a young Altmer that can flounce in there, be pretty and have a good time while I go get one damned sapphire. And you,” Toivon motioned to Saufinril, turning back to him, “Are the only young Altmer I know. Seriously. All the other members of your race that I’ve ever met or seen are older than you. That makes you a damn unicorn, which is another reason to catch their eye. It’s the simplest job ever, we literally do the dirty work and look at it this way: if you can’t catch their eye being the soul of the party, you can always cause a scene and it’ll work either way. You’ll be paid and it’ll just be one night, so spare me the ‘introspection days’ and just say yes.”

Saufinril’s gaze went down and to the left, then back to the Dunmer as he asked, “How much is the pay?”

“4000 Septims.” Saufinril’s eyes widened slightly, “Oh yeah. They really want this damned kidney rock.”

“Total?”

“No, that’s your part.” Saufinril’s eyes lowered. That was so much money, “I don’t buy their claims that ‘he ruined them’, in rich people language that just means they’re not as wealthy as they used to be but they still have luxuries, just not as many as they want. But hey, I’m not going to protest about gifts.”

“This doesn’t sound right.” Saufinril blurted out. Toivon cocked his head to the side. Saufinril was half expecting him to say he was crazy or ask what he was talking about or say he was being pessimistic, but Toivon just stayed silent, waiting for Saufinril to go on, so he did, “It’s too much money just to be a distraction. What’s the catch?”

Toivon turned back to watching Rialas, who had now sauntered to Lillandril and had his arms around him. Saufinril’s questions had crossed his mind, of course, but not only did he not usually get too deep in the whys of his job, to be honest that was the money Mme. Ferchand had offered straight up and then agreed on paying when Toivon had asked her for more. Saufinril was smart, if his hesitance in the face of so much money told him anything. You’d think it was common sense, but he knew more than one inexperienced crook who, blinded by the greed, had gotten themselves scammed, hurt, arrested, and even killed. Saufinril had caution, this was always good.

“You think this is a trap.”

“Can you blame one? That much money to just go to a party, help you steal something? Do you even know if the client will pay it all? Maybe it’s not a trap but at the very least, it’s too good to be true.”

“She will pay.” This guy is too cautious, though. Blind reassurance and pressuring him would only drive him away, and Toivon was dead set on having him in the group within possibility, “The money is this high because what we’re after is highly valuable, it’ll be taken in the middle of a party and it’s within a high sphere of Breton society. I don’t blame you being careful. Look, I’m leaving tomorrow, and we could use someone like you. If you want to join us, we’ll wait for you ten minutes at the north exit of Elden Root at midday. If you decide to sit this one out, no hard feelings. I’ll find someone else.”

Saufinril gave a small nod. “Fair enough.” That was some relief, “If one were to join in, hypothetically speaking of course, how would one blend in as a party guest?”

“You’d be entering their house pretending to be someone important or a least high society guest or something. Safest route is to go as some sort of artist. I asked some people of the Guild that have been to Evermor and Hawkcroft’s daughter invited as many artists as she could, apparently she has a fondness for art.”

“But one is not an artist.”

“Didn’t you just say your patron is a member of high society or something? Didn’t he teach you artsy things?”

“He tried. One is decent at dancing but not enough to call oneself an artist.”

“These people are Breton, what do they know of Altmeri art? You could piss on a pot and they’d cheer you on.”

“Well, it’s a hypothetical question anyways.”

“Sure. One last thing: this is of utmost secrecy. Not a thing to anyone else.”

“You can count on one to be discreet, nobody will know.”

Toivon gave him a nod, “Good.” He pulled out a coin purse and handed it to Saufinril, “North exit, midday tomorrow. Good night.” He began to walk out but Saufinril, confused, put a hand on his shoulder.

“Wh-what’s this about?” he asked. Toivon looked at him as if he’d just asked him what water was, and replied, “For your time.”

“What do you m-” his name being called below made him look down the railing, to Amara, who motioned him to come down. The stage was now being occupied by a Bosmeri dancer with a pair of huge feather fans, dancing provocatively to a lively melody. Toivon seized the moment to head out. That was odd, he mused. What kind of courtesan found it strange to be paid for their time? He wasn’t going to talk to him in his break and then pretend he didn’t have to pay him. There was hustle involved. Maybe Saufinril was new in this business. Or maybe it was done differently in the Isles. He just knew he didn’t want Saufinril’s patron to go after him for not paying one of his workers.

Saufinril, meanwhile, had signaled to Amara that he’d be right down with her, then turned to Toivon only to discover he was nowhere in sight. Kind of creepy, now that he thought of it. He looked down at the pouch and opened it, counting around 30 or 40 Septims with his eyes. For his time? What did he mean? He knew he’d told him he was on a break…he’d told him, right? He couldn’t remember. He better go downstairs and see what Amara wanted.

--------------------------------------

*This is from one of the asks that @thatoneshadyshop was asked regarding the Den. I lost the link like a pro but if you look in his tag “gambling den” you can find all the asks and things regarding the establishment. 

[purkinje-effect]

Running Interference

While all the Harbormen crowded the dock boilers outside for the feast, the old man who had brought back all that shellfish meat from the hunt sat almost alone in a briny fisherman’s inn with a now-empty bottle of whiskey. Mitch, a younger man with dark hair and a leather jacket, owned The Last Plank, and it was just him and Longfellow. With a hunk of fresh-boiled Fog Crawler the size of his forearm in one hand and a bottle in the other, Mitch strolled up to the old man and slammed down the spirits in front of him.

“How’s about one more round for the huntsman of the year?” Mitch grinned at him with a viscous, adenoidal admiration. “You’ve never really been much one for a crowd, but that had to have been a Captain’s Dance, Longfellow! You haven’t gone and done anything that crazy in years! You should be soaking up the praise for a job well done. Hahaw, you’ve still got it.”

The hunter with fine white hair sat in silence in his slate grey peacoat and well-worn charcoal scarf, and he stared at the bottle a moment to weigh his thoughts. He grabbed the whiskey with fingerless knit gloves, and uncorked it to pour a fresh shot and down it. He wiped the sorry off his short-bearded silver chin, then poured a second shot and slid it toward the barkeep. With brittle exhaustion, he gave the young man a rough, hoarse caveat:

“You’ll need this if you’re serious about hearing what’s on my mind.”

Mitch let out a strident laugh and sat across from Longfellow at the corner table. Accepting the shot to humor him, he crinkled his nose. He slid the glass back to the septuagenarian with a sly glance.

“Now for this story, do you need to be more sober, or do I need to be less?”

“I don’t think it’s possible for me to be drunk enough for this. Ha! Swear to me you won’t tell a soul.”

“I’m no gossip. I swear it.”

Longfellow stared into the glass as he fidgeted with it and nodded, stifling a purposeless frown as best he could.

“You know how long I’ve hunted Shipbreaker... It’s a complicated emotion, to truly miss something you’ve dedicated so much of your life killing.”

Longfellow trailed off and knocked back another shot, and offered another to Mitch. His plaintive, haunted eyes drifted off to the salt-frosted windows to watch people dancing, eating, and drinking all along the dock. Mitch didn’t understand what the hunter had described until the liquor already burned his mouth, and he choked, eyes thrown wide in amazement.

“You took down Shipbreaker!? We’re supping on the Shipbreaker tonight!?”

The hunter’s despondent gaze met the barkeep’s, and he closed his weary eyes and shook his head.

“That’s her all right. And a clutch of her kin. There’s worse things out in the Fog than her, it seems--”

“Good god!” Mitch got a wild-eyed, crazy grin and shot up in his seat. “You did the Captain’s Dance to lure her out, didn’t you? I should go get the others! We should all gather ‘round to hear how you felled the terrible Shipbreaker!!”

The old man flipped on him and slammed his hunting knife into the wood table. Mitch flinched and sat back down as Longfellow bared a cornered snarl at him.

“Did you not just hear me! I met something more dangerous than Shipbreaker.” The cherry-nosed old man bestilled himself a mite, more injured than angry. “I have no pride in how she went down.”

Wide-eyed and apologetic, Mitch sat himself back down and continued to gnaw on the hunk of shellfish flesh.

“Dinner and a tale, I suppose...”

The hunter withdrew the knife and put it back in its leather holster, and took a swig straight from the bottle.

“There’s no simple way of saying what I’m about to say, so I guess starting at the beginning is just as good a place as any. I got a wild hair about a month ago, to head out again hunting Shipbreaker. My bones weren’t getting any more limber, and I was growing stir-crazy at my homestead. I started out at the Dalton Farm to the North end of the island. I’d met her there more than anywhere. The telltale radio interference she causes when she’s nearby got stronger as I went Southwest. The Fog was so thick there, and I lost just enough of my bearings right when the signal was getting strongest, that a pack of Fog Ghouls overran me near Echo Lake. There were so many of them, and it happened so fast. A whirlwind of growling nails and snarling teeth. I went unconscious for a time, and I blamed the Rad exposure from the Ghouls for the horrid, lucid nightmares I experienced. I couldn’t tell waking from unconscious for the longest.

“I woke up in a tent pitched about tree roots. It was night, and all I could see was a campfire, and a man in a tricorner cap sitting at it. This man... even then I didn’t rightfully want to call him a man, but then I didn’t understand why... Still woozy, I nearly called out to Erickson on account of his stature. But he wasn’t a super mutant, pacifist or otherwise. His proportions were too close to a man’s, and he wore clothing that covered his whole body. I stared at him too long, and he noticed I was awake. He had already bandaged up my bites and scrapes, and he offered me a remedy for Rads, watery and sweet. It wasn’t spirits, but it eased my aches all the same.

“I kept staring at him, far longer than I should have, trying to make sense of who he was. Thanked him, for not leaving me to the Ghouls. His unspoken you’re welcome came with a bowl of food he’d just cooked. Told me to break bread with him. I remember the food so... clearly. Everything he cooked, really.” Longfellow squinted at an empty space lost in thought, and took another drink. “Wolf ribs, seasoned with Fog herbs. Lureweed that time.

“I didn’t recognize him for a Harborman. If he’d been a Trapper, he’d have killed and eaten me by then. And if he’d been a Child of Atom, he’d have killed me for being so near to their... holy ground. While we ate, I asked him why he was so deep in the Fog alone.

“He told me, in that low, deep, calm he always spoke in, that it had been serendipity that he’d found me. That he knew me, knew I still hunted the Shipbreaker. He offered me a wineskin, said he’d made it fresh from Hinter herbs. I partook of the dry, heady stuff. He said: ‘We have different motives, but the same goal.’

“I told him he handled himself well for a Mainlander. He wasn’t sure if it was a compliment, but he said to call him August.” Longfellow paused when Mitch squinted through a bite of firm fleshy Fog Crawler, but neither mentioned it. “Wore black head to toe. Had his scarf wrapped tight around his head, and wore his hat atop it. Everything was covered save the front of his face. I noticed he wore a single unit of Marine armor, covering his left leg, and though the yellow painted symbols had faded, it had once belonged to Children. He knew I recognized it, and we made eye contact. He had... pale eyes that almost glowed like the moon under that cap.

“He felt fondness for the Fog, always described it with kindness. He turned his question on me. Wondered if the Fog were as awful as I say, why I would be out this deep in it myself. I told him I’d been close to locating the Shipbreaker again when he found me. He could tell how much the circumstances had affected me.

“Everything he said twisted my sensibilities, but nothing more than that one remark. Different motives, same goal. He always made it so hard to tell him no, and not in the sense anything more than hesitation crossed my mind. It was like he knew exactly, truly, who I am, and what I live for. I could have... I should have... just come straight home, cut my losses, and nursed my wounds in my own home. But he enticed me with a proposal fit for Ulysses. I know how horrible it must sound, but the thought that my last taste of action might be my getting overwhelmed by those Echo Lake Ghouls just sat wrong with me, when all my life I was a hunter, and he knew it. I needed the hunt, and he knew it.

“Turns out, he wanted to hunt the Shipbreaker with me.

“What he said next should have lit a fire under me to leave once he was asleep. But, like a fool, I stayed. He told me he had wanted for years to return to Far Harbor, and approach me to ask for my help hunting her. Told me that the Condensers at the fringes of the shore made him feel uninvited. He became so childlike and small when he praised that when he couldn’t go to me, I’d come to him. Uninvited. That’s not a word one uses for just any situation. I could blame the liquor for my loose caution, but he had his hooks deep in me, and he knew precisely what I wanted. So I agreed.

“During the day, August almost passed for a man. My distrust of him melted over time. We traveled up and down the western half of the island for weeks, on the hunt of another strong signal. He’s a skilled marksman and butcher, and there wasn’t a day we went hungry--or thirsty, for that matter.” Longfellow guffawed warmly at this part of his story. “Whatever was in that wine, it sharpened all my senses. It’s got to be why I remember everything so evidently. And it had to have everything to do with his keen aim. He never laid traps--even with the rabbits and fowl. If I hadn’t been a part of catching and cleaning, I would have had harder doubts as to what we had been eating. But even my memory leaves me suspect... It worries me, how delicious the food had been... It couldn’t have been natural.

“I noticed at times that he drained the animals into wineskins, rather than let it wash away in the dirt, but I said nothing. Everyone has their superstitions and rituals, and if it worked for him, then it was right for him. It should have upset me, how hard he took a messy kill, as though collecting the blood was just as vital as the meat and hide. It was like he had to have the whole thing. ...Whole thing, he knew how to use every bit of an animal, vegetable, or mineral, let me tell you. We ate better than I have in years. Fresh rabbit, wolf, radstag. You name it. And he had a sauce to match each and every one.” The old man’s somber eyes grew distant again with a bitter smile. “I could have sworn it’s been since you had a cook here at the Last Plank, Mitch, that I tasted anything quite like it...”

Up until then, the barkeep had listened patiently, but at the insinuation, Mitch grunted his indignity.

“--Oh, forget this. You did not run into my old cook in the Fog, old man. He left with the Children ten years ago, when Far Harbor ran ‘em off the dock for good.”

“If it’s the same man, he’s not much August anymore. Something far worse. I can stop cutting the fat here, if it’s too much for you. It’s your proximity to the story that I even feel it’s right of me to tell it to you. Maybe I should be telling Avery. Or the Mariner.”

Mitch settled back, and poured himself another shot with an even face.

“No, no. Go on. Even if I can’t believe you, this is already a better tall tale than anything the Mariner’s told in a good while.”

“You’re lucky even I barely believe what happened, or I’d take offense. And you’re lucky she’s not in here to hear you say so.”

As the whiskey bit the back of Mitch’s throat, the barkeep could only close his eyes, exhale through his nose, and nod.

“The weeks felt like years. Pleasant years. I found my loneliness eased. A bond formed between us. Hunting together as we had, it was impossible for one not to form. He already looked up to me, and I came to admire him as well. We learned a lot from each other, even in that short time, with how different our survival skills were. I hoped to know him for a long time, even after we succeeded. But for what I know now, I don’t know that he could leave the Fog, even if he wanted to...”

Longfellow’s face harrowed with more lines than it usually carried, and he knocked back a solid bolt of the whiskey in displeasure.

“I thought often, Supposing August should try his hand at the Captain’s Dance. No better way to overcome whatever hostility the Harbormen could hold against him, than to earn their respect. I couldn’t fathom what could be keeping him out of Far Harbor. I described the Captain’s Dance to him. He glossed over his own personal gain and seized an intense and unwavering belief that the Dance was just what the two of us needed to lure out Shipbreaker. At the time, I felt a good deal ridiculous for never having thought of it myself. I knew one man might not be able to take her down after dealing with waves of shellfish flooding into the mire. But, how he talked--two, working together, that could get us much further. He could handle a Dance. And he insisted that, for all my years of devotion to hunting her, I should get the killing shot when Shipbreaker arrived.

“So, we hunted shellfish near Briney’s Bait n’ Tackle. Littered the swamp with ‘em. A single cut of Radstag Steak in the water lured up the Mirelurks, and their flesh brought up others. The chum kept them coming, wave after wave. We kicked up a ravenous, churning tide. Funny thing, I kept to my Henrietta, and up until that day he’d relied on a lever action rifle. He knew as well as any seasoned Harborman that bullets don’t do much against the oversized beasts’ carapaces. He dove in the melee with a machete notched just for husking them. The knife ripped right into the soft underbelly of those Mirelurks, and it did a swift job knocking off legs and pincers when the next mark on the food chain showed up. I’ve never seen a body take a Fog Crawler with a blade, Mitch. They’re too big, and too fast. But there August was, focused on slowing them down so I could get a steady shot. He’d cut off as many legs as he could get at, and move on to the next one, leaving the kill for me. As hungry for fresh meat as the beasts were, he was hungrier still to fell them. He truly did dance for her.

“In the moment, any worry I’d had that he could be a Child of Atom washed away. They can’t stand the thought of killing Fog creatures unless it’s for food. They don’t care if the things kill innocent folks--”

Longfellow quietened himself by finishing off the whiskey. Once his head swam, he continued.

“Well, his plan worked. After I’d fired the killing blow on the third Fog Crawler to beset us, the radio on my belt fritzed out like it was the End Times all over again. We’d been killing the Shipbreaker’s babies, and she was furious. The moment had come. I could feel it. I’d been hefting around a Harpoon Gun in the hopes I could finish her with it, and I got my chance. August went to lob off her legs just like he had with her offspring, but he chopped off just one of the eight before she leaped up and knocked him flat in the water. With her off-rhythm, I hooked her in the side with a harpoon, and did my best to rope her around a nearby tree. She still overpowered me uncontested, and I had to let go or risk her drowning me in the mire. But I’d bought August time enough to recover. He grabbed the rope still hanging off her neck, and scaled her, and mounted her shoulders, to rein her by her antennae... He yelled for me to fire again while he had her disoriented. The second harpoon-- it got her right... through the skull...”

Trembling, the old man fell silent when his voice began to break. His unease was catching, though Mitch still couldn’t quite glean what had Longfellow so tormented.

“Longfellow, you should be over the moon she’s dead. This is something to celebrate! You know my Uncle Ken is out at the National Park on his own, and he does just fine, though I miss him something sorry. Surely, there’s no harm in letting August live wherever he pleases on the island. Right? All the better, if he’s left the Children like you say he has.”

“That harpoon also bolted August through the chest. He didn’t seem more than shocked for the longest, and I was positive in the moment that I’d lost the closest to a son I’d ever had. The first thing he did was sever her head, skewered to his body. And he climbed down... and right away insisted upon butchering her. Like all the landbound wasteland marks, he began by draining Shipbreaker also. Drained something foul as sin from her. Only after he collected that oily, shimmering stuff did he sit down in a dry patch, to remove the creature’s head and harpoon from his chest, and tend to what should have been a fatal wound.

“I recognized the Stimpak. He used two, one to stop the bleeding, and the other to close the wound. But then... Then, all those wineskins of blood he’d kept from his kills, he... He uncorked a smaller one, and downed it like a lush to cheap wine. I objected, told him he was disoriented from the fight and blood loss, insisted that he hadn’t drunk his wine-- but had drunk one of his drained kills.” Longfellow’s hand had crept up trembling over his mouth for what he said next. “He looked to me with a weak guilt, put the cork back in the wineskin, and grabbed for a second. God, I hope the wine he and I shared hadn’t been the same as that. He cradled her head in his lap for some time with... a romantic finality.

“Given time to recollect himself, August pulled the scarf down off his head to rest around his shoulders, and retrieved his hat. Until then I’d never seen his long, dark hair pulled back beneath that scarf, let alone his pointed ears, or wiry, bushed-out sidewhiskers. I half expected him to have wicked teeth to go with all of that. Though still weakened from the battle, he took care of butchering Shipbreaker as well as her kin. I helped as I was able, too stunned to really object. The Mirelurk, too, where we could salvage. He didn’t want a thing to go to waste.

“He wouldn’t have any of my praise--not that I had much of anything to say at the sight of his full face. He fried up the smallest tail for us to split. Seasoned it and made it good and spicy. He told me I could take all the meat back for the Harbormen. That he couldn’t reasonably take that much food with him. That he’d gotten what he came for, besides. He asked me if I wanted to keep her head, to mount. I should have let him. I don’t think I can look her in the eyes.

“With him insisting we part ways, I got the nerve to address all the things that had chewed at me from the start. Those nightmares I had from the Rad Poisoning, one of them was my first memory of him approaching my fight with the Ghouls. All he did was... he laid his hands on them, and spoke calmly, and they all stopped and... stared at me at once.” He sneered to keep himself from crying. “He described what he’d done as ‘reminding the Ghouls what they are.’ He took them back to Echo Lake once he’d made sure I was safe.

“To hear part of what I remembered of that day had been correct, he had me reeling. I didn’t want to know the truth about anything else. Let alone him implying that he hadn’t killed a single one of those ferals, just... left them there. I didn’t understand that if Fog creatures listened to him, what use I could have served him hunting Shipbreaker. He said, ‘The Shipbreaker wasn’t some simple Fog Ghoul. She was an avatar of the Fog itself.’ Said the Children of the Nucleus are just as myopic as anyone else. That they worship a god far smaller than they realize. Said Atom is in all of us.’

“I asked him, just how long he’d been in the Fog. Told him his head was on all wrong. He insisted that he’s no Trapper. That he’s eaten Trappers, but human flesh doesn’t... satisfy...” He wore his nausea on his face, and rubbed at his bearded chin with a glassy-eyed snivel. “He’d always respected me fondly in his youth. I reminded him of his grandfather in West Virginia. He didn’t want to rob me of killing Shipbreaker. Knew how much my vengeance meant to me. But that he... had to have her...

“He’s more Fog than Man now. When I wouldn’t press him to explain himself with his features revealed after all our time together, he still felt I deserved to know what he was. He’s... made Stimpaks from Wasteland blood since he was a boy. He started mostly with insects, something he called a Bloodbug, but he keeps moving on to bigger and bigger beasts. Said the chemicals in Bloodbug glands made him able to hold more and more radiation... more of his god’s holy light... and that devoting himself to the habit was making his soul as big and plentiful an offering as he could possibly give Atom. And he’s convinced that the only way to achieve what his god requires of him is to hunt and... add the life force of these things to himself. He hunted Shipbreaker, to make Stimpaks from her. To subsume her.”

The old man had finally had enough, and relented to letting himself cry. Mitch had never seen Longfellow like this, and reacted the only way he knew how. He got up and brought him a bottle of the good vodka. As he sat back down, Longfellow eyed the bottle, and slowly smiled and chuckled. He gave Mitch a firm pat on the hand and cracked open the spirits.

“He left the Children because what he was doing was too much even for their demented faith. They’d warped him since his childhood to be led down a path to feel the need to do such a thing to himself... and he couldn’t see that what he’s doing exceeds even what’s acceptable by their morals. But the worst of it isn’t knowing what he is, Mitch. It’s not knowing exactly what he is.”

“I’m supposing you didn’t kill him.”

“I didn’t think I could! I froze up. Especially when he told me that he'd come to care too deeply about me to let any harm come to me. I figured, if I survived to get back to Far Harbor, maybe the superstition that the Fog Condensers could keep him away would afford me the ability to regroup, think things through. Sure enough, when he accompanied me, he halted twenty yards back from the furthest Condenser pillars, and from there watched me return safe inside the hull. He was gone, the next I looked back.”

Longfellow’s glassy eyes grew wild as he gesticulated with the fifth of vodka. Mitch was unquestionably shaken, shimmering with sweat.

“If I hunt him, do I hunt a man or beast? If I trap him, is he imprisoned or captured? As far as I can tell, his only crimes are against nature, and he’s done no ill toward the Harbormen. I’m... I’m just a tired old man. I don’t know how to rid this place of something I’m not even sure can die.” His head snapped up with alarmed conviction. “I have to speak with DiMA. Ask for more Fog Condensers. He’d understand.”

“You’d... better talk to Captain Avery before you even consider going up the mountain to talk to the Metal Man. Besides... aren’t you worried you’d encounter August in the Fog on your way up there?”

“If I ever step foot outside the hull again in my life, he’ll be in my shadow every step I take. I just pray that the next time I encounter radio interference, I’m not alone.”

[malodorousmalcontent]

Sixteen92 Review

Hi everybody, welcome to my Sixteen92 review, where I feel unnecessarily self-conscious about how many times I describe scents as 'perfumey'.

I've been sitting on these for a good couple... Weeks? Months? I don't know, but a fateful weekend came where I took a look at my exceptionally busy Notes file, and felt very sad, so I figured i'd knock a couple reviews off my list. Work through all this shit I still needed to review. And that brings us here! Hooray.

I'll be reviewing Kuro Lolita, You Who Swallowed a Falling Star, New Radio, Hydromancy, Telepathy, Mellifera, Vlad Dracul, Paper Moon, and An Excellent Day for an Exorcism.

Hold onto yer butts, folks, this one gets pretty long, here we go

KURO LOLITA (PERFUME OIL) || Black sandalwood, burning resins, straw, porcelain, delicate lace, wet stone, fog, wind-blown leaves.

This smells like a cold rainy fall day in a small southern gothic town, encompassed by farmland, with cobblestone streets and dotted with tiny run-down churches. Bales of hay are speckled around the area: leftover decorations from autumn festivities that happened a week or so ago.

...Just had to get that outta my system, onto the stuff that matters!

The first thing I get, punching me in the nose as soon as I put it on, is sandalwood and damp hay. It's a very warm, woody, dusty scent, with just a little bit of sweet acridness that makes me think there's a dry/decaying leaf note in this (I haven't double-checked the notes yet, so I only remember some of them), and enough petrichor to put the 'damp' in there. The burning resin note comes out after about 10 minutes of wear, and, boy, it's unmistakable: Sweet, with a kick, and a good amount of burniness to it. It smells dark. Like you just walked into one'a those imaginary churches and they were performing a sordid ritual in there, the chapel overrun with incense and candles.

Another 15 minutes, and the sandalwood fades, the resins mellow out some, and i'm mostly left with the hay and that gentle sweet smell of decay. The final note I smell on the drydown: leaves and cold, wet atmosphere. Really interesting atmospheric, evokes a lot of mental imagery.

tl;dr: Sandalwood at first, followed by burning, incensey, sweet resin that mellows out to hay and a decaying leaves note that is present throughout the whole wear. Dries down to leaves and cold, wet atmosphere.

RATING: 3.5/5. Nice, a very good atmospheric, but I feel like it's bordering overly complex, with some of the notes getting lost in the mix and my nose feeling a bit confused. I also don't know how much i'll want to really wear it.

--

YOU WHO SWALLOWED A FALLING STAR (PERFUME OIL) || Dark stone fruits, glowing embers, night rose, sweet sandalwood, plum blossom.

Oh, smells like rock candy.

So this is sitting on a weird edge for me. See, "stone fruit" (peach) notes tend to not work on me more often than not: they go acrid in this terrible, burning bodily fluid kinda way, and this... This is sitting juuuust on the edge of that. It's sharp and tart and kinda heady, rounded out by that rock-candy sweetness (which i'm 90% certain is frankincense. Source: I have a bag of pure frankincense), and just like... It's thinking about being a burny bile scent. But not quite. Nooot quite. There's a smooth, perfumey floral undercurrent to this, too. Lots of smells goin' on at once.

The drydown is basically lush, smooth, perfumey, rich-as-hell flowers, with a slight sourness to 'em. It's actually very pretty, that rose is killin' it. I don't get the threat of burning bile anymore, or the rock candy. It's a little humid-smelling, too - a great summer night scent.

tl;dr: Bright stone fruit and powdery, rock-candy-like incense which fades to lush, smooth florals.

RATING: 3/5. Well made, but i'm not big on how the top notes play out at all.

--

NEW RADIO (PERFUME OIL) || Vanilla milkshake accord, maraschino cherry, pink lemonade, grass clippings, waffle cone.

So, full disclosure, I had no interest in this scent. I saw it and went, woof, that sounds way too bright and sweet and youthful for me, and passed it over time and time again. I ended up getting it as a free sample when I ordered some of those Sea Salt Hair Sprays, and... Wow. I like it way, way more than I thought I would.

In the bottle, it's... Perfect. It's everything. Rich, foody, smooth vanilla; SUPER bright, almost candied, nice n' tart maraschino cherry (this is the note I was most worried about, too, as I don't like cherries - but this note is perfect). The gentlest edge of sour pink lemonade. A perfect, toasty waffle cone, which is honestly one of my favorite scents... I don't get much grass, but I don't need it. In the bottle, it's the perfect summer scent.

You'll notice I keep saying 'in the bottle'.

It touches down on my skin, and lives in that perfect blissful state for about two seconds, and then, boom. My skin absolutely gobbles up most of those wonderful notes. That bright maraschino cherry? Gone. Pink lemonade? Barely there, just giving a bit of a sour zing. All i'm really left with is vanilla and the faintest hints of that waffle cone note. It's absolutely heartbreaking. Like, it still smells good... But, god, not as good as it could. I might get a scent locket for this, though.

Virtually no sillage, but I can smell that vague warm sweetness on my wrist for a pretty good handful of hours.

tl;dr: A delicious, foody, bright, sweet and warm and toasty summer scent that's a dead-ringer for its notes... That my skin devours instantly, leaving only vanilla, a touch of lemonade, and faint breadiness.

RATING: 3/5. This would be a 5/5 if my skin didn't DEVOUR half of it. RIP, beautiful scent.

--

HYDROMANCY (PERFUME OIL) || Fog, cold violet, lichen, ambroxan, mineral accord, petrichor, glass.

This was recommended to me when I went out and asked people for a scent that makes me smell like a ghost, and honestly, this fits the bill pretty well. It's a pretty specific type of ghost, though: the ghost of a waifish maiden who went down with a sinking ship, who you find, suspended frozen above the water, in the air pocket of an underwater cave that she managed to swim to but ultimately starved to death within.

...ANYWAYS

This smells empty, silky, ethereal, dark in a spooky way, and most importantly, pretty darn oceanic and green. The first thing I smell upon putting it on is the lichen and ambroxan, the former being green, sort of dry-smelling (like lichen that's growing just a foot or so above the water, hasn't touched it in a while, y'know), with that weird tang that lichen can have, and the latter giving a very oceanic sweet-saltiness. The mineral accord and petrichor blend really well with the ambroxan note and it genuinely just ends up smelling like very realistic dank cave ocean water.

And then there's the fog and the glass. The Weird Notes.

The fog is less a scent and more a feeling - it makes the entire scent sort of... Soft and fuzzy. It's what's giving it that silky quality. The glass, you can actually smell, and it... Smells like glass, y'all. Cold and clear and giving off a faint sterile scent, but, it's there. Notably, I can only really detect it if I huff so hard that I become anosmic to the ambroxan and lichen, and it comes out more on the dry-down, but. ...Yeah, it's there. Combined with the fog, it's like... The scent equivalent of looking through a window that's become clouded with condensation. If that makes sense.

This doesn't have a ton of sillage - I can just barely detect it from 3 inches away - but wears very strongly on my wrist.

tl;dr: A realistic ocean water scent made fuzzy and silky by a fog note, with a fascinating, realistic glass note that peeks out on the dry-down.

RATING: 4/5. Too oceanic for me, but well made, and that glass note is WILD.

--

TELEPATHY (PERFUME OIL) || Winter narcissus, tonka bean, immortelle flower, sleet, ozone, white amber.

When I first got this, it was basically just straight sleet for the entire wear, and I wasn't wild about it. It was a very realistic sleet note, mind you, but that's not necessarily a good thing: the scent basically smelled cold, bitter, and a little dirty, which is not at all what I had been expecting from the notes.

The good news is, after considerable rest, it's verrrry different.

I put it on, and for the first minute, it's still that dirty sleet note, but then it softens up and out comes the florals - Light and lush and just a little stereotypically perfumey-smelling. It's still a little dirty, which gives the scent some complexity, and there's a gentle undercurrent of something sugary-sweet underneath the florals. This is more... Elegant smelling than I think I expected it to be. I expected it to be light and femme and kinda... Younger-smelling, but the actual scent smells like something a very refined woman in her 40's or 50's might wear.

Looking at the notes, yeah, basically what i'm smelling. Florals from the narcissus and immortelle, sweetness from the tonka bean and probably the white amber, and atmospheric, colder, dirtier notes from the sleet and ozone.

It's very, very light on me - if I huff it too much I quickly become anosmic, and while I was getting a little bit of sillage while it was wet, I have to have my nose pressed to my wrist on the dry-down.

tl;dr: A delicate, perfumey floral with undertones of cold, wet, dirty atmosphere and gentle sugary sweetness.

RATING: 4.5/5. I like this quite a bit. Has depth, but isn't overly complex, and the florals and sweeter notes are so pretty. I'd wear this to something very professional. Docked half a point for being so light, though.

--

MELLIFERA (PERFUME OIL) || Wildflower Honey Accord (not vegan), Violet, Jasmine Sambac, Vanilla Infused Sugar, Sandalwood.

So, i'm not big on honey scents. Unless the honey is very subtle, it can quickly go super overwhelming and cloying to me. Hex's Papa Legba was downright unbearable with how strong and sweet it was.

Mellifera, though, is not!

I mean, it's very honey forward, don't get me wrong, the honey's basically the star of the show, but it's a different kind of honey. It smells... Clearer. Rather than being overwhelmingly sugary-sweet, it's far more floral, with little pinpricks of something kinda sharp and tart and tingly. It's bordering on being kinda cleaning-supply-ish, but it's not quite there. There might be a citrus note in this? That's what i'm basically getting: Clear, gentle honey with a floral edge, and maybe citrus.

Let's CHECK! THOSE! NOTES

Not a LICK of citrus! Go me. The wildflower honey accord explains the quality of the honey, though, and I bet that sharpness that's a little cleaning-supply-ish is the jasmine. The violets are in there, but they're so well-blended with the other floral notes that I wouldn't be able to identify their trademark Purple Burp smell on a blind sniff. I can recognize them now that I know, but seriously, the other florals balance them out so well.

The wildflower and jasmine pinpricks eventually mellow out to a smooth, bright sweetness - a combination of the vanilla and honey, I imagine. I... Still don't get any sandalwood, which makes me sad, 'cause I love sandalwood. :( My wood-gobbling skin strikes again, I guess.

Virtually no sillage - it wears kinda light on my wrist, and I can only smell it from about an inch away.

tl;dr: A clear, floral honey with pinpricks of sharp jasmine that loses its floral edge on the drydown and simply becomes bright-yet-smooth honey and vanilla.

RATING: 3.7/5. Not bad, but the jasmine is just too sharp for me, and I can't see myself wearing it much.

--

VLAD DRACUL (PERFUME OIL) || Carpathian fir needle, red cedar, black amber, black patchouli, scorched earth, opium, blood musk.

This smells like a cologne for someone who dresses in refined clothes but also feasts upon the entrails of freshly-killed deer, so, I guess the name is apt. It's dirty as hell, but in a kind of bright way: like walking around on a very dry fall day through a forest that's all reds and yellows and dry cracked earth with sparse yellow grass. I get a cool airiness from it, and piney freshness, and d i r t. That scorched earth note ain't playin' around. I'm pretty sure that man-stank smell is the blood musk, which is this sorta... Feral, almost pheromonally sweet smell? But it's not bad or actually stinky, just kinda hanging out under the atmospherics.

On the drydown I get a resinous, very light sweetness, I assume that's the opium and/or the black amber, and the atmospheric notes are still there, most notably that scorched earth, but way subtler. It's warm and smooth and just... Prettier than I expected it to be, given the way it started.

tl;dr: A fall atmospheric that's distinguished by its scorched earth note and a sort of pheromonal, feral musk. Dries down to light resinous sweetness and that scorched earth note.

RATING: 4/5.

--

PAPER MOON (PERFUME OIL) || Soft vanilla musk, benzoin, oakmoss, trailing ivy, peach blossom, rose.

Mmmm, this is delicious. It's so sweet and mellow with the prettiest, smoothest florals. The vanilla musk is the strongest thing in this, humid and sweet, with a super well-blended floral edge. The florals are kinda perfumey-smelling, but the rose doesn't go overly chemical, is just lush and smooth, and the peach blossom is soft and delicate. I've never encountered benzoin before, so i'm not entirely sure what it smells like, but The Internet says it's a warm and sweet note - I bet it's part of what i'm reading as the vanilla musk. I keep sniffing this looking for the ivy or oakmoss, but honestly, i'm not smelling anything that hits me as particularly green.

The most morphing it does on the dry-down is that the florals mellow out some, but otherwise, it stays largely the same. It wears close to the skin, but is strong on my wrist.

tl;dr: A warm, humid vanillic sweetness with a floral edge that's lush and perfumey from the rose and soft and delicate from the peach blossom.

RATING: 4.7/5. An EENSY bit too perfumey for me, but that's about it.

--

AN EXCELLENT DAY FOR AN EXORCISM (PERFUME OIL) || Cathedral incense, black clove, burned parchment, tarnished silver, sacred woods.

Woods. Strong, evergreen woods, with a surprisingly light airiness to them - a real nice cold air note, i'm assuming. Genuinely makes the scent smell cool. The woods are strong and perfumey, which puts them a hair off realistic, but I also get that fresh, sap-sticky (I love that term pardon me for using it across reviews), slightly bitter mintiness that smells very much like the real thing.

I have, literally, NO idea what the notes in this are at the time that i'm writing this, apart from a tarnished silver note - which I think might be part of the cool airiness of the scent, i'm not sure. If I had to take a wild guess, i'd say that there's... Woods, resins, maybe a floral giving that perfumey nature, and some kinda cold air/ozonic note.

Here we go, let's take a peek at zee notes

...Wow, I was way off. At least I got the woods and the cathedral incense must be what i'm reading as resins, and is probably the source of the perfumey-ness, and, by process of elimination, the silver note must be what's making it so cold. The burnt parchment and black clove come out a couple hours into the drydown, giving this a tingly, burning quality, and a good bit of sharpness. The sweetness of the incense rounds it out nicely.

Doesn't have a lot of sillage, but says strong on my wrist.

tl;dr: Perfumey incense, fresh woods, and a cold and clear silver note that dries down to a burning, sharp smell that's still accompanied by the sweetness of the incense.

RATING: 3.5/5. Not bad, I love that silver note, but gets too sharp on the dry-down.

[tothewaterhq]

ACCEPTED // MARE DARROW

district ten mentor → victor of the 57th → karen gillan fc

positive traits: tough, honest, focused negative traits: disillusioned, untrusting, apathetic

describe their arena: the arena mare found herself in was a cloud forest, which was full of thin mist that made seeing during the day inconvienent, as it allowed other tributes to sneak up on you, and grew thicker at night, making seeing almost impossible. it had a cool temperature that dropped even lower at night. however, unlike other arenas, this arena had plentiful water, between the high humidity of the forest allowing for the fog to condense on leaves and then drip down to the ground and the numerous quick, thin rivers that ran through it. the mutts in the arena were creatures such as toads that leeched a poisonous substance if touched, and birds with beaks thick enough to impale a tribute on the first try that would swoop and attack them, as well as howler monkey mutts that would yell if tributes were close enough to them, giving away their location to the other tributes. there were plenty of other animals that harmlessly populated the trees that tributes could eat. however, all of the plants found in the arena were toxic, such as orchids, and some even mimicked plants that were edible, but turned out not to be, which some tributes found out the hard way. biography: mare was the only child of a single mother in district ten with an alcohol problem. this turned her nasty at the best of times, and violent at worst, so mare grew up on her own, in the depths of poverty of district ten. she was bullied by her peers because she was always wearing ill fitting clothes and was small for her age. she remained small, but after a growth spurt which put her at five foot eleven when she was only fourteen, she dropped out of school to work in the slaughterhouse. a week after she’d started work, her mother came home, angry and drunk, and mare stood up to her for the first time, leaving her mother with a broken arm and a black eye. her mother never touched mare again, and the two of them never spoke again, not even after mare was reaped at age sixteen. mare had no need to worry about food in the arena — she ran with the career pack due to her score of ten in training. they came up with a system — mare ran ahead, and told the other tribute that the career pack was hunting her (her addition to the alliance had been last minute, after she’d given the district one girl a black eye going for a backpack after most of the tributes who’d survived the bloodbath had gone), so the other tribute had no idea she was also a career. she then herded them into groups of the howler monkey mutts, where the other careers would find them and slaughter them. this worked for a long time, until the pack turned on each other. they’d been running out of food quicker than expected, and the district ones and twos had had enough. mare turned out to be a better fighter than they (or she) anticipated, and killed the girl from one and the boys from two and four (the other members having been killed by one of the pack members she killed), with her axe leaving her with only a non-fatal slash across her stomach and some broken ribs to show for surviving the pack fallout. however, there was still an alliance out there — districts seven, nine, and eleven had formed an alliance that was paying off in their final days. only one of them had fallen to the poisonous plants, and another to the mutts, leaving four of them still alive. mare stalked them back to their camp, and waited until the night was dark and the visibility was almost none due to the fog and smashed their heads in with a hammer she’d taken from the district two boy after his death, after which she was crowned the victor of the fifty-seventh hunger games. when she returned from her victory, after her stomach had been patched up and her ribs healed, she found the girls that had bullied her in school had said they’d been her close friends, just to get to be on television, which mare hated. the next year, when one of her most pervasive tormentors, kestrel drake, was reaped, mare did nothing to help her, and in fact did the opposite, refusing sponsors and telling the paparazzi within earshot that she was going to die in the bloodbath, despite the fact that the pretty young kestrel was a capitol favorite, and they’d just seen kestrel last year on tv saying that she was mare’s very best friend and crying as she begged mare to come home. this behavior towards a tribute, especially one who was mare’s friend, ostracized mare in the capitol, and caused her to retreat to her home in victor’s village, refusing to mentor or even meet the tributes. snow tried to bribe her out, but mare had sunk into a deep depression, and he knew that threatening her mother would have no effect on her, so he left her alone. district ten victors weren’t in high demand, and as long as she returned to the capitol when snow had clients who were especially interested in her, then the president had no problem with her reclusivity. she finally returned to mentoring after this past candlenights, when her fellow district ten victor, birch pembrooke visited her and told her he wished she would come with him. he needed someone to lean on and it would mean a lot to the district and the kids if she’d come out of retirement. mare didn’t want to do it, as she’d never worried about being a mentor before, since more likely than not, district ten’s tributes were dead by the end of day one, but she’d always felt bad about birch. she’d never assumed they’d need him, but birch survived the games, and she’d always felt guilty she’d never really been his mentor. so she agreed. it was the least she could do for him.

PLAYED BY // BEV

[tiaritoo]

The smell of water

If he could describe the smell of water, had anyone asked this man, whose knees had long begun to ache with every laborious step he took and whose eyes had grown sore and weak with age, his answer would have been more certain and clearer than his joints or his sight. He knew it, because as a pensive young boy, brows always knit tightly above his eyes, he had begun to make a comprehensive mental list of the smells he loved the most. A fascination like this, with smells, began one day in the golden rustling of autumn when as a small thin child, he watched his mother pour small black hard shelled pods into a pot of shimmering bubbling liquid. Soon, warmth and sugar and a smell that felt like the plump arms of his mother and her mellow comfortable voice filled the air, made his chest feel soft with sweetness. How louse like black beads could entrench his senses with something so delightful made way for a new intense curiosity for all other smells. So when he stood on the tips of his dusty worn shoes, small, splayed, uncertain hands gripping the edge of his homes splintered, old and only table, and positioned his nose above a glass patterned jug of water, the slight chill on the tip of his nose and the sight of the fluid crystal clear water, satisfied his need to understand what could possibly be the smell of water. The smell of water was just that. The delicious coolness that seemed to emanate from the jug and settle upwards onto his sun beaten cheeks. The gentle bobbing of the water casting brilliant shards of white light into his eyes. This had to constitute a smell, at least to a child of six. And so now, as he made his way through a rocky uneven path that would, at this stage of his body's deterioration, have usually proved a challenge, the absence of long accustomed to- pain and the cool relief with which it came, he likened to the smell of water. Not only had his body been returned to feeling the way which he'd taken for granted for years. The fog that had settled over his mind after years of his worrisome gaze fixed to his ceiling in the early hours of morning, of a heart thorned with the difficulty of being human, it had condensed and turned to rain. It washed away and cleansed his head of all the deep set grime of worry and fear that had begun to lodge in his minds corners as he toiled through life's seasons of love, misunderstanding, of grief and of responsibility. Paradise smelt of water absolutely.

[whichstiel]

Fandom: Supernatural Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester Characters: Castiel (Supernatural), Dean Winchester, Sam Winchester, Jack Kline Additional Tags: Dreams, Longing, Pining, Angst with a Happy Ending, spn 13x02, episode coda, Season/Series 13, Episode: s13e02 The Rising Son Series: Part 3 of Season 13 Codas

On my bed at night I sought him

whom my soul loves-

I sought him but I did not find him.

The spice shop was redolent with the scent of sweet clove, warm apple cider, and the tangy fog of dried leaves. It smelled heavenly - the kind of place that brought on fantasies of yellow curries and sweetly spiced apple pie cooling on countertops. It was also haunted. Dean gripped the shotgun a little tighter, shaking himself back to full awareness. According to the owner, the shop was sabotaged nightly. She arrived every morning to broken jars throughout the store and ectoplasm streaked across the picture window like tears, like someone pressed their face against it nightly and wept. Until a customer had been injured “and blabbed to the press” - she’d told them, lips pursed - she’d simply endured the attacks.

So far, with Dean, Sam, and Jack prowling the store, everything was quiet. Calm. Sam and Jack were checking in the back, trying to find any remnant or evidence of a false wall or floorboard that might be harboring remains. Dean ran his tongue over his teeth and winced at the fuzz. He’d insisted on heading straight into the hunt as soon as they’d made contact with the owner earlier in the day. Maybe afterwards he could find a truck stop with showers and a little privacy, and take a little time to feel human again. Dean and Jack could sleep in the car the rest of the night and they could press onward to investigate some possible ghoul activity the next state over. He picked up a glass jar labeled “Grains of Paradise” and rattled it. The contents jangled pleasingly and he smiled a little at it and shifted the shotgun to the crook of his arm so he could untwist the cap and take a quick sniff. Of course, that’s when it struck.

Glass shattered around him as Dean went down in between the shelves. He immediately rolled to his back and caught a glimpse of a specter darting away through the shelves. “Sam!” he yelled, scrambling to his feet. The shelves of the shop were low, barely five feet, and Dean raised his shotgun and fired one clean shot at the ghost making its way through the store. The ghost flung out its hands with a wail and disappeared in a flash of white.

Sam stumbled in from the back, Jack close on his heels. “Dean?” Sam said, looking around wildly. “Where?”

Dean shook his head grimly. “Headed for that wall,” he said, loading another bullet into the chamber. Together they stalked the shelves towards a kitschy collection of knick knacks nailed to the far wall. The entire back end of the shop was plastered in tacked on mid-century tinwork and dusty black frames. Dean scanned it rapidly before zeroing in on the culprit. “Yahtzee,” he said grimly, pointing at a photo mounted above a faded Coca-Cola sign. Hanging on the wall was a photo of a young man, mouth drawn into a sly half smile. A lock of hair was tied with a delicate piece of embroidery floss and plastered between the photo and the glass. Dean reached for the picture frame.

The ghost howled again with all the rage of a hurricane and Dean watched Sam and Jack get hurtled across the room, smashing rotund glass jars and decorative crystal work as they went. Dean grabbed for the photo, dropping his shotgun so he could use both hands to pry up the photo from the wall while the ghost was occupied with Sam and Jack. Sam hit the wall hard, and fell with a sharp thud onto the floor. He lay crumpled, still, and Dean grimaced. Jack had promised not to use his powers. Even so, he stood between Sam and the ghost. Although his eyes didn’t glow, his face was drawn in a grim expression akin to hate. He held Sam’s shotgun in his hands. Blam . The ghost disappeared.

Dean pressed his boot into the wall and tightened his grip on the frame, working it off the solid pegs spearing it to the wall. The frame burst free just as the ghost attacked again and the picture flew out of his hands and crashed to the floor below. The ghost tossed him towards the ceiling before he could protect himself and hot, white sparks jumped into his vision. Dean soon found himself tossed right on top of it by the ghost’s angry push and he shuffled his bloody hands around him until his fingers met the dusty thick paper. He slid it out and fumbled for the lock of hair, then fished a shell from his pocket. He broke open the shell and scattered salt before him so that it bounced out like hail across the tiled floor. Then he pulled out his lighter, squinted up at the inhuman face rushing towards him, and lit the remnants on fire. The ghost burned through one last scream and then the shop fell quiet.

Dean groaned and let his forehead fall to the floor where it crunched against glass. “Sam?” he called.

“He’s okay,” Jack said from across the store. “He’ll be fine.”

“‘Kay.” Dean closed his eyes for a moment - just a moment - and inhaled slowly to chase the sparks from his head. Even with his face pressed to tile, the shop’s sweet perfume permeated his senses. The floor smelled like spice and dust, heated by his breath. He wondered in his addled haze if this was what Castiel had described to him, long ago.

When Castiel had wings he used to travel for unusual ingredients in the blink of an eye or the space of an hour. He’d spoken of a market once, sweet with the scent of fresh fruit and the dust kicked up by people perusing the open air stalls. The town had smelled like mountain - minerals and pine - but once he was in the market the only thing he noticed was the thick cloud of harmonious spices. He’d spoken of this phenomenon with a crooked half smile, his eyes alight as though the concept of an edible symphony were entirely new to him.

Blood tinged spit pooled on Dean’s lower lip brought him back to the shop. He spat, then pushed himself up. Dean grabbed his shotgun and went to check on Sam. And Jack.

His and Sam’s head injuries meant that they were stuck with a hotel room. They limped their way to a nearby motel and after short, cursory showers, collapsed for the night.

Once the lights were out, pain pulled at Dean’s temple and he leaned against his bed with a groan. Jack and Sam had passed out fairly quickly. Jack, as it turned out, snored loudly and his chainsaw rattle filled the corner by the couch. Sam lay insensible under a pile of blankets, dead to Jack’s unwitting symphony. Dean reached for the bottle by the bed and took a long swig before dropping the condensation-wet glass to his pant leg. Another hunt down. Another day gone. Dean drank, and willed his mind to emptiness.

When he finally fell asleep, he dreamed. He was walking in a bazaar fringed by deep green pines and gray-blue mountains. The stalls were brightly painted with cloth-clad canopies flapping in the stiff alpine breeze. Dean looked around. It was a small village, as far as he could tell. Just a collection of sparse cabins and temporary stalls lining a wide dirt path that cut through it all. Still, the market was thick with people. They milled from stall to stall, their conversational haggling capped at a muffled buzz. Many of them wore furs or brightly cut clothing dusted white at the hems. Something white caught Dean’s eye.

A crisp white shirt and wide shoulders wove through the crowd and was eclipsed a moment later by a raucous man carrying a basket of melons on his head. “Cas?” Dean croaked. A white-clad arm appeared and then the tousle-haired man crossed the market to a stall on the other side, where he disappeared yet again. Dean pushed his way around a gaggle of men crowded around a dice game and shoved his way past two women with swords strapped high on their shoulders.

Just ahead of him Castiel’s hand slipped over sunny squashes lined up in a neat row. His fingers brushed along petals from a stand of cut flowers and then he disappeared again, this time behind a crowd of school children portaging wooden boxes over their heads.

Dean ran towards the stall where he’d last seen Castiel and an old man popped out from behind the flowers. He pushed a small glass cup under Dean’s nose, brown eyes steely. “Drink,” he ordered. Dean bit his lip and craned his head around. He’d lost Castiel again.

Irritably, Dean snatched the cup and drank it down quickly, like taking a shot. The liquid lingered on his lips, sweet but bitter, and his tongue darted out to taste it even after he’d shoved the cup back at the old man and pushed past him. Pomegranate juice, he thought. A drop of it clung jewel-bright on his lip and he caught sight of Castiel again. This time he stood across the bazaar, his nose buried in an uncapped basket, a look of bliss painting his face rosy.

“Cas!” Dean called out again. This time, a woman blocked his way. She thrust a crystal vial at him. An ornate golden air pump capped the top of it and he looked at the perfume bottle, puzzled. “What’s this for?”

“So you can keep his name,” she said.

He bit his lip again. Castiel was already moving on. Dean nodded curtly and snatched the bottle from her, sweeping around her side. She grabbed him swiftly, fingers cutting into the crook of his arm like talons.

“Don’t lose him this time,” she hissed.

See! He is standing behind our wall,

gazing through the windows,

peering through the lattices.

Castiel stood at the window as lightning illuminated his rain drenched face. He looked hangdog, worn down. It was the sweetest sight Dean had ever seen. Dean sprang up out of bed and ran to the motel window, pressing his hands against the glass. Slowly, his expression unchanging, Castiel faded away into the black night beyond.

In his sleep, Dean twitched then turned over.

The orchard filled the sky overhead. Sweeping bows of apple-heavy branches blotted out the egg-blue sky, casting the ground beneath the trees in soft gray shadow. Dean held a gun in his hand. The old god was behind one of these trees. Gun oil cut into the sweet apple-scented air and the stench of woodsmoke clung to Dean’s clothing. His lip curled.

Then the gun disappeared and his hand closed on air. Something wet touched his palm and he peered at it. A single golden drop of honey, bright as the sun, glimmered on the end of one fingertip. Dean stared at it dumbly for several seconds and then carefully he extended the finger all the way and closed the rest of his fingers into his palm. He paced carefully through the ankle-tangling grass, balancing the bead of honey as he went.

His dark head bowed, Castiel sat under an apple tree, legs folded beneath him. He looked up when Dean approached and grinned so widely that Dean nearly stumbled with rib-splitting relief. Bees circled Castiel like electrons around a nucleus. “Do you have it?” he asked, voice soft and rough and perfect.

Dean held out his finger and bent his knees, so that his hand drew level with Castiel. Castiel’s mouth dropped open and he leaned forward to meet Dean, then closed his lips around Dean’s first knuckle. His tongue cradled the underside of Dean’s finger as he sucked the honey from his hand. When he finished, Castiel’s tongue pushed against his skin and he pulled back with a sound almost like a kiss.

“It’s not enough,” he whispered. His face fell into sorrowful lines and Dean hung his head in despair.

Dean woke up with a pounding headache. He padded into the bunker kitchen, flicked on the lights, and barreled straight for the refrigerator. Beer populated a third of the fridge and he shot out his hand to grab one, changed his mind and shifted his hand to the handle of a six pack, before he dropped his hand again. A loose bag of apples sat on the bottom shelf. Dean hesitated, then reached for one of the red globes. He pulled it out and cradled it to him, curling his palm inwards as though protecting the apple with his wrist. He grabbed the six pack then, and retreated back to his room.

The watchmen found me,

as they made their rounds in the city;

They beat me, they wounded me,

they tore off my mantle,

the watchmen of the walls.

The angels accosted them at a gas station in one of the lonelier stretches of Nevada highway. Dean had already dispatched one. Off by the store, Sam fought off two others, whirling like a sand storm, his hand a blur of flesh and steel. An angel tackled Jack and angled her blade towards him with a pleased grin. Although Dean knew the blade would do nothing he stabbed his own blade through the angel who had tried to pin him against the Impala, then rolled towards Jack. He lunged for the angel blade, knocked away the attacking angel’s hand and used his momentum to drag the angel off to the side to fight him instead.

This close, the angel’s breath fell hot across his face and Dean ground his teeth and tightened his sweat-slick fingers around the hilt. He levered his arm to thrust the blade into the angel’s side when the woman reached out and caught at it. She grinned at him, blood dripping from a slash on her cheek onto Dean’s lips. He spat, then grinned back and knocked the blade a fraction of an inch, dislodging her sure grasp. The blade drove into her, and she dissolved into light.

Later, the bar near the hotel served them shots - Sam’s treat. Dean lifted the glass to his cut lip and let the liquid splash inside. He winced. Pomegranate. “It’s not enough,” he growled, and lifted his fingers to signal for more.

Set me as a seal upon your heart,

as a seal upon your arm;

For Love is strong as Death,

longing is fierce as Sheol.

Its arrows are arrows of fire,

flames of the divine.

Castiel was back. One minute he was dead and the next - he was back. Dean leaned his hip against the map table, arms crossed in a faux casual repose, and struggled to lift the numb fog from his brain. Sam and Castiel stood over the library table, a great sheet spread across it. Castiel was scribbling Enochian glyphs over it, Sam nodding over his work with a pleased expression on his face. Jack lingered in the background, his eyes still saucer wide and fixed upon Castiel.

It was almost like he’d never left.

Sam and Castiel worked together, a seamless team, hashing out a new defense strategy to protect Jack from the constant depredations of angels and demons. Dean’s mind swam with the effort of reconciling this image. This.

It was only the sight of Castiel, weaving away from him through the pillars and past the shelves that hot fire jolted through Dean. He was struck with the sudden conviction that if he lost sight of Castiel now he would wake up in sweat-soaked bedclothes, alone. “Cas,” he burst out and Castiel stopped and turned, instantly. His head cocked to one side, brow furrowed.

“Dean?”

“Can we talk? For just a second.” Dean’s heart pounded heavily as though he stood atop a twelve thousand foot mountain peak and he could feel his lungs struggle for air. Tantalizingly, he thought for just a moment that he could smell a whiff of pine on the air. He cleared his throat and gestured towards the kitchen.

“Of course.” Castiel dipped his head to Sam and Jack and followed Dean down the hallway to the small kitchen.

Dean swung open the refrigerator door and pulled out two beers, tilting the butt of one bottle towards Castiel. “Beer?”

Castiel took it silently and flipped the cap off with his thumb as though flicking off a speck of dust. He settled on the bench and set the bottle on the table before leaning forward. “Dean,” he asked in a grave, puzzled tone. “What’s going on?”

Dean slipped off his own bottlecap and took a long swig. “Needed a break,” he said with a gasp between gulps. He set the bottle down, lining it up across from Castiel’s. He drummed his knuckles on the tabletop. “Seriously, man. How are you holdin’ up? Resurrection’s a tricky business and--”

Castiel held up his hand, a gentle smile fixed on his cheek and his eyes stern and calm. “I fought my own way out of The Empty, Dean,” he said. “I assure you, nothing followed me. I made no deals. We’re safe.” He folded his hands on the table and glanced down at Dean’s tension-white knuckles. “I’m safe.”

Dean blew out a breath. “Yeah. Yeah. Of course.”

Castiel leaned forward. “Dean. Are you alright? You look…” He lifted a hand and gestured towards Dean’s face and the night black circles that had taken up permanent residence under Dean’s eyes.

Dean took another long drink of his beer before he said, to the wall, “I dreamed about you while you were...gone.”

Castiel’s voice was soft when he said, “I’m sorry.”

“I’m not.” Dean tried to grin, and turn the reply into something light, but his mouth refused and his voice broke. “I missed you,” he whispered to the stack of napkins against the wall.

Fingers brushed his jaw and nudged his chin to the side until his eyes met Castiel’s. “I missed you, too,” Castiel said. “More than you might ever know.”

Dean sat frozen for a moment, Castiel’s warm fingertips pressed spots of sunshine into his jaw. Then he lifted his hand and wrapped his own fingers around Castiel’s palm. He dipped his head so that his nose grazed along Castiel’s knuckles. His skin smelled like rich black loam overlaid with something floral, like sweet honeysuckle. The kitchen was utterly silent, Sam and Jack’s voices only dull echoes through the bunker’s thick walls.

Castiel’s fingers wrapped around Dean’s hand, fingertips pressing against Dean’s skin and brushing the top of his lip in tiny, almost imperceptible brushstrokes. It was only a fraction of an inch to move and, bolstered by the quiet bubble of unreality he’d been engulfed in most of the day, Dean raised his chin just a little more. His lips caught at Castiel’s first knuckle and he pressed them there, flicking his eyes up to catch Castiel’s expression.

Castiel watched him with widened eyes, a rose flush skimming his cheeks. “Dean,” he mouthed, barely loud enough to qualify as a whisper. Castiel watched him, but he didn’t pull away. If anything, he seemed to press the lines of his finger further into the cushion of Dean’s lips and Dean returned the pressure.

They stared across the table at one another.

When Dean finally pulled his head back, Castiel’s hand remained in his. Dean quirked a smile at him and lifted one shoulder in a fraction of a shrug. “I missed you,” he said again.

When Castiel grinned, it was like the sun coming out. “I’m beginning to understand that,” he said and leaned all the way across the table, so their lips could meet at last.

Tell me what you think on AO3!

[xottzot]

2018-03(FEB)-Thursday-8th--today at this hellhole area--and NEWS BITS.

2018-03(FEB)-Thursday-8th--today at this hellhole area--and NEWS BITS.

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false calm

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Around 10:30-11am, the crewcut haired aboriginal woman from the unfenced brick house who collects rubbish, foetid rubbish, truly foul utter garbage, who fills up whatever bins she ever sees with it, and brings all that foetid crap also in on a ute all the time from elsewhere so she can sort it out with her bare hands, fill and bins she chooses with truly foetid crap including foul 'food' utter garbage (in the truest sense of the word),...well this morning she was once more out in her unfenced front yard doing it all....then she walk ed off, crossed the road, and walked straight into fatguts abo criminal housheold and began collecting stuff from that residences front yard (and deliberately hidden carport) and property...and inner household?

She, NOT one of the abo's who 'live' there at fatguts place, but she has effectively 'cleaned up' all the rubbish and garbage that was mountained up in THEIR front yard, so much so that it was piled up against the dividing fence of that property and the next, and FAR MORE than can be described or I can hope to get you to accept. You simply cannot accept ANYTHING I write about no matter how true it always is.

So...was that huge loose pile of foetid garbage at fatguts criminal household the reason for a Swan Shire vehicle to be there yesterday? - Just so the facts of its existance can all be covered up and vanish from sight and make me a liar? - And then this morning the abo scavenger woman is collecting still more of it all, loading up by hand into her open ute vehicle along with other stuff?

Now...the dividing fence can actually be seen, only because SO MUCH garbage and rubbish has been removed from there.

And the NEXT door (totally unoccupied?) property's big wheely bin has been standing on the street verge next to the Kalara Way road itself uncollected and unemptied and overflowing with garbage. Nobody it seems is living there. Once again (as has happened countless times over YEARS) their rubbish bin(s) has been commandeered by abo's and filled with utterly foul garbage literally spilling out from it's overfull capacity and the lid unable to be put down & closed down thus making it once again yet another open spot where feral cats fossick about in, and wild birds distribute the foul muck everywhere including the big black crows/ravens that carry off all manner of garbage and drop it all over the place including foetid food garbage which they drop on the ground and spread it all over the streets and ino peoples yards. And over the past they have even done the same with illegal drug syringes and shit, spreading THAT all about and where unsuspecting people, including children, can infect themselves upon accidentally. - Welcome to this fucking hellhole area.

Just because THAT houses rubbish bin is so utterly overflowing full of foul, foetid crap, DOES NOT MEAN IT CAME FROM THE UNOCCUPIED HOUSE. THE CRIMINALS UNDER COVER OF DARKNESS FOR YEARS HAVE BEEN STEALING PEOPLES BINS. FILLING THEM WITH GARBAGE THEN PUSHING THEM BACK INTO PLACE for the unsuspecting Swan Shire council to cart away all evidence and foul garbage.....and then it's repaated endlesly...the bins were all emptied on Tueday just 2 days ago and yet everyones bins are gone EXCEPT for that one which is once AGAIN overflowing with garbage...AGAIN...... -- YOU work it out for yourself dear readers. Perhaps you might actually realise who the damn criminals are of the criminal ghetto and who have ALWAYS been criminals and who STILL are so very criminal.......

There was a foul foetid half-eaten crumpet I had to get rid of out of one of my own yard areas yesterday. - An object I of course myself have NOT eaten course here, especially in summer. And the only reason the diseased feral cats that roam through the streets and in & out of peoples properties at will hadn't 'eaten' it, was because it had become a (literally) sold rock-hard crust that will only become 'soft' through condensation of being carried off to be dumped by roaming crows/ravens under anyone's water sprinkler (or ANY water source at all) and thus ensuring more disease is always spread about. - So where do YOU think that pice of filth came from.......yes.....the usual place(s)......

At one point, there was a loud shout or call out as she was walking over at fatguts criminal place and she turned around and gave a friendly wave to? (the criminals of the abos main criminal household in Kalara Way street?), then she was quickly back to her 'work'.......carting off all manner of crap and carrying off a white plastic foldup table.......

That is the way of this hellhole. Where all the criminals are connected, everything is just one huge ghetto of filth, crime, roaming criminals, a destination for criminals and who attract more & is a visiting place for still more criminals, and who create still more all about and make innocent peoples lives misery and utter hell. - This is their 'traditonal' way of living at this hellhole area that has become so much very worse and ever-expanding and which authorities and Police can never work out what the hell is going on.....

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false calm

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The damn big jet planes that use Perth Airport have once again been flying VERY LOUDLY over this hellhole, thus making sure you can never have peace & quiet and rest. -- Just because I haven't written about them in my blog doesn't mean that shit still hasn't been going on and making life hell day & night.

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false calm

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The weather here is now becoming very HOT again after a false cool period.

And at night, as ALWAYS the air itself has CONSTANT falling haze of microdust. It's like a 'fog' in the air. - THAT is the case during daylight too but the damn sky is so bright you can't see it occuring. The only way it's evident in the daylight is by the amount of microdust built up upon everything and that even invades the air inside this hovel and everything.

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Again...it's all facts that nobody can understand. - Thay see the end results and they BLAME ME for even uttering the existance of, whereas before they refused to believe ANY of it all......

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oh look below.....just like this hellhole area.....

NEWS (court case):----------- Tot ‘had maggots in ear’ before he was taken from parents

https://www.perthnow.com.au/news/wa/tot-had-maggots-in-ear-before-he-was-taken-from-parents-ng-b88738184z

Tim Edmunds -- PerthNow -- February 8, 2018 5:30AM

AN eight-month old boy had to be taken from his drug-addicted parents after maggots were discovered in his ear and he had multiple limb fractures, bruises and bite marks.

The boy’s injuries are the subject of an Albany District Court trial in which his parents face charges of knowingly and recklessly engaging in conduct that may have resulted in harm to the child in 2015.

Opening the State case yesterday, prosecutor David Davidson said that authorities became involved with the family in October 2015, eight months after the boy was born prematurely in Denmark.

Bite marks were discovered by the child’s daycare centre.

The court was told that when the child was examined by a doctor, fractures of a rib, right forearm and lower leg were identified and the child had bite marks and bruises, was undernourished and had maggots in his ear.

Mr Davidson said friends and family had noticed the child could not sit up unsupported.

Scans detected head trauma.

He said expert medical evidence would indicate the infant’s head trauma was “highly suspicious”.

Mr Davidson said the parents’ drug addiction showed a lack of care for their child but they were not charged with causing injuries to the child.

When interviewed by police, the 18-year-old mother denied being violent and was “shocked” to learn of the injuries.

The father could not offer an explanation for the injuries.

The trial continues.

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.....but it's traditional eh?

WA NEWS:------- Wildlife attacks increasing in WA's south with turtles strung up and pelican stabbed

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-02-08/malicious-attacks-animals-concern-authorities-wa-south-west/9404678

A pelican has been stabbed, dead turtles have been hung up and hooked, and a seagull is walking around with a wooden skewer in its neck in a series of concerning wildlife injuries across Western Australia's south.

While two of the incidents appear to be the result of human littering, the other more serious injuries have been described by wildlife carers as deliberate and malicious.

On the south coast a pelican in Denmark was stabbed with a 30cm-long filleting knife last month, while two turtles near Collie have this week been pictured bloodied and hanging from a road sign next to the Collie River.

Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions (DBCA) regional wildlife officer Pia Courtis said the Collie River incident was still being investigated.

South West wildlife carer Jessica Berry received a report about the incident and said while she had seen people deliberately kill and display snakes like trophies, she had never seen turtles intentionally killed.

"I have seen pythons have their heads chopped off and displayed in a 'good snake's a dead snake' type scenario," she said.

"But I've never seen people outright hurt turtles.

"Turtles of that size are really old, so to live that long and make it that distance in life only to have that happen to them — it was just rude, it was so bad."

(more of this article at the NEWS website including NEWS photos)

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NEWS:------- Osborne Park kidnapping: Man forced to drive for hours at knifepoint

http://www.watoday.com.au/wa-news/osborn-park-kidnapping-man-forced-to-drive-for-hours-at-knifepoint-20180207-h0vr35.html

A man was forced to drive two men in his car around Perth for hours at knifepoint after he was kidnapped in Osborne Park on Wednesday evening.

Sergeant Patrick Lynch said a 28-year-old man returned to his blue Ford Falcon, parked on Howe Street, about 6:15pm on Wednesday.

As he sat down in the driver's seat, two men got into the car, one of them pointing a large knife at him and ordering him to drive.

He drove the men around for about two hours before they forced him to stop on Marmion Avenue just south of Pipidinny Road in Eglington.

The two kidnappers threw him out of his car and drove off before the 28-year-old-man called police.

Police are asking anyone with information on the matter to contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000 or make a report online at www.crimestopperswa.com.au.

AND......

NEWS:------ Carjacker demands to be driven from Osborne Park to Eglinton in Perth’s far north

https://www.perthnow.com.au/news/crime/carjacker-demands-to-be-driven-from-osborne-park-to-eglinton-in-perths-far-north-ng-b88738241z

February 8, 2018 8:16AM

WA POLICE are hunting two men after a driver was carjacked at knifepoint in Osborne Park on Wednesday.

Officers say the men jumped into a motorist’s blue Ford Falcon XR6 on Howe Street at 6.15pm.

He was forced to drive for two hours before being told to stop in Eglinton, 44km north of the CBD.

The two carjackers then forced the driver from his car in Marmion Avenue and drove off.

The victim had to walk 90 minutes to his brother’s place to call police because his mobile phone was also stolen.

One of the carjackers is described as fair skinned and the other as dark skinned.

Anyone with information on the incident can call Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000 or make a report online at www.crimestopperswa.com.au.

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NEWS------- Diphtheria death shows Queensland is failing to properly vaccinate, AMA warns

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-02-08/diptheria-death-shows-vaccination-failure-ama-says/9407920

The death of a far north Queensland man from diphtheria is a sign the state is failing to properly vaccinate the community, the Australian Medical Association (AMA) says.

The man, who was in his 20s and not vaccinated against the disease, was flown from Cairns Hospital to Brisbane's Prince Charles Hospital in a critical condition on January 24, and on Wednesday authorities confirmed he had since died.

It is the state's first recorded death from the bacterial disease since 2011.

(more at the NEWS website)

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false calm

and coverups......

that nobody believes.....

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I love you dear Fliss and so very wish to be with you just as you promised us both to be forever away from this hellhole here. -- Dear Fliss, you & Cath both live in paradises compared to this hellhole which it has become. Dear Max is having trouble breathing. Sam has been having terrible nightmares and barking in his sleep.