#rails with pails

[kayforpay]

my first thought was 'accidental eggs Gamzee' when I saw your prompts thing.

Karkat is surprisingly territorial. Granted, Gamzee wasn't surprised when they were younger, before everything that happened in the game, but he was surprised now.

Karkat had, after all, been the one to suggest they start dating from the beginning. And Gamzee had sincerely tried to meet him there, despite how often he found himself wishing he could skip pretending to get to know him again and just lay on his chest. They had managed one human earth "month" of platonic dates, before Karkat had come to his hive in the middle of the night and asked if he could have a kiss.

Far be it from Gamzee to say no.

The next "month", after several more dates that felt like dates used to, Gamzee realized fully that Karkat wasn't actually as comfortable distancing himself as he acted. There were signs, like the fact that he still initiated most of their piles or anything, but this was definitely the clearest indication Gamzee got.

They were sitting outside, enjoying a lukewarm day, and Meulin came up to them. Gamzee liked her well enough, and since he had at least a rudimentary knowledge of Alternian Sign Language, she had been coming to meet him more often than not; seems her group was as yet unwilling to learn.

"Gamzee! Do you wanna get something to eat?"

Since he was at that moment laying his head on Karkat's back, he took a second to respond, speaking the words as he did for Karkat's benefit. "I'm busy right now. Can he join?"

Karkat frowned at the corner of Gamzee's eye, but stayed silent, only putting his hands on Gamzee's thighs where they sat around his own.

"I wanted to take you out. You can ditch him, right?" That same, casual Beforan energy. It was worst about any of the mutants; Sollux or Rufioh, messiahs forbid Tavros even. They had been raised to not just consider Karkat and Kankri as lesser, but to think they were almost non-entities. "You don't have a pale, do you?"

Non-entities in dating, especially. Even the ones who knew Kankri for a while seemed to act that way a lot of the time.

Gamzee's frown matched Karkat's, partially because he had copied it so much to try and get his way on Alternia. "I'm with him right now. Stop talkin' about Karkat like he's not even here. Don't wanna go out with you, anyways, Nep would--"

He didn't have a chance to finish speaking, because Karkat stood, and offered a hand to Gamzee. When he took it, Karkat started leading him off, back towards his hive, stomping every step of the way. Meulin looked upset, but Gamzee didn't really feel much sympathy for her, all things considered, and resolved to send her a text later, maybe.

As soon as the door slammed behind Gamzee and he was closed up in Karkat's hive, Karkat was on him, pressing his face to the side of Gamzee's throat and stuffing his hands under his shirt. He turned his head, pressed a kiss to the base of Karkat's horn, and got pulled into a kiss that was half teeth a moment later.

"Baby, are you made at me?" Gamzee mumbled, stroking his palms over Karkat's cheeks. "You don't gotta be gentle."

Karkat froze, and settled his palms on Gamzee's shoulders. "I'm not mad at you. I'm mad at her. And all the other fucking Beforans, for acting like that. She asked you out when I was sitting in your lap! On Alternia, I would be expected to gut her!" He shook with bottled-up anger, and Gamzee kissed his forehead.

"Yeah, but the others'd get upset." He purred, rubbing his nose against Karkat's own. "Does it help you're the only troll I ever want in my diamond?"

He opened his eyes to Karkat's own wide, pale red tears threatening to spill over the edges. "The only one?" His face was flushed, and the heat suffused Gamzee's hands.

"Course, sweet. Only one I've ever wanted, only one I'll ever want. You're my perfect pink."

Karkat wasn't rough, kissing him again. He pushed Gamzee's shirt up, and slid his tongue into Gamzee's mouth, but pulled away after only a second. "D'you wanna lay down?"

The pile they'd made at Karkat's hive was plush, constructed mostly of his sweaters and blankets with too many holes to keep using for anything else. Even though it was easy to get new things now, they were both partial to the well-loved feel of old things like this, so they had silently agreed to keep it that way. Besides, it meant Karkat wasn't going to be upset if Gamzee's face smeared onto the blankets.

He fell into it with Karkat on top of him, the concentrated weight and softness of his stomach pinning him down in a way that always made Gamzee melt, this time included. Karkat licked his ear while he moved to straddle Gamzee's waist, his bulge twisting against the front of his jeans already. It had been a long time, after all, since they had really had any reliable outlet for that, too.

Karkat pulled his shirt off, dropping it to be lost in the pile, and ran his hands down Gamzee's chest, leaving a trail of goosebumps from how warm he was. "You're so pretty, Gamzee. You have to look out, trolls are gonna want to be with you because of it." He said it matter-of-factly, and Gamzee felt his neck get hot about it.

"You're teasin' me, Karbaby." Not that he was complaining. "Are you jealous?"

He gasped when Karkat stuffed a hand down his pants, hot fingers pressing against the lips of his sheathe. Karkat slid off of him to push his pants down, rubbing his fingers over his sheathe until Gamzee's bulge slid out a few inches to wrap around them. Then, he was kissing Gamzee's stomach, his hips, and he turned his head to look at Gamzee directly when Gamzee sat up on his elbows.

"Yeah, I am. I'm jealous anyone else looks at you at all, Gamzee." He sounded so miserable, so sincere and honest and pathetic, that Gamzee couldn't help but believe him. "Does that make me a bad palemate?"

Gamzee's hand covered Karkat's horn, half holding on as his bulge finished sliding out. "Nah. I love you, diamonds. Nothin' you did could make you a bad palemate." He smiled, and Karkat dug his teeth into Gamzee's hip bone, growling.

"Lift your legs, Gamzee." His fingers were pressing at the edge of his nook, rubbing insistently, and pressed in as soon as Gamzee spread his legs. "I love you. I love you so much." He thrust his fingers slowly, pressing the pads of them against the ceiling of Gamzee's nook, and followed him when it inevitably made him squirm.

"Fuck, lemme uh, lemme touch you, Karkat." His voice was a whine, hips rolling slightly, but Karkat only sat up to kiss him, firmly, even though it made his reach more shallow. "Baby, please?"

His other hand planted in the middle of Gamzee's chest, pushing him down with just enough force to keep him still. "Let me, Gamzee. I'm.." He bit the inside of Gamzee's thigh, and started thrusting his fingers more quickly. "I just want to. Just wait."

The first time was quick; he ripped some of the blankets in his fists, and Karkat praised him like he had done something special by spilling all over himself. The second time took a while to build to, and Gamzee felt almost so oversensitive he needed to stop several times, whining until Karkat slipped his hand into Gamzee's hair and kissed his face, purring at him, saying we can stop, if you want to and making Gamzee beg for him to continue.

When he came the second time, tears streamed down his cheeks, and his bulge, completely ignored around Karkat's wrist, only gave a weak twitch before clamping itself down against Karkat's skin again. "So good, Gamzee. I don't want anyone else to see you like this. Okay? No one else, you're mine."

His eyes felt sticky with quick-drying tears, but he nodded, looked up. "Okay, yeah. Love you." He sat up as much as he could, and pulled Karkat into a kiss. While he struggled to match Karkat's intensity, Karkat unzipped his pants, and only broke away to push them down.

Gamzee's nook was puffy and a little sore, and it made him flinch when Karkat pulled his fingers out. His bulge was softer, but after the first twist it was a stretch, and Gamzee whined, wrapping his arms and legs around Karkat as tightly as he could without hurting him, which he only really knew from the grunt his palemate let out.

Karkat's hips moved in jerky, quick movements that made Gamzee's bulge rub against his soft belly, and twitched a little faster when Gamzee's grip moved to the soft folds on his ribs, pinching his grubscars slightly. He was getting tense, sharp knees pressing into Karkat's sides and his claws threatening to dig into his beloved's skin, but he couldn't stop himself.

He yelped when Karkat pinned his hands down, leaning over Gamzee completely, and he shuddered as the combination of the deeper thrust and the weight of him on top pushed him over the edge again. Gamzee sobbed as he came, his bulge writhing angrily, and Karkat murmured against his neck.

"So good, so pretty, I love you, Gamzee. I love you." He moved a little faster, grinding the base of his bulge into the sore rim of his nook.

Head tossed back, Gamzee gasped. "Fuck, somethin'-- I can't, I can't stop it, babe, baby, diamond, mothefuck--"

Something moved through his bulge, solid and from the inside, and he couldn't make a single sound as an egg rolled against his stomach, the strange pain-pleasure mix making his eyes roll and his nook clench around Karkat. He spilled, white-hot material flooding Gamzee and pushing a second and third egg out of his bulge, followed by watery spurts of material.

"Fuck." Karkat was out of breath, grinding still, and released Gamzee's hands to cup his face. "That's so... Can you do that again?"

Gamzee blinked slowly. "Dunno. Didn't know I could at all. Felt fuckin... Weird."

[beneathsilverstars]

wait i should post my isat troll quadrant ships over here. in honor of the holiday. okay so

first of all loopdile are rails with pails. isafrin are matesprits who pile (there should be a catchy name for that too bc it is NOT the same thing). isaloop aren’t flipping they’re just permanently one sided <3 and one sided <3<. sifloop Are flipping, at the speed of light. everyone is at least a little pale for siffrin but mirabelle is siffrin’s official moirail - it’s the only quadrant she likes, but even then they’re a little weird about it, plus siffrin is still piling everyone else, sometimes all at the same time. isadile are rather <3< ngl. ok i know i said isaloop don’t flip but they actually do flip ashen sometimes with siffrin mediating. or sifloop with isa mediating. or sometimes odile mediates for sifloop but she’s not even that good at it but they think she’s cute so they do get sufficiently distracted.

clauphie are hearts. kingphrasie are spades. odile and her ex were the kismesis of all time until they both made a couple really foolish risky choices that ended in the ex’s death and now odile’s reluctant to do serious long term spades with anyone. the uninformed hatequaintance would suggest that miraclaude be <3< but mirabelle hates claude so much and so platonically; sometimes loop mediates for mirabelle and claude but no one enjoys it. occasionally there's a little <3< isaclaude action, though. sometimes siffrin mediates for loop and the king so they don’t for real kill each other. siffrin’s actually a little bit pale for the king but that fact pisses literally everyone off so you’re not allowed to mention it.

[starsnores]

Power Struggle Condensce vs GHB is also actually based. GHB being a big dog on a short leash. Could Condy reasonably replace him? Not on short notice I imagine, and not without some kind of cult outcry. Very. The Evil Pope vs The King Queen. You just know religion vs empire loyalties go crazy. It’s a historical precedent. Trying to seem like they’re perfectly cooperative in public. Privately baring their teeth and quarreling (but over big important political stuff so it’s not rly pitch banter). Though I did throw my hat in the ring for ‘toxic moirails’ where they ‘are there for each other’ but it’s a thin veil for ‘keep your enemies closer’ (demanding truth and honesty from each other, seeing each other as eithers only Real Threat, intimacy as fine line easily crossed into violence).

Toxic moirails is a really fun concept. But yes i agree with all the stuff in the beginning. Political scheming and maneuvering for hundreds of sweeps. I think they'd be sick of each other lmao. Thats part of why in my prisoner au ghb grabbed up gamzee so quick to groom him for Clown Clergy Leadership.

[justfortrolls]

🎵for Anrifi?

Skyfalling - The Adjective x Sunrises x thesleepynomad

Anrifi has plenty of flings and situationships and one night stands. It would be easy to find some generic We Boning song for that (and I do have those if that is what you were looking for) but I wanted to actually think about what being in a Healthy Longterm Relationship with him is like.

So, assuming this person is okay with the fact that Anrifi doesn't really feel exactly what they are feeling as well as all his other habits, I think it could actually be pretty sweet.

Adventures, moments of peace, playful flirtation, loyalty, and deep admiration founded on respect and friendship.

POV: it's movie night and you caught him being a sap and y'all laugh about it or something I dunno have a fish.

[doe-eyeddreamgirl]

𝐀𝐋𝐑𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓, 𝐓𝐎𝐔𝐆𝐇 𝐆𝐔𝐘

Benjicot Blackwood x reader

Ben was known for his brutality, receiving the name Bloody Ben from his opponents, but in your hands, he turns to putty. 💌 Based on a tiktok I saw where Ben was shy in the books

Looking that good while swinging a sword is cruel.

It’s borderline criminal how his biceps flex when he lurches forward. The way his eyes glint when he sees the first drop of blood and the absolute beast he becomes when he strikes down on his opponent sends a shiver down your spine.

Lowly grunts fly from Benjicot’s mouth countering his rival’s loud groans. The sound of metal clashing vibrates through the open air, atmosphere. Despite the fighting happening at the moment, it is clear to see that Ben is the better fighter— his harsh blows and agility unmatched. One last exchange has Ben’s foot flying to the center of his competitors armored chest, sending him flopping backwards straight onto his ass.

Applauds were immediate from the small crowd that had formed around the sparring match.

Underneath the attention, Ben flushes, waving at those around him embarrassedly.

You grin, heart full as Ben stares at his feet, approaching the steps where you reside. Leaning against the railing, looking down at him, you can’t help the taunt that slides off your tongue, like poison disguised honey. “Good job, Benny.”

His doe eyes look up at from the steps, the sweetness of your voice easing the tremble in his bones from his post-fight high. Boys have had their jaws broken for using that nickname, but he would never do that to you. Not you. Never you.

When you say it, it makes his blood run hot underneath his skin. Just being in your presence is a thrill, ten times over when compared to fighting. Trying to respond, he clears his throat, hand clenching the handle of his sword as he tries to untangle his tongue and respond to you without making a proper fool of himself. “I— thank you, uh, my lady.”

Ben clamps his eyes shut in shame.

Hunming melodically, you take a peak at the swarms of people behind you, chatting idle. As most know, hesitation was not in your nature. Without a second thought, you snag an empty pail of water. Taking a step down to become eye level, you tilt your head innocently, shaking the bucket on your wrist. “Would you mind escorting me to the well? I’m supposed to fetch some water and I’d much prefer not to do it alone.”

“Oh,” he says, almost disappointed by your offer. At least he gets to hang out with you! he thinks. When you raise a calculated brow, your words dawn on him. “Ohh, of course, my lady,” he blushes, offering an arm.

Your hand grips the meat of his bicep as you saunter past his beaten opponents and warriors unto the path to the woods. The walk isn’t far, daylight guiding your way to the tree line rather than a lantern on your wrist.

Sneaking around with Benji was becoming commoner and commoner. His presence shifting from a want to a need.

As you grow older, the risk of you two being betrothed to another becomes slimmer, seeing as your parents had solidified their place in his court so any rumors that may circulate your virtue no longer mind you.

The silence is comfortable as the pair of you are overtaken by a forest of dark green. Branches snap underneath your feet. Ahead you see two noble women talking together, and walking your way. When they walk past you, they giggle.

One look at Ben and you can see his anticipation rising— his cheeks flushed red, finger rhythmically tapping against his steel chest, and the swift glimpses he takes at the side of your face.

“We’re not alone,” you snide. Benji’s eyebrows furrow and he shoots a look behind him. He opens his mouth to refute, but the words are swallowed by your tongue when you grip his chin and pull him closer.

No matter how hard he tries, he can’t restrain the whimper that shrivels up his throat. His hands fumble against your soft skin as your hands push his chest, his back slapping against the bark of a tree.

While your tongue fights for dominance, Benji’s fights to get the taste of you out of your own mouth.

There’s something so addictive about you that Ben doesn’t quite understand. He had felt this way his entire life yet he had only just began to have the grace of kissing you this year.

A stupid part of his thought it would dim this overwhelming feeling to be near you, sedate the heart which you had already stolen, but instead, it heightened it.

Courage, similar to the one he gets from alcohol— when he first was brave enough to kiss you — powers him to grip the curve of your waist and slam your body into his. Your moan encourages him to flip you, your back pressing into the tree.

His hand finds a way under your skirt and the pads of his fingers dig into your exposed thigh, pulling it to meet with his hip bone. He doesn’t want any space between you. He wants you two to be one. Forever intertwined. He really needed to propose your betrothal.

He smells like moon water, blood, and sweat. It only makes you tug his hair harder.

Not far from you, a throat clears.

As your heart momentarily stops, Benji’s lips are separated from yours in an instant.

A boy not much younger than you, awkwardly stands, his cheeks pink with embarrassment for coming across your endeavor.

Before you can blink and before the boy can even speak, Ben has the tip of his sword to his throat, the edge of the silver pressed onto his Adam’s apple. “Get the fuck out of here,” Benjicott sneers, “Or do I have to make you?”

Shaking with fear, the boy shakes his head, eyes wide like a deer and dashing like one when the sword is off his throat and seethed back into Ben’s holster.

Then, he turns to you, a cocky smile on his lips as his hands move to grip your hips. “Now, where were we?”

Giggling, your hand pushes his cheek away from your face, making him stumble in his footing. He pouts, watching as you step off the tree and pull a leaf from your skirt. You tilt your head at the leaf before giddily biting your lip and pulling Ben back in by the collar. His eyes light up, expecting another kiss, but when he closes his eyes, all he feels is your fingers filtering through his hair.

His eyes flutter open when you smack a wet kiss on his cheek. Ben watches you walk away, skirt swaying. Leaves crunch underneath you as you continue down the dirt path to the well, basket throttling in your arm as you disappear and reappear between trees. Dumbly, he touches the spot where you kissed him.

The tip of his finger catches a crunch by his ear. Swiftly, he grabs the object. The leaf looks small and withered in his palm. He can only imagine how much of an idiot he looked like with a brown leaf tucked in his hair— the same space where you usually bury his gifted flowers in your own hair.

“Come on, Benny!” you call out, your sultry eyes finding him from just a glance over your shoulder.

Ben is quick to follow because who is he to oppose you?

ima be honest, i don’t what the fuck this is. this shit is so bad

not edited or proofread ❌ lowkey i refuse to believe in Davos Blackwood so…

Had this in my drafts. Leave me alone if this makes you want to throw up.

[pedge-page]

Joel dealing with preggo wife where he excuses himself to go to Home Depot to get some paint and plaster (preggo you was begging him to rail her so hard in bed that he didn't realize they put a hole in the wall from the headboard slamming it so many times). And he's very surprised when you waddle over excitedly and volunteer to join him.

Which he takes skeptically only for moment. But then maybe the baby in your belly is starting to make you warm up to him, and you really just wanna spend some quality time eith your hubby because being around him makes you happy!

Very suspicious indeed, but your innocent beaming convinces him to go along with any wins.

As you two go towards the automatic door, you grab a shopping cart. Nothing he needs requires a cart, but maybe that's instinct with you and your grocery shopping. So the two of you hobble in, and you give return a warm smile and a head tilt to him.

He smirks. You're so adorable, all pregnant yet happy to walk around and probably learn some stuff about home improvement--

The moment you get into the main area, you immediately skirt the cart to the left and speedily walk away from Joel towards the plant section without another word.

He stops and opens his mouth to say something, but you're already weaving between the tall indoor trees and out of site. Instead, he just goes off to get his shit.

Less than 6 minutes later he's got his spackle and small pail. Doesn't take long to find you with a jungle filled cart as you analyze two plants that look exactly the same, weighing one and poking your finger in the dirt of the other. You continue around the pallet and shelves over and over again like a dog chasing her tail just looking at each individual plant.

It's fine, except that he's been waiting now forever as you keep filling the cart with clearance half dead plants that you insist on "saving".

"But Joel! We have to rescue them! And 3 for $10!!!!

It's the fucking Momma Bear instincts already taking over.

Then you walk away solemnly with your full cart, only to turn right back around once you get to the register because you couldn't leave the one poor guy you put back, and honestly why decide between two plants when you can just buy BOTH with your husband's card?

Now he avoids telling you when he's going to Home Depot because you've completely stuffed the house with plants and he can't take it anymore.

[tophat-69]

Vander and Silco - First Meeting

When I started writing for Arcane I wasn't sure if I wanted to write Jayce/Viktor or Vander/Silco first. I landed on Jayce/Viktor because the idea for "it's the good, defining itself" pretty much took over my life to the point that I was putting out a chapter a day for 22 days. But I backburnered a prequel fanfiction of Vander and Silco, to get back to later. I'm not quite ready to commit to it, but wanted to put out there what would be my first chapter. I'm hoping you enjoy it, because I'd like to revisit the idea and keep going someday. So, for now--enjoy Vander and Silco meeting for the first time in the mines, and the start of a partnership.

To be honest, on first impression Vander’s not actually all that impressed. 

“Hey-hey, slim! How was lockup this time?”

It’s midday at the mine, not that anyone would be able to tell if it weren’t for the whistles that echo down into the depths. The only lights in the drift tunnels come from their headlamps, and there’s a sort of liminality to that—it could be dawn or it could be midnight, and in the tunnels they would never know. All they can see is directly ahead of them, and everything else is shadow and rock, like blinders for the beasts of burden that they are. 

As the forward line, their crew is down deep enough now that stopping for meals is almost as miserable an affair as chipping their way through rocks, the kind of heat that makes the heavy protective gear suffocating, the kind of humidity that has Vander’s hair plastered to his neck and forehead beneath the hard hat, and his shirt melting into his skin under the leathers. 

“Still dank, dark, with terrible food and worse company. So, roughly the same as being down here with you lot.” There are a handful of hearty laughs at the dry sarcasm coming from within the echoing cavern, the kind of shared bleak humor that comes with working in the shittiest conditions known to man and, apparently, spending time in prison too. The voice continues with a sly undertone that lends itself well to the affected accent of the Promenade. “Still, food on the table and a roof over my head and topside footing the bill. I’m considering the merits of making it my summer home. ‘Stillwater Manor’ sounds very refined, don’t you think?”

As they stump into the echoing depleted cavern, tobacco smoke curls through the air, though smoking down in the mines is a dangerous game to the point that bringing a match or lighter down is highly regulated. Yet the thirty hewers of their shift fan out to sprawl onto the rough stone floors on either side of the cart rails, and all of the more experienced members of the crew seem to be taking this as expected and normal, throwing out greetings as they haul out their lunch pails and settle in.

Taking off their protective gear is more than just against regulations, it’s a stupid idea: yet there’s a helmet hanging from a rivet in one of the support ribs of the walls, head lamp pointed down to illuminate a book in the lap of a shadowed figure comfortably sprawled out lounging while the rest of them busted their asses. In the dark and with the light focused on the book in front of him, all Vander really gets is a glimpse of stick-thin legs resting on top of the thick leather uniform jacket as if it’s a cushion. 

Vander’s not even really a tight-ass about the regulations. Just someone who understands why these particular rules exist, and how dangerously stupid it is to ignore them.

So, overall--not the greatest of first impressions. 

“You ever consider not getting arrested, Silco? It’s getting to be a pain in the ass for the foreman to pull you out of there.” Cray may be their shift supervisor but down this far he’s just another one of them, putting his back into it to lead by example. Until Vander came along he was the biggest of the crew and did that just in productivity alone, and he’s a well-respected and liked man overall. But leading by example extends beyond hauling rocks and apparently means plunking himself down next to this ‘Silco’ and hooking his helmet off of the bolt, dropping it down onto his head and then thumping his loose fist on top of it. As Vander settles nearby, feet braced against the rail, he can hear Cray’s voice lower, his tone a warmly affectionate warning. “Keep your helmet on, kid. We had a rib pop about a month after you were pinched. Sully didn’t make it out.”

“When they’re given the choice between having me break rocks up there and break rocks down here, I always end up back in the mines. Congratulations, even Stillwater thinks this is a worse punishment than prison.” There are a few of the men who have clearly done time as well who raise their canteens in a toast to that, and the echoing clamor of ribald and lively conversations pick up, letting the newcomer drop his charismatic performance to respond to Cray. He sounds different without a crowd to perform to, and Vander has to strain to listen as he sits nearby and opens up his thermos of leftover stew. “I heard the news when I came in. He was a good man, it’s going to be hard to replace him. …Though I assume that’s why we have the eavesdropping newcomer.”

When the headlamp swings his way, Vander turns and squints against the glare of it being directly aimed at him until his eyes adjust to the light.

Vander’s second impression is an entirely different matter. 

For Vander’s first job, he had been a dockhand where the River Pilt met the Conqueror’s Sea, saltwater and freshwater slow to mingle in the estuary. The brackish waters were a pretty shade of blue-green under the too-bright sunlight, beautiful and troubled, river eternally forced to cede to the overpowering force of the ocean. 

Staring into brilliant, challenging eyes, Vander’s second impression is just ‘pretty.’ Which is probably stupid to think about a dirty little thing so grayed in coal dust that it looks like he’d rolled in it, no matter how striking his eyes are under direct lamplight. 

“Vander, Silco. Silco, Vander. He’s a cousin of mine, so maybe try to be nice to him?”

“Half of you up in the sumps are cousins and all the rest of you call each other siblings. I’m not going to ‘be nice’ to any of them until they prove they’ve earned it.”

It’s an interesting way to phrase things, almost like a slip of the tongue. There are damn few people in the world who would consider the Sumps to be ‘up’ from anywhere at all, even in the undercity. You’d have to be looking up from the bottom of the fissures or the mines themselves to see the world that way. That combined with the Proms accent doesn’t make sense, but Vander just files it away for now as he offers an amiable smile and an extended hand.

“Well, let’s just hope I can earn it, then. Pleasure to meet you, Silco.”

It’s hard not to feel like he’s being dissected when under the glaring bright light of Silco’s headlamp, sharp eyes assessing him. It certainly makes it easier for Vander to do the same without it being awkward, despite being the only thing the other can see clearly for that moment. 

‘Slim’ isn’t a surprising nickname—he’s built small and wiry, all limbs and no bulk to him. There’s a shrewd, wary intelligence in his eyes but one of them is bloodshot; beneath the coal dust Vander suspects he has a black eye and a gash on his cheekbone that he’s trying to conceal. Stillwater wasn’t the picnic that he wants to pretend it was, and the second he’s in direct light it’s obvious. Vander’s nineteen and he’d estimate Silco’s seventeen or eighteen, but he talks as if he’s been a part of this crew for years, he’s gone to Stillwater more than once in that time, and he is perhaps overly comfortable in the mines. 

And he’s a snarky shit who doesn’t even pretend like he’s going to shake Vander’s hand. 

Instead bandaged fingers bring his cigarette back up to his lips as he drags in one last deep pull before stubbing it out on the toe of his boot and pushing himself to his feet, Vander’s outstretched hand completely ignored.  

“Charmed.” His voice is dry, sarcastic, and then he’s back to the show of it all again so others can hear. Illuminated from below by Vander and Cray, they watch as he tucks the book into the small of his back to be held in place by a cinched in belt, then tugs on a uniform jacket. “New rule number one of these mines, Vander. If you see your blaster run, you get the hell out and if I tell you to stand clear you stay the hell out. Cray, I’ll be at the third inbye. You haven’t done anything with it since I’ve been gone.”

“We hit solid on that one about three weeks after you were picked up, slim. I could have asked for another blaster since mine decided to spit in an Enforcer’s face, but then I’d have a harder time convincing them we needed you bailed out.”

Standoffish towards newcomers or not, it’s clear that Silco’s deeply embedded in the crew and they’re looking out for their own. Mining communities are tight-knit like that, and they may squabble among themselves but they’re viciously protective of each other among outsiders. It’s one of their best qualities, and has carried over into the culture of the Sumps. The Enforcers picked up the youngest member of the forward line, and they raised enough hell to get him back out a little early by grinding their operations to a crawl. 

“I’d thank you, but now they’re making me work off that bail so I’m doing this for half my take for about as long as I’d have been behind bars. Which as far as I’m concerned means I’m not being paid to be nice to any of you.” Cray grimaces, but Silco’s wry, slanted smirk doesn’t slip as he shoves his tied-back hair up into his helmet and grabs up a leather toolbag. Wedging a rod through the strap, lighting a safety lamp, and tucking a stub of chalk behind his ear, he then waves a hand lazily as he lopes into the dark. “Tell Myra not to wait the cart on me at shift’s end. I need a chance to get some prospecting done while you’re all out of my way. Draw straws for who’s going to butty me, because I’m blowing something up tomorrow one way or another. ”

“Try not to make it one of us!” One of the miners pipes in, and Silco huffs his amusement as others laugh, but he’s disappeared into the dark, just a narrow silhouette and an uneven bob of a light as he heads to the tunnels, voice echoing back to them.

“Half pay, so I only half promise.”

Vander frowns after him, and based on tone he’s fairly sure Cray is doing the same. “Don’t mind Silco. He takes a while to warm up to people…”

“Your blaster is limping and beat to hell from being in prison. He’s going to get himself killed.”

“The limp isn’t from Stillwater, it’s why he got himself picked up in the first place.” Cray passes over a hunk of bread for Vander in exchange for a portion of the stew, and together they eat side by side. Vander doesn’t have to ask him to explain, his silence says enough. “We had a shitty roof bolter, it’s why the rib popped on Sully too. Too much strain on a pillar ended up with a rockburst. Snapped Silco’s leg like a twig, and it’s only because he’s a fast little bastard that his leg wasn’t just crushed and him along with it. He went from the medical tent straight up to the first Enforcer he saw, picked a fight and let them think they fucked up his leg. So, Stillwater foots the medical bills and gives him three hots and a cot while he can’t work to feed himself or keep a roof over his head anyway. He’s done it before, and him being a kid usually lands him a short stint, too. We’d have left him in for another couple of months to finish healing up...”

But they were threatening to replace him. So Silco is back with a half-healed leg in a job that requires him to be fast on his feet or be caught in his own blasts, doing overnight deadwork that isn’t even going to get him paid, and still dryly quipping with the people who screwed up his plans to let himself heal. 

He’s also not really a kid anymore, so the trick with the Enforcers isn’t going to get him leniency in sentencing for much longer if he goes and gets himself injured again. And it’s clear he’s not exactly making himself friends in prison, either.

“Don’t draw straws.” 

Silco needs a partner, but whoever is stuck with him loses the chance for production bonuses while they’re paired up, and risks being blown up alongside him. Vander has a roof over his head, can get by on the daily wage. Plus he’s pretty sure he could throw the cantankerous little shit over his shoulder and book it faster than Silco can run right now. 

Cray’s scrutinizing him, light bright on Vander’s face again, but he just dunks stale bread into three day old stew and continues eating. 

“…Well, guess we’d better get you the gauntlets, then.”

[unmeisenpai]

Ok… sooo… I know I’ve been gone for a while but I missed you guys so much and I have been slapped with inspiration.

I need yall to know this is a dark Alcina x OC fic here are the warnings:

❌❌❌ 18+only❌❌❌ praise kink, marking, possessive behavior, physical violence, CNC(IYKYK) Omega vers. I can’t explain this enough this fic is dark and dirty please don’t read it if it’s too much.

As usual feedback is welcome, and let me know if y’all want more.

A Monsters Grace

Chapter 1: The Introduction

‘Speaking truthfully, I’m not sure why we keep fighting, you just go blame the bad timing.’

‘Admit it to me.’

‘Speaking Truthfully, I love you more then you love me.’

The song blasts through your headphones, as you ride down the hill to your house.

Your boss Alexander had let you out of the cafe early this evening at 4:15 pm, you thought it was because it had been annoying slow for a Sunday, but you couldn’t stop feeling odd due to the way your boss of 5 years had been looking at you and mimicked the behavior of a best friend when they can’t, but want to tell you something important.

You tried not to think about it as you went, skidding around the corner to the golden brick house at the end of Storm Trail Drive but just as the house comes into focus, you noticed a strangely huge black truck parked directly behind your mom, Sera’s dark blue Chrysler 300.

You’d never seen a truck of that size in your life, and as you slowed your bike to a stop in the driveway, only a few feet from the intimidating vehicle, you could see the license plate.

‘DIMITRISCU’

In thick black letters, the words seemed too big compared to the size of the plate, and you could see a woman in the driver’s seat with thick black sunglasses who glanced at you for only a moment, before she looked ahead again like you weren’t there, she looked almost like a CIA or FBI agent.

You dropped your bike afraid of what was going on, you and your mother had lived in this house alone for years, after your father passed, only a few months before your birth.

Company was scarce, because you both enjoyed each other’s company, and your mother told you many times that your father was the only one she loved, and that was ok with her.

So to see this, was too much.

You rushed to put your key in the lock, almost dropping your keys in the process. Finally getting the door open you immediately shouted into the seemingly empty space.

“Mom!?”

No answer as you rushed to the kitchen/living room, feeling panicked as you rounded the corner.

You stopped immediately in your stride, a woman, a very tall woman with eyes as gold as the sun, sat at your kitchen table. A hot cup of tea in her hand, that she was about to sip from before you had bolted in. The small chair looking odd beneath her, as you scanned her oddly elegant face and black suit.

Her face pail and almost perfect, you couldn’t help but blush when she looked you up and down, before taking a sip of her tea.

“Destiny?” Your mom spoke softly a surprised look on her face, as she put the tea kettle back down on the stove.

“Your home early.” She spoke quickly coming up to you and blocking your view of the stranger in your home.

You looked past her at the tall woman, your words unpleasant and cutting. “Who the hell are you?”

Your mother quickly wrapped her arm around you turning you around entirely, even as you looked back at the woman who now stood and smirked in your direction. Her height becoming completely realized as her head came close to the ceiling.

“Destiny I need you to go to your room for me ok sweetie?” She spoke in a rush as she practically dragged you up the first few steps.

“Mom who is that, what’s going on are you ok?” You had a million questions including why she didn’t want you there.

“I’m fine dear but..” she looked over the railing, then back at you. “I can’t explain right now ok but I promise I’ll explain soon enough, I swear.”

You felt even more panic rise in your throat at those words, and how your mother looked into your eyes. You never knew her to be a nervous woman she was your rock always had been, she even taught you how to box to an almost professional level in order to keep you safe.

But she held you tightly and gave you a reassuring smile.

So you nodded and headed up the steps to your room.

You don’t know how long you waited and paced about your room, trying to find your brass knuckles if you needed them, but to no avail.

Looking up at your clock you saw it had only been 45 minutes. No yelling or crashing sounds but you still felt uneasy.

‘Knock, knock’

You all but ran to your door at the sound, and reached for the knob, but it began to twist on its own and in stepped her.

Her eyes boring into your very soul as she walked towards you, instinctively you backed up until the back of your legs hit your bed and your were forced to sit.

You had to practically put your head back entirely in order to keep your eyes locked on the tall woman’s face.

She reached forward to touch you, so you quickly tried to swat her hand away with your right, only for her left hand to immediately seize it and squeeze it painfully. You tried to get away but her free hand was already around your neck, yanking you up towards her just as your mother’s voice calls out to the older woman.

“Miss Demitrescu!”

The iron grip on you was released and you ran past the strange woman towards your mother, standing behind her frightened.

“You will not touch her now that was the agreement.”

You shot a look at your mother who stood her ground, and held her arm out in front of you to keep you shielded.

“Mom, what?”

Your mother glanced at you apologetically, for a moment before addressing the tall stranger again.

“Do you hear me Alcina?”

This beautiful but scary woman ‘Alcina’ looked at you then your mother her face softened, and a sadistic smile graced her crimson lips as she tilted her head and put her hands in her pockets.

“Make sure she’s ready in an hour, no later, my people will gather the rest of her things in the morning.”

Her deep voice mixed with an odd accent that you couldn’t place was as intoxicating as it was cold.

Without another word she walked passed you and your mother, and down the steps.

“Mom, what the hell was that? What did she mean be ready in an hour!?” You shouted as your mother pulled you into the room closing the door, and sat you down on the bed next to her.

Her face was filled with pain, and what looked like regret as she spoke to you. Her eyes began watering with each word.

“Destiny I need you to listen to me ok? I’m truly sorry but we don’t have much time.”

She squeezed your hands as she spoke trying not to let her tears fall.

“I can’t believe this day has come so fast, and I wish it didn’t have to be this way but I…” She took a deep breath.

“Destiny, before you were born, your father and I got sick at the same time. I was pregnant with you at the time and your father passed before me. I was terrified that I would die or lose you, and with your father gone I had no way of paying for the house or the medical needed to save us both.”

Another deep breath as Sera wiped away her tears.

“I had been working for Miss Demitrescu for about two years, cleaning her offices, she found me crying one day when I broke down. I told her about my illness and your father, and how I couldn’t help you or him. She… she made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.”

Your body went stiff and your mind numb, as the next few words slipped out of your mother’s mouth.

“She offered to pay for everything this house my medical anything and everything I might need to help take care of you, and in exchange on your 25th birthday you would be her Omega.”

“It took me two days to think it over but my condition was getting worse, and I couldn’t wait any longer. So I signed a contract that made you legally hers.”

You couldn’t move, or think as you stood up looking at your mother with horror. This had to be some dream or nightmare, the day did seem to good to be true this must mean you’re asleep. Perhaps you blacked out at work this morning and now you’re sleeping.

“No.” You said coldly shaking your head.

“How.. how could.. you.. sold me?”

“You sold me!” You said turning to leave, as a million thoughts flooded your mind. Your mom took your wrist before you could get to far and she pulled you into her embrace.

“Destiny I’m so sorry I hope you can forgive me, I just couldn’t lose you I already lost so much.”

“Mom, please don’t make me go with her please I don’t want to!”

Sera looked down her eyes puffy and red as she kissed your cheeks, whispering apologies.

“I’m so sorry baby, I got 25 beautiful years with my sweet baby girl, and I wish I had made a better decision but there were no options back then.”

All you could do was cry as your mother explained why she didn’t try to send you away when you were born, how Alcina would have people watching the house and most importantly you.

As your mother began to pack a bag for you, while you sat on the bed still crying and sniffling. The door opened and Alcina stepped in and immediately grabbed your wrist, lifting you from the bed with force.

“Let me go!” You shouted as you tried to pull away, but Alcina only squeezed you tighter, sending a shooting pain up your arm.

“You’re hurting me, stop it.”

Your mother ran towards the two of you but a tall woman,(nowhere near as tall as Alcina but close) probably the one who was waiting in the car. Stepped between the three of you, stopping your mother from helping you.

“I’ve waited long enough, she’s coming with me now.”

She headed for the door without another word to your mother, and practically dragged you down the steps. Your mother continued to shout for her to let you go but Alcina acted as if she didn’t hear her.

You continued to struggle against her iron grip to no avail so you decided to try and punch her.

Big mistake, as soon as your fist made contact with her shoulder she whipped around and pushed you up against the rear car door pining both your wrists behind you.

“Keep fighting me Destiny, and I will break your arm.”

Her tone was as cold as ice and her grip on you made you realize she wasn’t bluffing.

Crying in pain as she twisted your arm further back.

“Ok! Please stop I won’t fight! Ahh please you’re hurting me!”

Alcina chuckles as she whispers;

“So cute when you beg little Raven.”

She finished those words with a lick to the right side of your neck, making you shiver.

“I’m going to let you go, so be a good girl and get in the car, if you try to run I’ll catch you and make you regret it.”

You began to cry as you nodded and she let go of your wrists.

She opened the car door for you and you stepped inside, just then the driver door opened the woman who stopped your mother got in and started the truck.

Alcina got in after you and immediately crowded your space burring her nose deep in your right shoulder, breathing you in.

“Finally… you’re all mine.”

She snapped her fingers and the woman who was now driving, pushed a button that closed a wall between the front seats and the back.

She pushed you down on the leather seats and began kissing you, you did your best to push her away but it was no use she was much bigger and stronger then you but you refused to give in so easily.

“Let me go! Get off me, stop it!”

Alcina could only chuckle at your words, as her grip on your wrists grew tighter.

“What did I say earlier?”

She squeezed your wrist so tight you thought it really would break, and you screamed in pain.

“Please stop, please you’re hurting me, why are you doing this?

What do you want from me?”

You started to sob as she licked away your tears, her hand resting gently on your cheek.

“Darling it’s ok, I won’t hurt you if you do as your told, now be still and take whatever I give you.”

She leaned in again and kissed you gently this time, her tongue playing around in your mouth as she moaned in ecstasy at your flavor.

“So delicious.” She said pulling away when you started to choke.

“You were truly worth the 25 year wait my darling.”

Ripping your black work button up down the middle to get better access, the buttons flying everywhere and all you could do was lay there and moan as she roamed your upper body with her tongue, kissing, licking, sucking and biting you anywhere she wished, worshiping until you were covered in her deep red lipstick and small black bruises. Your mouth was also smeared with it, a blush painted across your brass cheeks.

“Now that wasn’t so bad was it?” Alcina smiled down at you as you cried and tried to cover yourself, she simply took your hands and pulled you into her lap with your back to her front, her long black hair tickling your neck.

“Please… Miss Demitrescu, please let me go, I just…I just want to go home.”

You couldn’t help but cry more, as you struggled to remove your wrists from her grip.

Alcina kissed your right shoulder that was bitten and purple, then slid her free hand under your thigh, massaging the tender flesh and making your body shiver.

“Please darling there is no need for such formality, you are mine now so you may call me Alcina.”

You turned your gaze up towards her your eyes pleading with her, but all she did was smile down at you and kiss your for head.

Her gentle behavior was strange but not unwelcome, and you couldn’t help but lean more into her hold.

“Don’t fret my little raven, I shall make you understand that being mine is a good thing. You will want for nothing, you may eat anything you wish and you shall have a wardrobe that will make queens envy you.”

As she spoke she removed your underwear, leaving your skirt on and playing with your now exposed cunt.

“Well well, it looks like you did enjoy my touch. You’re dripping wet my sweet little raven, would you like me to make you feel good hmm?”

You tried to close your legs but she used her knees to keep them apart, as she continued to play with your dripping cunt.

Your legs shake as she rubs tight circles on your bundle of nerves, right before she added a finger.

“No!! Wait!!”

You began to fight her again regardless of the threat she made to break your arm but she didn’t snap your wrists like a twig, instead she let go of your wrists and used her now free hand to play

with you even more.

Digging her sharp nails into the soft flesh under your thighs and drawing blood, causing you to cry out in a mix of pain, pleasure and confusion.

“Please Alcina.” You said in a whisper, as the older woman sucked on your right shoulder.

“Well now, you finally said my name.” Alcina chuckled as you whimper, and kissed you once more, slowly this time sensually like she wanted you to enjoy it.

Her hands let go of your thighs to fondle your nipples, gently scraping the sensitive flesh with the tip of her sharp nails.

“Ahhh! Please I can’t… I ahhh! Don’t understand.”

“It’s ok my dear just enjoy it.”

Alcina slid her hand back between your legs and began to pump her fingers in and out of you gently, curling her fingers upward hitting your g-spot.

“Ahhhh!” You cried out your whole body feeling like fire crackers were exploding all over your sweaty body.

“No! Alcina… please wait it’s… ahhh too much, too much.”

You tried to fight off her hands but nothing worked as she bit down on the right side of your neck, breaking the skin.

You had never screamed so loud; you came undone on her hand, and as she made you ride out your high she marked you keeping her teeth buried deep in your scent gland.

The world around you became a blur, as you went slack against Alcina’s ample chest.

She kissed your forehead then your lips soothing you to relax against her, as she whispered sweet nothings into your ear and cleaned your now bloody shoulder.

“You did so well for me cel mic, I’m so proud of you.”

A kiss to your lips.

“I knew you would be perfect for me.”

A kiss to your temple.

“My sweet precious little raven.”

A kiss to the bandage on your sore bruised neck.

“Now rest draga mea, I promise to be here when you wake.”

You were too blissed out and scared to argue with her as you rested your head on her chest.

She continued to kiss you as your eyes became heavy and you found yourself leaning into them.

Part of you wanted her kiss and her touch but you knew it was wrong and twisted.

“Alcina… why did… you want…

Me?”

That’s all you remember saying before slipping into an inky blackness.

Look at that you made it to the end… you nasty (I love it) lmk what you thought cutie 🥰

[slowd1ving]

✦ IV. WEEP FOR HIM, I BID OF THEE

'Ratio had not been man for a millennium. He had not heard, not seen, not felt, not tasted, nor smelled, for a thousand years.  It began with a faint frequency that droned in the very recesses of the stone. A buzz, or a low hum, resonated as though he could hear the very orbitals of electrons whirring in each atom. At this point, the background levels of his simulations had ceased��for this was far more important.  For the first time in centuries, the sluggish pulse that still beat in his undead chest had quickened, just a little.' • . * cursed prince ratio + alchemist m reader rough design for minoan fashion ratio here warnings: video game violence, death? kind of? tyranny (are we surprised), male-coded reader (or at least the in-game avatar is) wc: 15.7k

LAMENT OF OUROBOROS MASTERLIST

HONKAI STAR RAIL MASTERLIST

MASTERLIST ・゜・NAVIGATION

On the first day came death, on the second a state of limbo, and on the third came rebirth—in the form of an idyllic meadow and the iron tang of blood far in the distance. Living was a constant skirmish; a fight amidst an amorphous crowd of not just humans, but against the nigh omnipotent tides of nature and its catastrophic ebb and flow. Every breath you took, every minute shiver of your body was all weighed against you: shivering in the frigid chill as you prayed to whatever higher existence there was that you’d live to struggle some more. 

Your limbo would not come just yet. 

Facing you was a man who teetered on the edge between cowardice and courage. Fear dulled his chromatic eyes, that seemed to only resign themselves to you leaving him far behind while you slipped out of his hold. It would’ve been easy. Wounds littered his arms into vices far too weak to anchor you in place, and the latent hum of the equation you’d failed to complete was still circulating throughout your body like a second respiratory system—endowing you with freakish strength. 

Behind you, past the worn bark of the tree that concaved into your flesh, was the behemoth occupying the river that had produced the clay that you’d filled your pail with: now knocked futilely to the ground, mauve seeping into the earth once more. You couldn’t see it, but you could hear the massive volume of water displaced with each shift of its swaying, powerful coils of steel-like muscle. A monstrous frequency tainted the otherwise clean air—piercing right past the inked dermis of your body and painfully twisting against your very veins. 

Any longer, and you feared both you and the stranger afore you wouldn’t live much longer. 

You considered him, trembling like a fragile leaf while trying desperately not to show it. Despite his acceptance of whatever fate allotted him, he clearly desired to live, whether he knew it or not.

Then, you studied the river. Not visually, but rather you tasted the faint salt on the air—wetting your lips slightly, feeling its sharp brine on the roof of your mouth and then the back of your tongue. The sea was just out to the west, and the river meandered into that: freshwater and seawater mingled in this area, enough to give your clay a slightly unfamiliar consistency. From what you saw, the river was wide; perfect for the foolhardy plan slowly taking root in your mind. 

In turn, the stranger studied you too; there was no matching panic in your own pupils, but a more analytical, dispassionate observation that put you into the shoes of a spectator rather than participator in this scenario. Like you didn’t belong there—and you knew it, too. 

Casually, you weighed the stick in your hand. It was up to your chest—a solid, decent height—yet in the face of that grinning colossus it was no more than a twig: a toothpick for its gaping maw to use after chowing down on the two of you. But it would do. 

◼◼◼◼◼ father thereof ◼◼◼◼ Sun, the mothe◼◼ Moon; wind carried ◼◼◼◼ ◼◼◼◼◼◼ with great sagacity it doth ascend◼ gently from Earth to heaven ◼◼◼◼ again it doth descend to Earth. 

The soft song of the tongue of thought wove against your neurons, clearer than ever. But the stranger wedging you betwixt him and the tree was unaware of the crooning placations building a spell in your mind—he could only watch you straighten, more alert than ever. 

But not to run. No, your stance looked like you were bracing yourself—not with painfully squeezed-shut eyes and a grimace for your impending doom, but rather with the disposition of a doctor armed with a syringe. There was a clinically straight set of your mouth as you gauged the usability of the primitive weapon you held.

No time to think. 

The leviathan was growing impatient; and you could practically hear its webbed crown fan out as it prepared to unleash whatever toxins it had built. But something else, too, was building: a buzzing of ions that were slowly disrupting the vein-twisting frequency emitted by the monster. In a split second decision, you diverted some of the energy tracing its electronic, droning charge back into your body to fortify it. 

It was risky. Your plan was risky, and you knew it. Maybe the stranger knew it too, but you had no time to care about his knowledge of weather phenomena. 

Thus was this ◼◼◼ world created. 

Where the tattoos glowed, your skin began to splinter in incandescent lines; and the sudden flow of charge seeping through fragile dermis of your skin caused your tentative ally to jolt back: stumbling against the tree root and falling to the soft foliage. But still you didn’t use the opportunity to run. Rather, you turned so your back now faced him—light bleeding through the clay- and blood-muddied cream shirt. It was reassuring, which he found to be ludicrous: in this situation especially, where his trust in others had been whittled to nothing. 

Fuck, this hurts, you momentarily took a break from the chant—feeling your mouth taste like static charge, like the metallic blood you’d gurgled prior to your death, But this time you weren’t dying—not when you still had to fulfil the self-assigned duty of rest in this life. 

Like an arcing javelin, the hands imbued with electrical power jolted the stick into the rest position of projectile motion—primed with an almost-superhuman awareness you never possessed before and probably wouldn’t possess again. Limbo had occurred; a sacrifice of your energy that had now returned back into a far more destructive form. 

Above both the clearing and the river churned dark clouds that weren’t here just minutes prior. With them came the pungent scent of ozone, a homage paid to the events that were about to unfold shortly. Your mouth filled with the bitter, ionic remnants and the filthy taint of blood. 

“Sa keres?” he hissed out behind you. ‘What are you doing?’ It was a garbled question, tied together only by the fact that it was his mother tongue. Each syllable from the tongue of honey was scattered with panic, inclining into a pitch that almost transcended the range of human hearing. As if to punctuate his poignant hysteria, you could hear him scrambling back as flickers of electricity began their coils down your body—beginning to char the once-soft shirt with pinpricks of a soot black. 

You couldn’t reply, too focused on the continued chant in your mind, as well as the hurried assessment you were making of the pattern behind that massive, weaving head. Though it was faint, the remnants of coding were there behind the eternal loop of the monster—shaking its frilled crown, ducking slightly, turning against the banks, and finally coming to a brief pause as the sequence came to a close. 

True it is, without falsehood ◼◼◼◼ certain and most true.

You toed a line with your dominant foot behind you, settling into a loose stance that would allow the perfect parabola through the air. Video game mechanics didn’t show the effects of air resistance, thus you surmised you could probably get away with bending the laws of physics a little. 

Theoretical, the calculation was—written somewhere on your body, no doubt. 

Ha’qal yaqina la◼◼ shaka◼◼ fih.  

Its monolithic, blinking eye was lined in your crosshairs: a horrifying sight, burning aureate sliced in half by a slit pupil. 

The acrid smell of ozone grew stronger. 

With your other hand, you guided the end of the stick to where the pupil would end up after the sequence concluded. 

The sinew in your body was beginning to slowly turn into live wires, hyper contracting your muscles as you fought to stay conscious in the torrential current that was threatening to teem from your skin itself. Not yet… Past the thrumming veins and the aorta that throbbed with pain, was the dermis that was pulsating along the etched lines of the formulae—white-hot crackles of electricity were invading the confines of each equation, and your mind was starting to cloud over deliriously. 

Not yet…

The monumental crown fanned itself out. 

Your hold on the weapon tightened, fingers pressing into the wood grain even as your skin fought to stay together. 

Ten seconds. Ten seconds it would take, once the ruffles closed, to act. Missing wasn’t an option: never was, never would be, not if you wanted to get out of this alive. The creature blinked as its head wove this way and that, breath just grazing past the bark of the tree you stood behind—the surrounding foliage withered immediately, and you swallowed thickly. 

The power thereof◼ ◼ is perfect. 

Your hand no longer shook, but rather thrummed with the coursing circuits lighting up beneath your skin. 

“◼◼◼◼◼◼◼◼◼◼,” you murmured, just as the head began rising back to its neutral position. Equivalent exchange. 

As above, so below. 

Your muscles screamed hoarsely, protesting the quicksilver motion of your arm as it flung the stick with all the borrowed force you’d exchanged. It was so fast it hurt: flesh and sinew practically creaking in how it snapped forward. But there was no time to nurse your wounds and proverbially lick them—there was only space for watching the stick pierce into the pupil. 

It was a needle in the face of a camel. For a brief moment, the massive basilisk stood stock-still, and that was when you forged past the aching hum of your body to transition into the second phase of your incantations. 

If it be cast upon the Earth◼◼◼◼ it will separate the element of earth from that of fire, the subtle from the gross. 

The behemoth shuddered, and rapidly descended into thrashing—attempting futilely to dislodge the firmly-stuck stick from its eye. It convulsed madly, and you prayed it wouldn’t whip its colossal neck towards you while you finished the final few lines. 

By now, the water from the river was flooding from the banks as the colossus disturbed the waves in its distress—the bilious smell of its lethal breath soon filled the surroundings, but there was only ozone you tasted. Too much water. Panicked, you realised there was water sloshing around your ankles; by extension, it had soaked the man behind you. 

You turned, wobbling slightly in the recitations, gesturing for him to get away with hand signs universal even as you crossed into a different one. The hurriedness of your movements left no time to observe his reaction to your ability: the way the breath caught in his throat; the strange, sharp pounding in his chest; and the tremors his hands carried—far more so than when he’d escaped from that hellhole and accidentally came across the basilisk in its territory. 

It was only when you heard the scrambling sounds get more distant that you finally relaxed. Not a minute too soon. You pressed your blood-slicked palms together, feeling more of the red liquid drip from your nose and splash onto your wrist. 

Uniteth ◼◼◼◼◼ in itself the Sky and the Earth. 

The sky tore itself asunder. It, ‘it’ being the cloud-stained firmament, split in two jagged halves as light descended from the heavens. Or, more accurately, lightning pierced through the delicate hues and straight through the eye your stick had marked. 

It was a quick death, if not a painful one. The basilisk contorted and thrashed, until suddenly it didn’t—topping over onto the bank only a dozen or so lengths away from the pair of you. Dead. You might’ve felt a twinge of pity, if it hadn’t been out for blood. 

Rolling waves crackled with dying electricity as you scampered back, but your calves still felt the faint crackles of voltage pressing in from the sloshing water that was now ankle-deep around you. Though, in actuality, it may have just been the remnants of the energy you’d exchanged—gone unused in the depths of your muscle and bone. 

It didn’t matter, not when the light had faded from the ink on your body and blood bubbled from your dry mouth. Dimly, you registered your metal pail floating on its side just near the blond; and your eyes could only flick feebly upwards to meet his own, widened ones. Your heart pulsed, sticky and metallic on your tongue: and it clouded the words forming on your tongue weakly. 

“To… umiro.” The syllables coalesced into a clumsy string in honey tongue; a futile attempt to be reassuring, when your clothes were stained with blood and charred marks and your fists still palpitated with small pulses of electrons. ‘It’s dead’. You staggered, pressing your fingers into the tree you hid behind only minutes prior to this—digging your nails harshly into the bark while you fought to stay upright. 

The profile was right—transferring energy into another form was far more efficient than turning it into a material object. But that didn’t do any good when you could feel the unfamiliar energy; you were due to collapse any time soon from the fatigue that had built up—ignoring the energy sacrificed. 

Still, you thought drowsily as you fumbled the thin, cold handle of your pail (the clay, miraculously, had stayed half in the bucket), the combat experiment had been extraordinarily useful to gauge how far you could push yourself in a fight. Casually, you wrung out your shirt and the rolled-up bottoms of your trousers, before you glanced at the massive snake one last time. Just like a minute ago, it was still dead. 

Whatever. It no longer concerned you; as someone who dropped Lament of Ouroboros an hour into playing, you had no concept of the value of the beast, nor how rare it was. Objectively, it was a fat snake. Perhaps you could take its massive skin for yourself, or find a market for basilisk meat, or even carve its massive teeth into more suitable weapons than the damn stick you’d found to walk with. 

Like a cracked pomegranate, the lightning had pierced through its body and spilled its innards onto the banks, while a fang lay chipped nearby. 

“Wait!” Ah. In all honesty, you’d forgotten about the blond man who now scrambled to his feet with a stricken, almost-panicked look in his eyes. While he was in the throes of adrenaline, his pinprick pupils had allowed you to observe briefly the vibrant turquoise and magenta rings in his eyes—blue spreading into the purple in a shade you’d never quite seen so bright. Though now, they had dilated back to a healthy size; similarly, his irises were almost completely purple as he held your wrist in a slight daze. You frowned. 

“Yes?” A headache began to form. 

. 　⁺ ✦

In the end, you took the stranger home. 

“Sorry,” he’d murmured with his teeth worrying at his lips, a habit you used to have back on Earth. Maybe that was what had made a shred of pity dampen your wizened old heart, or maybe it was the countless wounds that needed treating as soon as possible. You didn’t know what he was doing all the way in the deep of the Borderlands (you also didn’t particularly care), but it was particularly commendable to stay alive so long when he looked like he sucked at fighting. Perhaps he just had some insane luck, some you could’ve used a life ago. 

Though, you thought while flexing your fingers, this life had certainly made up for its shortcomings, present just a few months ago.

His name was Aventurine, he’d told you, eyes searching your face as if you were meant to react. Great, you’d replied, but you hadn’t given him your own in return as you half-carried, half-propped him up: his arm flung over and secured firmly in place by your hand over your shoulders, while your other hand gingerly clasped his side with a metal pail bumping against him. You win some, you lose some, you’d sagely surmised. Judging by the ornate clothing, which still wasn’t given as a convenient window of your system (seriously, you had to do some serious guesswork with that massive snake!), it was evident that he could be someone important—though you lacked both the knowledge and the shits to give to treat him with whatever courtesy he ought to have been owed. 

No, his name was actually Kakavasha, he’d amended hastily as he sat down in your bathroom. Maybe it was simply the brief security he felt when, upon seeing the long stairs in your house (and his face becoming a tad more palloured at the sight), you’d gently picked up his too-light body and merely climbed the rest of the way to the large bathroom that gazed out onto the forest and distant horizon. You said nothing. Neither did he, but when you held down his shoulders to wrangle him onto the wooden stool that clattered against cerulean tiles as you dragged it over to the cabinet where you kept medical supplies, he decided to finally break his silence. Alchemy, to your annoyance, could not directly be used to heal—at least not yet, when the finer points of anatomy eluded you. 

Cool, you replied once more, in that same impassive tone. For someone you were going to send away in a few business hours, he sure was chatty. Peeling off the long, dark coat that had been stuck to his body by blood, and the subsequent quality shirt (that was damn near unrecognisable with how much it had been torn and bloodied), you missed the faint pink on his face whilst you surveyed him clinically. 

A long gash from left pectoral to right clavicle. Bruising around the rib area. Lacerations on his lower abdomen. Bruising on his lower back, as well as many smaller wounds on his upper. Grazing on his arms with a more serious abrasion on his left bicep. 

“...No broken bones, right?” It was the first sound from you that hadn’t been monosyllabic. Really, almost dying together made you practically amicable. Buddies, even. These paltry words were the most you’d spoken to anyone in weeks. 

“No.” He was quiet as you pressed a ball of gauze soaked in cold spirits against the shallow wounds with nary a hiss. “...Thank you for saving my life.”

“Don’t sweat it. It was going to eat me too,” you returned. Gratitude that wasn’t mere platitudes came rarely. Gratitude was what you should’ve gotten by shouldering your runaway mother’s debts, but that never happened.

His sincere, earnest gaze prickled your skin with discomfort; too used to perfunctory nods and smiles.

“It was the most terrifying sight I’ve seen.” And for a brief moment, you didn’t know who he referred to—that basilisk, or the you so carefully wrapping his arms up with bandages. Your scent was that of blood and saltwater, tearing into his senses with an acuity that only reminded him of how easily you felled that beast. 

He didn’t elaborate. 

You didn’t ask further. 

. 　⁺ ✦

“Are you a spellsword?” 

The question was both unprompted and unprecedented. Aventurine peered his gem-like eyes up at you, while you paused in your deft chopping of fragrant onions. You could only stare back. Really, you hadn’t expected him to stay longer than three days at most, but apparently your interpretation of him being a flighty individual was ill-conceived. 

This was his second week staying with you, and between his slowly accumulating jabber was the transfer of drachma and minae on a startling level. If you thought Dan Heng had been rich, this guy was on a completely different level—gifting you so much gold that you avoided any semblance of the shade in your clothes for the past few days. 

Wearily, you thumbed the jade bead that felt slightly heavier despite the enchantment on it that prevented it from ever growing so. Or maybe it was your body, bone-tired from your self-dubbed ‘apprentice’; you still didn’t know why you dumbly accepted, though the wild look in his sclera that gave him the appearance of chased prey might’ve contributed partly. Although, you didn’t particularly understand what knowledge you were meant to pass on. 

“They’re mages who are proficient in physical weaponry,” he clarified when you kept mum—a habit of yours that hadn’t changed even after your death. A prickle of hot oil stung your hands as you swept the root vegetable into a gleaming copper pot. “I thought you might be one. If you could take out a beast that had killed over a dozen of the knight company I’d been travelling with, then you must be a spellsword of the highest calibre.”

A beat passed, in which you considered the weight of a false identity to further mask your own as an alchemist. 

“Foremost, I am a sculptor,” you murmured, feeling the drag of the kitchen chair as he padded over to you—an act graceful despite his slouching, which further reinforced your theory of him being an important figure in a far off land. It only puzzled you, to be frank. 

Why?

The answer eluded you as you supped with him, as you swilled the wine you’d managed to ferment, as you sunk below the fragrant bubbles in the large porcelain tub upstairs. You didn’t probe into his origins, thus the question of your class was the limit he could ask you, too. In fact, he didn’t even mention learning the ability you’d showcased at the river—rather, he was content in merely basking in the warmth with you and working over the clay you’d salvaged. In fact, sculpting was the only profession he seemingly wanted to learn from you as your apprentice: not the strange magic you possessed, nor the knowledge of chemistry packed tightly into your brain. 

“What are you thinking about?”

It became a routine, of sorts. Like some… colourful… lucky… bird, he brought back shiny things he’d ‘chanced’ upon in the forest. A pail of the smoothest clay you’d ever seen. A slab of the most luminescent rock you’d ever had the pleasure of carving. An opalescent bauble, delicately strung upon a thin chain—something you severely doubted that he simply stumbled upon. 

You eyed the man who stood by your stool while you worked the clay absentmindedly with your hands. The breeze today was especially pleasant, enough that your mood was light enough to actually reply with far less hesitation than normal. 

“Your abnormal luck,” you answered bluntly, gesturing to the large barrel of the soft medium that stood proud in the corner. 

“Really?” His voice was low as he leaned down, melodious even as he enunciated the harsher cadence of the common tongue. He was close, too close, enough that you could smell the faint aroma of floral tea on his breath and the expensive scent that lingered at the base of his throat, bound by the transient form of perfumed oil. Your oud, in particular—the one he was adamant on using despite the wide collection you’d purchased with a mere fraction of the drachmae that you now possessed. 

You couldn’t move back. If you did, it would be losing a gambit that you didn’t know existed in the first place. Some form of psychological attack, in such an amorphous shape that you could neither identify nor classify it. 

“Yes,” you murmured, eyes searching his. Your lump of clay congealed on your hands, misshapen and somewhat forgotten as you mindlessly worked into its soft material. 

“Was blessed by the almighty Gai’Athra Triclops at birth with it,” he offered, though that was no more answer to your question than a goose was a swan. You nodded like you knew what that meant, like the very words weren’t slipping away even as he spoke them. “My turn. Where did you learn the tongue of Avdĭn?” Honey-tongue. 

[The tongue of honey: a last relic to a land forgotten and swept away by time and sand. Barely any survivors made it out of the extinction of the Sigonian wastelands, and the language remains as mere fragmented shards amongst those who crawled to safety. Though nearing total deterioration, the tongue still serves as a bastion that those of the Avgin will one day regain what they lost.]

A question for a question, though you could feel the pressing weight behind his in a way that was never present in yours. Mechanically, your fingers pressed indentations in the cylinder to make room for eyes—feeling the cheekbones slowly melt into shape, and the strong nose taper beneath your hands. 

“I’m sorry,” you murmured. “I woke up two months ago with no memories of this world, and nothing but my name, occupation and New Metis remained in my head.”

“I see.”

The two syllables were embittered. He pulled away, focusing on his task once more with none of the cheer he possessed mere moments ago.

In hindsight, this brief moment could’ve been considered a turning point in your short new life. However, you didn’t and couldn’t know that; rather, your attention was honed on the face taking shape in your palms. 

How strange. Furrowing your brow, you cast your gaze to your other attempts you made while growing distracted; all shared a startling similarity that could no longer be ascribed to mere coincidence. A high, arrogant brow cast a thoughtful shadow over erudite eyes, while the rough mouth shaped by the flat end of your wooden carving tool held a displeased sort of heaviness that reminded you of your peers that went into teaching. Even the wavy hair you thought you only briefly shaped held the same uniform sort of curl in the front and back, framing the sides of his face until he bore an uncanny resemblance to his predecessors. Nonetheless, they possessed a nostalgic, dreamlike quality you couldn’t bring to destroy. 

Frowning, you set the new face to slumber alongside the rest.

. 　⁺ ✦

The frequency of Aventurine’s forays had begun to augment themselves. He was no less cordial and cheerful than—and no matter how hard you tried, there wasn’t any anger nor coldness that you could detect. Neither did he cease bringing you back something each time, though this time you could feel the desperation to cling to normalcy with him. 

His departures felt like thought itself, wrapped neatly in a contemplative air that prompted you to press your lips together and look away. 

In the end, you’d gotten used to his presence despite your reticent nature. That was your fault in the first place. 

[Princo Kakavasha, of the Avgin bloodline. The only prince that survived the Katica-Avgin Extinction, the one who desperately searches for  ◼◼◼◼◼.]

A prince. Charcoal stained your fingers as you absentmindedly sketched designs for new sculptures. It made sense why a prince on the run needed a place to stay, especially with someone strong enough to save his life. It made sense, but it embittered you to the same depth as he. 

Staring down at the large sketchpad, you frowned once more as that familiar face took root. Though this time, the soft waves of hair were shaded a sooty black, while a finger-smudged crown of laurels sat neatly in his hair. A dull ache resonated through your mind as you tried to remember where exactly you’d seen those accusatory eyes. 

Who is that?

Who are you?

. 　⁺ ✦

“Who is that?” 

Another week passed. The man named Kakavasha to some, Aventurine to others, appeared to have been contemplating something very deeply—and his train of thought had noticeably approached its final destination. 

He peered over your shoulder now as though there was never any distance between the two of you. In his fragrant, red-stained hands, he carried a basket of foraged fruit: something he only took the effort for when he was in a particularly good mood. The tired glare of your eyes softened at someone you’d fostered a tentative friendship with getting comfortable once more. 

“I don’t actually know,” you murmured. Though you took your time sculpting birds, faceless figures and endless ceramics to both sell and use, the image inked into the sketchbook resembled none of those—but rather something your hands felt strong gravitation towards. Rich purple bled into once-ink-black locks, while sanguine lips pulled back in a sharp grimace. 

Beautiful. He was beautiful, in every right, but all the media you cast him in never showed him happy. 

“Maybe he’s from my past,” you lied. The hands skillfully easing the knots in your upper back paused, and when he spoke again, his cadence was significantly clipped. 

“He might not even be real,” he retorted scathingly; startled, you turned to look at his face, but his expression was still pleasant despite his words. “If you want me to, I can check.”

You started at the unexpected thrum of hostility that threaded dangerously through the syllables leaving his lips. Rationally, nothing in this world was a coincidence. If you were somewhat superstitious—carefully treading around cracks in the pavement, praying for a tidbit of luck whenever sugar spilled—in your old life, the magnitude only increased now. 

The pounding headache you got whenever you stared down at the man without a name only further attested his significance. 

It was only logical to carefully tear the page out from the metal teeth clipping it to the rest, and hand it to someone offering to help. But just as strongly was the undercurrent that bid you to keep it safe: keep it close. 

This was a mystery you had to solve yourself. 

“It’s fine,” you said instead. “I have a feeling he’s not real, too.” 

It was a lie, of course. The man staring up at you from the paper felt a pen-stroke away from breathing—brows carefully poised in a question. 

Why did you create me?

. 　⁺ ✦

There was ozone in the air tonight. Through the open window, the draught stirring your fluttering curtains and brushing across your furrowed brow felt more sentient than not. 

Tonight, your sleep didn't come easily. Hours of fitful tossing and turning had led you by the hand to a restless slumber—not the dreamless night you were used to, but something far more sinister. 

Tonight, you walked past desolate fields under the pitch-tinted sky. The two suns were gone, and the moon appeared to exist only as a mirage. Just like the ever-amorphous path, it could not even keep its spherical shape. 

It was the field you woke up in all those months ago, but it no longer seemed as welcoming as it had, nor did it resemble the cradle it did previously. 

No end was to be found on the path you trod on. And walk you did, from one end to infinity to the other: never quite knowing why, but treading the beaten road nonetheless. The only justification you could find was the urgent beat of your heart and the taste of iron on your lips as you borderline fled this place—so filled with despair and loneliness that you needed out.

A flash of damson flickered in the edges of your vision. Wonderingly, you looked up, onto to be met by the distant view of the port of the Isle of Thassos. Except, this wasn’t Thassos, and this certainly wasn’t a very good dream either. 

It was far too grey. The moon sat lonely in the sky, while you reflected the heavens and were just as lonesome.

Your feet ceased their patter, and the audible crunch of earth beneath your ragged, bare feet was the only sound you had heard so far in your solitary eternity of wandering. 

Up above you, the tendrils of a small star blazed into existence; the moon was no longer by itself. 

The breath in your throat lodged itself inside, while your eyes traced the path of the two heavenly bodies that ambled their way towards the horizon. When you focused on the line of precarious cliffs kissing the firmament, there was a figure amidst the bleak backdrop. Though as soon as your pupils honed in on the person in their solitude, their garb rippled and you could only watch your company slowly drift away.

“Wait,” you tried to call out, but your syllables warped and scattered in the vacuum between you two. 

Nonetheless, you thought you could see a flash of damson as he turned—a pale face framed by rich locks, lips pressed together in displeasure—before he ceased to exist in the intransient space of your mind.

You knew him. 

Despite the leagues separating the two of you, you knew him.

. 　⁺ ✦

On the day Aventurine’s luck went to shit, it was a brilliant July day—almost qualified to be completely perfect. 

Nobody could sense the slight change in the winds: not the prince himself, nor his teacher. In fact, the lot that Fate sent him today was so similar to all the rest that no one thought to scrutinise the strand further. 

Kakavasha had always been lucky. Fortunate. Clinging to life by the skin of his teeth and miraculously, miraculously surviving; even when he let go of the narrow precipice with the express wish of slipping into death. 

This is perhaps why it was better to describe that particular July day as a lapse in his destiny, rather than it totally going haywire. 

Of course, like all days, he naturally assumed his golden, shining thread of life would remain unbuckled by the pressures he exerted on it. Like a tightrope, he had long gotten used to uncaringly placing his weight on it—one foot after the other. After all, it had never failed him before. 

But, alas, today the thread binding him to fortune loosened somewhat. 

It started as all days did. He woke up bathed in the comforting scent of your home, yawning as he ambled downstairs to where you already lounged with a thick book and a cup of tea that had notes of bergamot wafting from the rim. He felt refreshed, like he always did—a lack of nightmares plagued him in the sanctuary of your home, where you reigned over it like a god would their temple. 

At least, out of all the gods he prayed to, you were the only one who saved him with tangible hands. With fingers stained with mauve clay, and messy, loose clothes that were a far cry from the stiff cuts of the city, you did what a dozen spellswords couldn’t. Save someone, and stay alive yourself.

It weighed on his mind as he saw the long rib bone from the dracon carved into a curved blade that you kept by the fireplace. There was light dust on its gentle slope, yet Kakavasha had never felt more secure even if you barely held the thing. After all, you had felled its source material with nothing more than a branch and strange, brilliant magic which he could never hope to replicate with the Avgin arts. 

It was something other. 

Perhaps it was his pensiveness that led him deeper into the forest, past the cold thrum of the river and into the Borderlands proper. He’d ventured here enough to know where the miasma liked to frequent: shadowy monsters who still cropped up despite the tales of the glorious Hero those over the South Sea liked to spout. 

If there was anyone to herald as the anointed one, it was you. 

Soon, the wind turned sharper and saltier, and he could taste the chalk in the air. 

The cliffs of the Borderlands. 

There was something strange in the atmosphere. As though someone was watching him, but upon turning there was nobody there. Aventurine shook it off, deciding to walk further until he saw pitched tents in the distance, where he could distinctly see workers mining into the sides of the cliffs. 

“Hoy,” one greeted in a thicker Southern cadence as he wiped the sweat off his brow. “Fine day we’re having, y’think?”

Aventurine studied the man’s naive, friendly expression. It was clear he was on break, chowing down on some fruit and swilling something he could identify as a sort of cloying mead, threading honey-sweet through the air. 

Just to be safe, he’d employed one of the glamour arts, changing the harsh neon of his eyes to a softer brown. He’d done the same when he first stumbled in your vicinity, but he had the feeling none of his enchantments worked around you. There was a pressure greater than his whenever he began the soft weaving of prayer around you, something he didn’t think you were even aware of subconsciously. Like a coil of electrified wire, you were constantly live, overriding any magic and rationality the blond had. 

“Y’mining?” His lips pulled as he slipped into the accent with ease, suddenly remembering the ease with which you spoke both common and honey tongue. There was a third language, too, one you sometimes donned when performing your strange arts—the same one that had decimated the dracon on the river that day. No matter how his ears pricked to hear it and try to understand exactly what you said, all he could comprehend was a faint, ozone-like buzz—something that warned him to not go any further. 

Thus, he gave up on ever learning this strange magic to help restore the Avgin back to their former glory. 

There were times when he deemed it unwise to push his luck, after all. 

The worker’s expression convoluted into something sour, then finally into a sort of contemplative wince. “Err, not exactly. Our tools won’t cut the damned stone, but every year the cliff erodes through leaving blocks of itself that we then haul off and sell.”

His brows raised in a perfect picture of surprise. If there was anyone who was up for the challenge, anyone who could work their magic on the immoveable stone, it would probably be you.

“How much?” 

“I’m… sorry?” His syllables stumbled over themselves, thinking he had perhaps misheard the blond’s question. 

“How much for a block?” Aventurine gazed at the smooth rock cuboids that eclipsed his height, eclipsed even yours. 

Dumbly, the man listed a string of numbers that would’ve made your eyes grow wide in disbelief. Don’t do it, Kakavasha, he almost heard you say. He smiled, a small one that nobody ever saw but you. Your words of financial caution were heard loud and clear, but he was already thumbing the edge of his space-sealing charm that hung off his belt. 

“Who do I speak to?”

. 　⁺ ✦

How endearing. The man named Kakavasha crouched by his teacher’s slumbering body—on the flagstones by the yard, you snoozed peacefully while your tattoos flickered in and out of existence. Out like a firelamp, he thought, too used to your exhaustion after performing massive conjurings that would’ve taken at least five spellswords and five times more time to realise into the material realm to truly panic like he did the first time. 

This time, it was an extension into the lush gardens; there was now an outdoor workshop that merged the clean, open air and the delicate marble architecture. It was circular in shape with a stained glass roof covering all the materials within, which drew intricate patterns on the large block of stone that stood proudly in the centre. 

It will be my magnum opus, you’d mused, and he was too fascinated by the excited gleam in your eyes to truly dwell on the two strange words that had followed your winding voice. 

Carefully, he brushed the small twigs and flowers off your shoulders, propping your head to rest gently on his legs. Leaning back on his palms, he closed his own eyes to the steady rhythm of your breathing, as you slept the magick off—imagining this as every day for the rest of his miserable life. 

It was a pleasant dream. 

There were bags under your eyes that belied the nightmares you denied: strange landscapes rolling off the disturbed cloud that seemed to follow you with each step. But in slumber, you looked utterly at peace. 

With trepidation, he leaned down: ear to your face to make sure you still breathed. 

Don’t leave, he commanded, though he knew if anyone could break the tenuous bonds of his enchantment, you could. 

Nevertheless, it didn’t stop him from trying. 

. 　⁺ ✦

“Will he succeed? That is the question,” the youthful girl murmured. HER hands fumbled somewhat on HER spindle, as if SHE hadn’t been spinning threads since the very universe woke up in his cradle. 

“There is only one fate that hangs in the balance,” the matron insisted. HER face was drawn together in a scowl that marred HER elegant face: brows pinched together, mouth pressed into a thin line. “He must.”

“I bade you to consider the existence of the other fate,” the hag croaked. As always, HER wisdom was not initially clear to the other two women; Clotho’s hands ceased in winding thread onto a spool, whereas Lachesis put down HER gleaming ruler onto HER lap. 

“The golden child?” the mother queried. HER voice contained a sharp shock of disbelief. “The boy whose fortune will always be solely his own?”

“I do feel quite bad for the boy. He will never keep who he truly loves.,” Atropos defended. In HER hands, the scissors continued callously severing the marked lines of fate, finally freeing a mortal from the endless suffering life brought. 

“Please,” SHE scoffed. “You were the one who got us into this mess in the first place. Don’t get us into another one.”

“Hah,” the hag snapped. “As if you weren’t anxiously waiting for this to play out.”

“This was mere curiosity. Rethreading the tapestry of time is no easy feat, sister,” Lachesis seethed. 

“We have never tampered with probability like this,” the youngest added; a distinct trepidation wavered HER syllables.

“We are saving someone innocent from the same limbo we are stuck in,” Atropos replied flatly. Despite HER weathered cheeks and aged voice box, HER words were steadier than they’d ever been. “Don’t forget we judge what is fair and what isn’t.”

Both the maiden and the matron went quiet, with only the sound of thread against thread and the sharp sounds of a metal ruler cutting through air seeping into the endless cosmos. 

. 　⁺ ✦ 

The dreams didn’t cease. Nights spent tossing and turning while that pitch-tinted landscape unfolded afore you became so common that you began sleeping off the exhaustion in your studio: nestled against the cold side of the massive block in the middle, with nothing more than a tarp covering your body, 

It was frigid, and uncomfortable, and left you with a profound ache in your bones—but the dreamless cleansed your mind and filled you with nothing but the insatiable urge to draw. That man who’d faced you briefly at your slumber’s conclusion only exacerbated this effect: damson, scarlet and a rich gold flowed from your paint palettes, while your tools collected dust. 

Seven days after Kakavasha gifted you the stone, the first rough draft of your sculpture had materialised in your sketchpad. Countless renditions had swept over your hands: page after page was filled with the smudged body of the man in your dreams. Not once had he smiled at you, thus each face appeared troubled with the weight of the world.

The sketches began with the elegant planes of his body—a light step combined with rippled muscle supporting his bones. Then, eyes blinked up at you—irritated at his materialisation on the page, but there was something so entrancing in the cold glare he levelled you with. A strong nose gave his face some structure, extending and tapering into two brows that cast a deep shadow over his eyes. Finally, a mouth stained rich with graphite tensed at your ministrations: pressed together disapprovingly, like he was disgusted by the pixels that made up this very world. 

The dreams still hadn’t ceased. You still woke with sweat dampening your face, reaching out for a man who lingered for no longer than a second in the plane of illusion. 

But some things had changed. The sketches you pinned to the corkboard above your workbench had grown softer. 

He still didn’t smile, but the shadows above his eyes no longer looked as deep, and his mouth was more of a tranquil line than a frown. 

Fourteen days after Kakavasha gifted you the stone, the final sketch was ready: a life-size model of the man who eluded you. Just like you in your dreams, his hand reached out to an entity that did not exist in his own plane (you). His forearms gleamed with soft grey bracers, while his body was draped in delicate robes that looked like the ones you woke up in—but older. His garb was not of the glitzy New Metis, though you could see intrinsic similarities in the cut and how the garments were worn. Nestled in the gentle crests of his locks was a half-crown of laurels: something you saw him wearing night after night but couldn’t pinpoint the significance of. 

It consumed you. 

Every day had been spent in the warmth of the studio that you’d hastily put up just a fortnight ago. From dawn—when Aventurine left for his daily excursions—you pressed your stick of graphite into paper and drew, weaving together the image of a stranger until he meshed into something almost-tangible. Though Aventurine tended to stay out of your business, he had definitely noticed; your apprentice made sure to leave you food at the foot of the studio door, and when you stumbled into the villa at dusk, there was always a pot of food already simmering away in the kitchen. 

Your dreams merged into reality; the trance only broke when your palm pressed against the cool stone of what would be your magnum opus. 

Cold. It could only really be described as cold, but you swore you could feel something stir within—as though it were the faintest pulse, light as gossamer. 

You shook it off, and picked up a chalk stick to mark the preliminary shapes to cut. 

Drawing on the stone was easy. Like a child doodling on the sidewalk, the chalk pressed thickly into the ore. Perhaps it hummed beneath your thorough hands, but that was neither here nor there. 

After all, you had gotten used to the strange nature of this world. 

Tracing your fingers along the grooves, you surveyed the stone wonderingly—how the hell were you supposed to actually begin? Forget the pressure that you felt from who-knew-where; Aventurine had told you that tools couldn’t cut this stone, but the slight sparkle in his eyes indicated his faith in you. 

Why?

Why, you contemplated, staring at the deep colours that tentatively traced the limits of what would be your sculpture. Absent-mindedly, you pressed your palm on the circles that marked where his hand would reach out. Like your fingers were reaching past the vacuum of reality into imagination—past the stone and into a state of spaghettification, like you were reaching deeper than his desperate hand and into the black hole of his heart. Something so heavy it couldn’t help but draw others into its reality. 

It seemed to shiver slightly. 

Running a blunt chisel along the plane of the stone, you weren’t surprised in the least when it neither chipped or cracked. It was not like the yielding marble you’d carved small birds into—cold, but soft when you knew how to work it right. The rock that Aventurine found was immoveable. You knew instinctively that your chisels would be about as powerful as tissue paper against how densely compact the atoms no doubt were in the rock. 

Muttering a quick incantation, you could feel the latent flow from your tattoos envelop your chisel and warm your hammer; the tongue of thought strengthened the materials you would use, imbuing them with the abstract of destruction. 

Equivalent exchange. 

You could feel a faint wave of exhaustion ebb into your bones—not enough to knock you out, but enough to indicate the transfer was successful. Yet, still, the rock didn’t budge; a painful scraping sort of sound traced the air, but there were no other effects. 

He was right, you contemplated pensively. Tools really did not work, but from what Kakavasha had relayed, there was a periodic sequence where the cliffside of the Borderlands dropped these massive chunks of stone. It was too strong to be naturally eroded, and neither could the best equipment of this time cut it. 

This indicated some other force at work here. 

Your chisel hadn’t worked, but there seemed to be some reaction when it was just your bare hands. With careful, trembling fingers, you reached for the stone once more. Something that couldn’t possibly be pliant like your clay, something that hadn’t been cut by the heavy duty cutters you used for your marble busts. 

Nothing. 

Your hands couldn’t work miracles. By themselves, your hands could not possibly do what a good old hammer and chisel couldn’t. 

Nevertheless, there was a pulsing thrum in the material that only intensified the longer you pressed your palms onto it. It was as good a time as any for the system window to show you exactly what this block of stone was made of, but alas, fate wouldn’t be that generous. Disappointed, you drew back to make a note to research the Borderlands cliffs, only to pause. 

There, imprinted every-so-faintly into what you thought was a stone impenetrable, were the traces of fingerprints. 

. 　⁺ ✦

Deep in the heart of the Borderland colossus that guarded the straits leading to Metis, something was stirring. 

Coalescing. 

The cliffs had been a symbol of strength for centuries: a last bastion of defence for Metis against the hordes of shadows that still roamed the dense forests. Those interested in geology, a rather niche field for the hub of philosophy and orthodox sciences in the city, had published papers remarking on the unnatural way the monsters seemed to agree on a specific rule when venturing through the Borderlands. 

The most primitive of laws, this avoidance was described as: the law of the jungle. Strength won over all—in this case, something was off about the cliffs. Those large blocks that made up the ‘off-cuts’, as geologists liked to put it, could not be analysed in any conventional methods. Smaller samples were impossible to gain, while outside observations yielded little. 

Simply put, there was and had been a flow of energy that thrummed like Ourosboros’ heartbeat for the past millennium or so. 

And now, that energy was gathering. Not all at once, of course—more like a very large hourglass that only now had been turned. Slowly, but surely, the thing that had laid dormant for so long was waking. It was growing aware of one of its pieces that it had discarded after so many humans had hammered futilely at its walls. 

For the first time, one of those pieces had been pushed back by an energy far greater than the energy it constantly pressed outwards. Something so ancient it could not be defeated by mere human tools.  

And thus, this energy was slowly being siphoned off. Granule by granule. Piece by piece. Particle by particle, the entity stuck in the Great Wall of the Borderlands was being transferred—for no energy was ever created or destroyed. And particle by particle, that block of stone was gaining more of its fragments. 

Bit by bit, the workers at the cliffside witnessed the beginnings of a tidal wave in geology. 

Bit by bit, their tools finally sunk into the white stone and embedded inside the giant’s slumbering body. 

Bit by bit, the geologists would come and analyse their samples, only to come back with even more questions as it turned out to just be ordinary rock that made up the cliffside—that had formed one of their largest conundrums for the past centuries 

The wall of the Borderlands was growing weaker—there was no doubt about this—but in turn, there was something else gathering its strength. 

. 　⁺ ✦

Like most of his previous relationships with his fellow humans, Kakavasha noticed the stark difference between others’ fortune and his own. He noticed: the unlucky stumbles he never seemed to come across himself, the fatigue wearing down on someone’s bones, and how one’s actions often seemed to consume the person initiating them. 

Of course, it is much easier to identify something from an outside perspective—namely, that his master’s time was so merrily occupied with sculpting that he barely had time to eat. Aventurine did what he could. He chopped onions into neat cubes, made matchsticks out of the root vegetables that you’d planted painstakingly, and carefully made sure you had at least two meals a day. Despite his efforts, however, your passion appeared to be gnawing at you from the inside. 

Your misfortune was clear as day to him. The wonder he felt at your ability to indent the rock with your hands (oh-so-human they were) was overshadowed by his worry over the gauntness in your face. You were extraordinary. There was no doubt about that, and he had come to expect it. This misfortune, for it was every sense of the word, was due to him bringing that cursed stone in. As always, he was the cause of despair in others. 

But just as humans judged a situation from the outside easily, it was much harder to do so from inside it. Aventurine’s fatal error was in assuming he was absolved from bad luck. After all, his very birth was a golden one; where those born under an ill-omened star languished in despair, he was positively mired in fortune. The name Kakavasha and the adjective blessed could not be easily distinguished; this was a fact he long knew. 

Thus, Aventurine was dangerously reckless. As his thoughts of you began overriding the thoughts he had of an ordinary future, he, too, failed to gauge the situation from the inside. 

Your passion was not the only all-consuming one. 

. 　⁺ ✦ 

August arrived with no more than a whisper. Silently, it had crept its fingers alongside yours, and you found yourself staring at the abstract shapes that composed your preliminary statue with something akin to wonder.

He was to be your height, but the vast stone made him seem like a colossus. Something that you created, something you actively shaped to remove the damson-hued figure from your recurring dreams. He was to be your height, but already the bearing of the lines was far more regal than yours. In the night, he shone like gold—eyes and skin luminous in the lone moon, yet utterly reproachful when he stared at you. He was to be your height, but you felt cowed whenever you felt the thrum of a pulse in the stone. 

You were sure you were imagining it. A side effect of the hum of your tattoos. Perhaps it was merely the reaction of a stone said to be unyielding. 

The stone could not possibly be alive.

. 　⁺ ✦ 

August was once named Hekatombaion, back when the city of New Metis was simply called the centre in the old tongue. The month ushered in a new year: a herald of possibility, a harbinger of all omens. And like all things, it started at the very beginning. 

A day to mark all days henceforth—the Day of Silence. Millennia of traditions had homogenised under cultural pressure, creating a day of festivity that absolved one of all suffering and sin from the previous year. It was a chance to cleanse the mind in an environment where thought was always encouraged. Silence. In the modern era, it no longer possessed the same ritualistic heaviness it once did, but nonetheless, it was a day for reflection in Metis. 

The first of August. 

The beginning. 

Germinating in the very centre of the stone was a consciousness that had been sleeping for a millennium, yet one that never fully slipped into slumber. The seconds had turned into minutes as he counted them to prevent himself from losing his mind; into hours as he recounted all the knowledge he had learned from his extensive studies; into days as he slowly compartmentalised his memory into a shelf of segments. Months. Years. Decades. Centuries. 

Each day was longer than the next. 

He held on by mere fingertips, envisioning the evolution of science and humanity through simulation alone. On the precipice of madness, it was no surprise that his lucid being was slowly becoming binary. Zero. One. Zero. 

One. 

Ratio’s existence was a computation. Abstract. Immaterial. He was theoretical in all senses, and he had long lost all feeling. 

Except, it was the first of August once more, and the seventh prince of Metis had just felt a brief pressure on his incorporeal body. Something so absurd, so inconceivable, that he simply brushed it aside in the endless matrice of his mind. He had lost all sense of physical touch at the very end of his physical life, therefore phantom pain was computed as an anomaly every few decades or so. 

There was no other evidence to suggest otherwise, after all. He could not see, so he could not check for any disturbances. He could not hear, so he could not listen for the sounds of hammers or beasts careening into his form. He could not taste or smell, thus any chemical erosion causing the faint twinges was not based on observation. 

In any case, the faint pressure that occurred on the first of August was well within his margin of error: a mere blip in the fabric of his binary. Veritas Ratio, once descended from a mad god, carefully chalked it in the vast amphitheatre of his mind as just that: a remnant of madness. A rather contained, controlled sort of insanity, for which there was no other output than input. 

On the second day of what was once Hekatombaion, however, the pressure happened again—and this time the entity known as Veritas Ratio noticed. It was not the harsh clang of tools like he’d envisioned in his simulations of civilization; from the final image that replayed of Aha leaving THEIR son in the cliffs, he had documented and painstakingly predicted the wear in the environment. The climate, the evolution of species, the flora—and finally the use humans had for natural resources. 

He had imagined that, should he ever regain physical feeling, he would awake to the harsh beating of hammers and chisels. 

But this pressure was an anomaly within an anomaly. He wasn’t supposed to feel—and the striking of tools did not follow. Rather, the faint resultant force still held traces of firmness, but it did not have the painful impact of a hammer. This wasn’t enough to draw a conclusion—Ratio had no corporeal form, therefore his evaluation of this force needed more data to shape an analysis. 

Thus, the entity Ratio brooded in his imprisonment; for he felt a nagging curiosity for the first time in a millennium at the prospect of data from outside. 

On the third day a pattern was bound to emerge—and so it did, in line with the previous two forces he’d felt on his being. Something softer than metal, he noted in the vast bank of his mind. Like a hand that had simply reached past the covalent bonds and into the cliff itself, something was carefully grasping and twisting the energy that made Veritas up. He could feel the slight shifts: could imagine the pull of what he thought was a magnet. 

Slowly, the mind of Veritas Ratio was regaining the human sharpness he once prided himself on. Man rather than algorithm.

The simulations became background noise; rather, the entity placed that ticking clock in the forefront of his brain once more. Each second was carefully counted down until he could predict the periods of when he’d feel that pressure. Perhaps it could be earthquakes, he mused. Seismic activity could certainly cause such shifts. 

Yet, the wavelengths he registered weren’t the sinusoidal pulses of plates shifting; no, they were irregular, yet filled with a consistency that pointed him to fauna once more rather than flora and the shift of nature. 

A monster? Sightings of giant beasts had been ever-so-rare when he was still the seventh prince, but Ratio had included a possible population rise—a smooth exponential if he ever saw one—in his simulations of Ouroboros. He was no fool. 

But the longer the ebb and flow of force continued, the less it resembled the territorial marking of a beast. 

It resembled a human. 

Yes, the hands slowly pulling and pushing at the rock were utterly incomprehensible—but they were just that. Hands. They couldn’t be anything else, not when Ratio could feel each finger gently curl around his incorporeal soul. It was not the sharp strike of a mallet, nor the blunt scrape of a chisel boring into him. Hands: kneading him back into place as if he weren’t rock. 

It was a lie to say he believed it, but data was all he could rely on. 

. 　⁺ ✦

Metageitnion was the month of thanksgiving, and by the time autumn crept in, Ratio could hear the merest whispers of sound. The tiniest of frequencies—of which he clung to with gratitude, with such desperation it would’ve shamed any greater man. 

But Ratio had not been man for a millennium. He had not heard, not seen, not felt, not tasted, nor smelled, for a thousand years. 

It began with a faint frequency that droned in the very recesses of the stone. A buzz, or a low hum, resonated as though he could hear the very orbitals of electrons whirring in each atom. At this point, the background levels of his simulations had ceased—for this was far more important. 

For the first time in centuries, the sluggish pulse that still beat in his undead chest had quickened, just a little. 

With painstaking care, he catalogued every murmur—every brush of something against stone, for the force that periodically shaped his vessel had sound. Everything had sound: its very own natural frequency it followed. And there was sound. By the second week of Metageitnion, Ratio had begun to discern someone’s voice. 

(Like all things, it had a beginning.) 

Starting off with a mere brush of air, the first words he heard were nonsensical to his bleeding ears. The first sound in a thousand years was song. It was an absurd ditty—a melody of no particular rhyme nor reason. Someone sang for the sake of it while hands prodded and kneaded at him; for by now he could feel what appeared to be a body materialising into existence. A body, just for the prince who had lost his own so long ago. 

What appeared to be a rough thumb pulled and pinched at his right lobe, rolling the stone between two pieces of flesh that could not possibly be human, yet were painfully so. It dug a shallow concha into the rock, creating a very preliminary vessel for sound, but a vessel nonetheless. 

A human. A human, twisting stone for a whim as though it were clay. 

A human, who had given his hearing back—at least, some rudimentary version that seemed to be improving by a few degrees whenever those hands sculpted the rock he resided in. 

He found himself filled with anticipation. 

Who are you?

. 　⁺ ✦

“Truth, certainty! That in which there is no doubt,” were the first proper words the stranger said to Veritas Ratio. Or, more accurately, those were the first words he’d overheard—slightly deeper, more mellow than the singing the voice had been cheerily repeating. To be even more precise, these weren’t exactly proper words to his half-formed ears either; the inflection of the words was far more different than the common tongue he was familiar with, while the intonation was more of an under-the-breath murmur, followed by a static buzz of something that might’ve been a word yet he could not place it. 

If he had autonomy over his limbs, though, he would’ve clung to each word until his fingers bled and his nails formed crescents in each syllable. 

No matter how absurd they were. 

“...then I told him, are you stupid or what? Honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever…” 

His voice. Every word, every flux in the language Ratio once knew, every syllable—those were carefully compounded into memory. The common tongue was no longer quite what he knew, but the prince found that each small change was eagerly discovered and rectified in his own simulation of speech. 

A hand cautiously worked some stone out of his outstretched arm, and it was warm. 

Ratio liked warmth. 

The frozen walls that kept his time stagnant and in limbo were melting due to it, after all. 

Occasionally, his words made no sense to Ratio. The prince was well-versed in etymology and language, therefore the occasional sentences in what he presumed to be the language of the Avgin (and snippets of something he could barely put his finger on, but sounded familiar), weren’t all that surprising. What was surprising to him, however, were the small sentences that possessed none of the linguistic developments of any language he’d heard before. 

“Shit—” followed a muted thump; “Oh, fuck—” followed a small crash, and “What the hell—” seemed to be murmured at times of lull. The sharp, irritated cadence of the syllables suggested to him that the man was using colourful expletives; but the language shared no roots with anything he knew. Though, with each gentle press of fingers across his body, he came to accept the oddities of whoever had given him back two of his senses. 

Over the month of Metageitnion, Ratio learned a great many things about the person slowly casting away his prison. The thumb that gently worked his lips was accompanied by a tale of a school in a far off land (what sounded like it, anyway)—the hand that pried his fingers apart, by an anecdote of a laboratory experiment. 

A scientist, he carefully noted—one who clearly just viewed the prince as a sculpture he was labouring over. Although this was the case, it was also the case that a murmured sorry graced his ears whenever the man bumped up against him: a dignity afforded to a mere piece of rock that Ratio incredulously observed.

If it were a millennium ago, Ratio would’ve been irritated by the constant, spontaneous chatter. The conversations were utterly one-sided, yet the man appeared accustomed to casually talking about this and that: his apprentice, what he ate for breakfast, the progress of his vegetable garden, the weather. Really, the only useful things he got out of the banal talks were that this was a residence he was sequestered in; far removed from the cliffs of the Borderlands, but in the area nonetheless. 

Still, he found that he didn’t dislike the talking as much as he might have a thousand years ago. 

. 　⁺ ✦

Boedromion ushered in his sense of smell as the sculptor began working on his face in earnest, smoothing and kneading the material like clay while his words ghosted past Ratio’s stone ears. 

He first realised it when the faint scent of perfume oil—a woody scent, with sweet, rich undertones—cut through a rather chalky smell he attributed to his environment. A studio, perhaps, he’d documented; a background slowly materialised in the artist’s wake. The warm smell of sunlight. A breeze, stirring and rustling the clothes of the person before him even more. Birds, chirping and singing with such honesty that he could feel himself ache with bittersweetness, just a little. The aroma of grass and plants. 

All these things were sensations he clasped eagerly, each more precious than the last. 

Of course, there was the sculptor as well, who still managed to stand out against the vibrant backdrop. Decadence mingled with the powder-fresh scent of clean laundry, but one could tell a lot from the deeper undertones that lingered beneath. He could feel a sleeve flutter against his body, before the warm pulse point of a wrist allowed for a faint profile of clay to seep into the air. 

At the very centre, twining with the cool breeze, was a distant ozonic scent. Lightning, he noted, half-wonderingly. It seemed to be a constant—only growing stronger when the sculptor’s hands pressed white-hot into the stone, as though the creator of the body was less human than he’d imagined. 

He’s something far wilder, Ratio mused. 

A deep, fluctuating energy was concealed with utterly human anecdotes: a crackling core of lightning, with laughter masking the high frequency. 

. 　⁺ ✦

Naturally, the emergence of his olfactory sense occurred tangentially to hands granting him a mouth. He could not speak, he could not scream—for his lips were only stone—but he could taste the salt of regret. 

Sophos Nous’ words rang in his mind once more.

For all knowledge one must pay equal price. 

Alongside the bitterness of his pride was the bite of tangerines that trailed behind with each motion the sculptor made—such a deep scent that he could compartmentalise each and every aspect of its profile. It was sweet, as if it were offsetting the grief that rested heavy on his tongue. 

The notes of flavour, of scent only expanded his questions: data that only complicated the picture further. 

Who are you?

. 　⁺ ✦

Who are you?

He found himself focused on every single detail of his creator; Ratio’s thoughts centred on unravelling exactly why this person could do the impossible. Every passing comment—every slip in the language he began to identify as the long-lost tongue of thought—started to intricately inscribe the sculptor with various adjectives and titles. Even scholars—revered in his time—struggled with even preliminary translations, as material to access the tongue used by people millennia ago were far and few between. 

There was a certain bated breath with which he listened to the man’s fluency in the language; part of the reason that leads were so hard to access came due to the language’s ties to alchemy (though he had only learned this due to his trips to the palace library all those centuries ago). 

The question that shaped his thoughts for the past few months became more poignant once more. 

Who are you?

Based on the cumulative senses he’d regained, he would be an imbecile to not realise that his sight would be next to return; in due time, he would finally be able to put a face to the entity before him. A method, to try to explain the madness that he had been experiencing. 

His investigations on governmental corruption (and indirectly, alchemy) had doomed him to limbo; would alchemy save him, after he already spent his life in hell? Had he finally paid off the price of his knowledge?

Who are you?

Even if he was doomed to hell again, the possibility of getting an answer to his question consumed him more than anything before. 

Thus, the once-seventh prince of Metis patiently waited for his creator to give him back his eyes. 

He could be patient. 

Hadn’t he proved that already?

. 　⁺ ✦

Ratio endured. 

He had held out for the past millennium; waiting another three months was nothing in comparison. Still, he found himself itching to claw out of the confines of stone; every brush of warm skin against his, every calloused touch of his skin and tentative shaping of his body ignited in him an impatience uncharacteristic of his previous assumptions about himself. 

Managing to stay sane was a miracle, and it allowed him to appreciate the fruit that the month of harvest brought. 

Pynopsion had come with the telltale signs of fallen leaves crunching underfoot, with the small imprecations that left lips right before a brush began sweeping the floor, with the scent of warm honey and spices enveloped in milk. When he was a youth, he would’ve felt the warmth of the harvest fires and tasted the pynopsia stew that was traditionally offered in the temples. 

But, he found that he didn’t mind the low heat of hands fleshing him out instead: feeling all the effort the sculptor put in beginning to show. Sinew, muscle, skin—all were painstakingly pressed into shape, with stone robes carefully draped on top. In fact, Ratio could feel the once familiar feeling of bracers weighing on his arms—garments he thought he’d never wear again. 

The eagerness that was slowly growing into a fervent madness was abated by the continued voice, with the mundane tales of the world outside. He listened to stories of pickling exploits with fascination, of foraging with an apprentice for berries and nuts with enrapturement, and summaries of novels with considerable interest. 

Yet he still didn’t know the sculptor’s name. 

There were too many things he didn’t know about him, but Ratio could wait. 

He could wait, especially as those warm hands had finally begun working on his eyes—smoothing and pressing and pulling eyelids into position, then gently opening them. The first rays of light were in the form of a flickering candle: bound to waver behind the thin layer of stone that made up a tentative iris. 

His sight had been the very first thing to start deteriorating: blind for a millennium, with nothing to guide him. 

In this sense, perhaps he should’ve been the most accustomed to the loss of his sight, but in other ways it had been the most painful to recreate in his simulations of the world. Forgetting the faces of the old woman who sold him basyniai dripping with honey, the victims of the Elation, and the Sophos had been painful enough—but in his simulations, he could no longer recreate his own face. 

He had forgotten what he looked like. 

In his recreated worlds, he wandered faceless; no mirrors existed in his imagination, for any reflection would be blurred from the centre, features morphing into others. 

Ratio’s anticipation of his returning sight was therefore tainted with dread—mired in a fear that should he see the statue’s reflection, he wouldn’t recognise himself. Or worse, that he’d wrongly accept the image of whoever the sculptor carved him as. 

Though, this was forgotten on one Pynopsion evening. The hands chipping away at the irises were particularly gentle and slow that night, and though he could not feel pain, he appreciated the thought nonetheless. There was an orange glow backlighting the shadowy figure in front of him, which only grew clearer as the suns began hiding over the horizon. 

The man was silent as he worked, but Ratio didn’t mind that either. He, too, was focused entirely on making out the details registering in his optics. 

Ratio’s first view of the world as it was now was of symbols inked into the sculptor’s palm. They gradually focused as his stone retinas adjusted to the world—fixed in shape and place but seeing nonetheless. Lines that ranged in colour glowed incandescent as the sculptor worked, and though Ratio impatiently waited for the hands to move away, he catalogued each symbol as they appeared nonetheless. 

Some of the images—like the scales, the geometric progressions, the sequences—he recognised, though he had not seen them decorating human skin ever before. As the sculptor’s wrists moved across his vision, his gaze jumped from the shapes to long strands of formulae written in a language that he could not comprehend: twisting and moving with each movement. 

He’d never seen something quite like it. Every time the palms chilled somewhat, the sculptor murmured something in the tongue of thought and the tattoos on his hands glowed white-hot. There was a faint ozonic smell that lingered in the air after every chant—and suddenly, Ratio realised the exact reason that the sculptor was able to break through Aha’s enchantments. 

THEY were revered for THEIR powerful sorcery: achieved by crude extractions of alchemists’ powers in an utterly terrifying, amorphous amalgamation of strength. That had partly been why royal supremacy had been so strong; against an omnipotent lord, who could possibly question THEIR rule?

But this was something different. Ratio, in his study of ancient magic and his secret studies on alchemy, recognised these chants for what they were; verbal conversions of energy that perhaps could never have been achieved by anyone else. This was undoubtedly alchemy, though with none of the orthodox tools that alchemists would ever use. 

No, his sculptor was using themselves as a medium; a thing utterly forbidden and stupidly reckless. It was a sign-off on one’s soul, effective right after the alchemist got their wish. He’d researched it, seen the effects in back-alley streets and never observed a case of success. 

Except for now. 

For months, he’d heard him manually transfer energy into presumably his hands—judging by the latent glow of those tattoos—yet nothing had happened. In fact, there had been many times he’d heard a specific phrase uttered in the tongue of thought, before the distinct scent of a food or beverage filled the air. Wish after wish, yet his sculptor was still alive. 

This was, perhaps, the most foolish and most practical use of alchemy he’d ever seen. 

But more importantly, he knew that it could not be recreated by anyone else. There was none of the malevolent energy that came with a demonic pact; rather, it was a clean sort of buzz that filled his sculptor. It was a chaotic sort of ebb and flow, but clean nonetheless. 

Still, the power that had been flowing into him for the past few months had been incomprehensible and completely unique. 

He digested the information with a sort of wonder he last felt a millennium ago. 

It was not fate, nor him finally paying the ‘price’ for a knowledge too heavy for him to bear. Aha had simply been too powerful, yet this sculptor was breaking him free from the prison he had been sequestered in for a thousand years. 

Nous was wrong. 

A quiet hum cut through his aghast realisation; he had paid a price that was never fair in the first place. 

Just as suddenly, his eyes opened; the hands that had covered his eyes while the sculptor worked on him were lifted, and he could finally see. 

A rush of lamplight delayed his vision for a few more brief moments, and he might’ve gritted his teeth if he could move. But when the flare faded, all he could see was his sculptor’s face in front of his own, so close that he could feel his chest rise and fall, each warm beat of his heart, every breath that ghosted his lips. 

Ratio stared at him, though he wasn’t quite sure if he wouldn’t have decided to do the same had he been able to look away. He was so close that the prince could count every eyelash, every small crease in the man’s lips. 

Before him was a human in the flesh and blood: not some demon like he’d half expected when he hypothesised on who was behind the pressure. A human. The gods had not granted mercy to him, but one of his fellow humans had, albeit by accident. 

He found it incredibly ironic: trying to save more people from the Elation and paying the bitter price for it, and being saved by another human in return. An alchemist, nonetheless. 

The sculptor didn’t notice his return of vision, it seemed—choosing to work on his under-eye, appearing utterly focused on his work. Ratio took the opportunity to keep watching: though for some strange reason, he felt the faintest agitation crawling under his skin as the man continued his light ministrations, chipping away at the stone with only hands and discarding it at his feet. 

How strange. 

A face had finally been put to the stranger, to his creator. 

He memorised the man’s gait as he swept the room, his height, the exact shade of his eyes while they bored into his own. Down to the way his brows furrowed in concentration, to the wispy strands of tangerine that clung to the ozonic scent of him, he compartmentalised it all—the profile of his sculptor was complete. 

An alchemist, gaining victory over Aha.

The thought was absurd, and if he weren’t made of stone, it would’ve brought a smile to his face. 

How ridiculous.

. 　⁺ ✦

Perhaps if he hadn’t been committing you to memory, he would’ve noticed the mirror propped up against the window sooner. As it were, he only noticed the shining reflection of the lonely moon in the sky when you left the studio for the night and his vision was forced to tear away from you. 

Well, the first thing he noticed about the room, regardless, was the size of it. He was far from his cliff, evidently, if the views of the forest that he faintly saw from the moonlit landscape was anything to go by. A colossal window framed it, and his eyes trailed to the workbench that could potentially give him more clues about you. 

What he saw would’ve made him freeze if he weren’t already stone. 

Pinned to the board above the dark wooden desk, littering the surfaces of it, and even piling up beside the bench, were sketches upon sketches that made his heart skip a beat. 

Every drawing, every small doodle was of the same subject: some in vibrant colour, others in graphite and charcoal. No matter the medium, they were all of the same man. Carefully, he traced the features slowly to not skip over any. 

Dark hair, coloured a lustrous damson and cascading down his shoulders in waves. Gold leaves twisted up the side of his head like a crown, and Ratio felt his own head twinge with a familiar sensation. The status of a prince, he thought feverishly. A strong nose was shadowed by proud brows, though the sketches pinned had made the man look softer, ever-so-slightly lowering his eyelids in a pensive look. Those lips in some drawings were a disapproving line, but once more in the pinned drawings, there was the barest hint of a smile on them—

If he could draw breath, the rise and fall of his chest would’ve been extraordinarily shallow: rapid beyond belief. 

His focus snapped onto the drawing directly in front of him; a full-body, coloured image that detailed the robes he could feel on his clothes, and the outstretched hand that mirrored his own, reaching one. 

Yearning. 

Instinctively, Ratio recognised the emotion that the expression portrayed. Though it was regal, there was the clear wistfulness in the slight furrowing of his brows and his stare at the vacuum his hand reached for. But there was something in the drawings that made him uneasy. 

It was only when he finally caught a glimpse of the mirror slightly off to the side that he finally realised exactly what it was. 

It was a full-length, sturdy mirror: evidently meant for his sculptor to check for consistency in the reflected image. Against all the sketches that drew his attention, his vessel’s own, ghostly reflection hadn’t captured his attention instantly. 

There he was: a vision that matched the sketches almost exactly, albeit with a few, less-detailed accessories and robes that marked him as unfinished. He had the same locks, the same strong brow and wistful gaze, the same yearning hand—everything, down to the very lines of his muscle and sinew, were identical as in the drawing. 

Unbidden, his mind raced as he compared the blurred image of his simulations to the sketches and his reflection that stared back at him with what now appeared as regret. He searched for the generated figure, yet he could no longer find it. 

That was him in the sketches. It was not merely his current vessel, nor was just some vague imagining of somebody. 

It was him, before he lost both his body and his mind. 

It was him, back when he was still a naive prince mired with hubris. 

It was him.

In the studio beneath the lonesome moon, the lonesome statue felt his pulse thrum for the first time in a thousand years. 

. 　⁺ ✦

Finally. Wiping sweat from your brow (despite the December chill that had settled in the air, though you couldn’t be surprised with the heat your hands radiated when sculpting), you took a step back to survey your sculpture. 

Almost done, you mused. It had been a long five months, but the stone had yielded better than you expected. Shaping the rock had been like shaping buttery clay of the highest quality, not the impure type you’d found at the river. No, this piece of cliff had practically shaped itself into what you drew—an almost exact replica of the man in your dreams, save the few small details you still needed to fix. 

Carefully observing the minute folds of cloth draped upon him, the way the muscles rippled over bone and sinew, the sorrowful way his face looked, you concluded that the strange feeling you got when you gazed at him was due to how realistic he looked—down to the slight crease at the left side of his mouth. 

Working on him had felt like standing over a live specimen in the lab you worked in. On some days, there had seemed to be a second heartbeat syncopating with your own pulse: one you chalked up to the buzz of energy from the continuous alchemy you’d applied in order to be able to carve that damn stone. Naturally, this was only exacerbated by the intricacy of the statue—in fact, he was so realistic that you often found yourself telling him about your day. 

It had become a routine of sorts. He was a statue, thus you told him things you couldn’t tell Aventurine, and never got the chance to regale anyone with in your past life. He was a statue, therefore he couldn’t spill your secrets—though you did keep any confessions of your death to yourself. Those things would stay buried: unacknowledged by even yourself. 

You had left such scars far behind. 

It was comforting, in some ways, being able to let down your guard in the presence of the statue. It was hard, in front of your apprentice, to keep up the facade of someone ordinary when your house appeared filled with seemingly unlimited resources despite your infrequent trips to the city. He wasn’t stupid—he’d also seen you fell that monster and make a sword out of its ribs—but at the same time, you prayed that he’d stay oblivious to the intricacies that made up your alchemy. 

With the statue, you didn’t need to worry about mental incantations, nor the panicked look in his eyes whenever you sat against the wall and closed your eyes like you did for Kakavasha. No, this sort of distance was what you had preferred back in your old life, and were still accustomed to. 

You reflected on how bleak this mindset was as you busied yourself sweeping up the offcuts of the statue—half-tidying, half-watching the first snow of December fall. It was… peaceful, you mused, a peace that you’d never truly felt in either life until now. In some ways, this was the perfect paradise that made up for your life before you crossed over.

You were so lost in your thoughts, in fact, that you jolted abruptly from where you leaned on the broom handle upon the sound of Aventurine knocking on the door. Startled, you realised that he hadn’t actually seen the statue in its almost-completed state—though it wasn’t a big deal, right?

“I brought you some spiced wine.” His voice came muffled from behind the towering mahogany doors of the annex studio, as if he were wrapped tightly in a scarf to combat the frigid weather. A smile involuntarily broke out on your face at the thought, and you swore a small draught swept through the studio even before you opened the door. 

Really, you could’ve conjured a warm glass of it yourself, but you appreciated the care he treated you with. He’d settled into your life with an ease you didn’t know what to make of; the faint heaviness that traced his eyes whenever the two of you conversed in honey-tongue had faded, though when you could, you bought resources to help him search for his fellow Avgin. 

“Avav,” you called back. Coming. Recently, he’d taken to teaching you the finer points of his language—sitting side by side on the couch in front of the fire, his shoulder pressing into yours as he leaned over your notebook, snorting at the mess of your handwriting while you scowled with mild petulance. Though you could read the scripts fine, it was a different story altogether when writing them—that stupid system of yours could not give you better handwriting, it seemed. 

It hardly was your fault, though; even in your past life you were required to write quickly and type quickly, and it seemed you’d used the latter more over the course of your career. 

Shouldering the door open, you pulled him into the warmth as he stared up at you: taking in the loose work garb that you wore in the studio, the faint smile playing on your face that seemed to simply appear one day and never faded, and finally your hands still resting on his upper arms. Like you’d expected, a scarf had wrapped around his face—but you could still see the flush from the cold air nipping at his cheeks and nose. Or at least, that was what you assumed had caused it. 

He was close enough to stare at the tattoos on the hollow of your throat, and he swallowed briefly before handing you the warm mug with hands that shook slightly. 

“Nais tuqe,” you murmured, and he mumbled a ‘you’re welcome’ back, wide-eyed. “Come look at the statue.”

His eyes seemed to become more flinty, somewhat, upon shifting his gaze from you to the large sculpture. “It’s… nice.”

“Really?” you teased, swilling down a large mouthful of the wine. The taste of cinnamon and star anise lingered in your mouth beneath the fuller, warm drink. “Just nice, after I spent so long on it?”

“Fine,” he sighed exasperatedly, his lilting accent growing more pronounced with his seeming irritation. Gazing at the statue like it had physically hurt him, he briefly glared at its face before he stared back at you. “You’re extremely skilled, with such exquisite technique in capturing emotion that you’d become a household name even in Metis. You—”

“Stop, stop,” you hid the lower half of your face in your palm, both in the face of such an onslaught, and to hide your laughter. “Such sweet compliments, yet such a bitter voice.”

“You’re neglecting your apprentice. I can’t help but be bitter,” he grimaced, petulant. “Five months, and I see you maybe two hours a day.”

He clung to your arm, and you could only suppress your laughter some more, missing how his eyes glared daggers at the sculpture with almost murderous intent. 

“I’ll be done soon,” you reassured him. “I’ll be able to teach you sculpting properly then.”

The techniques in question that you’d used to sculpt the man from your dreams, after all, weren’t possibly applicable by anyone else. Once more, you missed the glare your apprentice levelled at the statue. 

“I’m holding you to that,” he smiled, sweet as the strawberry aftertaste of the wine. 

You placed the glass down on the bench, ruffling his hair with your free hand affectionately. Really, these past few months had brought you out of your reclusive shell—like some bristly cat that had finally settled in at home. 

“Take a break and come see the snow with me,” he insisted, hiding his face in the scarf. “You’re overworking yourself.”

Reluctantly, you looked back to the statue—alone with the snow settling behind him in the background. You’d been planning on finishing off the final details decorating his clothes, and maybe touching up the curls of hair that rippled down his shoulders, but Aventurine wrapped his long fingers around your wrist. 

“You’ve been here from dawn till dusk the past few months,” he muttered, unwinding his long scarf from his neck and wrapping it around yours with his free hand. There was a faint bitterness in his voice, offset by the vague traces of pine and oud on the garment. Wordless, you let him tighten it, lingering on the knot on your chest for a few more seconds than necessary. He seemed to be staring carefully at the jade money-bead at your neck with a pensiveness he only got when he was planning on buying something again—but it passed just as quickly, and you wondered if you imagined it. “You have time later today to work on it—it’s almost done, anyway.”

Unbeknownst to you, he’d occupy your time today as he saw fit, until the suns finally entered their slumber beyond the horizon. 

Swayed, you allowed the latent heat in your palms to dissipate. 

“Fine,” you acceded, dusting your hands off on your working trousers. Once more, you could feel the draught chill the air behind you, but once more you ignored it. It must’ve been the windows not being closed properly. 

Moving to the cupboard that functioned as an area to store spare garments, you rummaged around for a clean shirt, trousers and warm boots, as well as a surprisingly supple coat you’d got off that one snake. Casually, you pulled the dusty shirt over your head, missing the surprised cough Aventurine let out. He whirled around with such speed you might’ve been concerned if you’d seen, but you were too busy figuring out the strange fastenings that some of this world’s clothes had. 

You did the same with the trousers and shoes, and though Aventurine had turned, he could distinctly hear each piece of clothing hit the floor. He swallowed. 

Folding up the work clothes, you settled them on the bench as you picked up the warm mug of wine once again. “Ready.”

“Right,” Aventurine couldn’t seem to hold your gaze. As he held open the door for you, you swore you saw the stone hand that reached in your direction move, just a little. 

Upon looking back, however, nothing had changed.

“What’s wrong?” Aventurine asked from your side, forcing your gaze back to his face to answer him. 

“Nothing,” you shook your head. Really, maybe it was for the best that you took a short break from the endless sculpting, if you were beginning to hallucinate things.

Statues couldn’t move, right?

. 　⁺ ✦

[kayforpay]

For the kink requests: Meowrails cum inflation. (Nep is the one receiving. Doesn't have to be an obscene amount, just kinda noticeable)

It's a little awkward. But then again, they both anticipated that; they're not exactly the most well-versed trolls when it came to pailing, which was why they were even doing it together. It was one of those stupid pacts that people made with their friends, or, as the case may be, with their moirails.

If we're both virgins by the time we've both had our tertiary molts, we'll sleep together.

Of course, they had both laughed, Equius had went back to half-sleeping on her lap, and the rest of the early morning had passed the same way it always did; watching romance movies, and Nepeta complaining about the incompatibility of the predesignated couples while she fed Equius carrot sticks like he was a particularly needy pet hoofbeast.

And now, since Equius' slower growth had finally caught up with Nepeta's to have them both comfortably out of their tertiary molt periods, they were stuck with the reality of their conversation. Equius was, again, curled up against Nepeta and accepting her gracious attention, while Nepeta herself was talking through their options.

"Of purrse, we don't have to do anything. Obviously."

"Obviously. But if you wanted to, Nepeta--" He sat up, slightly and looked at her eyes. The color had come in more clearly over the sweeps, and she was only getting prettier. He felt guilty about being, presumably, the main cause of her lack of romantic partners. A hulking blueblood she was constantly toweling off wasn't exactly going to get many people interested in a lowblood. "I'm not uncomfortable. I adore you."

Her hand, bigger now but still extremely warm, rested on his cheek. "I love you, Equihiss. I just don't want it to be, you know, weird. I mean it's gonna be weird! It will be, but I don't wanna not have you with me beclaws of it." Her bottom lip trembled.

"I could never leave you, Nepeta. You are my beloved diamond, no matter what we- what we might d-do." He wiped reflexively at his forehead and neck, the main reason for his own lack of experience. "And, if I can be l-lewd," Nepeta nodded, knowing he wanted her permission when he said that. "I would feel somewhat more comfortable, knowing that it was you. That you would be with me."

Now, Nepeta was smiling, her other hand cupping his cheek, and she kissed him, soft and chaste. "Of course. I'll always keep you safe, Equius. Besides, I was thinking the same thing." Her ears twitched, pleased.

Kissing was easy. Although they had taken it up more slowly, out of Equius' fear of hurting her and Nepeta's wavering comfort with bodily fluids (as laughable as it was), kissing was easy once they got started. It was smooth, with Nepeta pulling him over her and holding his hair in a loose fist to keep it from falling in their face. When he was able to break his focus on her tongue in his mouth, he felt her putting it up in a hair tie.

"It'll just break." He mumbled, doing what he could to keep from flinching when her hands slid from their resting place at his shoulders to slide over his chest. Her mouth was on his neck, and he shivered. She smelled good. "I should just lay down. I-I'm dripping, Nepeta."

The towels of their pile were starting to get slightly damp, even though his sweating had tapered off somewhat. Still, she pulled at the hem of his shirt. "I'm gonna need a shower anyway, right? I've never minded before." Her voice was shockingly confident, even though her hands were wavering, unsure where to rest.

He nodded, and sat back to strip his shirt off. She sat up, and pulled her own off, tossing it out of the pile and onto the basement floor. The movie seemed muffled when he kissed her again, when her hands curled around his grubscars curiously. He giggled, twitching to get out of her reach, and she wrapped her legs around his waist.

Feeling her press against him was the first time he realized his bulge was already starting to slip out, and he shuddered again. Her own was twisting under her pants, and when he moved to pull his shorts open, she did the same. Her rumblespheres spilled to either side of her chest, and he let her put his hand on her chest, trying to only match the pressure she started.

Her legs curled slightly up as she pushed her pants down, trying not to move away, and Equius whimpered when his bulge slithered over the lips of her nook. His hips twitched, and she gasped, her claws sinking into his wrist. It was, apparently, that easy. Before he could fully catch his breath, he was half inside her, his thighs tense and shivering as he watched her hand press against the top edge of her nook, rubbing her pleasurenub quickly.

He cursed as she pulsed around him, pulling him in deeper, past the tapered end, and she yanked him down to kiss him again as his hair broke the rubber band, curtaining around their faces as he rolled his hips against her. Sweat pooled in the hollow of her throat, both his and hers, and he delicately wiped it with a towel, between slow, kisses, his hips moving reactively

Her bulge couldn't quite reach his own nook, from the position and how it was trapped between her thighs, but he hoped he would have another chance with her. Nepeta's hands pet through his hair, her voice was still that high, warm tone he loved so much, her body was reassuring against his. It felt like he was wrapped in her embrace, her safety.

"Oh." He gasped, breathing against her chest as he curled up. His fingers brushing against her grubscars made her pulse, made her squirm and whine, and he was caught off-guard when he came. "Oh, Nepeta. Nepeta."

She purred, though it broke up around light, breathy little moans, and kept her hands tangled in his hair to keep him close. At some point, she spilled over her stomach, though he couldn't really tell when. When he was finally released, and able to get his legs under himself properly, he was wobbly as a foal.

Nepeta let her legs down, and he gently undressed her the rest of the way before flopping face-down onto the pile beside her. "Goodness."

She giggled. "Goodness!" Her legs kicked slightly. "I didn't expect it to be so much."

He lifted his head to agree, but she was looking down at herself, at the small rounded lump of, he guessed, her seedflap. He could see blue through her skin, and had to hide his face again. "I-I'm sorry, I meant to p-pull back--" He stopped when she pat his head.

"I'm okay. It felt... Interesting. I don't know if I liked it, you know? D'you think we could try again, Equihiss? I-I mean, would you be okay? Are you okay?" She rolled over, onto his back, and kissed his shoulder. "Are you alright, Equius?"

Equius nodded. "Embarrassed. I liked it so-so much more than I thought, it feels kind of bad." He turned his head, and she kissed his cheek. "I don't want to seem like I'm quad-hopping."

Now, Nepeta snorted a laugh, snuggling under his chin, and it felt exactly like it always did. "Couldn't be you, Equius. And I'd never be worried about that. I know better." She paused. "We have to restart the movie, huh?"

[randomasfuk]

Houce mates- Jason Todd

First post and I haven’t a clue what I’m doing but eh this is a Jason x fem!reader thing they aren’t together but they live in an apartment together they’re friends but not close

Jason felt the cold air gnaw at his face with each gust of wind as he wandered home to the apartment he shared with you. The two of you had an odd relationship, rarely speaking. You were always the one to start a conversation, your words carrying an odd sense of warmth he wasn’t used to. It made him feel strange—he couldn’t decide if he liked or hated the way your words wrapped around him. They didn’t even have to be particularly kind to unsettle him. That warmth made him feel vulnerable, as though you could see through him.

It was impossible, of course. There was so much he hid from you—so much you didn’t know. If you ever found out who he really was, what he really was, he knew you’d never look at him the same way again.

The keys jingled in his hand as he unlocked the door, taking care to move quietly to avoid the creaking floorboards that riddled the old building. He closed the door just as silently. By now, you should’ve been in bed, fast asleep, and he had no intention of waking you.

But as he turned on his heel, he stopped abruptly. The door to the balcony was open. A sudden alertness shook away the exhaustion weighing down his body. Quietly, he marched toward the balcony, unsure what to expect.

What he didn’t expect was you, leaning against the railing. You were picking at the chipped black paint to reveal the silver metal beneath, flicking the end of a cigarette down to the street below. In the dim lighting, you looked mesmerized by the orange sparks scattering through the city streets.

When the sparks disappeared, you turned around and nearly jumped out of your skin.

“JESUS JASON! ..I didn’t hear you come in. You’re very quiet for such a large man,” you slurred, your words thick and clumsy.

He immediately noticed your red cheeks and swollen eyes. You were drunk—and you’d been crying. That’s when something else caught his attention. His pack of cigarettes.

“Hey, was that mine?” he asked, referring to the cigarette now lost to the abyss below.

“Yes. Sorry,” you murmured, your voice small and defeated. The usual spark in your eyes was gone.

Jason hesitated. He wanted to ask what was wrong, if you were hurt, if there was anything he could do to help. But his mouth wouldn’t cooperate. Perhaps it was for the best—getting too close to you would only end in pain. Everyone he touched ended up broken. He didn’t want to hurt you.

Instead, he settled for holding out his hand and jerking his head toward the apartment, silently gesturing for you to come inside.

You looked up at him, your glossy eyes stinging with the effort of holding back tears, and met his soft gaze with those piercing green eyes you loved so dearly. Standing out on his ghostly pail skin.



“Your eyes are really pretty,” you whispered, a faint smile in your voice.

“Thanks,” he mumbled, caught off guard.

The moment felt like it stretched for minutes, though it was only seconds. Then, without warning, you stumbled into his side. He shut the balcony door behind you with a sharp bang, the loudest noise of the night, rivaling the distant wail of sirens that echoed through the city streets.

You slumped onto the couch, dragging him down beside you with the unexpected movement. Before he could react, you kicked your feet up and turned his shoulder into your own personal pillow.

Jason froze. His eyes darted toward you, then quickly back again like a kid caught staring at something they aren’t supposed to. He was stunned. Meanwhile, you were already fast asleep, your breathing so soft he could barely hear it.

He knew he should move—lay you down properly, grab a blanket, and try to snatch a few hours of sleep himself. But when he turned to look at you again, he found he couldn’t bring himself to disturb you.

You looked peaceful. The way your hair framed your face, the softness of your features in the dim orange glow of the lamp by the TV—it all captivated him. He couldn’t even bring himself to breathe too loudly for fear of breaking the moment.

He let himself enjoy the weight of you leaning against him, though he hated to admit it. He wanted to keep you at arm’s length, not on his arm, yet here you were. And somehow, he didn’t have the strength—or the desire—to move you.

[slippinmickeys]

Familiar (8/?)

He woke with the thick, grassy musk of sheep pressed into his sinuses and a sharp pain blooming in his ribs. The scent—warm, heavy, a little sour—seemed to anchor him to the earth, and when he blinked his eyes open, he found himself staring straight into the oddly unblinking face of a ram. Its yellow eyes regarded him with mild contempt before the creature huffed, gave a flick of its curled horns, and wandered off toward the rest of the grazing flock.

The man lay there for a moment, dazed, wracked with thirst, listening to the faint bleating of the animals, the stir of wind through tall grass, and the soft thump of hooves against earth.

Then, slowly, he sat up.

His breath hitched. Pain bloomed deep along his side—a massive bruise, already swelling beneath the fabric of his tunic. He brought a hand to the cloth. It was soft, finely made, dyed the orange-brown of old leaves. Familiar, somehow. But not his.

Nothing was his.

He looked around the field, the hills, the clumps of bramble and broken rock—and none of it meant anything to him. Not a tree. Not a birdcall. Not the feel of the dirt under his knees. It was all strange.

A rising unease crawled up his spine.

He didn’t know where he was.

More terrifying: he didn’t know who he was.

His mind, when he reached for it, came up empty. There were no memories waiting behind his eyes. No name. No past. Only a vague hum of something lost—like trying to remember a dream that slipped away at dawn.

Panic crept closer now, curled tight in his throat. He rose on unsteady legs and stumbled down a slope, toward a faint cluster of buildings nestled at the edge of the field.

It was a village. Small. Tidy. After dark.

He walked along the lane, trying to place buildings, trying to piece together something–anything–coherent.

Most of the shops had already shuttered for the night. Wooden stalls stood empty along a crooked lane. Here and there, the low flame of a guttering candle glowed dimly behind warped glass. A pair of women passed him in the street, baskets under their arms, and gave him a look that was more wary than kind.

He didn’t recognize them. And it was clear they didn’t recognize him. 

He wandered, parched and disoriented, until he reached the village square. There, beneath a crooked old tree, stood a stone well. He staggered to it and dropped the pail, the rope rasping through his palms. It hit water with a soft splash.

He hauled it up and drank. Greedy, shaking gulps. Cold water spilled from the corners of his mouth, ran down his chin, soaked the tunic.

When he stood, the world felt clearer. But only slightly.

The emptiness inside him remained.

Eventually, he drifted toward the blacksmith’s shop—silent, the forge gone cold. Behind it, in the straw-sweet dark of the stable, he found an empty stall. He curled into the corner, pulling his legs against his chest, and closed his eyes.

Sleep came slow. Heavy. Like sinking through water.

*X*

Hay.

He smelled hay. And horse. The sharp tang of dung, musty horse piss soaked into straw and the hard-packed earth.

Fox stretched, slow and sinuous, letting the scent curl around him. Dust on his whiskers. Pain in his side. A new place.

From nearby, a sound. Movement.

His body froze, every muscle taut. One ear twitched.

A woman entered the stall. He saw her boots first. Then her eyes.

She screamed.

The pitchfork glinted. She lunged.

He bolted.

The first stab caught nothing but air. The second missed his tail by an inch. He was through the door, under the rail, sprinting.

Shouts. Cries. A dog barked somewhere.

He ran low and fast, his belly brushing dirt, claws scrabbling for purchase on the packed road. Hooves clattered in alarm as he cut through the square. A child yelped. A man shouted, “Fox!”

He didn’t belong here.

His heart hammered. His blood was wild.

He didn’t belong.

Out past the edge of town, the woods waited. He slipped through the outer scrub, vanished into a pocket of brush, and dropped to the ground, breath heaving.

Stillness.

He listened.

No chase.

Slowly, his panic eased.

The scents returned.

And there—faint, strange, calling—a thread of something on the breeze. Not food. Not danger. Something else.

He tasted it on his tongue. Human, yes—but not quite. Not fully. Or more fully human than the rest of them. 

It was warm and sharp and alive.

It made something in his chest ache.

He followed it.

Low to the ground, silent as wind, he crept through tall grasses, over rocks, through field and fern and briar. The scent pulled him onward. Over one hill. Then another.

He paused at the ridge.

Below, in a quiet fold of land, stood a cottage. Weather-worn. Tidy. A small barn leaned against its side. Goats meandered the pasture. Chickens pecked at the yard.

He licked his chops.

One of those birds would be easy. A gift from the gods.

Then she stepped out.

The scent of her bloomed through the air, carried by the wind and into his snout. Like a thread stitched between her body and his nose, it had pulled him to her. 

She lifted her hand against the sun.

Short. Flame-haired. Light-footed. Bright.

His ears flattened. His breath stilled.

Her scent was stronger here, layered with herbs and soap and earth. She smelled like old things. Wild things. Things half-remembered in dreams.

She was the thing that called him.

Memory came to him, unfolding like the petals of a soft flower. In the daylight he was one thing. In the night another. And her. She was the reason for all of it. And she had no idea. 

He sat. And watched. And waited.

[maddie-dog-story-blog]

Sarah's Playground - 2

PREVIOUS CHAPTER

As I open the door to my apartment, I'm greeted by the beautiful plants, ample daylight, and modern furniture that suits my mature tastes so well. Little things give away the presence of my little 'guest' in the house though.

A large mesh-sided playpen full of stuffies, dolls, and blocks is shoved into a corner of the living room. An extra large highchair sits in the dining room, with a bottle still perched on the tray. Rather than a recliner in the living room, there is a large rocking chair. Also, sitting out on one side table is a hospital quality breast pump.

Looking at the breast pump causes me to rub my breasts. They feel warm, hard to the touch, and tender. Just the act of touching them causes them to leak milk into my bra. It's definitely time to feed the baby! I must have taken longer on my walk then I planned.

I quickly walk to the hallway in my apartment and open the second door on the right. I can't help but smile as the smell of the room hits me before I can even see it. The room has an overwhelming odor of lavender baby powder and bleach that almost covers up the underlying smell of ammonia and messy diapers. In essence, it smells like a daycare or nursery, exactly how I want it to.

As I open the door and look inside I'm greeted by a familiar sight. The room is a fully stocked nursery, but sized up to handle an adult baby. An extra large, fully stocked changing table sits along one wall next to a large diaper pail. Set into another wall is a closet with white doors which, I know, is filled with onesies, baby dresses, fleece pajamas, and other baby clothes sized up to fit my precious little one.

Next to the closet is a large toy chest. Beyond the standard baby toys, it also contained more adult toys I let my charge use for my own pleasure and entertainment. There is nothing more fun than watching a fully grown adult, wearing a poopy diaper and sucking on a pacifier, hump her favorite stuffy while pushing a vibrator into her crotch. The combination of arousal, submission, and humiliation is perfect.

Finally, placed against another wall of the room is a queen-sized crib with locking railings that reach 6' into the air. It's the perfect location to keep my precious little adult baby safe and contained while I am out.

I look to the crib and see exactly what I am expecting. Crouched on her knees is a five-foot tall woman wearing a pastel pink onesie with the phrase "Mommy's Little Pampers Packer" emblazoned across the front. Her small but noticeable breasts push against the soft fabric of her onesie. The onesie is also stretched almost to its limits around the woman's waist and bottom where the extra large, and, based on what I am smelling, extra messy, diaper is taped onto her. The small woman's blonde hair is cut short and styled into short pigtails high on her head. A pacifier is tucked snuggly between her lips. Above her pacifier, the woman glares at me angrily. She looks exactly like the petulant toddler I have strived to turn her into. I subconsciously reach up and rub my magic necklace between my thumb and forefinger in satisfaction.

The woman in front of me, Lidia, despite all appearances, is four years older than me. We grew up on the same street, and our mom's were best friends. Growing up, Lidia was the stereotypical perfect girl. She was beautiful, a straight 'A' student, a varsity soccer player, and the most popular kid at school. Basically, everything about her stood in stark distinction to the pants wetting adult toddler locked in the crib in front of me right now.

In contrast, growing up, I was always a little small and immature. My mom was a helicopter parent who didn't want me participating in anything where I could get hurt or into trouble. I wasn't allowed to play sports, go to sleepovers, or even have a boyfriend or girlfriend.

My mom also didn't trust me. She always saw me as a small child, all the way until I was 18. So, whenever she left town or had something to do at night, she'd call Lidia's mom and have the neighborhood's golden child come over and babysit me.

Having your mom hire a babysitter at 16 was bad enough, but Lidia was the worst. Lidia had a dark side that no one knew about or even believed when I told people about it.

I was a bedwetter growing up, and, as my babysitter, Lidia knew all about it. I eventually grew out of it at 13, but that didn't keep Lidia from blackmailing me with it. You see, when Lidia babysat me, she thought it was hilarious to treat me like her little baby doll. I had to comply, or Lidia threatened to reveal how long I was a bedwetter to my classmates. I was already a social outcast and knew that information would ruin me.

So, everytime my mom would hire Lidia, within minutes of her leaving I would find myself wearing nothing but a diaper and shirt, sucking on a pacifier, sitting on a baby blanket in my living room, and watching Cocomelon while Lidia laughed at me. I have horrible memories of spending entire weekends being forced to act like a toddler by perfect little Lidia. It was horrible.

As a result, when I realized the power I had, one of the first things I did was turn the tables on Lidia. I shrunk her down as I made myself bigger. I took away her independence, changing her reality so she lived with her parents again. I made her a bedwetter. I made it so her parents, like my mother so long ago, didn't trust her, and hired me to babysit her.

From there, just like she did to me, I've blackmailed her over time to becoming my personal adult toddler. Without changing her, I've changed reality such that Lidia was forced to choose to become my plaything--choosing to act like a toddler rather than being forced to--despite remembering everything that happened prior to me reshaping reality. Watching her devolve to my naughty little girl by choice, all while I know she remembers bullying me, has been the most satisfying part of using my new found powers.

Now, after months of Lidia agreeing to be my permanent baby doll, I can't help but smile as she glowers at me, locked in her crib, sitting in a poopy diaper.

"Oh, my little pamper packer is awake! It smells like you made Mommy a present? Did you make me a present, Lidia?" I say as I walk up to the crib, stick my hand between the bars and rub her cheek affectionately.

Lidia scrunches up her nose behind the pacifier and I can see her willing herself to act like a toddler to avoid any punishments.

"Yeth, Momma! Lidy makes poopies for Momma!" Lidia lisped out from behind her pacifier with a false sweetness to her tone.

"Good baby!" I say as I reach over to unlatch the side of the crib and begin lowering it. "With such a full diapy, I bet Lidia has an empty tummy. Let's get it all filled up with some of Mommy's num-nums."

I watch as Lidia grimaces at the idea of suckling at my test and carefully avoids putting her weight onto her poopy diaper. I know, from history, that she wants to ask me for a change before she eats. I also know that she knows she is not allowed to ask for a change.

"Yeth, Momma, Lidy 'ungry," Lidia tells me as I lift her from her crib and place her on my hip, making sure to mush as much if her mess into her butt as possible as I carry her out into the living room and sit in the couch.

"Good, baby, because Mommy needs you to empty me out!" I say as I sit down, laying Lidia on the couch with her head in my lap and pop her pacifier out of her mouth. I pull out my breasts, exposing my nipples that are now dripping with my creamy white milk.

Lidia looks at my massive, milky breasts with disgust. She then shuffles her body in discomfort, probably trying to get to where she can't feel the shit sitting in the back of her pants. But, as she is expected to, she opens her mouth like a hungry baby and waits for me to help her latch.

I smile in satisfaction at how well trained Lidia is now. Hundreds, if not thousands, of punishments, tears, and public humiliations have turned Lidia from the bully who loved to play mommy to my perfect bratty little girl.

I grab Lidia by the back of the head and pull her mouth up to my left breast. I moan in pleasure as she begins to suckle, relieving the pressure that's been building for hours. I run my hand through Lidia's hair lovingly.

"That's it, good girl," I moan out as Lidia continues to suckle.

The relief of pressure, the dominant feelings I am having, and the knowledge of how much Lidia hates this is incredibly arousing. Like almost every time I feed Lidia, I'm tempted to rub myself. I resist though, and settle for throwing my head back and closing my eyes, imagining what tortures I can work up for Lidia next.

While my eyes are closed, I feel Lidia's hand drift up to my breast and begin to press. I'm not concerned by this. She does this often to help fully empty me, and, frankly, the pressure feels good.

I keep my eyes closed and moan as she suckles me with her mouth and milks me with her hand. I didn't notice as her hand drifted to the magically ruby pendant on my necklace. I didn't feel her grip it firmly in her fist.

Before I realize what is happening, I did feel Lidia unlatch from my breast and hear her rapidly call out a wish.

NEXT CHAPTER

[molotovstrafficconeaddiction]

TOUGALICIOUS 

DISCLAIMER!!!

(I DO NOT LIKE TOUGA AS A PERSON AND DO NOT CONDONE ANYTHING HE HAS DONE)

This is a parody RGU (specifically touga) version of the song "karkalicious", which was based off "fergalicious" which means these lyrics HAVE been altered by me BUT I DIDN'T write the original song or karkalicious. This text contain mildly suggestive lyrics, but nothing too bad. I have sensored it as well, but read at your own risk! :)

Four, three, two, fork you 

Listen up y’all, this shirt is ironic  Saionji’s beats are best for girls hooked on angst and chronic  (Chronic playboy syndrome?) 

Tougalicious definition makes Kozue loco  She wants to know the secrets she can’t taste in my photo  Dyin’ just to know the flavor  I ain't doin’ her no favors  No reasons why I tease  Her blush just comes and goes like seasons 

I’m Tougalicious (so delicious)  No, I don’t do kiss faces  And if you read those fanfics  Half that shirt is capricious  I blow kisses (mwah!)  Don’t matter if we’re just more gays  Girls be lining down the aisle for a chance with me  (Four, three, two, fork you) 

So delicious (super sweet — haha, not)  So delicious (forkin’ playboy beachhhh)  So delicious (even Shiori wants a piece o’ me)  I’m Tougalicious (l-l-l-like Anthy, Anthy) 

Tougalicious def—  Tougalicious def—  (Gosh dammit, Saionji, stop forkin’ with my mic) 

Tougalicious definition makes the fandom crazy  Girls always squealin’,  Cutesy pet names like “Kiryuu-senpai,” baby  I’m the T to the O, U, the G, the A  And the majority of pairings better include me, hey 

I’m Tougalicious (so delicious)  My aura stays malicious  All the council’s gettin’ nervous ‘cause I’m playin’ so capricious  Nanami’s my witness (whistle!)  Bet that ship rails  And he’ll be needin’ all the towels ‘cause I’ma make him sweat pails  (Four, three, two, fork you) 

So delicious (super sweet)  So delicious (forkin’ playboy beachhhh)  So delicious (even Miki wants a piece o’ me)  I’m Tougalicious 

(Now you background extras, hold the fork up, check it out) 

Baby, baby, baby  If you really want me  Honey, get some patience  Maybe then you’ll be my bride  I’ll be tasty, tasty  I’ll be raced with roses  It’s so tasty, tasty  It’ll make you crazy 

T to the O, to the U G A — forkin’ touga  T to the A, to the S T E Y — forkin’ tasty  D to the E, to the L I C I O U S  To the D, to the E, to the, to the, to the 

I’ll just spell it out for you! 

All the time I turn around, girls gather ‘round  Always sniffin’ at me, wanna guess the 

Color of my rose  I just wanna say it now  I’m so tired of all the drama  Little forkers, I just don’t care 

You should know  I never come off as  Just a little insecure, although  I keep on repeatin’ how the 

Revolution’s forkin’ awesome  But I’m tryin’ to tell — it’s a secret I don’t wanna tell  Utena says I smell 

Delicious (so delicious)  No, I don’t do kiss faces  And if you read those fanfics  Half that shirt is capricious  I blow kisses (mwah!)  Don’t matter if we’re just a**holes  Girls be lining down the aisle for a chance with me 

Four, three, two, fork you  My body stays vicious  Miki’s feelin’ nervous ‘cause I’m just so ambiguous  Juri’s my witness (meow!)  I’ll even let her first ship sail  Just watch that kitten be the first to lose the forkin’ veil 

So delicious (Utena, see)  So delicious (you can trust me)  So delicious (I’ll help you be)  I’m Tougalicious, l-l-like Anthy, Anthy (Utena, Utena)  It’s so delicious (ay, ay, ay, ay)  So delicious (ay, ay, ay, ay)  So delicious (ay, ay, ay, ay)  I’m Tougalicious (say I’m meant for Anthy, Anthy) 

T to the O, to the U G A — forkin’ touga  T to the A, to the S T E Y — forkin’ tasty  T to the O, to the U G A — forkin’ touga  To the D, to the E, to the L I C I O U S  D to the E, to the L I C I O U S  To the D, to the E, to the, L I C I O U S  To the D, to the E, to the L I C I O U S  To the D, to the E, to the, to the, to the 

Now, wait just a motherforkin’ second! 

Do I seriously gotta spell this shirt  ‘Til the end of the forkin’ series? 

I mean, whoever wrote the original  Never had access to spellcheck, I guess 

‘Cause T-A-S-T-E-Y does not spell tasty  Was this idiotic duelist illiterate, or what? 

What do you mean duelist rap artists  Are the only ones brave enough to write  Their own grammatical car wrecks and call it music?  What the fork even is Saionji doing? 

He doesn’t throw down sickfics anymore? 

Fork this shirt, I quit. 

[tellmealovestory]

Trick-or-treat

Summary: Your little family goes trick-or-treating for the first time.

Warnings: A few lines of suggestive dialogue, but mostly fluff and also dad!Eddie

Spooktober Masterlist

“Ladies, let’s go!” Eddie says, fist pounding on the door of the bathroom in impatience. “All the good candy is gonna be gone soon!” 

“Chill, Eddie, we’re almost done!” you shout back.

Your daughter dances impatiently in the bathroom and not one to be outdone she turns her tiny face towards the bathroom door to shout, “yeah, dada chill!”

His laughter rings out on the other side of the door following his retreating footsteps. Finishing the last touches on your daughter’s costume you tie the bandana around her forehead and tell her, “okay, baby, go show daddy your costume before he has another meltdown.” Booping her on the nose you open the door for her and watch as she waddles out to Eddie. 

She acts so much like him it makes your heart sing every time you look at her or see them together. She was a surprise that caught both of you off guard and made you question if either of you were ready to be parents and though it’s hardly been smooth sailing raising a child in a too small apartment on too small checks your little family makes do. 

There’s also the added bonus that having her has given Eddie a second chance at a happy childhood that he missed out on when he was growing up. 

Swiping on a layer of lipstick you adjust your top and step out of the bathroom door watching Eddie and his daughter. He’s got her in his arms, peppering sloppy kisses to the top of her head and forehead, each one making her giggle and coo as she flails her arms about. 

Such a daddy’s girl. 

“See? Now wasn’t that worth the wait?” you tease, stepping towards him to press a kiss to his cheek before grabbing the neon green pumpkin pail she’ll be using for trick or treating. 

“It’s always worth the wait for my little rockstar.” 

You smile softly as he grabs the keys to his outdated van while still holding onto his daughter. 

“Not just any rockstar,” you start, shutting the lights off behind you and locking the door, “She wanted to dress just like her daddy.” 

The words and realization make Eddie pause on the steps outside the apartment door and he takes a longer look at his daughter's little rockstar costume. Dressed in a black tee shirt she’s drowning in and black leggings and boots she’s got a bandana tied around her forehead just like Eddie always wears on stage.

Eddie’s heart picks up speed as it all clicks into place. You’re right. She is dressed like him and it makes him smile so wide his face hurts. 

“Who’s idea was that? Yours or hers?” 

“Hers. I gave her a hundred different options and all she said was she wanted to dress like you. But not the mechanic you. Apparently that’s not as cool as her dad being a part time rockstar.” 

Reaching the van it’s a well oiled machine as you both work to buckle her into her carseat before sliding into the drivers and passenger side respectively.

The town of Hawkins is decorated like the set from a movie scene. Orange and purple lights are strung up on porch railings. Carved pumpkins stuffed with candles flicker on porches. Kids dressed as everything from princesses and doctors to ninja mutant turtles run through the streets as doorbells and fists knocking on doors fill the night air. 

While Eddie grabs your daughter from her seat you grab the red wagon with a squeaky wheel that he promised he’d fix before tonight as you begin to walk through the streets. You take turns taking her up to each house. Her manners impeccable, her smile huge, her giggles louder than the other kids as she proudly tells everyone who asks that she dressed like her daddy the rockstar.

Most of the parents don’t care. Hell, most of the kids don’t care either, but Eddie can’t stop hearing it enough. 

As the night wears on and your daughter starts to get tired you place her in the wagon piled high with fluffy blankets and pillows as you swing her overstuffed pail of candy and popcorn balls back and forth. 

“So,” Eddie starts, gaze sliding over to you to take in your appearance of a ripped Corroded Coffin tee shirt, black skirt, fishnet stockings and thigh high boots. “I know what she’s dressed as, but what are you supposed to be?” 

You jut your hip out as he pauses in front of another house to let a group of teenagers pass. You peek at your daughter seeing her not paying attention to either of you as she begins to clamber out of the wagon by herself accomplishing it after a few tries. You both watch her hurry up to the house before finally answering his question.

“Isn’t it obvious?” you purr, hand resting on his chest. “I’m dressed as your number one groupie.” 

If the smile on his face was large hearing his daughter was dressed as him the smile on his face hearing what you just said is pure filth.

His hands fall to your waist and he closes the tiny bit of distance between your bodies as his lips hover mere inches from yours. “Might be the best costume I’ve seen all night.” 

“Mm. Maybe if you’re real good tonight I’ll give you a treat instead of a trick that I’m sure you’ll enjoy.” 

“Better not be teasing me,” he growls seconds before his lips are on yours, but the kiss is short lived as your daughter comes stumbling towards you both, wrapping her tiny arms around Eddie’s legs she peers up at him like he hung the moon and the stars just for her. 

“Dada,” she starts, “Let’s go!” 

You laugh with Eddie as it’s so reminiscent of the way that he demanded you both to hurry up before leaving. 

“Yes, ma’am. So demanding,” he teases, picking her up as he begins to jog down to the next street. “You know she gets that attitude from you.” 

“Excuse me?” you laugh, pulling the wagon behind you as you trail after them. “That is all you, Eddie!”

His laughter joins yours and as you finish up the night trick-or-treating you’re filled with love and happiness. 

[sanderssidesplaylist]

Disco Snails by Vulfmon and Zachary Barker?

I know there is a full version of this song, but it’s not as good as the original tiktok clip (in my opinion). But I’ll respect whichever version you choose to link (but the original is shorty and funkier and definitely goes hard).

It’s also important to me that you know this is legitimately my favourite song. It started as a joke my first year of undergrad but now my friends and I sing it almost daily. I have a metal wire statue of a disco snail. (I’m the weirdest person when it comes to music; I’m so sorry for derailing this blog and not being able to always fully participate)

Inside every snail shell is a tiny disco ball Disco isn't dead, instead, it turns out that it just got small They've got the boogie oogie all up in their buggy bodies These super freaks of nature love to seek out funky hobbies

Disco snails, they're off to San Francisco where the disco's off the rails They meet and dance to disco in disgusting garbage pails The afterparty is in your garden where they'll eat your kale And dance to disco 'cause they're disco snails

Disco what? Disco snails, they're leaving silver trails Disco where? Current position's 3rd and Mission Disco how? They're on the roof, they've found the groove Disco why? The simple answer is, they're dancers

There's traffic on the freeway, for the snails are on the loose Watch your step, they're only one inch tall atop their platform shoes They've got the smoothest groovy moves up in their buggy bodies This downright funkadelic bunch have come to start the party (p-p-p-party)

Disco snails, they're off to San Francisco where the disco's off the rails They meet and dance to disco in disgusting garbage pails The afterparty is in your garden where they'll eat your kale And dance to disco 'cause they're disco snails

Disco what? Disco snails, they're leaving silver trails Disco where? They're in the height, filled with love Disco how? It's not a spoof, they've found the groove Disco why? The simple answer is, they're dancers

Disco what? Disco snails, they're leaving silver trails Disco where? Their latitude is gratitude Disco how? It's not a spoof, they've found the groove Disco why? The simple answer is, they're dancers

Disco what? Disco snails, they're leaving silver trails Disco where? I can't tell you that Disco how? It's not a spoof, they've found the groove Disco why? The simple answer is, they're dancers

Disco what? Disco snails, they're leaving silver trails Disco where? I can't tell you that, can't, can't tell you that Disco how? It's not a spoof, they've found the groove Disco why? The simple answer is, they're dancers