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Flamel tattoo commission for @vaatiandveselekov

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Donna Tartt, The Secret History 

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>> I ain’t got time for you baby  Either you’re mine or you’re not  A Little Party Never Killed Nobody

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You never forget. It must be somewhere inside you. Even if the brain has forgotten, perhaps the teeth remember. Or the fingers.

Neil Gaiman, Trigger Warning: Short Fictions and Disturbances (via the-book-diaries)

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Mazama Ridge 2, Frostfang & Imperator by Maciej Karcz

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celandione averre // roots run deep

Do you know the purpose of yubitsume?

To make

               you

                     useless.

The Garlean's face is obscured by his helm; she can only tell he's male from the tenor of the grunts as he hauls her into the cell, ankles bound. She's forced to her knees before her cellmate, the knife that passes between their faces reflecting scared, pearlescent eyes--

Shono--

--before his gloved hand presses it into hers.

“Choose.” The man's voice is stripped of emotion, ringing metallic from inside that helm. “Cut out her eyes, or cut out your own.”

“That isn't a choice,” she hisses back, snatching the knife away. The only question is of how-- how to make herself drive the blade into her own skull, not once but twice...

She stares down the length of the blade, her own blue eye now reflected in its surface.

A part of you--

        to make you useless;

                we'll take your horns, your eyes, we'll eat your heart...

It's all very well to want to, but to actually do… And yet there is no alternative, not one worth considering; Dione the dark knight is no torturer of the good, and Dione the woman, Dione the child

cannot even think the words;

                    {{Cut out her eyes.}}

without the urge to retch; and so she

turns her gaze back to the point of the blade, wondering how to approach it, how to approach herself with it without flinching. Should she try to cut the nerves behind the eye, minimising the damage while leaving her almost certainly incapable of performing the second cut well? Or just jam the knife in before her body can protest-- but what if she drives it too deep, piercing her brain and killing her? Will they still cut Shono's eyes out if she can't remove both of her own? Will they do it anyroad? Is all of this futile? How--

--have you failed

       to protect her

              this badly?

“I didn't fail,” she murmurs, staring down the blade of the knife. “It wasn't my fault I wasn't there. No one told me-- it wasn't my fault…”

Then, will you accept

                  this unjust punishment?

      A judgment without trial?

“...I have to. They own me. I have to accept it-- for Shono--”

Enslavement! She feels the rope chafing the scales on her ankles, and dimly notes that the voice is not the Queen's. It's deep; male; resonant; ancient. Why do you bow your head for these fools? Why do you bow your head to a dead man? Stand and fight!

“--my legs are bound…”

Cease your mewling, whelp! Now stand!

Still staring at the knife, she tries in vain to stand--

Fight! Are you of My brood or no?

“Brood…?”

She looks down at her thighs, thickly armoured with ink-black plates; the ropes cut into her scales as they swell, as Uhm Ala's curse wars with the soulstone's gift, with the dragon heart, with an ancestry writ in blood. Her muscles strain against the bonds, legs thickening and twisting until they abruptly

snap

backwards

She roars with pain-- and triumph, reaching down with massive jaws to rip the last of the rope from her flesh. She looks around for Shono--

--only to find herself atop Uhm Ala's tower. The yellow dragon stands upon it no longer; wrapped around it instead is a great black wyrm, tenfold larger than the corpse dangling from his jaws. With one awful lurch of his throat muscles, he gulps down Uhm Ala whole.

Dione-- who even as a dragon had been dwarfed tenfold by Uhm Ala-- is a speck before the massive wyrm. A wreath of abyssal scales encircles the tower, crushing it in their grip-- the tower shatters--

Dione falls--

--and flies again, rising to hover, slowly, before the great wyrm's face.

Nidhogg’s booming laugh fills the air around them, storm clouds amassing overhead. The Red Queen’s scorched wasteland is no more; rain streams down their faces, soothing away Dione’s heated tears.

Observe! Though your wings be torn from you, you fly! Though your heart be fouled and blackened, it beats! Though your voice be silenced, you roar! Hot, fetid dragon breath blasts against her face; she minds it not.

His great hand reaches out, and she finds herself stood atop his palm. Should your horns be cut, regrow them! Should your eyes be lanced, reclaim them! He brings her to his face, eye to massive, blazing eye.

And should they think they can render you useless…

Nidhogg’s eye is a roiling pit of flame, its burn unending, ever-yearning.

...Destroy them.

She awakens to the taste of smoke in her mouth, to the tingle of fire on her lips; around her, the soft curl of Shono’s sleeping form, lips parting to murmur protest at Dione’s stirring.

She settles back against her mate, eyes falling closed once more. For the first time in a very long time, she wishes to return to her dreams.

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casual intimacy kills me every time. grand gestures are cute and all but seeing two people who are just totally comfortable with having each other in their space, who dont think twice about leaning into each other and thoughtlessly holding each other while doing unrelated things….. thats love

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Takuma Nakahira

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I’m a slave to my emotions, to my likes, to my hatred of boredom, to most of my desires.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise  (via thequotejournals)

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thank you for loving me, even when i’m still learning how to

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