#patchwork tiger

[sarahkomik]

i just remembered i'm in the patchwork pals fandom... UHHHH

have these, 4 characters I like, but not patchwork

also reblogs are better than likes! but it's okay if you give em' a like!

[ink-ling]

[rapscallion-rumble]

Oz Character Spread

I tried to add in as many characters as I could from the The Wizard of Oz books.

[aniseandspearmint]

just having some fun with interesting fantasy imagery! Give it a reblog, if you play, please? And tell me WHY you picked what you picked if you want?

[s1e1lar]

“The Hollow Watchers” | various Creepypasta x youtuber!reader

a/n: this took me longer than I’d like to admit. But now is better than never

Wc: 4,494

CW: female reader, uncomfortable social situations, blood, feeling of being watched, throwing up, mention and description of dead bodies, everything to do with a hospital, talk of being stalked, alllusion to regrets while drunk, and overall creepiness

⛧°.⋆༺🦇༻⋆.°⛧

You wake with a start—not from a sound, but a feeling. That unmistakable sensation of eyes on you.

Your body is still, but every nerve is screaming. You keep your eyes shut, your breathing soft and measured. Pretend you're asleep. It's the only plan you have right now. Your mind is foggy, nauseous from the constant back-and-forth between terror and adrenaline. You’d already been up several times throughout the night, crouched over the toilet, trying not to sob as your body rebelled against the reality it was being forced into.

But now… now you don’t have the luxury of breaking down.

You hear it—subtle movement. A shift in the air. Someone’s in your bathroom.

Cabinet doors creak open. Something glass rattles, and there’s the unmistakable sound of rummaging. Not rushed. Not panicked. Just… casual. Like this is their space. Not yours.

Your stomach turns, but you shove it down, teeth clenched against the urge to throw up again.

Move. Now.

You slide out of the bed as quietly as you can, blanket falling away in silence. Bare feet hit the floor, and in a fluid, desperate motion, you rush for the door, slipping into the hallway like a ghost.

The moment the cool hallway air hits your skin, you feel your lungs expand fully for the first time all night. You inhale sharply, pressing yourself to the wall just outside your room. Heart pounding, hands clenched into trembling fists.

Who the hell is in there?

You wait, every second dragging out endlessly. The soft rustle of movement continues inside your room. The creak of the bathroom door. Then—

Footsteps.

You spring forward the second he steps through the threshold.

Your hands slam into his chest. He stumbles but doesn’t fall, and you’re already pulling your arm back for a swing when you recognize him.

Jeff.

Of course it’s Jeff.

The jagged smile is already in place—cut into his face, a horrifying, permanent grin. His hoodie is still stained, a patchwork of old and fresh blood. The way his head tilts when he looks at you, the glint in his eye—it’s all wrong.

"Well, good morning, sweetheart," he drawls, entirely too pleased with himself. “Didn’t know you were the jumpy type. Got a thing for surprise attacks?”

You don’t respond right away—just breathing hard, fists still raised.

His hands go up in mock surrender. “Easy there, tiger. I was just looking for some peroxide. That bathroom’s got better supplies than the main one. Thought you were dead to the world.”

“You were in my room,” you spit, venom lacing every word. “You don’t get to just—walk in and—go through my things—”

He interrupts with a snort, his grin widening unnaturally. “Your room?”

Your stomach twists.

“You don’t own shit,” he continues, voice low now. “That bed, that bathroom… you’re borrowing all of it. You think you matter more than the rest of us just because you got handed a shiny scythe?”

You don’t dignify him with a response. Instead, you breathe in deeply—once, then twice—just enough to pull yourself back from the edge. From the overwhelming urge to lunge.

You lower your fists. Just slightly.

Jeff watches you with a kind of fascination, like you're a particularly interesting bug he hasn't decided whether to kill or keep. “You’ve got fight in you. I like that.”

You don’t.

Not from him.

“Get the hell out of my way,” you growl.

For a second, you think he’ll resist, but then he shrugs and steps aside, still smiling. “Sure. I’ll let you cool off. We’ll have more fun later.”

You shoot him a look that could freeze fire before pushing past him and disappearing down the hallway, your pulse hammering in your ears.

He chuckles behind you.

You don’t stop until you’ve put at least three turns of hallway between you and your room.

And even then… you don’t let your guard down.

You don’t even realize you’ve made a full loop of the hallway until your door appears in front of you again—shut, undisturbed, like nothing happened.

Your stomach clenches as you rest your hand on the knob. You half-expect Jeff to be waiting behind it again, but when you crack it open and peek inside, it’s empty. Still. Silent.

You slip inside, closing the door behind you with a soft click.

Your eyes scan the room, and that’s when you notice it—your stuff. Little things. The overnight bag you kept under your bed at your apartment. Your hoodie—the one with the bleach stain on the cuff—folded neatly on the chair in the corner. A familiar bottle of your shampoo sitting on the bathroom counter. Your toothbrush. Even your damn phone charger.

The air in your lungs leaves in a slow, tight breath.

Someone was in your apartment.

Someone went through your belongings. Touched your things. Chose what you needed to survive for a night or two and brought it here. And they did it all… without your roommate noticing.

You sit down on the edge of the bed, gripping the blanket between your fingers as the weight of it settles in. You feel exposed. Like there’s nowhere they won’t reach, no part of your life they haven’t already wormed their way into. You think about your roommate again, the text you sent her last night. That stupid, vague excuse about being gone for the night. The guilt sinks in heavier now.

You sit there for a long minute, breathing in slow, shallow pulls, trying to force the nausea down. There’s no way in hell you’re going to the kitchen. Not with Jeff lurking around like some smug parasite and the others still unsettled from last night’s meeting.

So you get up, pull on your hoodie, and grab the new phone from the nightstand. Then you open the door and slip back into the hallway.

You need stability. Logic. Answers.

And if anyone in this place has it, it’s probably EJ.

You make your way through the mansion, sticking close to the wall. No one’s out—not yet, at least. Most of them are probably still asleep or pretending to be. The halls are quieter than you expect, almost eerily so, but you don’t question it. It makes it easier to move.

You remember the infirmary from the quick house rundown—two floors down, west wing. Tucked behind an old set of steel double doors that look more like something out of a fallout shelter than a mansion.

You don’t knock when you get there. You just push the door open and step inside.

It’s cold, sterile in a way nothing else here is. The lighting is harsh fluorescent, buzzing faintly overhead. The room smells of antiseptic and iron.

And there he is.

EJ stands hunched over a metal table, gloves on, sleeves rolled up, working intently at something you can’t quite see—his frame calm, methodical, like everything he does is exactly as he intended.

You hesitate in the doorway.

Without even looking up, he speaks—his voice even, low. “I figured you’d come here.”

You swallow thickly. “I didn’t feel like… facing anyone.”

He finally glances up. That dark void of a gaze meets yours behind the smooth bone of his mask. “I don’t blame you.”

You take a tentative step forward. “Did you… take my stuff from my apartment?”

“No,” he replies instantly. “I didn’t enter your space. Cody did.”

That somehow doesn’t make it feel any less violating.

EJ’s tone softens slightly. “It was already decided before you woke up. You needed your essentials. Cody was careful. He didn’t linger.”

You nod, though it does little to soothe the sick twist in your gut. “Still feels wrong.”

“It is,” he agrees. “But it was necessary.”

You finally let yourself breathe, just a little. It’s not an apology, but at least it’s not gaslighting either.

EJ steps back from the table and gestures toward one of the clean chairs against the wall. “Sit. You’re pale.”

You sit.

Not because he told you to, but because he’s right. The adrenaline is gone. The fire from earlier has burned out, leaving behind only ash and nerves.

He begins gathering a few supplies in silence.

You frown. “I’m not hurt.”

“You threw up a lot last night,” he says simply. “I’m making sure you didn’t get dehydrated.”

You blink.

He noticed. Of course he did.

And for some reason… that makes your chest ache in a different way.

You let him work in silence, the sterile calm of the infirmary wrapping around you like a thin, cold blanket.

And for the first time since arriving here, you don’t feel like you’re drowning. Not entirely.

You accept the cup without a word—fingers curling around it, the plastic crinkling faintly beneath your grip. The water’s slightly cloudy, which confirms what you already guessed: EJ dosed it with something. Electrolytes, maybe glucose. Nothing dangerous, not from him. If he wanted to hurt you, he’d have already done it.

You sip it slowly.

The coolness helps settle your stomach, though it doesn’t do much for the unease crawling up your spine when your eyes flick toward the metal table.

You hadn’t looked before—not directly—but now, the moment you glance over, you see it.

A body.

Most of it’s obscured under a sheet, but the arm is exposed. Pale. Stiff. Blood dried beneath a deep incision where EJ had been focused just moments ago. The surgical tools nearby are neatly arranged, shining coldly under the fluorescents. There’s no blood spray, no chaos—just methodical, practiced precision.

Your stomach tightens. You swallow the rising nerves, forcing yourself to keep your face neutral.

EJ doesn’t look up from rinsing his hands in the small steel sink in the corner. But somehow, he still knows.

“She wasn’t one of ours,” he says evenly. “One of theirs.”

You don’t ask who they are. You’re not sure you want to know. Not yet.

You nod once, slowly, like it’s something you understand. Like it’s something you’ve already decided not to question out loud. Because this—whatever this is—is now your world. And you’re learning the rules by immersion.

He dries his hands with surgical precision, then turns back toward you.

“I’ll be driving you back to your apartment tonight.”

The shift in your posture is immediate—like a string pulling taut in your chest. You sit up straighter, the cup still half full in your hands. “Really?”

“You’ll return with whatever cover story you told your roommate. Tomorrow night, you’ll come back here.”

You nod slowly. “Okay… and between now and then?”

“We’ll be going over the details of your assignment,” he answers. “Your first mission is in three weeks. On Halloween.”

The words settle like a stone in your chest.

You already knew it. They said it last night. But hearing it again—alone, here, in this sterile, quiet place—makes it feel real in a way it didn’t before.

“Today,” he continues, stepping closer, “you’ll learn exactly what you’re expected to do.”

You meet his gaze—or where his eyes should be behind the dark mask—and nod again. There’s no use pretending you’re not scared. You are.

But you’re listening now. You’re in this.

And the more you understand, the less power they have over you.

You down the rest of the water and set the cup aside.

“Okay,” you say softly. “Let’s do this.”

EJ steps past you to a locked cabinet near the wall. You watch as he inputs a code—quick, practiced movements of gloved fingers—and the lock clicks open. Inside are rows of files, thick manila folders lined up like teeth.

He pulls one out without hesitation and brings it to the table beside you, laying it open with that same clinical efficiency. A photo paperclipped to the first page stares up at you: a man, maybe in his late forties. Clean-cut. Professional-looking. Friendly smile. The kind of face that wouldn’t turn heads at the grocery store.

But you already know better than to trust that.

“His name is Calvin Reddick,” EJ begins, his voice even, factual. “Lives on the outskirts of town. Big house. Secluded, but not so much that he draws attention. He’s in his late forties, works from home. Claims he’s a security consultant.”

You lean over the file, eyes scanning the information. Something about the name… tugs at you. Familiar, but not entirely.

“He's not innocent,” EJ continues, answering the question before you can ask it. “None of them are. The boss doesn’t send people after civilians. Not unless they're a threat.”

“A threat to who?” you ask quietly, eyes flicking back to him.

“To us. To the system we operate in. Calvin’s both.”

He taps the next page. Newspaper clippings, blurred photographs, a scanned police report. Then another page—a photo from a crime scene, the edges redacted, but still brutal. You can see just enough.

“He’s killed before,” EJ says. “Multiple times. Patterns that don’t match your average spree. Surgical removals. Ritualistic behavior. He’s a collector—sick, even by our standards. Slipped through the cracks for years.”

You glance at the evidence again.

“Recently,” EJ adds, “he’s started digging. Got wind of this place—sightings, rumors, activity around the outskirts. Cameras went up. Some of ours barely made it out undetected. He’s smart. But paranoid.”

“And now he’s on your radar.”

“He was already being watched. Your mission just… bumped him to the top of the list.”

You let that settle. It makes sense, in a disturbing kind of way. You’re not being sent after some clueless civilian—this is a test, yes, but it’s also a cleanup.

“Is this… a message?” you ask finally.

EJ shrugs one shoulder. “You could say that. It tells others no one’s safe. And it tells us something else too.”

“What?”

“If you’re ready.”

You stare at the file for another beat, then nod, more to yourself than to him. It doesn’t make you feel better, but it does make it feel real. Like you’re not just some plaything or pawn being thrown to the wolves. You have a reason now, a purpose.

“I’ll get you there and back,” EJ says, snapping the folder shut. “We’ll start prep tomorrow. Right now, just focus on surviving today.”

You almost smile.

But instead, you glance back at the covered body on the slab, that single exposed patch of skin a dull, waxy gray—like candlewax left in the cold. The skin has an unnatural stillness to it, and the veins beneath shimmer faintly, almost violet in the harsh lighting.

You open your mouth to ask, but EJ is already ahead of you.

“They’ve been showing up for the past month,” he says, not looking up from where he’s jotting something on a clipboard. “Always in the woods just outside the estate—far enough from the freeway to stay hidden from cars. We wouldn’t even have known about the first one if Toby hadn’t caught the smell.”

You frown, eyes narrowing. “Who are they?”

EJ finally meets your gaze, his expression unreadable behind the mask. “That’s the problem. They’re no one.”

You tilt your head slightly. “No one?”

He sets the clipboard down and peels the sheet off the corpse’s chest, revealing a patch of bruised, purpling skin over a ribcage that looks too hollow.

“No criminal records. No connections to us. Some local, some from completely different towns. A couple didn’t even live in this state. Random people. Different backgrounds. Different lives. And yet…”

“All showing up here,” you finish, stomach tightening.

He nods.

“Completely exsanguinated. No wounds. No signs of restraint. Whatever’s doing this… it’s clean. Too clean.”

Your mouth goes dry as your thoughts scramble toward explanations—none of them good. “So you’re saying something is killing civilians… and dropping them on your doorstep?”

“More like just outside the gates,” he corrects. “Every time. Close enough to be a message. But we don’t know from who.”

You glance toward the cameras perched in the corners, then at the cold body.

“And nothing’s been caught on footage?”

“Not a thing,” EJ says. “Cameras glitch for exactly twenty seconds. Each time. Then it’s back, and there’s a body.”

A cold chill runs up your spine.

“And the boss?” you ask. “What does he think it is?”

EJ’s voice is low. “He thinks it’s something new. Or something old—that’s woken up.”

You sit with that for a moment, trying not to let your hands tremble as you shift the cup of water between your palms.

“Just one more thing to worry about,” you murmur.

He hums softly. “Welcome to the job.”

You look at him, and there’s a strange gravity to his words. Like he’s not trying to scare you—but trying to make sure you really understand. Whatever this is, it’s not a ghost story or side quest. It’s something real, and it’s just outside the walls. Watching.

Waiting.

You try to stay focused on the file in your hands—the one with your target’s photo paperclipped to the front, a mugshot-like print from a DMV database. But as soon as the infirmary door creaks open, your attention wavers. You can’t help it.

Cody walks in first, casual as ever, his blue hoodie dampened with dark patches that look far too red under the fluorescent lights. His satchel is heavier than usual, and his dark curls are ruffled like he just came from something rough. Probably did. He holds up a keycard lazily in one hand.

“Freezer’s restocked,” he says to EJ like he's commenting on the weather. Then, glancing over at you, he adds with a smirk, “Caught you staring again, sweetheart.”

You don’t rise to the bait. You just level your stare at him, cold and flat. “Maybe I was trying to guess if that’s someone’s blood or yours.”

He grins wider, teeth white and sharp in a way that feels practiced. “That’s the fun part—sometimes it’s both.”

But before you can toss something biting back, the door swings wider and the room seems to tilt.

She steps in without a sound.

The woman moves like a shadow that forgot how to be human. Her nurse’s uniform looks too perfect, like something pulled from a wax museum—pristine and dated, with a stiff white cap and a dress hem that flutters even when she doesn't move. Rust-colored stains darken the edges, permanent in a way that bleach could never touch. She’s tall, rigid, her steps eerily graceful and mechanical, like someone trying to remember the choreography of being alive.

You read her tag as she glides past without a word: Ann.

Her skin is waxy and pale, and beneath it you can see veins like spiderwebs made of ink—black, branching in unnatural patterns. Her face is too still, eyes a washed-out blue-gray that don't blink once, just stare. Past you. Through you.

When she tilts her head, it's with a snap too fast, too birdlike. Her hair, bright red and coiled into a perfect bun, doesn’t move at all. And as she steps behind the desk, you catch the stitching.

Fine, surgical, running up the sides of her neck, along her wrists, elbows, even her collarbone like she was sewn together after being pulled apart.

She doesn’t say anything. She just starts typing on a small terminal, robotic and efficient, like she was programmed to ignore everything else.

You realize you’re holding your breath.

Cody breaks the tension. “You should ask her to do your bloodwork sometime,” he says with a teasing tone. “She’s got a hand steadier than a corpse.”

EJ glances up, unamused. “Don’t flirt near the cadavers.”

Cody shrugs, then turns his attention back to you with that same infuriating twinkle in his eye. “Speaking of bodies, did you know we’ve got a file on you too?”

You freeze.

EJ reacts before you can. A sharp smack to Cody’s shoulder, more warning than pain, but enough to signal shut it.

Cody laughs, rubbing the spot. “What? It’s not a secret.”

But you’re no longer looking at either of them. You’re staring at the manila folder in your own hands, the target’s face now blurred in your periphery.

They have a file on you.

Your fingers curl slowly around the edge of the file. Cold sweat prickles at the back of your neck. The weight of being watched, known—before you even stepped into this house—settles into your bones.

Cody leans against a counter, trying to downplay it. “Don’t look so shocked, newbie. You wouldn’t be here if someone wasn’t already curious.”

EJ doesn’t say anything. He’s looking at you now, carefully.

Measured.

And that silence says everything.

You stare Cody down, jaw clenched, then shift your gaze to EJ, voice low but steady.

“I want to see it.”

EJ doesn’t argue. Doesn’t sigh. He simply nods once, pivots on his heel, and walks to the tall metal filing cabinet. You hear the quiet screech of the drawer pulling out, the soft shuffle of folders being pushed aside. Then he returns and holds the file out.

You take it.

It’s heavier than you expect.

Thick.

You feel a tightness coil around your throat before you even flip it open. There’s something deeply wrong about holding your own life documented like this. Not just the government-paper kind of file, either—this one feels personal. Intimate. Violated.

You open it.

Your eyes scan the first page, and then your stomach drops.

Date: August 28, 20xx. Age 17.

You freeze.

And then your gaze falls lower, right to the stapled photo printed on glossy paper.

You recognize the porch immediately. The dim morning light, the sagging wood. But more than that—you remember that moment.

Your own face, caught mid-sob, makeup smeared, hoodie sleeves yanked over your hands. You’re sitting on the porch steps of your childhood home, curled in on yourself like you were trying to disappear.

You remember the party the night before. You remember waking up in a stranger’s bed, heart pounding, head aching. You hadn’t even remembered getting there. You grabbed your clothes and fled, disgusted with yourself, clutching your phone like it might give you some excuse to undo it all.

When you got home, your mom had scolded you. The typical argument—words thrown like knives, the kind that don’t need to be loud to wound. You remember raising your voice, and how the vase on the windowsill had shattered. Your mom went to clean it up.

And you went outside.

To cry.

To get away. To breathe.

And someone watched.

Photographed you.

That image—you, broken open on the steps, without knowing it—had been taken and filed away like a specimen.

They’ve been following you since then.

You feel bile rise in your throat.

All those years. All those moments you thought were yours alone—dark nights, shaky hands, screaming into your pillow after too many wrong turns.

Not alone.

Someone saw.

Someone wrote it down.

Someone decided you were interesting enough to keep tabs on.

You close the file slowly, fingers trembling just slightly.

Cody, who had been watching from a distance now looks almost sheepish—like he realizes the joke didn’t land the way he’d hoped. Or maybe he did know, and just didn’t care.

EJ doesn’t speak. His hands are tucked neatly behind his back, gaze fixed on the wall like he’s giving you the space to fall apart.

But you don’t.

You just sit there with the file still in your lap, your face blank but your insides roaring.

Because whatever line you thought they hadn’t crossed—they had.

And years ago.

You don’t look up when you ask it.

Your voice is low—tight in your throat like a wire pulled too taut.

“Why?”

The file still rests in your lap. Heavy. Dirty. Full of pieces of your life you thought belonged to you alone.

“Why was I worth watching? Why follow me since I was seventeen?”

There’s a long silence. The kind that stretches until it starts to feel personal.

EJ doesn't answer right away. You watch his jaw flex slightly behind the mask, the lines of his shoulders stiffen. He glances once at Cody, who’s unusually quiet now, fidgeting with something in his satchel, gaze averted.

Then EJ turns fully to you and sighs.

You’re not sure if it’s tired or reluctant.

“I wasn’t sure if this was the time to tell you,” he says, voice level and calm as always, but a little quieter now. “But I suppose it is.”

You lift your head. You can feel the burn behind your eyes again, but you blink it back. You’re done crying. Now you want answers.

EJ folds his arms behind his back again, shifting into that unnerving, surgical stillness he wears like second skin.

“There are things in this world that don’t follow the rules of nature,” he begins. “Monsters. Creatures. Abnormalities. Magic—whatever word you want to use.”

Your brow furrows. “Like… you?”

He nods once. “Like me. Like a lot of the people in this house. You’ve already met several. And there are hundreds more—some hiding, some feeding, some watching.”

Your grip tightens on the folder.

“And me?” you ask. “Where do I fit in?”

EJ tilts his head slightly, studying you like you’re one of his case files now. A specimen on a table.

“You’re not exactly like us,” he says slowly. “But you’re not normal either. Not in the way you’ve been told.”

“What does that mean?”

“Do you remember the mall?”

The question catches you off guard. Of course you remember the mall. The fight. The screams. The blood.

He sees it in your eyes. That flash of memory. But he narrows it down.

“No. Not the fighting. The moment before you blacked out. When you screamed.”

You swallow.

You do remember.

Not just the scream—but the feeling behind it.

It wasn’t panic. It was something deeper, raw and unnatural. Like something inside you had cracked and poured out.

The world tilted. People dropped. Things—creatures—flinched like they’d been burned. And then the darkness took you.

“That scream,” EJ continues, watching you carefully, “wasn’t just adrenaline or fear. It wasn’t even human. Not entirely.”

Your mouth goes dry.

“You don’t just walk into this world,” he says. “You’re drawn to it. Or it to you.”

You’re shaking your head now, but only because the truth is starting to unravel inside you, thread by thread.

“No,” you whisper. “I’m just—”

“—A girl who’s been waking up different her whole life,” he finishes for you. “Who feels when things aren’t right. Who dreams about people before she meets them. Who knows when she’s being watched, even when she’s asleep.”

The air feels heavier suddenly.

“I thought I was just paranoid,” you murmur.

“You’re not paranoid,” he says softly. “You’re sensitive. Like a pressure valve left half open. That’s why you’ve been watched. That’s why you’re useful.”

You don’t know what to say. The weight of the folder on your lap feels different now. Not just invasive, but inevitable.

EJ steps closer, lowering his voice.

“You’re not one of the monsters, Y/N.”

“But you’re close.”

And for some reason… that’s even more terrifying.

[emmyrosee]

Random but ive read your tattoo artist sukuna drabbles and i was wondering what you think of your hubby samu being a tattoo artist as well??

All i will say is i will die happy in his beefy tattooed arms

i will physically combust right here right now.

imagining him decorated in tattoos, thick and dark lines covering his mammoth of a body and disrupting the milky flesh underneath. there's tigers on either side of his collarbones, a massive snake that wraps around his left leg from hip to ankle, a massive tree on his right arm. on his left is more patchwork, little doodles he's done on himself, like an alien, some onigiri, and a detailed fox his best friend gave him in honor of his high school mascot. there's also a tiny little fox on his hip that he gave himself with the sole purpose of matching with his teammates. he's convinced Kita (surprisingly) and Suna to get the small fox tattoo, drawn by him, only leaving aran and his brother to receive.

atsumu's too much of a baby, and aran can't find the right placement for it. he wants it to be perfect, and osamu waits patiently for him to decide, using stencil after stencil on his friend.

you, however, can't help but froth at the mouth over his tattoos. there's a soft spot for the one of your name he gave himself behind his ear, relishing in the purr he lets out when you plant kisses to the sensitive spot, but you love and admire them all as the same.

you love to trace the ink with the tips of your fingers when you cuddle in bed, fingers looping over the intricate lines and bluish coloring they've taken on from wear. your favorites to admire are his tigers, resting permanently in an arched, almost ready to attack, position. you love the goosebumps that raise over his skin as you use the gentlest touch against them, as if you'll disturb them, and when he gently grabs your hand to press a kiss to each of your fingers, you smile and nuzzle into the bear on his inner right bicep.

you love him. more than you can fathom. and when he comes home from work with a sketchbook full of new designs and a few photographs of the work he did that day, you only feel your love for him grow, your big strong man being excited over his job is beyond precious to you, and you're so happy you get to experience it every day 🥺❤️

[maybeelse]

Her hands are always the same, soft and firm as old well-worn leather and covered with fine traceries of scars. Some of the scars you recognize—the finger she almost lost slicing onions when she laughed too hard at one of your jokes, the scattered dots where bees objected to her plucking a chunk of honeycomb, the shiny burn-scars on her fingertips that she'd had to beg your help with. Most of them you do not. She was already ancient when you first met.

She changes bodies so easily, shifting with her mood and the seasons and the fashions. Formal bodies dense with ornamentation, and soft bodies for days spent lounging, and patchwork ones for workings best left undone. Her closet must be a crowded nightmare, though she's never let you see it. Nothing like yours. You barely afford one body, keep on mortgaging its future to make rent, struggle to wring a few more weeks of function from joints already stiff and worn.

Sometimes you think of asking her what she does with her old bodies. The one with fiery hair and tiger-striped sides that she hasn't worn since that morning at the bar, when she got into a distressingly public fight with her ex; the spindly one with arms like sticks and a sandhill crane tattoo wrapped around its chest that you've only ever seen her wear when she needs to clean her house's drains. Perhaps they're piled in a closet somewhere, gathering dust; perhaps she'd let you have one if you asked. A hand-me-down.

You don't ask, though.

Just like you've never asked exactly what you have, exactly what your relationship is. Certainly your friends draw conclusions; you spend more days with her than you do in your own coffin, and it would be hard to miss the looks you give her or the way you cling to her side.

It hurts when one of them calls her your girlfriend. It hurts more when one of them asks whether it's official yet, though by now your closest friends all know that some questions shouldn't be given voice.

You're a coward.

You know that.

But you still can't bring yourself to risk what you have by forcing a name onto it, still can't bring yourself to ask those little questions that loom so large.

"What are we?", you don't say, chopping carrots for dinner.

"I love you," you think, as she rests her hand on your neck and you melt into the touch. "I'd do anything for you."

Such are the contours of your relationship, those moments of aching softness shrouded in jagged mist. Perhaps you could ask; perhaps she is a coward too, waiting for you to make the first move, unwilling to upset the balance. Perhaps she's waiting to find the right body, the right moment, the right words ...

Perhaps she's just using you.

You promise yourself that someday you'll find out. Someday you'll scrounge together enough bravery to learn whether what you have is simply inertia and habit. But not yet. Not today.

Today you'll just smile at the body she's wearing, at the way its hips sway as she walks and the little moue its lips make as she sips her glass of wine. You'll nurture that warm feeling in your chest that grows with every affectionate touch and every kind word, knowing that someday love will break you.

Coward.

[markothompsonlives]

“Marko’s Revenge: A Wet Towel Saga"

It all began one muggy summer night in the cave when Paul, bored and probably high on hair spray fumes, discovered a wet towel left behind by some poor, long-forgotten beachgoer.

“Marko!” he yelled, grinning with chaotic glee. “Bet I can tag you with this from across the cave.”

Marko barely had time to look up before—WHAP!—he got lashed across the back with something that felt like Poseidon's personal belt.

“PAUL WHAT THE HELL—”

“It’s called a towel duel,” Paul said, spinning the soggy weapon like a cowboy lassoing vengeance. “Winner gets bragging rights. Loser gets moist.”

Over the next 30 minutes, Paul hit Marko six times, one of them square on the forehead. The towel snapped so hard the cave echoed like thunder. David didn’t stop him. He just watched from his throne with a smirk like a Roman emperor enjoying gladiator games. Dwayne left. Smart man.

Marko took the hits in stride. Sort of. He said nothing. He just smiled that quiet, homicidal smile of his and disappeared into the shadows.

Three days later.

Paul’s brushing his bangs when—THWIP.

“YEEEOW! WHAT THE—”

“Oops,” Marko cooed, casually aiming a handmade, wrist-mounted needle launcher. “My hand slipped.”

Paul stared at the tiny dart embedded in his shoulder. “DID YOU MAKE A FUCKING BLOWGUN?!”

“Maybe. Maybe I had time. Maybe I spent three days in the shadows, sewing vengeance into every stitch. Maybe next time you’ll keep your sea rag to yourself.”

Paul squinted. “Is this about the towel?”

Marko’s smile widened.

---

Cut to Michael, later that week.

He corners Paul by the bikes and whispers, “Hey. How do you know if Marko’s mad at you?”

Paul sighs, lifts his sleeve, revealing a patchwork of tiny punctures, and says, dead serious:

“You know those zoo signs that say, ‘If the tiger is pacing, stay back’? Yeah. Marko doesn’t pace. He gets quiet. Too quiet. That’s your warning.”

Michael frowns. “But he smiled at me earlier—”

“Did he smile with teeth?”

“Yes?”

Paul grabs his shoulders. “RUN.”

---

Bonus Epilogue:

Let me know if you want Part 2: “Marko vs. the Glitter Bomb Incident.”

David, watching all this from his corner, sips from a bloodstained goblet and mutters, “Let them fight.”

Dwayne sighs, plugs in his Walkman, and pretends none of it exists.

---

[littlecrow64]

PART OF THE CRK X HERMITCRAFT AU

Since everyone has their own headcanons on the Hermit’s species, and the beast’s minions have hybrid traits, I thought, why not list down everyone’s species for this au? This will also list some familial relations. Please be aware that there are currently 24 active Hermits and 5 minions.

Cookies

Nutmeg Tiger: Tiger-centaur.

Pavlova: Avian hybrid (dove)

Candy Apple: Changeling with a little bat hybrid blood. Adoptive daughter to Shadow Milk and sister to Black Sapphire.

Black Sapphire: Changeling with a little bat hybrid blood. Adoptive son to Shadow Milk and brother to Candy Apple.

Cloud Haetae: Dog hybrid.

Hermits

Bdubs: Glare hybrid. Etho’s boyfriend.

Cub: Vex hybrid. Scar’s brother

Doc: Creeper-Goat hybrid mix. Married to Ren. Doccy’s father

Doccy: Creeper-Goat hybrid mix. Doc’s daughter.

Etho: Artic Fox hybrid. Older than time itself. Gem’s brother. Bdubs’ boyfriend.

False: Avian hybrid (hawk)

Gem: Shapeshifter. Etho’s sister. Pearl’s girlfriend.

Scar: Vex hybrid. Cub’s brother. Fiancé to Mumbo and Grian.

Grian: Watcher, but takes the form of an avian hybrid (parrot). Brother to Pearl, Jimmy, Lizzie, & Martin. Fiancé to Scar & Mumbo.

Hypno: Bee hybrid.

Jevin: Slime hybrid.

Impulse: Electric-demon. Husband to Skizz.

Joe: He’s… something. Doesn’t age and isn’t human. Friends with Cleo since before her death.

Keralis: Eldritch horror. Rumoured to have a thing with Xisuma.

Mumbo: Shapeshifter. Fiancé to Grian and Scar.

Pearl: Watcher, but takes the form of a moth hybrid (Glover’s silkmoth) Sister to Grian, Jimmy, Lizzie and Martin. Gem’s girlfriend.

Ren: Wolf hybrid. Doc’s hybrid.

Skizz: Fallen angel. Impulse’s husband.

Joel: Human. Married to Lizzie.

Tango: Blaze hybrid.

Beef: Bull hybrid.

Wels: An immortal human. Has a clone named Hels.

XB: Guardian hybrid.

Xisuma: Voidwalker. Has a brother called EX.

Zedalph: Ram hybrid.

Cleo: Patchwork zombie. Has been dead for decades, so she has to replace certain parts every few weeks. There’s a sign-up sheet to donate some of your parts to them.

[ozzgin]

Week 1: Inktober doodles ft. Yandere School and Yuugiri (Naga); Monstertober: Local Folklore (Surprise Romanian Guest), Artificial Intelligence (Internet Monster), Deep Sea?; Yantober: Homemade meal ft. undecided

Week 2: Inktober doodle ft. grumpy dragon boyfriend; Monstertober: Devilish Charm ft. Zzy, Patchwork ft. Deer Monster

Week 3: Monstertober: Mating Season ft. Lion/Tiger Hybrid; Vampire Clown; Undead x Grave Robber!Reader

Week 4: Grumpy Dragon Boyfriend; Yantober: Aftercare ft. Yandere!Circus; Yuugiri (Naga) smut

Week 5: Monstertober: Alien ft. Xenomorph and Surprise Hotel Guest; Slasher x Reader, Dullahan x Reader

Alright everyone, this is what I gathered so far from your requests and my drafts. Some are done, some are planned. Keep in mind these are all short snippets or doodles, as I sadly don't have the time for anything more complex. :')

Someone asked me how writing requests work: it can be anything yandere/monster/Halloween related, whether it's smut, fluff, horror, or something silly. If you want, you can use my own prompts for reference. Pick a prompt and a character, if you find this to be the easier way of doing it.

Other examples of requests I've gotten so far: "I'd love to see more of X character"; "How about this Halloween scenario?"; "Have you ever considered x type of monster?"; "Here's a fun fact, do whatever you wish with this information".

The requests are, of course, still open. I just wanted to give you a quick preview! <3

[mcromwell]

"See You There" a short story. Read it below the cut here or on my blog here. ♥ A high-schooler receives rare advice from a mysterious stranger. This is a story for artists, new and experienced.

The young lizard girl sat at the art table on her own, scribbling in a sketchbook, holding her long green head in her hand. She was a creature of her own overactive imagination that she retreated to often. None of her peers were so unique—or as she’d say, weird. None of them were a made-up mammalian reptile with long ears or a prehensile tail, yellow flesh, and green skin. They were tigers, lions, wolves, dogs. A rabbit here or there, a bear, a beautiful bird. But she had invented a body for herself that spoke true to her strangeness. She wanted to be creative, but her plans backfired. She just felt weird. She furiously erased a drawing, almost rubbing a hole in the page, and thought, ‘I’m not creative, I’m just a freak who thinks she can draw.’

The door to the classroom opened. In walked another creature, older, old enough to be a teacher. The lizard girl glanced up at the person but paid them no mind. Not from apathy, but from a desire not to attract attention. The person walked up to the lizard girl’s desk, put their elbows on the teacher’s counter across from it, and leaned back. The person was not a normal creature. White fur, black outlines, an aesthetic of literal two-dimensionality that even the most boring jock at school couldn’t compete with. But the lizard girl found it hard to look away. Every position the cartoonish coyote took felt like they were scrawled into the world with markers or chunky oil pastels. Bits of the background showed through as if their creator couldn’t be bothered to fill them in completely. Their long patchwork jacket was starkly faded where the batik fabric showed through the myriad of patches and highly contrasted embroidery thread. The lizard girl thought they looked like a collage come to life. Their black jeans and black tank-top underneath looked just as ragged. The white design on the top was crusty and chipping, but the lizard girl recognized it.

“Hey,” she ventured. “I like your shirt. Is that…”

“Johnny?” The 2D coyote person said. Their voice sounded quite similar to the lizard girl’s, which startled her, but she didn’t show it.

“Yeah, I love that comic,” the lizard girl replied.

“It was my favorite when I was your age,” the coyote replied, chuckling at the adage they finally got to say. The coyote was definitely older, but not yet old-and-tired like math teacher Mr. Mitchell and his coffee-brown teeth. “That comic got me into drawing, actually,” the coyote person added.

The lizard girl’s long pointed ears perked up. She wiped her nose on her baggy sweatshirt sleeve, chewed to rags, and said, “You’re an artist?” Maybe the coyote was a substitute teacher, or a guest speaker. Usually they came in earlier than the students. The lizard girl liked to come early, too, to draw in peace. She absently covered her sketchbook with her sleeves. If this older creature was a guest speaker, then they were an accomplished artist or otherwise professed, which meant they could, under no circumstance, lay eyes on her inane doodles. Lizard girl was one of the most passionate artists in her class, but shame runs thick as blood in every teenager, and she was particularly heavy with it.

“Yeah, I’m a freelance fine artist,” the stranger said. “I sell paintings and stuff for a living.”

Lizard girl imagined the concrete studio apartment they must live in with three other starving artists. If the stranger was this badly drawn? They couldn’t be a very successful artist. Maybe they still live with their parents.

“Yeah,” the stranger went on, “It’s not a glamorous life or anything, but it’s good for me. Pays the bills on our little farm in the woods, anyway!”

The word ‘farm’ snapped lizard girl’s mind shot to when she was ten years old. She was learning computer programs to make your own tri-fold pamphlets, charmed by the clip art and the glossy photo paper that squeaked under her fingers. Lizard girl had made an “All About Me” pamphlet. It went over her favorite things: the foods she liked, her favorite animals, her friends, her hobbies, and lastly: her dreams for the future. (This was at her mother’s suggestion, perhaps to steer her into a mindset of thinking ahead.) Her future dreams were simple. She wanted a two-story house (she had never lived with stairs and found them exciting) in the country with a dog and chickens. Especially the chickens. “That sounds amazing,” Lizard Girl said. “That’s what I want, too.”

The coyote person smiled: a simple curving upwards of their almond-shaped eye outlined in greasepaint black. “Don’t give up on it and you’ll get it someday. But even if you don’t, whatever you end up doing will be good, as long as you stay true to yourself.”

Lizard Girl furrowed. Yeah, this person was probably either a sub or a speaker. She caught a whiff of the vacant pep-talk language that adults loved to spout. “Are you our sub today?”

“Nope,” the coyote said, putting their paws into their jacket pockets, “I’m just visiting.”

Weird, the Lizard Girl thought. Adults usually had a reason for showing up at school. The coyote person’s name tag they got from signing in at the office read, ‘Crooked Waters’.

“Is that your real name?”

The coyote looked down and said, “It’s the Old English translation of my surname. It means ‘one who lives by the crooked waters’, technically, but I like to shorten it.”

“Oh,” she said, “cool.”

“What’s your name?” Crooked Waters stuck out her three-digit cartoon paw for Lizard to shake.

Lizard shyly shook it. “I’m uh, well sometimes I go by Kirai online, it’s like my artist name, but, uh—”

Crooked Waters smiled. “Alright, Kirai…” They seemed torn for a moment, like a tempting question teetered at the end of their tongue. “Well, I’ll just ask. I couldn’t help but notice you’re kind of a unique critter. What was the inspiration for this?” They gestured to Kirai.

Kirai’s long ears perked up. “You’re the only one to guess it right,” she said. “I’m a made-up species, a tree lizard, it’s from a world I made up. They’re warm-blooded and have smooth skin but, like, reptile claws and stuff…” She stopped herself from gushing about her passion project any further. Crooked Waters probably wouldn’t care about some dumb fantasy world.

Crooked Waters smiled. “That’s awesome. So you’re an artist, too?”

“Uh, sorta,” Kirai replied.

“What do you mean, ‘sorta’?”

“Well,” Kirai said, looking at her hands folding and unfolding the sketchbook pages, “I like to draw. I dunno if I’m any good at it but—”

“Well it doesn’t matter if you’re good at it,” Crooked Waters said, treating the word ‘good’ as if it were ridiculous. “An artist makes art. That’s the only qualifier.”

Kirai couldn’t come up with a good counter-argument so she remained silent.

“Can I see your sketchbook?” Crooked Waters asked. The question was phrased easily enough but it sent jolts of panic through Kirai’s hormonal body.

“U-uh, well, this is my sorta, uh, work sketchbook, it’s got homework in it, we do sketchbook assignments every week, uh, here,” she frantically flipped past a few pages, “these aren’t anything, uh, okay,” she unfolded the sketchbook and displayed a page of drawings. Two anthropomorphic figures danced across the white paper, fully shaded in graphite. “This is today’s sketchbook assignment.”

“Wow!” Crooked Waters said, eyes widening, the three chalk dashes that made up their whiskers bristling towards the book. “Are these more of your creations?”

“Yeah, uh, they’re characters from the book I’m writing about it,” Kirai said.

“A book!” A toothy smile etched its way across Crooked Waters’ face. “Hey, how old are you?”

“Sixteen,” Kirai replied.

“This is very skilled for sixteen,” Crooked Waters said. “Are you sure I can’t flip through it?”

They sounded genuinely excited. Kirai hesitated, but then in a moment of clarity, figured this person wasn’t going to criticize their work (a fate worse than death) and handed over the sketchbook.

Crooked Waters thumbed through the book. Every now and again their 2D face would turn up in an implied smile, their ears would swivel curiously, their chalk whiskers flick. Kirai thought briefly their crudely-drawn body would leave charcoal smears or wet paint on her sketchbook. As they handed it back to Kirai, they said, “This is great stuff. Reminds me a lot of the work I did as a high schooler, actually. Thanks for letting me look.” They chuckled and added, “I remember how scary it was to share stuff with people.”

Kirai flipped the book closed and set it down. Now that the scariest part was over, she felt braver. “Does it get easier?”

“Does what get easier?”

“Letting people look at your sketchbook.”

“Oh yeah,” Crooked Waters said easily. “It gets way easier with time. And honestly, high schoolers can be so mean,” they laugh, “so there were some kids in my class I did not show it to.”

Kirai immediately thought of some of the football guys in her Art 101 class last year. She hated Art 101 because it had all the normies in it who were there just for the graduation requirement. They tossed the still-life fruit around like chimpanzees (one of them actually was a chimpanzee) and they’d hide it from the teacher when her back was turned, snickering. For students like Kirai, that behavior was disrespectful and stupid. She was better than that, she never acted out, she always did what she was told. Realizing this in front of such a cool, capable, professional artist made the blood flow to Kirai’s face. How immature! How lame! Real artists don’t just do what they’re told. They’re cool and rebellious, they have cool names like Crooked Waters, they have farms.

“Can I, um… Can I see what kind of art you make?” Kirai asked.

Crooked Waters shifted their weight and leaned back on the counter again. They carried a bit of extra weight in their breasts, stomach, and thighs, just like Kirai did. Kirai hated her body and all its squishy folds that never fit into pants right. But even though Crooked Waters bore the same body type, they carried themselves differently. Their clothes seemed to belong to them. Kirai wondered briefly if she and Crooked Waters might share some genetic background. “Sure,” Crooked Waters said, reaching into their strange jacket to procure a small sketchbook. “This is just my travel book, so there’s nothing super finalized.”

“That’s okay,” Kirai said, taking it. The book was made of some kind of leather, sewn with twine around the edges, and covered in stickers. All types of colorful creatures bounded and danced across the tattered cover.

“The stickers are all my design, too,” Crooked Waters added. “I print them on clear vinyl so they show the background better, and I use the sketchbook for product photos on my website.” They spoke so matter-of-factly about this wondrous thing: their artwork made manifest as a real-life object. People could stick them onto their things and carry the art forever?! Kirai’s mind spun. She imagined a huge printer in a warehouse with Crooked Waters confidently striding the aisles, two employees at their side, taking notes as Crooked Waters gestures and points out flaws in sticker production and snaps their fingers at the employees to run it again! This batch isn’t perfect! Crooked Waters’s artwork deserves the finest clear vinyl! Kirai beheld the colorful, confident artwork and swallowed. Maybe her art could be on stickers one day. She quickly smashed the notion with, ‘I can’t ever be as good as Crooked Waters. Their stickers look awesome, but mine would look like trash, and I don’t even know where to start with making something like that.’

“Everything alright?” Crooked Waters asked.

Kirai had been gripping the sketchbook a little too hard while her mind raced. “Sorry,” she said hurriedly and opened the book. The art inside was just as good as the stickers. Studies and life sketches exposed the hand of a master, confident marks and concise observations. Kirai shut the book and handed it back to Crooked Waters.

Crooked Waters eyed her as they re-pocketed the book. “What’s up?”

How could adults always tell when something upset her? Kirai fumbled her words and ended up with, “Nothing.”

“Look,” Crooked Waters said seriously. They grabbed a vacant stool nearby and brought it over to sit opposite Kirai at the desk. They were the same height. “Can I give you some advice?”

Kirai looked less like a lizard and more like a deer in the headlights. “Sure…?”

Crooked Waters gently held their cartoon hand out to Kirai, who almost put her own hand in Crooked Waters’s, but luckily caught on to their actual intention and handed them her sketchbook. Crooked Waters began thumbing through it once again. “Here,” they said, lying it down turned to today’s assignment: the figures in graphite. “This area here,” they gestured to a torso bent slightly, “this is great. It really shows how the waist in flexible, not just a static rectangle.” They flipped the pages a few more times. “Oh, paint pens? Those are fun. One of my favorite toys. I see you’re getting the hang of it. How many paint pen drawings have you done?”

“T-that was my first try, it was an experiment,” Kirai said quietly.

Crooked Waters beams. “Right on. Seems like you got a feel for it already.”

Kirai didn’t know how to respond.

“Can I ask you a sort of personal question, Kirai?”

Kirai’s walls went up whenever an adult tried to be ‘real’ with her or whatever, an attempt to really know her, as if they could understand. They always tried, but it never stuck. “Okay.”

“How did it feel when I asked to see your sketchbook?”

Kirai hadn’t expected that. Encouraged by an art question, she replied, “Kinda nervous.”

“Okay. But how did it feel?”

Kirai’s ears tilted quizzically. Didn’t she just answer that? “What?”

Crooked Waters patted their chest and said, “What did the feeling feel like in your body?”

No one had ever asked her anything like that before. “Uh, bad, I guess.”

Crooked Waters nodded, apparently satisfied enough with that reply. “And how did it feel the second time?”

“Not as bad.”

“There you go,” Crooked Waters said, “it gets easier.”

A flush of anger flowed through Kirai. She balled her fists. When she spoke, the words arrived choked and garbled with the beginnings of a sob, to her surprise and mortification, but the emotions pushed them out: “I mean that’s easy for you to say,” she gestured harshly at Crooked Waters, “you’re so good at art. My art sucks.”

“Not for a sixteen-year-old,” Crooked Waters said. “Besides, you’re barely starting your artistic journey.”

“Yeah but I feel like I should be better,” Kirai said, shoving her fingers through her greasy brown hair. “There’s artists I see online that are like, younger than me, even, and they’re so much better!”

“So?” Crooked Waters said so easily it just made Kirai boil harder.

“So!” Kirai said loudly, immediately self-conscious of her volume in the empty room. She huffed a sigh and said, “So why can’t I be good like them?”

“Because you’re not them,” Crooked Waters said gently. “Do you know them? Personally?”

“No…”

“Then you may not see all the opportunities and situations they had to help them improve. What if they’re rich and got sent to an atelier when they were ten?”

“Uh…”

“What if they were born to established artist parents, or have a private tutor?”

“Yeah, okay, I get it.”

“My point is that you can’t gauge your own progress with someone else’s yardstick,” Crooked Waters explained. “No one has exactly the life, body, or experiences that you do. Some artists never get opportunities. Some of them never even get to go to school! But they still made lots of art and strove to improve their skills no matter where they were at.”

“Like Grandma Moses,” Kirai suggested.

“That’s right, that old goose only started to paint when she was sixty-something! And she became one of the most beloved folk artists of the century. And you,” Crooked Waters pointed at Kirai playfully, “already have a leg-up on that old bird.”

Kirai giggled a little, but didn’t feel much better. She still felt a sinking feeling deepening in her gut.

“I see a lot of promise in your sketchbook,” Crooked Waters went on. “I’d hate to see you quit.”

“Really?”

“Yeah really.”

“I’ve thought about it before,” Kirai said. “Quitting.” She didn’t know why she felt compelled to tell this to someone she just met.

Crooked Waters folded their strange paws under their long, cartoon snout and blinked innocently, waiting for Kirai to continue.

“I was… well there was this project,” Kirai began, gesturing with her green hands in the air, “a big poster project for English. Our teacher said we had to make it as nice as we could, there’s points for the display and pictures and stuff, so for my group I volunteered to draw pictures about the poem we were assigned.”

Crooked Waters nods.

“So I did all the drawings and I spent so long on them but then this one kid,” Kirai’s heart raced, “Kyle. Kyle Pennington. He said my drawings didn’t look good enough, that they should have full backgrounds, but I was going for a storybook style and he just didn’t get it, and he said I was going to get them docked points.”

“What did you do?”

“I threw away all the drawings.”

“Threw them away?” Crooked Waters sounded genuinely hurt.

“Yeah,” Kirai said. “I did! But then I didn’t have time to do them all over again because it was Sunday night so I had to pick them out of the recycling and try and get the wrinkles out and then I stayed up way too late finishing them because they weren’t good enough and I didn’t wanna be the one to get everyone’s points docked.” She took a big breath.

“Did anyone else in the class do handmade art for their poster?”

“Yeah, one other group did,” Kirai said.

“How was it?”

Kirai didn’t want to be mean, but she knew the art was sub-par. Crude. Ugly. “I don’t think they were artists.”

Crooked Waters tossed their snout back and laughed a big coyote laugh. “That’s such a nice way to say it. But okay, so the art wasn’t as practiced?”

Kirai nodded.

“So for an English class,” they said slowly, “you painstakingly drew pictures for the project, basically twice, when hardly anyone else did.”

“Y-yeah…”

“How’d you do?”

“Huh?”

“Oh the poster,” Crooked Waters said. “How did you feel about the final piece?”

Truthfully, Kirai had it up on her wall in her bedroom at home. She didn’t know why she hung it at first, but she liked it up there and hadn’t taken it down yet. “It looked better than it did before.”

“Be honest,” Crooked Waters said kindly.

Kirai furrowed and said with venom, “Well I liked it, I dunno what Kyle’s problem was.”

“What did Mr. White say?”

“He said it was good,” Kirai said resentfully. “We got an A.”

“So it sounds like your assessment of it was more in-line with reality than Kyle’s.”

Kirai nodded. “Mom said he probably didn’t have an artist’s eye.”

“I’d agree with mom there,” Crooked Waters said. “So who’s Kyle?”

“Just some jock from my English class.”

“Sounds like you’re not friends,” Crooked Waters said.

“No. We aren’t. He’s a meathead,” Kirai said.

Crooked Waters laughed and replied, “And you don’t want a meathead’s opinion polluting your mind, right?”

Kirai puffed air out of her cheeks and said resentfully, “I guess so. But it hurt still. I hate it when people say mean things about my art.”

“True,” Crooked Waters said, tilting their black-and-white head down. “It does still hurt. Why do you think it hurts?”

Kirai felt the familiar flush of frustration rising again. “It hurts because I made it! I spent a lot of time on it and he just said, ‘no it isn’t right’. I’d like to see him try it.”

“For real,” Crooked Waters chuckled. “Did it sorta feel like he was insulting you, too? Not just your art?”

“Yeah!” Kirai said. The bitter joy she felt from an adult finally touching upon something real made her feel more real, too.

“I remember,” Crooked Waters said. “I remember feeling that way, too.”

“But you don’t anymore?” Kirai asked. She imagined Crooked Waters, cool as a cucumber, dressed in something expensive and nice at a gallery opening, gracefully shutting down the critics and being above it all, confident in their abilities and status as a fine artist.

“Nah,” Crooked Waters said, leaning back in the creaking stool. “It still hurts my feelings sometimes.”

The wind fell from Kirai’s sails.

Crooked Waters continued, “You know, I felt how you felt way back when I was in school. Some kid in computer class said my Paint drawing of Johnny looked like a raccoon.”

“That’s mean,” Kirai said.

“Sure it was. I mean it was clearly not a raccoon! Right at first I felt like attacking her, screaming, drawing pictures of Johnny murdering her,” Crooked Waters said with a smile.

Kirai laughed. She’d done the same thing in middle school, drawing characters she liked (or versions of herself dressed like those characters) murdering bullies or other annoying classmates in hyperbolic ways. Machetes, meat grinders, gratuitous ink splatters of blood. She now thought the behavior and drawings were cringe but felt a delightful twang of satisfaction hearing that someone like Crooked Waters did the same stuff.

“The drawings didn’t help a lot, in hindsight, but what did help was thinking about her differently. I figured eventually that she was rude to me because she was hurting,” Crooked Waters said.

The 180 gave Kirai pause.

“The fact that she felt the need to put me down was probably because that’s all she got at home,” Crooked Waters went on. “Imagine showing a drawing to your parents and they just say, ‘Looks like a raccoon.’” They intoned it with a snobby voice.

“Raccoons are cute…”

“You know what I mean.”

“Yeah.” Kirai did know. “That reminds me of a friend, actually.”

“Oh, yeah?” Crooked Waters said.

“Yeah. My friend Sonja. She tried to get into drawing because I was into it, so she did a really good Pikachu and showed her dad, but her dad told her it sucked and she should give up.”

“Did she?” Crooked Waters said soberly.

“Yeah,” Kirai said. “No matter how much I told her that her dad was mean and wrong, she hasn’t drawn anything since.”

“See how powerful that is,” Crooked Waters said, sitting back and sighing. “See how powerful punishment is at shutting people down?”

Kirai nodded.

“But that girl in my computer class,” Crooked Waters said, “she was probably just saying exactly what she’d been trained to say by her own family. It’s sad, to me, because when you shut someone down, sometimes they stay down. Imagine if Sonja had kept drawing.”

“She’d be as good as me probably,” Kirai said.

“Exactly.”

“Hey Crooked Waters?”

“Yeah?”

“How can I grow up to be like you?” As soon as she said it, Kirai wanted to take it back. How embarrassing. Only little kids said stuff like that! But there must have been something about this strange adult that coaxed the delicate question from her.

“Like me?” Crooked Waters laughed. “Like how?”

“Like uh… I mean art is what I like doing the most, so, how can I make it my job?” Kirai asked.

Crooked Waters smiled at her. It was a sort of smile that told Kirai more adult platitudes were on their way. “Well, first of all, discard any assumptions you have about my life, it isn’t that glamorous.”

Kirai, glad to be wrong, obediently erased her daydreams of confident-capable-Crooked-Waters ordering around gallery attendants and staff.

“I got where I’m at because I worked hard,” Crooked Waters said. “I practiced a lot and I never quit.”

“That’s it?” Kirai asked, bewildered. That couldn’t be it.

“Well, sure, and having parents and friends who looked out for me helped a lot, y’know, no man’s an island and all that,” Crooked Waters waved their cartoon paw flippantly, “you don’t get anywhere alone in life. I have friends, family, lots of cool animals, and a little farm and gardens and stuff. I’m broke a lot but really, I got all I need. And that’s pretty cool.”

“That’s awesome,” Kirai said dreamily. She’d never burdened herself with unrealistic goals like some of her peers did: she had no ambitions to be a firefighter or a doctor or run for president. She just wanted to make art in peace and watch a flock of chickens bustle past the kitchen window. “So you think I could…”

“Lemme give you some more advice,” Crooked Waters said. “Can I see your sketchbook again?”

Kirai thrust the book at them.

“Can I write on a page? Just a little spot, I won’t take up too much room.”

“Uh, yeah, anywhere that’s blank, I don’t care.”

Crooked Waters opened the sketchbook like a holy text and carefully chose a page with minimal drawings, mostly notes from art class. They procured a ballpoint pen from their long sleeve and began writing. Kirai tried not to show that she was craning her neck to spy what Crooked Waters was doing. When Crooked Waters handed it back to her, the cover was closed. They rested a crudely-drawn paw on the book and said with a sparkle in their doodle eye, “Don’t read it until I’m gone, okay?”

“Alright,” Kirai said. She’d play along with the adult’s game, whatever it was.

By then, the class bell was imminent and students were trickling into the classroom. Crooked Waters stood from their stool, returned it to its place, dusted off their patchwork jacket, and said, “Wellp. I better get going.”

Kirai puzzled over this for a moment. “I thought you were a guest speaker or something…?”

“Nope,” Crooked Waters said easily. “Just visiting. But hey,” they grinned at Kirai. Long striped bars of cartoon teeth were scrawled across their coyote nose. “Keep it up, alright? And have a good crit today.”

“Bye, it was nice meeting you,” Kirai said lamely as she watched them turn to go. Crooked Waters pushed the silver bar on the green classroom door, strode outside with their sketchy tail swishing, and disappeared down the hall. The bell rang.

Like a shot, Kirai slammed her sketchbook open and turned to the notes page. In purple ink, Crooked Waters had written a quick message:

Punishment is poor motivation. Find joy in everything you make. Haters don’t know any better—be nice to them and even nicer to yourself. You will go far. I know you will. ...but only if you never stop.

See you there, ♥ Crooked Waters

Kirai beamed at the message. As more students filed in and flopped into their seats, Kirai folded her sketchbook closed. The last part of the message perplexed her: see you there? What did that mean? She shrugged it off. Adults were weird. That one especially. Something else sat oddly with her as class began: How did Crooked Waters know her English teacher Mr. White’s name…?

The art teacher, Mrs. Armstrong, passed Kirai’s desk and smiled her toothy horse smile. The palomino was in her red, flowery sundress with matching horn-rimmed glasses. “Drawing already?” She sang.

“Yup,” Kirai said blithely, tucking away her drawing pencils and eraser. “And all ready for the crit.”

“That’s what I like to hear,” Mrs. Armstrong said, tossing her blond, braided mane. She clapped her hands together and called, “Okay, class, circle ‘round, sketchbook assignment time! Back of the room!”

Various groans from 20-30 teenagers-only-recently-awoken rolled out of the class. Except from Kirai, who felt a strange and uncharacteristic surge of energy. She was first to the back counter. For once, she set her sketchbook out with aplomb.

[mixelation]

Who are your favorite Ozverse side characters?

my favorites when i was a kid were polychrome and the patchwork girl! i also really liked button-bright and the shaggy man

for those not deep into the lore: polychrome is a "daughter of the rainbow". she's basically like a fairy girl whose personality is ~vague whimsy~ and being cold all the time. meanwhile the patchwork girl is a girl made of random pieces of cloth sewn together. also for her personality they accidentally added too much "posey" so she's whimsical but loud about it. button-bright is a young boy whose shtick is constantly getting lost. the shaggy man is a Designated Adult who is a homeless man who's like "oh no, i'm now in charge of these children?!" oh, i also really liked the glass cat and the hungry tiger!

i reread all the books as an adult years ago (while i was still a teacher -- i had some down time between classes so i reread the entire oz series mostly sitting in the break room one year) and i remember liking the wizard a lot more? he comes back as a Designated Adult in later books and then starts taking lessons from Glinda on learning actual magic. most remake media gives him a conman vibe, but in the books he's a much more sympathetic character. OH and i remember only really liking Glinda when i was a kid bc i liked beautiful women with magic, but as an adult i really liked a bunch of random details about her. she rides around in a carriage pulled by swans and employees only beautiful women. hello???

my all time favorite Oz character is and always will be Ozma, but i don't think she counts as a side character?

[blancamz]

Oz Illustration Masterpost

OUTSIDERS:

Billina the Yellow Hen

Dorothy Gale of Kansas (1, 2)

Eureka the Pink Kitten (1, 2, 3)

The Nome King of the Underground World, a.k.a. Roquat the Red, a.k.a. Ruggedo

Princess Langwidere of Ev

The Wizard of Oz, a.k.a. Oscar Diggs

PEOPLES OF OZ:

Bungle the Glass Cat

The Cowardly Lion (1, 2, 3, 4)

Miss Cuttenclip

Glinda the Good (1, 2)

The Good Witch of the North

The Hungry Tiger (1, 2)

Jack Pumpkinhead

Jellia Jamb

General Jinjur

Kalidahs (1, 2)

The King of Bunnybury

The King of the Winged Monkeys

Mombi (1, 2)

Ojo the Unlucky

Princess Ozma (1, 2)

Dr Pipt, the Crooked Magician

The Queen of the Field Mice

The Scarecrow

Scraps the Patchwork Girl

The Tin Woodman a.k.a. Nick Chopper

Tippetarius a.k.a. Tip

The Wicked Witch of the West (1, 2)

The Wildcat

The Highly-Magnified Woggle-Bug, Thoroughly Educated

[whatisflorencewearing]

Editorial: So It Goes Issue 11

Let's start this year on a positive note with Florence all smiles in @soitgoesmag. 

She's wearing a @louisvuitton Spring 2018 tie-neck patchwork floral silk blouse with balloon sleeves. 

Her ring party includes a @gucci Le Marché Des Merveilles tiger head ring with yellow enamel and diamond eyes (right hand, index finger), a @gucci Le Marché Des Merveilles tiger head ring with a purple amethyst and diamonds (right hand, middle finger) and her own rings. 

The antique gold and diamond horseshoe motif locket by @tiffanyandco is a personal piece acquired from @plattboutiquejewelry.

Photography: @giancarla.coppola Styling: @aldenejohnson Styling assistant: @lgrovesss MUA: @tamah_krinsky Hair: @ryanrichman

[saturn-canine]

ok, i guess its prolly time to intro the whole crew lol :P

🐇 My Rabbit Side:

"Cozee"

I am a  Black Otter Dutch Rabbit, Mini Rex spunky, playful, expressive and very sweet, while not being overly clingy.

 "I made you a nest. No, you don’t get a choice. Lie down."

Chatty honks, obsessed with soft things, baby fever so strong it hurts, I want kits NOW!"

I may be very small but my love is a FORTRESS! You will never escape >:}

🐅 My Big Cat Side:

"Phantom in the Storm"

I am a Siberian tiger, I love to swim, I am capable of moving in silence, aloof but i have the capacity to be protective over those who i care for, and my wrath is neverending

"I could kill you. Instead, I’ll watch you from this tree. Affectionately."

Restless paws, water-lover, zero patience for nonsense.

The woods are his church and I am the phantom priestess

🐑 My Goat/Sheep Side:

"Sunbeam & Grimy"

I Icelandic sheep + Nigerian Dwarf goat (chaotic gremlins that travel together)

"I threw up a flower for you. Please respond"

 Climbs everything, loud opinions, nest architect.

Menaces, boffumem

🦌 My Deer Side:

"Ghost/Autumn"

Tawny doe with a black-streaked muzzle and snow-dusted throat.

"Sorry I vanished into the mist, when you tried to point me out to the people you were with. but left you a perfect leaf on your doorstep."

Traits: Baby fever ×1000, crisp fall air personified, silent but expressive, OMG I WANT BABIES PLSSSS 🙏

She is golden hour and old forests and the smell of old books.

🐕 My Canine Side:

"The Patchwork Pack"

Saint Bernard: Quilt

Rottie: Shadow

Pitbull: Rainstorm

Chihuahua: Naomi 

Poodle: Snowbelle

"I will carry your groceries, scream at squirrels, and style your hair with drool, hope you don't mind."

Service >,  love, big bark, bigger heart, den life best life, I am your guardian devil :P, I will piss on everything you love!!

"I am 5 dogs in a trench coat and we’re all your problem now."

🦴 My Neanderthal Side:

"Pidg"

"I dragged this fur here for you. Sit. Eat this mushroom. I tested it first, it only makes you feel a little funky!"

Makes art in caves, grumpy softie, knows 12 ways to survive winter.

[xxmarcxline]

003 - THE LIGHT OF FREEDOM ON MY FACE - “enchanted!”

Pairing: Edmund Pevensie x Wolfstar!Daughter!Reader

ENCHANTED MASTERLIST!

By no means do I support R*wling’s biased views! This profile is meant to be a safe space promoting escapism <3

TW: none ( although, please feel free to message me if you believe i missed some!! )

THE FLYING CAR BEGAN ITS DESCENT, and soon enough, you were able to catch a glimpse of a dark patchwork of fields and clumps of trees.

“We’re a little way outside the village,” says George. “Ottery St. Catchpole.”

The edge of the brilliant red sun was now gleaming through the trees, its radiance, Harry found, reflected your own as you grinned at the familiar sight of the Weasleys’ residence.

“Touchdown!” said Fred as, with a slight bump, you landed — a tumbledown garage in a small yard to your right, Harry looking out for the first time at Ron's house.

In all truthfulness, it was run-down, for lack of better term. The structure appeared unreliable at best, as though originally a large stone pigpen, but renovated to fit extra rooms and reach several stories high. It had been so crooked, staggering like the lightning-shaped scar on your friend’s forehead; however, like the mark etching his skin, magic had built and kept it ebbed stubbornly along the grassy surface.

Four or five chimneys were perched on top of the red roof. A lopsided sign was stuck in the ground near the entrance reading, ‘THE BURROW’. Around the front door lay a jumble of rubber boots and a very rusty cauldron. Several fat brown chickens were pecking their way around the yard.

“It's not much,” said Ron, rubbing a self-conscious hand along his forearm. He looked around the wooden walls of his home in uncertainty, just as he had when you first came over — a subconscious sign of his insecurity.

“It’s brilliant,” Harry was quick to react happily, thinking of Number 4 Privet Drive and the horrors he associated with its pale, perfected walls.

“It’s nothing short of wonderful,” you followed, smiling at the three brothers, meeting their silent gazes. As you exited the vehicle, the sun’s warm rays cast upon you, moving silently as your shadows crept towards the door.

“Now, we'll go upstairs really quietly,” said Fred, throwing a cautious glance at his surroundings, “and wait for Mum to call us for breakfast.”

He turns to face you and his younger brother, “Then, you lot come bounding downstairs, Ron going, ‘Mum, look who turned up in the night!’ and she'll be all pleased to see you and Harry, and no one needs ever know we flew the car.”

You raised an unimpressed brow at their careless grins. There were so many ways this could go wrong. . . for them. But you were never one for wiping off the twins’ smiles, no matter how stupidly aggravating their cheshire grins could be.

“Right,” agreed Ron, nodding his head in full agreement. He doesn’t give you a second glance as you go, guiding Bowie atop your shoulder. “You know your way to Ginny’s room, I’m sure. Now come on, Harry, I sleep at the top—”

Harry found it odd how his friend simply stopped, going a nasty green in complexion. Meanwhile, you exuded the opposite reaction, grinning goofily and waving madly, gaze set out the kitchen window. His eyes followed yours, blowing wide as he spotted Mrs. Wesley marching across the yard. Chickens scattered, Bowie took cover behind your hair, and for a short, plump, kind-faced woman, Harry found it remarkable how much she looked like a saber-toothed tiger.

“Ah,” muttered Fred.

“Oh, dear,” mumbled George.

“‘Ello, Molly!” you exclaimed shamelessly as Ron gulped. He appeared close to tears, you mused. How funny.

All of the above were telltale signs of the trouble you five were undoubtedly in, and if Harry had known any better, he would have taken off running and not looked back. But he didn’t, a stupid decision on his part, if Bowie were to say so himself. Mrs. Weasley came to a halt before the lot of you, her hands on her hips, staring from one guilty face to the next (then there was you, a smile peeking through her tough exterior for a brief moment). She was wearing a flowered apron with a wand sticking out of her pocket.

“Morning, Mum,” said George, grinning in what he believed to be a jaunty, award-winning means while you and Fred withheld a snigger.

“Where have you been?”

“Have you any idea how worried I've been?” said Mrs. Weasley in a deadly whisper.

“Sorry, Mum, but see, we had to—”

All three of Mrs. Weasley’s children towered over her, yet simultaneously, they cowered as her rage befell them.

“Beds empty! No note! Car gone — could have crashed — out of my mind with worry — did you care? — never, as long as I’ve lived — you wait until your father gets home, we never had trouble like this from Bill or Charlie or Percy —”

“Perfect Percy,” muttered Fred bitterly.

“YOU COULD DO WITH TAKING A LEAF OUT OF PERCY’S BOOK!” yelled Mrs. Weasley, prodding a finger in Fred’s chest as her voice rose an octave higher. At that, even you flinched, taken aback. “You could have died, you could have been seen, you could have lost your father his job —”

“They were starving him, Mum!” You were unsure how you felt about your friend speaking up. But you were all for liberation, so, nonetheless of your conflict, you internally cheered him on. “They put bars on his window!”

“Well, you best hope I don’t put bars on your window, Ronald Weasley.”

You loved Molly, you really did. But she had the ill temper of a mad dragon, burning fierce and easily triggered. You consider yourself lucky to be receiving special treatment from the woman — saving you the need to fear being on the wrong end of her fury.

It seemed to go on for hours. You had attempted to ease the boys of her full attention a good few times, although Mrs. Weasley had no intention of cutting her lecture short, shouting herself hoarse before she turned on the pair of you.

While Harry backed away on impulse, Bowie returned to the comforts of your pocket. Godric knows how greatly he fears the woman.

“Oh, darlings!” she beams, her deep frown fixing into a welcoming grin, “How wonderful it is to see you both! Come in and have some breakfast!”

You needn’t hear any further invitation before joining the family for a meal.

Long story short, life at The Burrow had been all but ordinary. Every day, you woke to the sound of small explosions from Fred and George’s room — having to comfort Bowie each waking moment —, and every night, you were kept up by the incessant racket of the ghoul in the attic. The howling creature was a pitiful thing. But your patience could only take so much, wearing thinner every time it had interrupted you and Bowie’s beauty sleep.

With summer coming to an end, it wasn’t long before you heard from Hogwarts again. It had been a sunny morning about a week after you had been welcomed into the Weasley residence. You were at the kitchen table, seated by Ginny Weasley (she always looked forward to your company, eagerly offering to trade all her brothers to gain you as a sister) when you heard the boys thundering down for breakfast.

You feigned ignorance as the younger girl stiffened up beside you, taken by amusement with how she fawned over Harry and the oh-so-holy grounds he walked on. You saw her pupils dilate into cartoon hearts, you swore. And as one would in a cartoon, her admiration blinded her from all else — including her bowl of porridge, until she knocked it to the ground with a loud clatter.

You sent Bowie a silencing look as he chittered merrily, poking fun at the mortified Ginny whose face glowed like the setting sun. Meanwhile, Harry, pretending he hadn’t noticed such interactions, sat down and took the toast Mrs Weasley had offered him.

“Letters from school,” uttered Mr Wesley, passing you identical envelopes of yellow parchment, addressed in green ink. “Dumbledore already knows you’re here, [Y/N], Harry — doesn’t miss a trick, that man. You’ve got them too,” he added as the twins ambled in, their hair askew, still in their pajamas.

For a few minutes, there was silence as you all read your letters. It was the usual, come to King’s Cross on September the first, the need for school supplies, and finally, there was a list of the new books you would need for the coming year.

‘Second-year students will require:

The Standard Book of Spells, Grade 2 by Miranda Goshawk

Break with a Banshee by Gilderoy Lockhart

Gadding with Ghouls by Gilderoy Lockhart

Holidays with Hags by Gilderoy Lockhart

Travels with Trolls by Gilderoy Lockhart

Voyages with Vampires by Gilderoy Lockhart

Wanderings with Werewolves by Gilderoy Lockhart

Year with the Yeti by Gilderoy Lockhart’

It was ghastly.

The man was one your father had spoken endlessly about, and not in the best sense. Upon every glimpse of his books the pair of you had encountered, his jaw would tick and he would give a subtle eye roll — one only you were trained well enough to see. He would go on about how Lockhart had gone to school with him, and how the Ravenclaw was most undeserving of his affiliations with the good house and his recent fame.

He was a freeloader, a credit-grabber. He would ask Remus to tutor him, and idiotically enough, he was able to provide the younger boy with the answers to his assignments, and all he would do was rephrase and reconstruct the wording. It was quite brilliant, yes, but it irked Remus to this day.

With that in mind, you couldn’t contain the grimace at the sight of that list. There was no way you would support his career by purchasing his books. No way in the seven bloody rings of hell.

Bowie, sensing your displeasure, was quick to attack the ink along the parchment, crossing every trace of Gilderoy’s name until it was but messy scrawls along ruined parchment. He made sure to keep the rest of it intact, however, that thoughtful beanpole.

Meanwhile, Fred, who took quite longer to finish reading his list, went to peer over at yours, eyes widening as he caught sight of the shredded patches. He instead turns to Harry’s. “You’ve been told to get all Lockhart’s books, too!” he said. “The new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher must be a fan – bet it’s a witch.”

At this point, Fred caught his mother’s eye and quickly busied himself with the marmalade.

“Or perhaps a fool. . .” you lowly muttered to yourself, wincing as you caught sight of Mrs Weasley’s tattered book displayed on one of the countertops. You’d momentarily forgotten you were in the company of a die-hard fan. And a fierce one, at that.

“That lot won’t come cheap,” said George, with a quick look at his parents. “Lockhart’s books are really expensive. . .”

“Well, we’ll manage,” said Mrs Weasley, but she looked worried. “I expect we’ll be able to pick up a lot of Ginny’s things secondhand.”

Just then, Percy walked back in. He was already dressed, his Hogwarts prefect badge pinned to his knitted top.

“Morning, all,” said Percy briskly. “Lovely day.”

It was a wonder how he got up and ready for the day so early in the morning. You may have awoken earlier than him, but you were by no means ready to start the day. Your hair was quite a mess, and you were still in your knitted sweater and comfy pajamas. Most often, you would be able to start your day early. But today was not one of those days. Rather, any day at The Burrow was not one of those days.

He sat down in the only remaining chair but lept up again almost immediately, pulling from underneath him a molting, grey feather duster – at least, that was what the pair of you (Bowie and yourself. . . plus Harry) thought it was until you saw that it was breathing.

“Errol!” said Ron, taking the limp owl from Percy and extracting a letter from under its wing. “Finally – he’s got Hermione’s answer. I wrote to her saying we were going to try and rescue you from the Dursleys.”

He carried Errol to a perch by the back door and tried to stand him on it, but Errol flopped straight off again so you cringed as the thud echoed loudly in the silence, and despite Bowie’s defiance, you went to pick the poor creature up and balance it on its two left feet. The bloody creature had no sense of balance left — well, if it had any to begin with. Laying him on the draining board, you overheard Ron muttering, “Pathetic,” in much dismay.

Meanwhile, from over by the dining area, Harry admired your care for the rugged creature. He couldn’t contain the small smile that erupted his expression, admiring the gentleness of your gaze despite telling the poor creature off.

Whilst he paid attention to you, Ron made haste, ripping open Hermione’s letter, its contents spilling out, and read her long-awaited message aloud:

Dear Ron, [Y/N], and Harry if you’re there,

I hope everything went all right and that Harry is OK and that you both didn’t do anything illegal to get him out, [Y/N], Ron, because that would get Harry into trouble, too. You both know how often [Y/N] gets injured, especially on the ventures that lack my assistance.

The majority, if not all your days as a first-year (that was an exaggeration, but it certainly felt like it) were spent wallowing (healing) on the second bed of the dull, cramped, sullen hospital wing. (Okay, that was yet again an exaggeration. It was clean and spacious enough, and well-kept, and Madam Pomfrey ensured it to remain as such. But by Godric’s beard, did it get tiring — its four walls became your home at some point or another. But at least, the madam was a good gossip, keeping you entertained during your stays.)

There was that one time a troll had knocked you against the bathroom wall, that “so-so” injury you sustained during that one quidditch match (“A broken arm is by no means mediocre, Ms. Black-Lupin!” you could hear Minnie’s yells echoing from a distant memory), those boils you’d gained from that one Potions class, that one encounter with Lord Volde— You cringed at the growing list.

Nonetheless, I’ve been really worried, and if Harry is all right, will you please let me know at once, but perhaps it would be better if you used a different owl, might I suggest Hermes, or perhaps Hedwig, because I think another delivery might finish this one off.

I’m very busy with schoolwork, of course – “How can she be?” said Ron in horror. “We’re on holiday!” – and we’re going to London next Wednesday to buy my new books. Why don’t we meet in Diagon Alley?

Let me know what’s happening as soon as you can, love from Hermione.

“Well, that fits in nicely, we can go and get all your things then, too,” said Mrs Weasley, starting to clear the table. “What’re you all up to today?”

Mrs Weasley woke the lot of you bright and early the following Wednesday. After a quick half-a-dozen eggs and bacon sandwich, you pulled on your coats and Molly took a flowerpot off the kitchen mantelpiece and peered inside.

“We’re running low, Arthur,” she sighed. “We’ll have to buy some more today. . . ah, well, guests first! After you, [Y/N], dear! Your father must be expecting you.”

And indeed he was. The pair of you had been exchanging letters almost daily throughout your stay at the Weasleys and agreed to meet at the Leaky Cauldron before heading off to buy your supplies. While some notes exchanged your plans for today’s awaited reunion, others contained sweet nothings and greetings, and others bore more pressing matters, such as your father’s well-being after the previous full moon.

Poor Moony had to deal with its aftermaths on his own this time around. . . You could only hope that your friends (the little critters that resided in the forest and those that took permanent residence in your room) were enough company to bring him some semblance of comfort while you and Bowie were away.

“I’ll meet you lot at Flourish and Blotts, yeah?” you turned to your friends for a moment, ignoring the puzzled gaze of Harry as Mrs Weasley offered you the flowerpot. You only smiled as he blinked in confusion, taking a pinch of glittering powder from the clay pot, stepping up to the fire, and casting the powder into the flames. You only faintly heard him ask about the wonders of the Floo network when a large emerald flame swallowed you whole upon exclaiming, “Diagon Alley!” and vanishing.

Remus had been looking forward to this day from the moment he waved you goodbye. It had been a quiet two weeks without your company, and he knew that it would be an even lengthier rest of the year with you off at Hogwarts.

There was something in his gut telling him that this year would be much unlike the last. Not in the sense that he would never see you again, but that. . . his yearning for you, his only daughter, would be strengthened twice fold. That something peculiar, even beyond Lord Voldemort’s reappearance the previous year, would occur.

Thus, he wished to make the most of the little time you had left before the school year began and planned to make it as memorable — if not more — than the last.

If only your (other) father were here to help him with that. After all, despite everything that went wrong, it was undeniable that Sirius Black loved his daughter endlessly. Once, the man compared it (his love) to the galaxy. Infinite and unmistakably immense. Neverending.

Your father always said he “loved you all the way from the moon, and to Saturn.” Always, he would say he loved you even more than that, but, like Saturn’s rings, his love for you orbited his entire world. It was his entire world.

But then again, if that truly was the case, why did he leave? Why did he betray their friends? Although, Remus always made sure to leave that bit out of your bedtime tales.

Every night, as you grew up, unlike most parents who read their kids fairy tales and books, he would recount the stories that consumed his youth. He would recall his days at Hogwarts, the escapades that filled the four marauders’ nights, and the laughter that filled their halls by day.

As much as he despised the love of his life for betraying you both as he did, for depriving your childhood of any sense of normalcy, he couldn’t bear to tell you such a thing. That your father, who claimed to love you so, had left you behind to serve the dark lord. That in his madness, he got himself sentenced to life in Azkaban, never to be seen again. Or so he could only hope.

His secrecy did little to shield you from the rest of the world, however. It was inevitable that you learn of what happened (or what was said to have happened), just as it was inevitable to recognize the fear, pity, and distaste in some passerby’s eyes. But you were strong. You did not let that deter you, if not for your own sake, then for your father’s, who worked tirelessly to provide for you both.

Remus, righteous as he was, was always too ashamed to take anything from the Black family vault, nor from Sirius’s own savings (which contained more than enough, mind you). Although, he did allow himself to use some of the latter to send you to school. He at least owed you that.

The rest, however, and all that you both spent as you walked the cobblestone path of Diagon Alley, he took from his own pocket. He enjoyed spending — so long as it meant seeing those light blue streaks highlight your head of hair.

He grinned as you shared a cup of butterbeer brittles from Florean Fortescue’s Ice Cream Parlour, (though, thanks to his familiarity with the owner, received it with a discount), sniggered as you nearly tripped, having stepped on a cracked stone, and hid a scowl as you joyously greeted one of the subjects of a pile of your letters home from the previous year.

Cedric Diggory knew not what he did to receive a strained handshake from your father, but he shook it off with a nervous smile as you waved him goodbye.

Striding down the rest of Diagonal Alley with an occasional smile, wink, and wave (you were quite popular amongst your peers, you learned the previous year), you caught a glimpse of a shop or two that caught your fancy. There was Ollivander’s Wand Shop, where you’d received your wand (the old man noted it a peculiarity, albeit you hadn’t a clue why), then there was Quality Quidditch Supplies, where you made your rounds, though exited with nothing.

Finally, you reached Flourish and Blotts, where you were immediately tackled into a hug.

Hermione Granger, hair bushy as ever, had weaved through the crowd to greet you after a summer away from one another. You missed each other greatly, yes, but you seem to have underestimated just how much.

“Oh, [Y/N], how I missed you!” Exhibit A.

“‘Mione, oh, love of my life! You haven’t a clue how I missed you! In fact, the parchments of my notebook are drowning in inked sonnets of just how much!” Exhibit B.

“You’re exaggerating,” she hid a grin behind a shake of her head.

“Oh, but I’m really not,” you blinked innocently in reply. Indeed, you really weren’t.

In your trunk was a notebook filled with little things you had noticed about your best friend — how her eyes set alight when she reached certain parts of her books, how she straightened in her seat and furrowed her brows upon a particularly page-turning plot twist. You noticed it all, and being the poet daughter of a Black and Remus Lupin, you turned these simple moments into words, etching them along the pages of your notebook, and on occasion, annotating them by particularly relevant lines of your books.

Truth be told, there was once a time you mistook your affections for her to be beyond platonic. You thought, at some point or another, that Hermione Granger would be the person you would love silently for the rest of your life. But of course, you were only twelve. What could you have known about love?

Not far later, you traded those faux butterflies with the realization and contentment of a sister. That was what you were to Hermione Granger, and what you learned, she truly was to you.

That didn’t stop you from admiring the beauty in her simplicity, however. Rather, you carried on, albeit, now also noticing the others that composed her background. You would smile wider upon Blaise and Theo’s bickering, giggle (though you despised the word) more heartily at the tickle of Bowie’s movements, and drown in grief, albeit momentarily, as professors spoke of your likeness to your fathers, once believing you to be out of earshot.

But that was nothing. You would shrug it off after a moment or two.

Like then, you went on with the remainder of the day. After a short reunion with your friends, Blaise and Theo, as well as a mini meet-and-greet with your father’s favorite schoolmate (he wished to strangle the man in his place), you ran into a bit of trouble with your not-so-distant relatives, the Malfoys.

Lucius was pretentious as ever, taunting Arthur Weasley and your father for their blood and financial status, while his spawn, Draco, was unbearable as the previous year. He, like his father, simply had to taunt Harry with every waking moment, and in doing so, only managed to piss off the rest of his company, and in particular, a temperamental metamorphmagus.

In later retellings and biographies of your life, some would state that it was accidental magic on your part that dropped a particularly heavy book atop Malfoy Senior’s head. Meanwhile, others would say you knew exactly what you were doing, and performed some degree of wandless magic or that you had simply thrown it with your fantastic, Quidditch Chaser aim.

You couldn’t be bothered to correct any of them.

It wasn’t long before dusk made its return, the sun slowly setting to signify the day’s end. Exchanging brief promises of “see you later”s and meetings at the train, you eventually parted ways, gripping your father’s hand as you headed in the direction you first came.

It wasn’t long before you disappeared into the crowd, leaving behind a proud set of twins, a starstruck Ginny, a content Ron and Hermione, and a wistful Harry.

The boy was smiling to himself again, staring at the grounds you once stood. It was a strange, dopey-looking smile that left Hermione amusedly rolling her eyes at her friend.

“A sickle for your thoughts?” she asked him, breaking him out of his [Y/N]-induced daze.

“What?” he could only stammer in response, blinking up at Hermione in confusion.

“I see the way you look at her, Harry,” Her tone was almost teasing as she smiled at him. “Don’t worry though. You have plenty of time to win her over.”

“I’m sure of it.”

He couldn’t be bothered to deny her insinuations. After all, it was useless to argue against Hermione — she wasn’t even wrong to begin with. She never was.

Harry took comfort in her words. She was right. He had more than enough time to win over your affections. It couldn’t be that difficult — if Cedric Diggory and Oliver Wood could do it within a year, why couldn’t he? And he had seven!

What could possibly prevent two best friends from becoming more than that?

Meanwhile, as night came upon London, a young boy of the name Edmund Pevensie, gazed out his windowsill in contemplation.

Earlier that day, he had overheard his parents speaking of sending him, alongside his four siblings to a family friend — some professor, if he remembers correctly. He recalls his mother fretting, expressing her worries about the four of them, when they heard a distant creek along the wood of the floor.

They retreated into their room, and somehow, Edmund couldn’t make out a sound.

The rest of the night, he was left to worry, silently and to himself, of whatever was to await them in the coming days.

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