dragons-locator

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Why do they even make apps for ADHD. You want me to use my 24/7 handheld immediate distraction device? To manage my 'gets distracted too easily' disorder? Ooooh we developed the perfect tool for managing your anemia. Its hosted in Dracula's castle. 👍

dragons

DRAGONS LOCATED

Why do they even make apps for ADHD. You want me to use my 24/7 handheld immediate distraction device? To manage my 'gets distracted too easily' disorder? Ooooh we developed the perfect tool for managing your anemia. Its hosted in Dracula's castle. 👍

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DRAGONS LOCATED

Blessings Of The Wool Dragon

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Mary brings her mother sweet chamomile tea, that night, and a warm shawl in all the colors of a garden, and a hairbrush. In the morning, the priest’s son comes round, with payment for his mother’s pretty new dress and a shy smile just for Mary.

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DRAGONS LOCATED

Here’s a story about changelings: 

Mary was a beautiful baby, sweet and affectionate, but by the time she’s three she’s turned difficult and strange, with fey moods and a stubborn mouth that screams and bites but never says mama. But her mother’s well-used to hard work with little thanks, and when the village gossips wag their tongues she just shrugs, and pulls her difficult child away from their precious, perfect blossoms, before the bites draw blood. Mary’s mother doesn’t drown her in a bucket of saltwater, and she doesn’t take up the silver knife the wife of the village priest leaves out for her one Sunday brunch. 

She gives her daughter yarn, instead, and instead of a rowan stake through her inhuman heart she gives her a child’s first loom, oak and ash. She lets her vicious, uncooperative fairy daughter entertain herself with games of her own devising, in as much peace and comfort as either of them can manage.

Mary grows up strangely, as a strange child would, learning everything in all the wrong order, and biting a great deal more than she should. But she also learns to weave, and takes to it with a grand passion. Soon enough she knows more than her mother–which isn’t all that much–and is striking out into unknown territory, turning out odd new knots and weaves, patterns as complex as spiderwebs and spellrings. 

“Aren’t you clever,” her mother says, of her work, and leaves her to her wool and flax and whatnot. Mary’s not biting anymore, and she smiles more than she frowns, and that’s about as much, her mother figures, as anyone should hope for from their child. 

Mary still cries sometimes, when the other girls reject her for her strange graces, her odd slow way of talking, her restless reaching fluttering hands that have learned to spin but never to settle. The other girls call her freak, witchblood, hobgoblin.

“I don’t remember girls being quite so stupid when I was that age,” her mother says, brushing Mary’s hair smooth and steady like they’ve both learned to enjoy, smooth as a skein of silk. “Time was, you knew not to insult anyone you might need to flatter later. ‘Specially when you don’t know if they’re going to grow wings or horns or whatnot. Serve ‘em all right if you ever figure out curses.”

“I want to go back,” Mary says. “I want to go home, to where I came from, where there’s people like me. If I’m a fairy’s child I should be in fairyland, and no one would call me a freak.”

“Aye, well, I’d miss you though,” her mother says. “And I expect there’s stupid folk everywhere, even in fairyland. Cruel folk, too. You just have to make the best of things where you are, being my child instead.”

Mary learns to read well enough, in between the weaving, especially when her mother tracks down the traveling booktraders and comes home with slim, precious manuals on dyes and stains and mordants, on pigments and patterns, diagrams too arcane for her own eyes but which make her daughter’s eyes shine.

“We need an herb garden,” her daughter says, hands busy, flipping from page to page, pulling on her hair, twisting in her skirt, itching for a project. “Yarrow, and madder, and woad and weld…”

“Well, start digging,” her mother says. “Won’t do you a harm to get out of the house now’n then.”

Mary doesn’t like dirt but she’s learned determination well enough from her mother. She digs and digs, and plants what she’s given, and the first year doesn’t turn out so well but the second’s better, and by the third a cauldron’s always simmering something over the fire, and Mary’s taking in orders from girls five years older or more, turning out vivid bolts and spools and skeins of red and gold and blue, restless fingers dancing like they’ve summoned down the rainbow. Her mother figures she probably has.

“Just as well you never got the hang of curses,” she says, admiring her bright new skirts. “I like this sort of trick a lot better.”

Mary smiles, rocking back and forth on her heels, fingers already fluttering to find the next project.

She finally grows up tall and fair, if a bit stooped and squinty, and time and age seem to calm her unhappy mouth about as well as it does for human children. Word gets around she never lies or breaks a bargain, and if the first seems odd for a fairy’s child then the second one seems fit enough. The undyed stacks of taken orders grow taller, the dyed lots of filled orders grow brighter, the loom in the corner for Mary’s own creations grows stranger and more complex. Mary’s hands callus just like her mother’s, become as strong and tough and smooth as the oak and ash of her needles and frames, though they never fall still.

“Do you ever wonder what your real daughter would be like?” the priest’s wife asks, once.

Mary’s mother snorts. “She wouldn’t be worth a damn at weaving,” she says. “Lord knows I never was. No, I’ll keep what I’ve been given and thank the givers kindly. It was a fair enough trade for me. Good day, ma’am.”

Mary brings her mother sweet chamomile tea, that night, and a warm shawl in all the colors of a garden, and a hairbrush. In the morning, the priest’s son comes round, with payment for his mother’s pretty new dress and a shy smile just for Mary. He thinks her hair is nice, and her hands are even nicer, vibrant in their strength and skill and endless motion.  

They all live happily ever after.

*

Here’s another story: 

Keep reading

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And then I read this book. This fucking brilliant and beautiful book written by a man who had seen the horrors of war and spilled it all over the page. And I read it for the first time as an adult with full understanding and experience of what it all means.

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DRAGONS LOCATED

I finished reading The Lord of the Rings for the first time in my life. With all of *vague gesture at everything* this going on.

I Am Not Okay

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DRAGONS LOCATED

[image id: Smaug burning Laketown]

Burning Laketown by Hassan Ali

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DRAGONS LCOATED

[image id: a blue baby dragon painted on a small blue stone. The brushes and paint tubes are visible.]

Ocean dragon Miniature painting on a stone. Made by oil paints. Stone size:5x2.7cm Work in progress. Custom art.  

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and like for one hellish second my soul is suckerpunched out of my body and thrown straight into supernatural-fanfic-on-wattpad hell, and then I reassume control of my flesh prison, ignoring the mental edits of Dean and Castiel making out, and go “Aren’t those the guys who are half human and half angel?”

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DRAGONS LOCATED

thinking about the time they sent me a seven year old autistic patient to investigate if he was suffering abuse because in every psychological test he kept drawing awful monsters

and I start the consultation already miserable as fuck and I give the kid some pen and paper so I can maybe communicate and see what's on his mind

and then I go WAIT A GODDAMN SECOND I KNOW THOSE MONSTERS

turns out the kid just had a special interest in Five Nights at Freddy's

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Dr. John Sharpe of London, who in 1957, a decade before physicians in England could legally perform an abortion for any reason other than the health of the woman, took the considerable risk of referring for an abortion a twenty-two-year-old American on her way to India.

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DRAGONS LOCATED

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DRAGONS LOCATED

[image id: a dragon coiled around a huge pile of books]

... dragons are everywhere ...

🎨 Astrid Sheckels

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update: transmogrifying my haters into an animal that is known for something called the "death roll" has backfired in a manner no one could have forecasted

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DRAGONS LOCATED

All my haters become aligators when I activate my gatorinator.

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did trilobites walked among flowering plants

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[image id: a picturesque field of flowers, with three trilobites wandering around]

did trilobites walked among flowering plants

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I had a fort where a gaggle of vampire migrants showed up. I immediately tried to remove them to save my fortress from being eaten, but the dumbasses decided to elect one of the vampires mayor.

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DRAGONS LOCATED

Can someone explain Dwarf Fortress to me???

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Got the annual companywide email today about tick safety! While ticks in my region are no joke, this still goes on the list of weird/funny job stuff because I am the only lawyer I know (besides my junior associate) who gets this.

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DRAGONS LOCATED

Sometimes being in environmental law means that your schedule for the afternoon gets completely thrown because a colleague standing the middle of some woods calls to tell you that there’s gunk in the stream and it smells bad.

[dragons-locator]

And speaking of pronouns, flat-out my favorite part of the LOTR Appendices is when it’s revealed that the Gondorian dialect of the Common Speech differentiates between formal and informal second-person pronouns but the distinction’s been lost in the Hobbit’s dialect, so Pippin’s blithely been using familiar terms of address with the Lord of the City, and thus helps to explain both why the Gondorians are so ready to assume he’s a prince and why Denethor finds him so amusing to have around.

draGonS

DRAGONS LOCATED

And speaking of pronouns, flat-out my favorite part of the LOTR Appendices is when it’s revealed that the Gondorian dialect of the Common Speech differentiates between formal and informal second-person pronouns but the distinction’s been lost in the Hobbit’s dialect, so Pippin’s blithely been using familiar terms of address with the Lord of the City, and thus helps to explain both why the Gondorians are so ready to assume he’s a prince and why Denethor finds him so amusing to have around.

[dragons-locator]

However, he replied to said email within five minutes, asking a question that required an answer. So I answered and was like "Also, I was going to apologize for answering emails during this call, but I see we're both here at the Devil's Sacrament, so I don't think an apology is necessary."

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DRAGONS LOCATED

using "what were YOU doing at the devils sacrament" to mean "yeah i made an embarrassing reference but you understood it which is also embarrassing" is very funny to me

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DRAGONS LOCATED

Baba like dragons?

DRAGON IS FAVORITE

[dragons-locator]

And honestly you don't even need a powerful interpersonal connection to activate Hater Mode. I wasn't that close to any of my middle school classmates and I certainly wasn't interested in them romantically, but I was still so sick of hearing about the boy band guys they had crushes on that I fantasized about Justin Bieber dying in a plane crash.

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DRAGONS LOCATED

re: finding platonic explanations for things you cannot even imagine, I'd like to see an aromantic jealousy plot for a change. Character A is seethingly jealous of Character B's love interest but it's not because they're romantically interested in B, it's because they're aro and B is the most important person in their life and this is an unwelcome reminder that they will always come second to a traditional romantic partner in society's eyes and possibly B's as well.

And honestly you don't even need a powerful interpersonal connection to activate Hater Mode. I wasn't that close to any of my middle school classmates and I certainly wasn't interested in them romantically, but I was still so sick of hearing about the boy band guys they had crushes on that I fantasized about Justin Bieber dying in a plane crash. Not my most hinged of moments but idk what to tell you, middle school was a bad time