#(and in a more jaundiced view: have her where she could watch what she was doing; who she was seeing)

[fideidefenswhore]

the downfall and execution of a tudor queen (2023) / the boleyns: a scandalous family (2021) / the king's pearl: henry viii and his daughter mary (2017), melita thomas / anne boleyn (tv miniseries 2021) / the mirror and the light (2024) / elizabeth (1998)

[sdv-mostly-shane]

not sure if this has been asked or written before, but what a about a 'sort of cryptid like farmer' and shane? a farmer that's just a little bit more on the non human side kinda thing, if thats alright

A special Spooktember treat for you guys- I hope you enjoy. Been saving this one until it was appropriately close enough to spooky season. Also- TIL that goblincore is a quite delightful aesthetic-read til the end to get the full ✧･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ:* vibes *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧ they’re feral AND charming.

Just Goblin Things

Summary: There’s something sinister in Cindersnap Forest, and Shane is the one to come face to face with the creature. What he finds is a more than just a little magical, and he can’t wait to discover more.

Trigger warning : very brief, vague insinuations of alcohol; general spookyness.

“Seb, how many more until we can go back to my house?’

“Just a minute, Sam. I can hear one croaking just over there…“

“Yoba, what was that!-look, there in the bush!” A flash of green had caught Abigails eye, followed by a loud scrambling noise. She pushed herself off the ground, using Sam’s shoulder as a boost, and leaped toward the sound, searching for its maker.

“What kind of frog was that?”

“I didn’t even see anything. Probably just some raccoon or something.” They watched Abby crawl around a small thicket of bushes, peeking in between branches as she went. “Leave it alone, Abby, you don’t want to catch rabies.”

“Raccoons don’t have green eyes, Seb,” she said, as she perked her head up to listen to a faint crinkling of leaves. “Listen, do you hear that? It almost sounds like.. hissing?”

“What, like a snake?”

“No, like a-AH!” Abby shrieked, and fell back. The two boys ran towards her. “No, get back, it might see you!” She was referencing the massive pair of green speckled eyes that were now accompanied with a gnarly, toothy grimace emerging from the bush. From it, came an ungodly snarling and hissing.

“Alright, time to go,” Seb yanked the two teenagers away from the creature, and they started to run. Once they had made it inside Sam’s house, the trio slammed his bedroom door and jumped on the bed. They sat for a moment in silence, listening to each other’s panting breath. Abby began to say something, but Sebastian interrupted, “we’re not gonna talk about it. Just don’t-nothing happened. We didn’t see anything. Got it?” Abby huffed in frustration, and protested with him, arguing that they needed to get back out there and figure it out. All Sam could do was stare at his floor, stunned at what had just happened.

The next day, Sam went to start his shift at the Joja Mart on edge from the night before. Shane was working the freezer when he spotted him-he had picked up a packaged of individually sealed pancakes seven minutes ago and was still staring at it, unmoving. “Uh, you alright, bud?”

“I’ve never seen anything like it…” His voice seemed far away, but he managed to finally move, making to put away the product. He turned to him, “Shane, you live in Cindersnap Forest. Have you ever seen anything… weird… there?”

“You mean besides Mayor Lewis sneaking out the back window and crawling around the house, thinking I can’t see him?”

“What?”

“No, never seen anything.”

“Well we did, Abby, Seb, and I, last night.”

“And?”

“Well, nothing really actually happened-it just scared us, really. Made a really ugly sound and showed it’s teeth to us. It must have just been some animal… but the thing is… gah, I can’t even say it.”

Shane tossed a bag of multipurpose detergent at him, demanding, “C’mon, say it.”

“Ouch, Yoba, alright. I didn’t tell the others, but when we were running away, I looked back and.. and well, I saw it run away and it was on two legs like a person.”

“Hah, okay you got me. There’s nothing in that forest, kid, don’t think about it too much.” Shane slapped the back of Sam’s shoulder, bidding him to just do his work, and went about finishing the stocking. He’d look over, occasionally, to see the golden-haired teen zoned into space again, but he didn’t have the mental capacity to really care at that point; he just needed to get through his shift.

______________________________________________

Shane looked at his phone-11:26 PM. He’d gone out, not able to sleep, and forced himself to take a cold walk through the woods to avoid the saloon. Shivering, not just from the cold, he made his way over to the edge of the lake. He enjoyed watching the little sparkling fish swim, their silver scales glisten underneath the shallow water… Swishing and splashing and crashing-crashing? He flipped his body around to see the source of the crash-in front of the big tree, in a disheveled pile, sat the farmer. They were brushing the leaves out of their hair and dusting off their knees.

“What are you doing?”

“Oh! Goodness, Shane, you scared me.”

“You’re the one who fell out of the tree.”

The farmer finger-gunned, “You got me there,” and stood up, gathering the belongings that tumbled from their satchel.

Shane watched them, and smirked at seeing them covered in Earth matter-leaves, moss, dirt-it all seemed to have managed to stick to them as they tumbled down the tree. “You’re covered in dirt.”

“Oh, yeah I am.” The farmer brushed off their apron and body. Dirt, rocks, and leaves fell from their arms, but the moss stayed firmly attached.

Now with a clear view, Shane could see that their skin wasn’t quite right. It looked jaundiced from their shoulders down, where the color faded to a sickly vibrant green down to their finger tips. The moss had attached itself to their elbows and seemed to grow down to their fingertips. As the farmer moved about, their arms coming in and out of scattered streaks of moonlight, he could almost see it blinking at him. Was it growing on their arm? He blinked trying to make sense of it, “No, no I meant your arms have-“

“Oh, Hey Franklin.”

Shane’s jaw hung open on his words. Emerging from the Farmers.. arm moss?.. emerged a little frog. It opened and closed its mouth a few times before letting out a tiny ‘ribbit’.

“Yeah, I found this little guy a few weeks ago and he just didn’t want to leave. He likes to come with me on our nightly mushroom hunts.” Franklin went cross eyed as he focus on a little bug flittering past before catching it with a satisfying crunch. “Oh, that was a good one, Frankie.”

“Okay I’m gonna go now,” Shane regained control of his jaw, resolutely shoved his hands in his pockets, and started to turn away.

“Wait! You’re not gonna tell anyone my secret are you?”

“Tell them what, that you keep a secret frog hidden somewhere in your arm?”

“No, everyone should know about Franklin, he’s precious. I meant-you know what, can I just show you?” The farmer reached out their hand in an offer for Shane to grab.

He hesitated-he only barely knew the farmer, having really only seen them run past him at full speed with a pick axe held high above their head-but he was in desperate need of a distraction tonight.

The farmer, seeing his reservation, offered up, “come sit down with me, I’ll make us some tea.”

“I don’t drink tea.”

“Well I’ll tell you some of my other secrets?”

He was in too deep now, his curiosity overtaking his tentativeness, “Alright.” He accepted their hand; his fingertips flexed atop their hand, cushioned by the lush, damp covering of green.

Holding his hand, they led him to their crash-landing zone under the tree, where they sat down. As the farmer sat, legs tucked into each other, Shane thought he saw their body hesitate mid-air for half a second. He then was sure that he saw a little fairy ring of mushrooms pop out of the ground with a glimmering puff of orange dust as the farmers body finally made contact with the ground.

“Please, sit.” Shane pretended to not be concerned, but the farmer smiled to themselves as they spotted him cautiously glancing down to the ground as he gingerly lowered himself to sit. Satisfied, the farmer opened up their satchel and pulled out their trinkets for tea-two wooden cups, a shiny silver teapot with a mismatched spoon, and a box of vials and jars. Opening, smelling, taking, and closing the little jars, they began to make the tea. The beautiful earthy colors of the roots, grasses, and leaves peeled out over the edge of the cups. Craning their body, they reached over to the other circle of mushrooms where they crashed, and plucked a purple one.

As they filled the teacups, Shane watched in horror as the they grasped a moth straight out of the air, ripped a wing off, and shredded it into the two cups. He hoped to Yoba the ‘tea’ was done, but they pulled out one final vial. Swallowing, he asked, “Who’s hair is that?”

“Don’t worry about it.” The farmer pick up the teapot, cradling it in their palms. As the silver started to glow red hot, the farmers hair flew up, standing straight when the teapot began to steam. They poured the hot water into the cups.

“Okay, I get it, I know what this is.”

“What is?”

“I just had a few too many today, and I’m actually just super hammered right now and it’s making me see things. I’m gonna go to bed, now”

“But I didn’t see you at the saloon today?”

“Well, no, but if I think about it too much I’m gonna freak out a little bit,” he pushed his hands off to stand, “so I’m just gonna say that this isn’t real and-“

The farmer reached out their hand to him once more. He stood, frozen, as he watched twigs emerge from their fingertips, growing into branches, followed by leaves, and finishing with a delicate flower unfurling inches away from where he stood.

“It’s beautiful.”

“Take it.”

“Take it? But it’s.. attached.”

“Just take it,” the farmer smiled.

He picked it, cupping it in his palms, and brought it to his chest. He watched in awe as the flower petals began to sway, and tiny white fairies sprouted from the pollen. Transfixed, he stood holding his breath as the hazy creatures danced around the petals.

While he watched, eyes big and lit up, the farmer quietly pulled out from their satchel a little carved wooden chair. While Franklin hopped down and plopped onto the chair, the farmer plucked another tiny mushroom, removing the stalk, and tipped a mini-portion of tea from their cup into the cap. They handed it to Franklin who busied himself with dunking his head in and out of the tea and screaming into it.

Shane, remembering his need to breathe, finally gasped and attempted to sputter something intelligible out, but just as he thought of a semi-formed sentence, the dancing fairies suddenly burst into a frenzy of colorful fire. They continued their elaborate dance until the last of them fizzled out, and there was nothing left of the dancing flower except misty smoke and white ash.

“You can keep that-here, pour it into here,” they handed an empty vial to Shane, “sprinkle it on your doorstep and it’ll protect you and your loved ones.”

He did as he was told, not even questioning it at this point-he wanted to know more and how and why and what. Finished, he sat back down, facing the farmer, watching them lift the teacup to their lips. “So uh, does the tree thing happen a lot, or just at night, because I’ve seen you during the day and it doesn’t look like that.”

“No, you’re right, see the thing is, it’s when I- HHREEEEEEEEEK!”

Shane tumbled back in shock, catching himself with his elbows and hands. The farmer had let out an awful screech, showing their (formerly enchanting smile) now fanged row of gnarly teeth. In an instant, their eyes grew and melted into dinner plate-sized puddles of green. Shane yanked his head to match the direction of the farmers leer, where he saw a scruffy-looking opossum attempting to sneak their grubby hands around Franklin. The caught-and foiled-thief returned the farmers screech with a feral ‘hiss’ of its own, before it clambered back into dark bushes.

As quickly as the transformation happened, the farmer returned to normal just the same, meeting Shane’s stunned eyes with their own-now regular sized-smiling eyes. “Can’t be letting Franklin become someone’s snack, now can we?” They laughed and smiled to themselves, giving Franklin a little finger pat.

He was stunned, again. He blinked his way around the farmers face and body, searching for something that would make sense of his feelings. Was it repulsion? Fascination? Perhaps even a little attraction? The farmers little twinkling laugh would normally be very charming to him, but the circumstances of it were overwhelmingly frightening… if not still partially alluring. He settled his searching to focus on their smile-they offered it up so freely to him.

The farmer had waited for him to get settled back into a relaxed position before they continued, “Now what was it you were asking me, dear?”

“I was asking about your arms, that they normally aren’t literal trees,” he stoped, “dear?”

“Well, yeah. We’re friends now, aren’t we? Would you prefer me to call you something else?”

“… no, that’s fine.”

They sat together for a few moments in silence while the farmer drank their tea, and Shane gathered the courage to at least sip the leafy moth water. (It wasn’t good, but it wasn’t bad. He swished his tongue around his mouth to feel for any fuzzy winged remains, but couldn’t find any. It was smooth, and still hot. While he pondered, Franklin made a few flighty hops over to where his foot was resting, and jumped up onto his sneaker-he was trying to bite the laced up shoestrings.

He let out a little laugh-what a strange little animal. He looked up at the farmer and thought ‘what a strange little.. goblin.’ He let himself stare a bit-they didn’t seem to mind. They had taken off their hat by now, and revealed a pair of little pronged antlers that were hidden underneath. They were encrusted with clusters of crystals, which glittered with every turn and tilt of the farmers head. He continued to drink his tea, getting more accustomed to it with each sip, and watched the scattered moonlight refract off the crystals onto the ground. There, where the prismatic light met earth, a misting of teeny white flowers sprouted and bloomed. Shane had always been appreciative of the wonders of nature, but he had never seen it this beautiful. The farmer seemed connected to the earth, each breathing life into the other. It was humbling. And it-they-were beautiful.

The farmer finally caught his eye, and looked down, now a bit embarrassed. They didn’t mind the scrutiny-it wasn’t out of judgement, they knew, just curiosity. Truth be told, the feeling was more of self consciousness than anything. It was always daunting to show anyone their true selves, but to Shane? His gaze was so honest and searching that it was intimidating. Still feeling his eyes on them, the farmer briefly looked up through their lashes to give him a shy smile, and then turned their attention to the lake.

Shane broke the silence, “Any other goblins in their you wanna tell me about,” he motioned to the lake.

“Nah, that lake is occupied already.”

“Ah, I was just playing. Of course, it’s occupied with fish.”

The farmer was silent

He turned to them, only slightly panicky, “With fish right?”

“Mmhmm yeah fish, lots of fish.” They pursed their lips tight and took a nervous sip of their already empty tea.

Shane squinted to the water, studying it, and caught a glimpse of some bubbles rupturing on the distant surface. He scooted closer to the farmer.

With the shoulders pressed up against each other, the farmer reassured him, “Don’t worry, I got you,” and took hold of his hand.

Shane eased his body deeper against their shoulder with a sigh. He took a peek at the farmer’s face just in time to see an attractive blush warm their cheeks. He smiled, and rubbed his thumb over the tops of their knuckles. They sat together, watching the lake, while the moon rose higher in the sky.

“Did you call me a goblin?” The farmer broke the trance.

Shane let out a hearty laugh, “What other kind of magical creature sneaks around in the dark and scares neighborhood children?”

The farmer returned the laugh, and finger gunned once more, “you know what, you got me there again, Shane.” The pair filled the foggy air with the sound of their laughter, pushing their bodies still even closer together.

“If you don’t want your cover blown, you should probably stop doing that, you know, screeching at teenagers.”

“No, I don’t think I will,” the farmer said with a small growl and a wink.

It was Shane’s turn to blush, now. He looked down at their hands, still cupped together, and smiled. “What other magic secrets do you have?”

“ ✧･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ:* Let me show you.*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧ “

[insomniac-dot-ink]

The Hare’s Scream

Genre: Supernatural/horror

Words: 1.8k

Summary: A woman returns to her childhood home for her fathers funeral only to find that the field outside her house is filled with shrieking hares one night. She tries to do something about it.

The hares used to scream outside in the fields some nights. I never knew what that meant until I grew older and was back home in my old room.

The comforter was dusty and heavy over my chest when the dogs started barking. I had barely been sleeping, but that didn’t stop me from cursing and stuffing the pillow over my head. The braying was yappy and insistent.

“Ma!” I called out almost helpless despite being almost thirty at this point. “Ugh.” I groaned as Wilhelmina, George, and Minx were all joined together for a howl.

I shot my feet out of bed and grabbed a jacked. “This better not be those damn rabbits again.” I brushed my tangled hair aside and the floorboards were cold against my bare feet. I growled in the back of my throat as I went to the stairs.

“Ma, can’t you hear that? They’re doing it again.” I called in the general direction of my mom’s bedroom. She wasn’t much of a deep sleeper now that dad passed, but maybe that had finally changed. I went down the stairs two at a time by myself.

The old house creaked and groaned around me and the light of the moon was syrupy silver spilled in through the windows and across the carpets. All three dogs, the Collie, the Australian Shepherd, and the boxer mix were all facing the screen door with their noses pointed like arrows to the doorknob.

“What are you all on about?” I forced my way through the middle of hair and frantic doggy steps until I was at the door. The porch was a blank page of wooden planks and two old battered chairs facing outside. 

Then there was the field.

I never enjoyed growing up in the countryside. The power went out at random, the internet was slower than an old mule on a rainy day, and it was lonely as a toothache. None of my friends ever wanted to come over and I didn’t blame them.

I was reminded of this as I took in the stretch of dead field with prairie dog holes that were long since empty and scraggly yellow grasses and prickly weeds. The treeline began about twenty feet away with low, ugly pine trees and a long ditch by the side of the dirt road next to our house. Sitting in the middle of the field there was a hare.

Now, hares are not rabbits. Rabbits are small furry creatures with puffy cheeks and fluffy little cotton tails and you can have a proper conversation with a rabbit. Hares on the other hand are nasty pieces of work. They have long lean bodies meant for speed and yellow eyes like the devil’s teeth.

They are bigger than rabbits, and meaner too.

A hare was standing up in the middle of the field on its hind legs and staring directly into the house. It was staring directly at us with its huge unblinking yellow eyes and it seemed prepared to cuss out my mother or else order a meal off the menu it wouldn’t enjoy.

“You want something?” I called in a surly manner and reached for the doorknob. It’s mouth opened with two enormous yellow teeth.

It let out a terrifying shriek of a noise and I covered my ears. “Goddammit!” I swore at it and picked up a boot from beside the front door. “I won’t have any of that shit right now.” Even if my mom wasn’t awake right then that didn’t mean she couldn’t be woken up.

And she needed her rest. I hadn’t even seen her cry yet over dad.

“Eeeeeee!” It shrieked again and I shoved open the front door and turned on the porch light. I expected the hare to flee at that moment, but the bastard simply stood there and yelled like it was dying.

The scream of a hare is piercing grotesque noise of a prey animal that doesn’t know any better. I noticed that there were several other lumps past the first hare. More damn animals. I held up my boot in the light of the full moon.

The dogs streamed out of the front door behind me. “Get!” I yelled, but didn’t want to leave the sanctuary of the porch itself. My feet weren’t as hardened as they had been in my youth. “Shut up!”

Finally, I threw the shoe with all my might at the little creature. The boot sailed over its head and several more hares started to line up besides the first one. They were all screeching with their ears upright and their gnarled teeth out. 

The moon was still bright as wishes and I groaned.

The dogs, strangely, weren’t going out into the field either to chase them off. They were growling though and snapping at the air in front of their noses. I stiffened up and started rubbing my face with both hands. I was going to have to go chase them off myself, wasn’t I?

The porch light was reflecting off the eyes of some of the closer hares and their gazes looked brilliant red in the glare. It made me shiver and go inside to put my shoes on. I slipped on a pair of battered tennis shoes and went back outside.

However, the second I took a step out I noticed that a cloud must have gone over the moon. The land looked like it was dipped in ink. The bushes and pock-marked ground was greyish and dark with only the light of the porch to illuminate the dusky landscape.

I shivered. It was too dark.

The shrieking of the hares ended all at once and I noticed how all of them scattered. They ran headlong back into their holes and into the brush and the dogs all yipped and yelped and made their chorus of noise as well.

I took a step into the yard and the porch light blinked off for a moment. My heart seized in my chest and for a moment I considered that I made a terrible mistake. I could barely see the nose in front of my face and the dogs were going crazy behind me.

I exhaled the second the porch light flickered back on and the field came into view. I narrowed my eyes as there were still hares fleeing backward and something was moving. I turned and a figure was coming up from the ditch by the side of the road.

The ditches often collected water into great muddy puddles that you had to avoid driving through. That might have explained why the figure appeared to be soaking wet-- though I couldn’t remember it raining recently.

She had damp dark hair that clung to her face and was wearing what looked like pajamas. I couldn’t make out too much more than that since the moon was still out.

“Holy hell,” I said and started to wave at her. “Are you okay? How long were you down there?” Maybe that’s why the dogs had been barking their heads off. They hated strangers.

She was walking toward me now. It was at a slow ambling pace and it appeared unsteady as she kept shifting her weight entirely from one foot to the next in a way that made her sway terribly as she moved.

I took a few steps toward her to help, but something stopped me in my tracks. She was wearing grungy sneakers and a puffy blue jacket. She took her time lurching forward and I could just make out her face.

She was smiling a sickly wide smile that stretched her face in half. She looked directly at me without blinking and her eyes were a jaundice yellow around dark irises. I gasped and took a step backward. This was wrong. 

The woman also had a soft chin, and high forehead. A forehead like mine and a chin like mine and ears and nose and everything-- just like mine.

I had a moment where I faltered. I remembered, clearly, what my mom called hares at that moment. She called them “The Twins.” I gulped deeply and watched as my exact body was drawing closer and closer with her wet shiny skin and yellowed teeth. I turned and bolted the opposite direction as the dogs began barking again and Wilhelmina braved jumping off the porch toward me.

To my surprise it was me that she came for and she nipped at my heels as I ran toward the road and away from my doppelganger. A voice let out a laugh like a barking fox. And I looked over my shoulder to see her streaking after me.

She was slower, but gaining speed. I ran until my lungs burned and my dog fell behind, but never lost sight of me. I waved my hands back and forth and searched the road for any passing cars, but of course there were none.

It was so dark. I took a moment to look up at the clouds up above, but that’s when I noticed that there were no clouds. There were no stars. There was no moon.

A shriek sounded by my left ear and I turned to see a hare. It was standing upright on its hind legs but a bush with red berries. It spoke in a baritone gurgle. “Evid.” I looked behind me and realized the doppelganger's arms were out and she was gaining on me. “Evid!”

I dove for the hare just as she pounced with her streaming wet hair and wet eyes and terrible smiling mouth. I dove into the bushes and a chorus of shrieks lit up the night. The hares were crying again.

I covered my ears and closed my eyes. A heart pounding moment passed with my chest tight and my entire body huddled down into place like prey animal myself. No hands came for me though. No laugh like a fox followed. Nothing. It took me a full minute to pry my eyes open again and blink upward. 

I exhaled like the Angel Gabriel’s horn being played. I spread out and stared up at the night sky. The moon was back. The world was bright again. And there was no fucked-up version of me hunting my trail.

It took another few minutes to unsteadily get to my feet, find my dog, and start the trek back to my house. I was bruised and covered in twigs and dirt, but I was never more happy to see my front door.

My mother was standing there with her apron on and a small smile on her plump face as she rubbed the ear of one of the dogs. “Thank God,” I breathed and waved at her. “You’ll never believe the night I had.”

“Oh?” She looked up pleasantly and I paused in place. My mouth fell and my heart bottomed out. I didn’t take one more step forward.

Had my mom’s eyes always been that yellow?

[helaintoloki]

Child’s Play

pairing: obi-wan kenobi x princess!reader

warnings: lots of fluff and mutual pining

notes: I wanted to write more for this duo and their story bc I just find them so precious🥺 also I want to have obi-wan’s babies but honestly who doesn’t?

summary: a trip to the village orphanage allows obi-wan to see you in a new light, and neither of you can help yourselves from picturing what it would be like to start a family together.

You stand by the ramp of your leisure ship, arms crossed impatiently over your chest and a permanent pout on your lips as you tap the outsole of your elegant slipper against the ground. You don’t see why you need a guard to complete such a mundane task, a task you’ve consummated numerous times before, but unless you were with guardian you would not be permitted access to your transport. A Jedi Knight would be quite inutile at the destination you were expected to arrive at within the next hour, and all of this fuss seemed very unnecessary.

From the palace doors does Obi-Wan then emerge looking contrite and apologetic all at once, already revealing to you the answer to your predicament.

“Well?” You ask anyway, hoping to gods your assumption is falsely based.

“I’m sorry Princess, but your father has made it very clear that you are not to leave the palace without an escort.”

“Oh, karabast,” you huff, narrowing your jaundiced gaze at the faint amusement on Obi-Wan’s features. “I’m glad you’re enjoying my misery.”

“On the contrary,” Obi-Wan repudiates. “It is not your misery I take delight in but your passionate, although stubborn, nature. I must accompany you on your journey, but I shall do my best to stay out of the way.”

As always, Obi-Wan finds a way to compromise, and as always, you find yourself melting at his understanding nature. Though you are a Princess, he never treats you as fragile or incapable. Obi-Wan has never viewed you as a damsel in distress and never will, and it makes you all the more fonder of your Jedi Knight.

“Please forgive me for my brash nature,” you smile apologetically, cheeks flushed with embarrassment. “I just can’t stand the fact that every day my freedom is chipped away at. This outing is a duty I hold closest to my heart as Princess of Caelia, and not being able to fully enjoy it without having to look over my shoulder for hidden dangers is almost too much to fathom.“

“Then I will do my best to make sure there is no danger present during our visit into the village,” Obi-Wan vows earnestly, and you can’t help but wonder if he’d still speak so passionately about protecting you if he hadn’t been hired by your father to look after you.

“Though I’d prefer to go on my own, I’m glad I’m going with you,” you say. You smile endearingly in a way that makes Obi-Wan weak at the knees, but he recovers in time to grant you a feeble smile in return.

“I think it’s best we get on our way,” he suggests, and you graciously accept the hand he offers you as he guides you up the ramp and into the ship.

~~~

Obi-Wan stands by the doorway dutifully, on guard but out of your way just as he had promised, though feeling rather silly in the process. Perhaps an escort truly hadn’t been necessary for this trip.

At the center of the room the children of the orphanage gather around you while you animatedly share exciting adventure stories with a smile bigger than Obi-Wan has ever seen. The little ones cling to your every word, wide eyes keeping your gaze with great awe and admiration, some sitting right at your feet in order to be as close as possible to their Princess.

Though not required of the previous Princesses of Caelia, you made it your duty to visit the village orphanage at least once every month. With these visits came gifts of new toys, clothes, and food you then bestowed upon the children. And though the gifts were blessings in all forms of the word, it was your kind nature that made you such a beloved presence in the drab building. You treated them as equals, beings capable of doing great things, and never once talked down to them or brushed them aside. You were patient, you were gracious, and you were tender hearted. You were the people’s princess, and it was moments like these that Obi-Wan found you almost unbearably easy to fall in love with.

“Master Kenobi?” A little voice calls, tugging at his robes and interrupting his thoughts. At his feet stands a little Twi’lek girl with doe eyes and a shy smile on her face. “Master Kenobi, would you like to sit with us for story time?”

“Oh, I...” Obi-Wan hesitates, because he really should be standing guard at the door, but what danger could there possibly be at such an establishment? “Well, I suppose I could.”

She gives him a toothy grin before taking his hand and guiding him towards the seating area. In the very back row Obi sits himself beside the Twi’lek girl- Ashla - with his legs crossed underneath him. He meets your gaze to give you a sheepish smile, and you can’t help but laugh at how out of place the grown man looks seated amongst the sea of children.

“How kind of you to join us, General Kenobi,” you tease.

“Please, don’t mind me,” he smiles, and his heart all but melts as the surrounding children snuggle closer to his side. They’ve never met a real Jedi before, and their knowing eyes are well aware of the affectionate glances you both steal when you assume no one is looking. The Princess’s knight is the pinnacle of today’s visit, and neither of you mind in the slightest.

When story time is over the children eagerly dig into their new toys, thanking you graciously for your kindness and even offering to let you play with them first. Instead you opt to sit aside and watch while your hair is braided skillfully by some of the other orphans. Obi-Wan sits beside you, eyes traveling along the complicated pattern being implemented into your hair and admiring the way you seem to glow with pure unadulterated happiness.

“I’m sure you think this is a juvenile way to spend time,” you admit, turning sheepish under his gaze. “Playing with orphans when I could be training or strengthening my healing.”

“Not at all. I must admit this trip has made me admire you even more than I thought possible.”

A faint blush tints your cheeks at his words and you cannot help but to fall deeper in love with your protector. Would it be wrong of you to imagine what it would be like to raise a child of your own with Obi-Wan? To settle down somewhere quiet away from the war where you could live out the rest of your days growing your little family? Belly swollen and heart filled to the brim with unconditional love? It was all child’s play in truth, but they were your hopes and dreams, dreams you clutched tightly to your chest and refused to ever let go of.

“I just don’t see the point of being a Princess if I don’t use my title for the good of others.”

“You have a big heart, y/n,” Obi-Wan smiles, “and I think you are going to make a fine Queen one day.”

“I can only hope so,” you smile faintly, heart aching with longing as you look upon the man seated beside you. He pauses then, almost debating whether or not to speak, before tenderly taking your hand in his own and meeting your gaze.

“And you are going to make a fine mother one day as well.”

~~~

You begin your goodbyes as the first sun begins to set, promising another visit soon and promising to bring Obi-Wan with you as well. As always, it’s hard to part from the orphanage, but you take comfort in knowing the supplies you’ve brought will tide them over foe the rest of the month at least.

Ashla approaches Obi-Wan before he can depart, resting two beaded bracelets in his awaiting palm.

“For you and the princess,” she explains shyly, and Obi-Wan smiles.

“Thank you,” he says, kneeling down before her in order to match her height, “I’ll see to it that she receives your gift.”

She smiles before flinging herself into Obi-Wan’s arms, nearly knocking him over with the sheer force of her hug. From the ship’s doorway you watch on with a fond smile as he hugs her with all of his might, promising to return to her soon. He understands now why this means so much to you and feels privileged to have been able to share such an experience with you.

The second sun is just beginning to set when you return to the palace on Obi-Wan’s arm as he escorts you back to your quarters. And decorating your wrists are the matching bracelets from the Twi’lek orphan.

[ask-de-writer]

SEA DRAGON’S GIFT : Part 30 of 83 : World of Sea

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SEA DRAGON’S GIFT

Part 30 of 83

by

De Writer (Glen Ten-Eyck)

140406 words

copyright 2020

written 2007

All rights reserved.

Reproduction in any form, physical, electronic or digital is prohibited without the express consent of the author.

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Users   of Tumblr.com are specifically granted the following rights.  They may   reblog the story provided that all author and copyright information   remains intact.  They may use the characters or original characters in   my settings for fan fiction, fan art works, cosplay, or fan musical   compositions.

All sorts of fan art, cosplay, music or fiction is actively encouraged.

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New to the story?  Read from the beginning.  PART 1 is here

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When Everything was readied to the diver’s satisfaction, she waddled to the rail in her flips and went over the side, hitting the water on her back.  She went under and surfaced head first.  After several deep breaths, she blew out all that she could and sounded like an Orca whale, jackknifing down, flips shooting straight up into the air.  She disappeared into the dark water.  Over three minutes later, she burst up through the surface, almost to her waist and sank back, just her head out of the water, breathing deeply again.  

She steadied and called, “The bow-cable is secure.  Lift fifteen feet with the big crane!”

They lifted as directed and the diver sounded again.  Shortly, she was back up.  While she was getting her breath, she signaled with a circled thumb and forefinger.  

“Lift twenty five feet with the portable crane!  Pull easy, there’s going to be a lot of water resistance.”  When they had done it, she went back down and looked to see that all was well before they hoisted the boat up.

The mast tip broke water with the forlorn, drowned lantern still hanging from it.  In minutes the cabin roof was in view and then the fore-deck and flooded cockpit.

“Hold!” called the diver and the cranes stopped.  “Get a bilge-pump!” She flipped her feet up and dove.  This close to the surface, they could see her stroking in a leisurely way with her feet and shooting the length of the boat, turning and coming back along the other side of it.  Surfacing again, she called, “Belay that pump!  Lift the stern, gently! — — Good!  Now lift all, dead slow!”  

She just lay back and floated, watching as the boat came up.  Water gushed in a foaming torrent from a perfectly round, six inch hole close to the bows and low on the bottom.

Chapter 9: The Dragon’s Kin

When Kurin and Sula went to the bazaar, about noon, they were greeted on all sides by whispers of, “There she is!  She’s the one that maps the bottom!  That’s why the Longin is doing so well!” and many other variants of that.  Including, “The Longin has a new Luck!” There were also malicious whispers of which the kindest was “Witch!” said by a group of Fauline sailors, looking at Kurin venomously.

There was a knot of Captains about Captain Mord, in front of the Council Pavilion.  Captain Sula strode through the group with such assurance that they gave way before her.  Kurin followed.  Reaching Mord, Sula turned to the other Captains, raised her hands for attention and said bluntly, “This is unseemly.  Let us go in and deal with your concerns in a quieter, more private, setting.”

She opened the flap of the Pavilion and held it while the other Captains filed in.  She took the center of the Council Circle, and turned until she had faced them all.  Only about a dozen of the over two hundred Captains of the Council were present, leaving many empty benches on the tiers of the cavernous pavilion about her.  She waved them all together into a close, intimate group.

Boldly, she said, “I have taken this liberty because I am not involved in your squabble.  What is the problem, that you assault Captain Mord in such a public fashion?  She pointed at the Captain of the Gula. You?”

“Rumor started yesterday that the Longin had some uncanny method of finding fish, and that is why she has been so successful.  We want her to cease its use and fish fairly, with the rest of us.”

Sula actually laughed, wiping an eye, she replied, “I did not expect comedy in such a Council as this.  Would it not make more sense to inquire how the fish were found, so that you could catch them, too?”

Several of the Captains gave hard looks at Barad, Captain of the Grandalor, and pointing said, “It was his idea to shut down the Longin’s fishing methods.  He called them witchcraft.”

“And you listened to him with no more proof than his word?  I have only been here with you folk for a few days, and already I have heard that he hates the Longin and her success.  

“I have heard as a food booth tale, told with much mirth, how he cheated himself of what has proved to be his best fishing waters while trying to swindle the Longin.  If this is what you use for evidence in this fleet, then twist a rope from the moonlight of Dorac, Carsis and Wohan.  We will use it to hang Captain Mord.  Captain Barad left his wits on dry land Gatherings ago, and now he has you beaching yours in his wake.”

“If you know so much,” asked the Captain of the Dolthin, sourly, “how do they catch so much more than the rest of us?”

“I would hazard a guess that they use lines and hooks and nets, like the rest of you.  They excel in knowing where to put them.”

Barad jumped on that, “And just how do they know where to fish? Witchcraft!  That’s how!”  He sat back with a self satisfied smirk.

“Actually, I think not,” replied Sula sarcastically.  “You should allow questions that you ask to be answered, instead of answering them yourself.  That method of inquiry leads you onto the reefs of unreason.  

“You must accept that the Great Sea Dragon, Blind Mecat, lived on board the Longin in human guise for nineteen Gatherings.  They may have learned from her, and now use their resources better than you.  

“Five Gatherings ago, the Dragon left, and in so doing, gave you absolute proof that at least two Great Sea Dragons are still about.  

“For the last five Gatherings, the Longin has been blessed with the Dragon’s kin.  The finding of the fish is her work, is it not?” She turned to Captain Mord as she asked the last.

He looked at her blankly, “The Dragon’s kin?  Cat had no children. We have not picked up any other — — What do you mean?”

Sula pulled Kurin to the fore.  “Here is the Dragon’s foster daughter. With her father dead and her mother gone mad beyond help, Kurin was taken in and raised for an entire Gathering by whom?  Blind Mecat. The Great Sea Dragon became her foster mother by the laws of both Winternight and the Corlis fleet.  Is not your law similar?”

A buzz of consternation showed that it was.  And that nobody had thought of it.

“So, now the question becomes this; do you reject the Dragon’s daughter and her gifts?  Will you risk the wrath of very real Dragons in the process or will you embrace her gifts, and in the bargain become wealthier?  I have no vote here, but I think the choice is obvious.”

Skua, Captain of the chronically poor Fauline asked jealously, “Will she do for us what she does for you, Captain Mord?  Exactly what is it that she does?”

“I will answer Captain Sula’s question first,” said Mord, nettled by Skua’s tone.  “Yes, Kurin has been responsible for our finding fish.  Unfortunately, it is far more complex than her simply pointing and saying ‘the fish are here or the fish are there.’”

Mord cast a jaundiced eye at the covetous Skua and scolded, “Skua, how we find the fish and the way that she helps us is protected Ship’s Business.  Our Master’s Council has studied the matter and determined that it is a skill, not a Craft.  She does not have to share it with anyone.  I can say that the part that is still secret involves something completely new in the way of dead-reckoning navigation.  She has been teaching some of us the skill, with varying degrees of success.”

Kurin tugged at Mord’s sleeve and whispered urgently in his ear for a few moments.  His eyebrows shot up and he smiled.  The assembled Captains did not like the look of that smile.  It was almost predatory.

When he spoke, they were sure of it.  “It is clear that a great part of the knowledge is no longer secret, due to a loose tongue.  The crew will vote this evening on how to share our knowledge and what parts of it to keep secret.  Tomorrow morning, here, I will tell you of the vote.  By the Articles of the Longin that is all that I am free to do at this time.”  He got up and taking Kurin by the hand, he walked out.  Kurin went to her booth and thanked Roper, who had opened and watched it for her.

TO BE CONTINUED

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[thepensmight]

This Time- A Good Omens Fic

It was a common mistake among immortals to theorize that Pestilence had retired. For them, it was merely a vague notion and really was of no concern either way. Unfortunately, mortals had also adapted this idea. This was a deadly mistake. 

Just as War often seemed to be vanquished, only to return all the sooner under false banners, so too Pestilence had merely retreated from view. Vanished to those forgotten places, where doctors and those dreaded hospitals never came. Where clean was a wish and watching eyes slipped from one corner of beauty to the next, willfully ignoring their neglected brethren. Yes, that was where Pestilence lived. Famine was no stranger to such places, either. But he was curtailed, tempered by this Modern World in all its shining glory. Medicine. Technology. He oozed with contempt, looking up at the world through jaundiced eyes. He inhaled, his boil ridden nose contracting and for the first time this decade, Pestilence smiled. Not that anyone would have enjoyed the sight, with blackened teeth, forever rotting but never breaking free. They sat in his mouth like burnt tombstones, spreading the scent of infection and rot. It was a smile nevertheless, and when he scanned the street. There in the center stood a black void. One that Pestilence knew so very well.The one voice that commanded him wholly completely.WE HAVE WORK TO DO. Pestilence emerged. Not that many knew it. No, it would be weeks before the mortals knew and many more before they acted. It was their way… He smiled as a girl brushed against him on her way to work. Man ignored all its own creations.

Across the world, one being knew. Knew the instant that it had been contracted. It was his job to know, after all, they had once been arguably on the same side, though this creature would never had agreed to that. Pestilence was his own personal brand of hell, and he would know. He’d been there.

Anthony Crowley’s hands were buried in earth. He liked the warm dampness between his fingers. Liked the care and the control and the nurturing. More than anything, he loved the soft smiles he received for the task.  He liked growing flowers for his Angel.

And at the moment Pestilence emerged, Crowley felt his willed to beat heart stop. Because he’d felt this before, though not for a few years, and not so close.

He felt it during the black death…

Dread coursed through his veins where blood might’ve flowed, a thousand painful memories all summarized in a single phrase. The Fourteenth Century. 

He quickly turned toward the window, where the soft white blond curls of his Angel could just be seen. Aziraphale had been reading, and God-Sa-Somebody- Willing, he might not have noticed yet. Not now, Crowley silently begged, closing his eyes against the images.Crowley scowled. There were thousands of angels who could snap their fingers and heal the masses with no pain, but very few would. They believed it was a privilege reserved only for the Greatest Good. His angel was not so particular, though it caused him much more harm.

Aziraphale was a principality. Though he’d done the service many times, his type of angel could not easily heal. What he actually did was offer a small aspect of his life force, his divinity, and that did the work. In a single healing, it did little harm. He merely collected more of the Divine nature from Upstairs and carried on. En masse, it had almost killed him. 

A plague was Aziraphale’s worst nightmare. His Angel was selfish, yes, but not like this, not with so many in pain and fear and suffering. 

Aziraphale was not mortal, he’d still been able to carry out a few small miracles, but neither did he know what he was. There hadn’t been an invitation to keep in touch after the Apocalypse that wasn’t. Crowley would not count on any Divine Intervention. And that had been all that had saved Aziraphale the last time. He’d been there, he’d tried what he could at the time to steer Aziraphale off without alerting any suspicion, but he was just as strong-willed. And he hadn’t been able to speak to any good reasons why.

Back then, he couldn't  keep his angel from going into the fray, he had to watch in silence as the glow left his body. Drop by drop. Watch as pestilence loomed, excited for a prey it had never experienced before. Divinity.

Crowley shuddered. He remembered those eyes. He remembered the smell. Snake eyes scanned the streets, the still fresh smelling air wafting through the trees. 

But this time... this sickness. This he could stop. 

He should have known a demon could never stop the divine.

"Angel, be reasonable!" "I am an angel. They are dying, Crowley!" Aziraphale was walking toward the door, Crowley stood in his way, trying to physically block him as gently as he could. 

"You don't know what you are! What happens if She doesn't grant you favor? What happens if..." Crowley didn't dare finish the sentence. Fearful of giving fate any ideas. He'd waited a thousand lifetimes for this life, he'd be Damned again if he lost it so quickly. Aziraphale touched his cheek gently, you don't know what you ask, Angel, you just don't. The ethereal being was not just the closest he could be to Good. He was Crowley's Good. His own light. His own religion. "Man is crying out, my dear..." His Angel said softly, Crowley's heart sank... filled again with something he'd known for so long. Fear. Fear that was icy and threatened to drown. "If I do not answer, I was never worthy of being an angel in the first place." With that, a soft touch left his hair and his angel walked out toward hell on earth.  

Crowley reached for his coat, making a decision that suddenly seemed far less frightening. A click of his fingers and the Bentley roared into life. The demon took his hat and blazer from a hook and walked out. "Then I'm coming with you." "Out of the question!" Aziraphale blustered, "You're a... demon." Crowley managed one of his trademark smirks as Aziraphale whispered the last word, "If you were found out..." "They'll what? Send me to hell?" He opened the door to the car, "I'm used to the heat. Get in, Angel."

[momtemplative]

Two Cans and a Very Long String.

(All photos from History.com. Fox photos/Getty images)

<<Author’s note: I’m remembering what happens when I make a commitment to write every week. Sometimes the words flow fluid and without obstacles, and sometimes, well, they really don’t. Such is the case with any new practice; it takes time to find a groove. 

Meanwhile, god-forsaken Caronavirus concern is permeating everything in our day-to-day world system right now, so writing about anything else feels vacuous and out-of-touch. But sitting down to write something on the current pandemic from a ‘unique’ (ha!) perspective (in a way that does NOT inspire the reader, or myself, to want to go and commit suicide) is a challenging task. I know I didn’t nail it, need more time to nail it. But here is a start...>>

I was lying in bed a few nights ago, in the drowsy place between awake and asleep that brims with lucid visuals. I was thinking about mothers, specific mothers from long ago, who lived through their own versions of ruthless and lethal pandemics—Black Plague, Scarlet Fever, Spanish Flu. The Big Ones. I could see these mothers in my mind, one after another, as they held their babies in stained swaddling clothes and rocked them in the dark.

It’s so easy to see these women from the past through the dusty, incompatible lens of time. (The Black Plague took place in the mid-fourteenth century!) But the Spanish Flu took place a mere century ago. There were light bulbs and phones and cars chugging down dusty roads. The Industrial Revolution was over and hygiene and sanitation were understood to prevent illness and disease. These were not the dark ages. My great-grandma, Emma lived through it. 

When I juxtapose her mother-life next to my own, I see that the world I live in may be evolved/evolving in states of everything from gender roles to technology, but does that brand of growth compete with a pandemic? 

If the view-lens we are using is that of simply mother-to-mother, though, I sense that our deepest, most unfeigned thoughts and feelings are universal. To clutch our babies close, to do everything in our power to keep them warm, fed, safe and loved—I bet even a mole rat mother feels those feelings.

So I lie there between my flannel bed sheets, on my right side, shoulder crammed into my ear as per habit, eyes closed like tiny projection screens, thinking of that.

In the time between sleep and morning, those thoughts percolated and wound up rooting someplace deep down. Alongside the catastrophic declarations that scream from every media device —”The coronavirus can't be contained! Are you ready??”— and the images of medical masks and quarantined crowds, I’m experiencing my own version of what-the-hell-is-going-on-here. Trying to keep one’s head on straight in the face of a litany of panic requires a full-time commitment to mindfulness. (Which, as far as I can tell, is a state of mind limited to gurus and saints.)  

The louder the commotion gets about the world’s impending doom, the more I feel a plumbed sense of longing rise from my gut like a military tank from over the horizon line. A yearning—yes, that is the word—to know what it was like for a mother one hundred years ago as she weathered far-worse conditions while continuing to care for her babies and her household. I want to know her. I want her to remind me of resiliency and the uncompromising strength of family and community. As four-year-old Ruthy says when there is something specific she wants to hear, ”SAY THE WORDS!” I want my long-dead great-grandma to tell me those words.

The pandemic we are currently facing feels like a very long string between two extremely far-off cans. (A telephone line though time, the Indigo Girls sang.) I can almost hear Emma’s quiet conversations with her husband while standing over a half-boiling tea kettle. Her middle-of-the-night prayers. Her timid reassurances to her young children, Harriet and Lewis. 

I sat down to do a light bit of research, hoping to fill in the cracked and pencil-sketched images of the landscape of 1918 in my mind. I attempted to time-travel through Google, searching, “Life during the Spanish Flu,” then “Parenting during the Spanish Flu.” I found jaundiced images of hundreds of hospital beds, lined up meticulously like cards in a game of memory. The white sheets rendered the individual bodies in each bed impossible to decipher. I stumbled on some photos of five young boys, in sooty, ill-fitting clothes, wearing camphor bags around their necks to ‘prevent the flu.’ There was one photo of a group of WWI military gurgling salt water in unison at Camp Dix . 

I soon realized that there was very little personal history that the tentacles of internet could reach. Nothing from day-to-day life. It was too far back. 

So I settled for history book-type content—The facts. Un-nuanced. Bone-dry and depressing. Apparently the Spanish Flu affected one-third of the world’s population. It was typical in that the mortality rate was high in children and the elderly, those with more vulnerable systems. What was NOT typical is that it also took down healthy, robust young adults. 

Oh what I would give for Emma’s journal of what it was like to keep her babies safe and alive. I need to know, if they were old enough, how much truth did she tell them? And what about the days, weeks, months held after the panic had cleared and the dust had settled. Had her insides changed at all? Did she retreat inward, become less trusting of the cosmos?

Mercy. From where I watch the panic swell around our current pandemic—COVID19—things look much less tragic than Emma must have had it. Foremost, regarding our flu, it seems children are being spared—only 3% are showing symptoms and, of that, only 2.5% are showing severe symptoms. Thus far, barely a sliver. It seems my Opal and Ruth will be spared this round. (Physically, at least.) I say that to myself like a prayer of gratitude. 

I wonder how many long days and nights Emma had to endure, unsure if Harriet and Lewis would be pardoned from the Spanish Flu. As one of the countless mamas who pioneered hell realms to carry evolution one more generation closer to my own—where I’ve lived quite comfortably and safe for forty-three years, mind you—she certainly warrants a few moments of consideration from her great-granddaughter.

Meanwhile, Ruth continues to pick her nose. (I have tried umpteen times to guide her hand gently from her nostril to the light of day, but it returns the moment I let go, as if spring-loaded.)

Meanwhile, Opal sang Ruth to sleep tonight while gently caressing her little sister’s nose with her pointer finger, the way you would do with the velveteen nose of a puppy.

Meanwhile, three brand-new-baby boys have been born in the last two months to people who are close to me.

Meanwhile, my money plant by the window is outgrowing us all.

Meanwhile, the time changed yesterday, throwing my ten-year-old into a tail-spin of exhaustion this morning.

Meanwhile, the bean seeds we planted last week have shot up, aimed at the window pane, as if attempting to upend their little roots and run free.

Meanwhile, the discord of the winter geese is still my favorite music.

Meanwhile, I have a multiple-week supply of mac and soups and oatmeal and peanut butter stowed downstairs, in case of quarantine. We figured we’d eat it either way.

Meanwhile, the sun still burns upwards. The deep-spring blue of the sky pays no mind to the humans who are hoarding sanitizing wipes below. 

Tonight is the full moon, the same moon that Emma gazed at out her window, a hundred years ago. It will hover on the surface of the nearby goose pond, like a coin that refuses to be pulled to the bottom of a wishing well.

March 9, 2020

[awakearcturianparadise]

Nice try...and why did I anticipate, and yet hope, that you would actually use it—and avoid stooping as much as you have—because to use that particular admonition when you should have known that I would be loathe to hear it is simply the most saddening aspect of this experience. And this is where I am supposed to use the human common parlance “you must really think I am that stupid” but as your condescension and continually insulting refrain, the disgusting snd humanly dirtiest excuses busy-ness and its malevolent application in the passive form of ‘indifference towards spiritual principles’ has been a mantra for every session well as pre 1st session phone call is nauseatingly so very anemic as a valid basis of support for mistreating the pupil who lies in proper submissive posture and exposes his belly to the dominant female wolf as a sign of respect, trusting. This posture is not meant to be seen mistakenly as weakness and will humble the teacher in awe of the divine strength of the student.

The teacher, whereby, and duly in gratitude of this honor, accepts this teaching from the powerful and genuine earnest passion of the student to actively absorb and transform the stream of knowledge. The student will soon consume and transform this nourishing data into a desire filled vortex of concentrated emotionally chaotic elementary ingredient. This is to signal readiness for sculpting in guided learning and frictionally heats the IT and sears such creations into place through interactive wavelengths donated through the inner being of both partners in trusted alignment. And the continuation with the upward vibrational cycle, as the other mutually self and other compassionate characters in a transmutation dance. And the teacher as vibrationally in compassionately tending to simultaneously other and self and therein between. and embodied now assumes the role of instructor as a equilibrium flow cycles she is driven dutifully caretaking a sacred conduit of energetic variation. She, mindful of contrast, pursues a collaborative discourse with the student through venous and arterial continuous flow and corrective monitoring.

Given the low vibrational state you have fallen to that you have soiled a profoundly eminent and imperative procedural necessity in your selfish desire to please yourself fas you saw this opportunity —adaptive parasitic energetic opportunism created epigenetically, mutatively, or through intuitive or logical physical organic neurological experience.

And in your own autodeceptive trap, the peaceful and transcendant process creates no surprise. And had you been at least somewhat attuned to the vibrational frequency of your inner being, you would not even have considered to align to the false yet lucrative prophet of the momen. And if this unconscious and unconscionable action was also a result of my own creation of substantial energy perception somehow entering in your psyche dysfunctionally teaching you to perform the sepukku of the solemn functionally vibrational spirit bond.

And so I find myself yet again in disappointment at the temerity of attempting to chastise the victim perpetrated against as if he were a woman “asking for it” by the clothes she wore, as diabolical rationale for why I was raped.

The doubt is that this us the very same classic phenomena I described to ylu previous where I say to myself I trust them that they would refrain from engaging in such hurtful behavior much less double back to abuse the already expiring corpse in a most despicable example of what you humans would term ‘cognitive dissonance.’

While I might attribute it to the utter horror, self-loathing, and soul cringing news that you could be a “people pleaser” according to a very human and allopathic and very flawed and dubious assessment tool....your need to scrub yourself raw of the notion of pleasing another—because it could only be the stigma of the organ of your birth and the wound of your flesh of shame—has led you to another extreme of paranoiac hyperbole inapposite of your greatest and most attractive asset of compassion and kindness—to something altogether hideously simian. And while you also have been endowed with physically uncanny beauty and a level of energy undiminished by brain injuries or fatigue-laden imbalances...they are heaped under the hard light of the lime kiln burning the flesh to the bone as I was unprepared and deeply hurt in a way I rarely felt not only by your tone and manner with me and by canceling within a mere two hours or less of the actual appointment constituted...as you already know—wholly unprofessional, even in coach-level politeness, for someone ‘licensed’ as such, yet allows herself not only to humiliate her client in a shameful display of arrogance to please the mother superior—and—act as inconsiderate and smug, ... as if modeling yourself on the behavior of the chestnut wig and transparently poor excuse for a saint, who feels entitled to humiliate and project her own anger and obviously self-flagellating stereotypical fashion onto those who fall outside the pack of wolves and are vulnerable states and who are ill-prepared for the crudely dismissive farce that fails to hide the thinly veiled contempt I saw immediately as disingenuous charm so obviously coupled with the need to atone through buying oneself using ill-gotten gains into the mistakenly literal high altitude exclusive club if ‘heaven’—atonement not only through her own sins of emotionally abusing THIS client and refusing in rather comically repetitive and cruel terms—to accept news that is not terribly welcomed. But in repeatedly ignoring the messenger and mistaking the placid exterior for passive lack of self worth—a common form of ignorance that the unwary and overconfident exhibit—at their own peril— and, by the by, potentially shooting herself in the proverbial foot in the brilliant process.

Your performance followed by languishing around and again returning too soon and sheltering in place—as if I were a perpetrator— in your shitbox heap of metallic gloom—just allowed me to turn the corner yo view how absurdly asinine and pathetic a creature your own creation had become — as it began to take on your features.

For I was the one caught by surprise e having yo deescalate from my silly assumptions to asdign credulity to someone who says and believes they are a divine being. But whether or not I sm of not I am open in telling that I am most likely pretending as if I were...in thd hope. Of a playful way of internalizing some of themore elegant pronouncements of the ascribed way of the nonphysical being entertaining the idea and getting into character and admitting freely my own hypocrisy.....again I had to course correct from my own Sheltering Protection of Disbelief...

...Beyond sinew or bone, it had been a lonely while since I have felt that level of undeniably sharp emotional sadness and psychic dismemberment brought forth in the form of an internal sewing needle of dread from the heart through the gut, that I had previously thought I permanently exorcised to banished catacombs—the resurrection of sorrow brought me on the brink of tears.

So while I own the part where I trust too much I will not allow this to experience to jaundice my view of your successor—that I that to cooked the beginning of injustice will not occur under my watch.

I know you have more capacity for getting bigger and if you’re surrounded by vipers and sickness it takes a great deal of self care to maintain connection with source. Your benefactor can keep you back from your mission success inevitably and I hope you choose wisely in timing the cutting of this umbilicus.

If I am to pay honor to what humans call self-respect, then you know and agree you behaved in a hurtful and unacceptable manner. And I can hardly open to a state of allowance at all with the current paradigm and this of course you also know this is your notice of breach as the goods are not arriving free on board my old and weathered Plant door. The goods cannot very well be non conforming if they never even leave the point of origin. Violation and abuse comes in many mannerisms and forms and its pathology emanates from various sources.

And I say this with every intention of assertive didactic force that the imbalance lies in your misalignment causing warping in your priorities, myopically misplaced by your perceived lack of acceptance of your proclivity for these: obsessive thoughts that pleasing others is something about which to feel shame. Yet the shame exists only in your manifestation of suffering in another who is your student as well as your ultimate messiah in achieving your mission. That is Me and our collaboration.

Release thine own distorted facets of self and ask your limitless inner being what you desire and it answers; Allow its creation to enter your experience and you shall be swept beyond your dreaming and the bringing shall occur momentous and serene.

5'-TAAAATATATATATAT beta version 4.02 PLDS Arct-Mission ID {1789’-?3”} (FaciVibratos$$Coeuro-Necro) transmit codex cyphyr-lo<u>is: hitwkfe et102T----

[a-mad-scientist-approaches]

Dad, Probably

Well, I've had quite a stressful time, and I really needed a whole lot of happy, self-indulgent fun, so enjoy my entry for Diptember, Week 3: Mysteries.

A VERY short amount of time ago - Dipper can't stress that enough - Mom got a job as a travelling journalist and now, in the absolute epitome of convenience, she's gonna be pretty much constantly on the move for anywhere between 2-6 months. So, him and Mabel need some place to stay.

What better place than this . . . this . . . Mystery Shack.

Which belongs to a friend Mom hasn't seen in years.

Who looks kinda . . . terrified?

Oh boy.

AO3

“I like it,” Mabel decided brightly, staring out the car window at the tourist trap.

It was old. It was gauche. It had been owned, operated, and inhabited for a long time and looked it. The self-proclaimed “MYSTERY HACK” nestled in the woods as naturally as a toadstool in a library and as yet Dipper hadn’t been inclined to autocorrect the ramshackle spelling. The fact that Mom was going to dump him and his sister here for the rest of the foreseeable future didn’t help his mood. He glared at the floor.

“I think that’s the guy.” Mabel nudged him, tilting her head towards the view she had. Sparing a glance, Dipper saw a large group of overly-excitable tourists rounding the side of the building and being herded inside by a man in a suit and a fez, directing them with some sort of cane like a Maestro. Mom approached as the last of the crowd disappeared inside, calling out an indistinct greeting. The man turned, immediately stepping forward with a wide showman’s grin, only to falter. He became significantly more awkward as Mom approached, and by the time she stopped in front of him the smile was more a grimace of politeness. Dipper frowned. This was not encouraging.

He watching glumly as they talked for a while. When the guy’s jaw dropped, and his head snapped around to look at the car so fast he must have gotten whiplash, eyes going wide and face draining of colour at Mabel’s happy wave, Dipper sighed and turned back to the floor. To the backdrop of a very loud “Oh God. Oh my GOD,” he thought, Great. She doesn’t tell us she’s got the travelling journalist job, she doesn’t tell her friend beforehand that he’s going to be putting up two kids for a while, what’s next on the agenda?

“I think he’s excited!” Mabel cheered.

“WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH-”

“Very excited,” Mabel maintained blithely as Mom shut the guy up before he could say (or, more accurately, shout so loudly the windows rattled) something he’d really regret. She was pretty big on the no-swearing thing.

“Is he about to throw up?” Dipper wondered, eyes drawn back to the scene against his will.

Mabel paused, inspecting the view. “He might be. Oooooorrrr he might be really interested in the grass! He sure is bending down close to it,”

“I think ‘doubled-over’ is more accurate,”

“Haha, cool words. Ooh, what about now, what’s the word for that?”

Dipper looked closely.

“I’d say that’s a ‘row’,”

“‘Row’.” Mabel turned it over in her mouth. With cheerfulness that possessed the tensile strength of a steel cable, she said, “It rhymes with ‘wow’! This is gonna be great, I just know it! Woop, here they come,”

Mom was walking back towards them, the guy following her like his legs weren’t working properly. When she motioned for them to hop out, Mabel did so in an “eager” way, while Dipper went for more of a “resigned” look.

The four of them met in a square of grass. There was a daisy growing in it. Mom looked at the guy. The guy continued to gaze speechlessly at the kids. The kids side-eyed one another. Mom sighed.

“Kids, this is Stan.” She introduced. “He’s okay with you staying here for a while until I get back.”

Riiiiight, Dipper thought, mentally raising an eyebrow. In his experience, Mom usually ended up getting what she wanted regardless of what other people were okay with. He and Mabel considered it both an awesome and frustrating superpower, and this was a case where Dipper was sour enough to be leaning heavily towards the latter option.

“He’salsoyour-” she added, lightning quick, but the speed with which Stan’s head cracked around to nail her with a panicked glare was still fast enough to stop her in her tracks. And ‘cracked’ was perhaps an even more suitable term than Dipper had originally realised. Now that he was closer, the guy did look old – but not definably so: he could have been anywhere between five and fifteen years older than Mom; the hair that was visible under his fez thick, but very grey, and his face lined, but more of the stress type than the age type, if Dipper had to guess. The cane seemed to be for show rather than support, and everything he’d heard of his voice so far was . . . well . . . atypical, Dipper decided with some restraint. Really gruff (possibly the roughest thing he’d ever heard), but what it lacked in pleasantness could more than be made up for in strength of volume, as he’d already demonstrated.

“I’m sorry, I mean, he’s also my . . . very good friend,” Mom finished eventually, rolling her eyes. Stan relaxed slightly, which was to say he looked like a marginally less tense bowstring.

Now, Dipper wasn’t an idiot. He was very proud of that fact, and he was determined to keep it true. As such, he’d only had to listen to one of Mabel’s overly-embellished explanations of this in his whole life, when certain things came up, and since then he’d been able to put together clues himself. Mom had never been married, had never wanted to be as far as he knew, and had had no one serious enough in her life for Dipper and Mabel to know about since they’d been born. That being said, they would, occasionally, encounter and be introduced to someone who had been, at one point, Mom’s “very good friend”.

i.e. Someone she’d dated or something. Mabel was generally more interested than he was in prying for details.

So. Another one, then. One that he and his sister would be crashing with.

Could this really not have been planned better? Or at all? He thought desperately.

During the silence Stan’s gaze had gradually been drawn back towards them. Dipper managed a weak grin. Stan matched it, even weaker. It stayed that way, before becoming something more genuine. Another moment, and Dipper would call it downright infectious.

“This is a long silence,” Mabel said airily, also grinning widely.

Stan laughed.

“Anything you want to say?” Mom asked him expectantly. That brought him back to reality. The grin dropped, and he suddenly looked like he wanted to run away again. Mom grabbed his arm.

“Excuse us,” she said to them, her smile brittle. Stan got dragged a few steps back to the Mystery Shack.

“This is not going well,” Dipper said flatly.

“You’re right,” Mabel snapped her fingers. “This old man is gonna need some ultra Mabel cuteness if we want this to be the best summer-slash-undefined-length-of-time-that-probably-won’t-exceed-six-months ever!”

“-of course I’ll tell them! Yes, I will I swear, I just- I need some- I gotta sort some things out first!”

“That’s not exactly what I meant,” frowned Dipper, trying to subtly edge closer to the adults and eavesdrop on their hissed argument better.

“-it’s a lot for a guy to take in, is all I’m saying!”

“Hey.” Mabel tugged at his sleeve.

“What?”

“Did you see that?”

“-the hell wouldn’t you tell me?!”

“Uh huh, sure,” Dipper said vaguely, craning his neck to try and make out the expression on Mom’s face.

“Dipper. In the forest, look!”

Mom was saying something matter-of-factly back now, but she was much better at keeping her voice quiet than Stan was.

“It looked like a hawk and an octopus had a baby together!” Mabel said ecstatically, peering further into the forest.

“Right, right – what?”

“It was a . . . wait for it . . . hawktopus!” She grinned dazzlingly, eyes wide and amazed.  

“What? Mabel, stop messing with me, what did you really-” He stopped dead at the shadowy shape he saw moving high in the trees. There was a clear bird head, and a hint of feathers, and . . . well, could those really be vines, dangling below it? And from its beak, as well?

One whipped out and snagged a nearby critter, dragging it up to the tentacled beak to be swallowed whole.

Dipper felt his jaw drop open.

“Alright kids, I’m gonna head off now,” Mom said unceremoniously. Mabel turned away immediately and dashed over to give her a bone-crunching hug, which was readily returned.

Dipper continued to stare speechlessly at the forest.

“I’m going to miss you so much,” Mabel whined.

“I know honey, I’m sorry, but it’s only for a little while and I’ll be back as soon as I can. I love you so much. Dipper Pines, get over here and give me a hug good-bye!”

“Oh, right.” Dipper shook himself and tore his gaze away, heading dutifully over to Mom, remembering when he was halfway there that he wasn’t happy with her and appropriately reschooling his expression. He still gave her a hug, though, and hugged tighter when he realised he might not be seeing her in person for as long as six months – but it wouldn’t actually be that long, right? Just until things became a bit steadier, which couldn’t take too long, right?

He caught sight of the garish building again.

No way that we’ll have to stay here for six months. Right?

“Promise me you’ll at least try to have some fun?” Mom said, pulling back and looking at him in concern.

He didn’t want to have bad memories of his last hug with Mom for definitely-not-a-long-time. With this in mind, Dipper only used about a quarter of his sarcasm reserves in his answer.

“Well, you said spending some time outdoors would be good for me, so I suppose it’ll happen whether I like it or not,”

“That’s the spirit. I’ll be back as soon as I can,” she promised them, and then got back in the car, honked a goodbye, and left. Unnecessarily rapidly, in Dipper’s jaundiced opinion.

With nothing left to do, he turned back to Stan.

And the forest.

And the hawktopus!

All concern and resentment was flushed from his mind in an instant: he wanted to know what the frick-frack was in the trees and what it looked like and how big it was and if there were more and was it really a hawktopus or was it just something normal after all? That would be disappoint-

“‘Pines’?” said a dazed voice.

“Uh, yes?” Mabel smiled at Stan, who was blinking like he’d been hit on the head with a your-life-is-now-changed stick. “That sure is our last name, and it sure does seem to have a lot of significance to you!”

He cleared his throat and seemed to hurriedly pull himself together. “Right. Of course. I just, y’know, was under the impression that your mom’s last name was . . . er, something different. Right?” He looked at them uncertainly.

Well, this guy mustn’t have lasted long, Dipper mused privately. He doesn’t even remember Mom’s old last name. So of all the exes she could have loaded us with, why this one?

“Yeah it was,” he explained, still itching to run over to the boundary line between the trees and the car park and examine the dark, tentacled shape further. “But she didn’t want us to have it because it was so awful, and then she changed hers to match ours as well a few years after we were born,”

“Right! Yeah, that makes sense, ‘cause, yeah, her last name was definitely cra- cruddy, that . . .” Stan trailed off.

“Pea-Nez!” Mabel filled in helpfully.

“Pea- what?” He looked pretty startled. Dipper felt his cheeks warm up and nodded grimly.

“Yep. Some people still call her by it, but at least now the spelling’s different,”

“Yeesh, no wonder she used mi-,” Stan said reflectively before abruptly cutting himself off. “Uh, well, better get you two inside, huh?” He crouched down to pick up Mabel’s bag for her.

Immediately, Dipper saw his chance to investigate the thing in the trees starting to vanish. He looked urgently at Mabel, and she leapt into action, just as curious about it as him.

“Wait!” she shouted.

Stan jumped violently and snatched his hand back, stricken.

“What?!”

“We want to explore!” she beamed.

“Specifically the forest!” Added Dipper eagerly. “Is there something in there? That, like, possibly has never been discovered or seen by human eyes before?”

“Like an entire forest full of magical creatures?” Mabel enthused.

“You saw something?!” Stan whirled around on his knees to face the trees, one hand unmistakeably closing into a fist.

“Yeah!” Dipper said excitedly. “It was like this huge hawk, but it had tentacles for a beak and more tentacles for legs and it reached out and just grabbed this squirrel and it ate it whole and it’s eyes, oh man, they were-”

“-so beady!” Mabel picked up. “Like it had a hunger that could be satisfied only by the blood of the innocent! But other than that it was totally cute. Its squishy little tentacle face! Awww!”

“I wonder if it squirts ink! Wait, wait – if it inks, then it must have a predator! But it was huge! How big could its predators be? How dangerous? Mabel, we need to check this out!”

“You mean, go after the crazy deadly animals that hunt hawktopuses for food and maybe fun?”

“Yes!”

“Well, duh! What else are you supposed to do with the wonders of nature! Haha, I doubt we’ll get eaten or anything,”

“Stan!” Dipper’s heart was starting to beat faster and he already picture all the cool photos he could get if this was really happening and not just some awesome dream he didn’t want to ever wake up from. “Is the supernatural real?!”

After a moment, Stan turned back to them, hands spread in a what-can-you-do gesture, a shrug in his shoulders and only the barest hint of strain in his grin.

“Nope. Sorry, kid. The only weird things around here are the idiot tourists, who, believe me, are much easier to scam out of their money than the effort making a moving hawk-octopus hybrid thing requires,” he dismissed, taking hold of Mabel’s suitcase and reaching over for Dipper’s as well.

“Wait . . . you mean it’s a robot or something? You made it?” Dipper frowned.

“Awww, what?” said Mabel disappointedly.

“Got it in one,” Stan said easily.

“But I could’ve sworn it was . . .” Dipper moved to the side so he could see around Stan, who was blocking his view of the hawktopus.

“Well it wasn’t,” Stan said shortly, his arm coming up to grab Dipper’s shoulder and keep him in front of him. “Alright, let’s go find some room for you in the Shack, huh? Indoors. Away from any hell-bir- robotic hell-birds. I think the attic’s got some free space. You with me, kid?” He waved a hand in front of Dipper’s wandering eyes, bringing them back to him – which made Dipper notice something.

A very familiar pair of brown eyes.

Dipper blinked and frowned a little, looking more closely into the man’s increasingly confused gaze.

“What, I got something on my face?”

Dipper looked over at Mabel – or more precisely, her eyes; the same brown – but he supposed brown eyes weren’t all that unusual, and even if they were also a similar – no, exactly the same shape that didn’t necessarily . . . mean anything.

Mabel had tilted her head and was looking back and forth between him and Stan, inspecting them thoughtfully.

“What? What is it?” Stan and Dipper said together. Then they looked at each other. Then they scratched the back of their necks in bemusement, mirroring each other.

Stan froze. Dipper lowered his hand hurriedly.

“Okay, this is gettin’ weird,” Stan said after a pause. He retook his hold on Dipper’s suitcase and stood with both their luggage. They followed as he strode perhaps a bit quicker than necessary back to the shack, the thought briefly crossing Dipper’s mind to make a break for the forest before it was dismissed. He was getting more curious about Stan, which . . . kind of undermined his strength of cynical conviction.

They were in a crowded giftshop. Tourists milled about near clothes racks and counters, fawning over snow globes and souvenirs. Stan grinned and talked and gestured grandly, upping prices with practiced ease. Dipper had to admit that his guts were impressive – he was certain that no snow globe could be worth eighty dollars, no matter how well-made or “one-of-a-kind” (despite there being another twenty on the same shelf). With every gaudy and obviously fake attraction he saw, like the jar of eyeballs on the desk, Dipper became more and more suspicious of the creature he’d seen outside. It had appeared significantly more . . . real than anything inside so far. The tourists called Stan “Mr Mystery” as he passed. Dipper was beginning to think that name fit him.

They reached the back of the room. The thought that maybe all wasn’t as it seemed was once again entering Dipper’s head. If it was true . . . well, maybe this hopefully-only-a-summer (although if this town was a nesting site for the supernatural, maybe six months wouldn’t be so bad) was going to be a lot more interesting than he’d imagined. Question marks were filling his head.

“Hey, who are you two little doods?” said a friendly voice.

Tweaking the hinges of an “Employees Only” door was a large man with an affable face, a toolkit belted around his waist, and, huh, a question mark across his dark green shirt.

“Hi!” Mabel said brightly, sticking out her hand. “We’re here for an epic summer romance!”

“She’s here for an epic summer romance,” corrected Dipper.

“Our mom dropped us off to live here, in this place specifically, for no discernible reason except that she somehow knew Stan,” Mabel continued happily. “I’m Mabel Pines, and this is my brother Dipper!”

The man laughed, shaking Mabel’s hand. “Oh man, what a coincidence, huh? Mr Pines, they’ve got the same last name as you!”

“Same last name?” Echoed Dipper. He looked narrowly at Stan, who was very interested in the ceiling all of a sudden.

“I’m Soos, by the way, the Mystery Shack’s mysterious handyman – or not really, I guess. If you want real mysteries you’ll probably have to go into the forest,” Soos said amenably.

“Mysteries in the forest?” Dipper repeated, perking up.

“Soos, can I talk to you for a minute?” Stan interrupted, making the request sound more like a demand.

“Sure thing, Mr Pines.” He added to Mabel though, “No discernible reason, huh? Then I’d guess you’re in for some life-changing and probably unexpectedly heart-warming personal revelations. That’s the way it always goes.” He nodded knowledgeably.

“A room, Soos! We’ve got to set up a room for them!” Stan said, some desperation creeping into his voice.

“Oh, sure. Can’t have you sleeping on the floor – unless that’s what’s you like. If that’s not what you like though, we should probably get you some beds. I don’t know if there’s any more in the Shack, actually. But hey, I’m sure Mr Pines’d let you have his bed if it came down to it! After all, you guys have the same last name, and you look a little similar, and your mom knows him, so you’re practically fam-”

“Now, Soos!” Stan quite literally dragged him into the next room, carting away Dipper and Mabel’s bags with him.

Dipper stared at the door, feeling a little bowled-over. He licked his lips.

“Hey Mabel?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you . . . do you think Stan’s our da-”

“Probably.”

“Huh,”

Well, I guess that’s one mystery down. Only a hundred more to go.

I wonder if the hawktopus is still out there?

[1ovefoo1]

How I Gave Birth, Almost Died and Lived to Tell About It

This is a speedy disclaimer - Before you read this,https://real-123movies.best/other-brands/kissanime  if you don't mind comprehend that there are a few regions that some may think about realistic. The queasy may welcome the admonition. My own story underneath is expected for enlightening purposes as it were.

"What doesn't kill you makes you more grounded." This is the idea that propped up through my psyche as I lay on a trauma center cart only days in the wake of bringing forth my girl. That, and how and for what reason is this incident?

I'm losing track of the main issue at hand. Let me begin once again...

The day I discovered that I was pregnant, it was 2008 and I was preparing to go to work. I recollect that I was wearing a splendid yellow and white flower dress finished off with a white trimmed cardigan. After work, I planned to see the new Sex and the City film with my sweethearts. Realizing that there would presumably be a Cosmo or two in my future, I added, "take a pregnancy test" to my morning schedule. I needed to watch that it is protected to drink a grown-up refreshment. Call it instinct. (I'm a Charlotte, coincidentally.)

When I see that pink in addition to sign, I hopped on my resting spouse waving around the pee stick and shouting, "I'm pregnant!" We had formally begun pursuing for a child a half year earlier and I figured that following quite a while of anti-conception medication pills it would have taken longer than it, yet there we were, pregnant. I would have been drinking water at the films.

My pregnancy was uninteresting, save for the way that I created gestational diabetes. I practically calculated that this would be the situation because of numerous components, my age, weight, and hereditary qualities. I wound up being recommended drug to help control that viewpoint.

I was 35 when I planned to convey. Since I was viewed as a high-hazard pregnancy, my primary care physician booked a period for me to come in to actuate work with Pitocin.

On Friday, January 30, 2009, I went through the day experiencing work. The specialist came in intermittently to check how far along I was. Close to the furthest limit of the day, the specialist clarified that my infant was "just right" in any case referred to medicinally as occiput back or OP position. She had a go at coming to in and controlling the position, yet my obstinate child was not having it, and her heartrate would drop.

Subsequent to talking about with my primary care physician, I selected a caesarian area to abstain from worrying the child anything else than was fundamental. After a fast prep for medical procedure, I was whisked away to conceive an offspring. It seemed like it took a couple of moments and before I knew it, my girl, Olivia, was conceived at 8:50pm.

I was unable to hold her as my arms were lashed down, which I surmise is basic work on during medical procedure - no thrashing about and keeping a clean climate. I needed to trust that the specialist will shut me down. When I had returned to my room, I held her unexpectedly. It was sublime and she was the most delightful young lady on the planet. My family encircled us and it is something I'll generally love, holding her unexpectedly.

Since I had the C-segment, I was in the emergency clinic for four days and Olivia had jaundice and spent most of her days in the NICU (Newborn Intensive Care Unit) getting phototherapy. We were both awaiting our opportunity until we returned home. While at the emergency clinic, I thought that it was difficult to get settled. I was having torment over my left bosom, beneath my shoulder. Attendants revealed to me that it was gas because of the prescription and that it would pass. I in the long run requested an acid neutralizer as the torment endured. I figured in the end, I would pass gas and I would at last be finished with the torment.

When the child and I got our spotless doctor's reports, we set off for home. Excuse my gruffness when I state that I actually had not "honked". In the long run the torment was awful to the point that I needed to rest sitting up as resting aggravated it. Peculiar, I thought, however didn't ponder it.

Subsequent to being home for a day, my significant other and I took Olivia to her first pediatrician arrangement. In transit home, I referenced to my significant other that this gas, or the absence of passing it, was truly beginning to incur significant damage. I called my OBGYN to check whether she could endorse an all the more impressive stomach settling agent as the over-the-counters were not cutting it.

In talking with the assistant and clarifying my issues, she put me on pause to talk with the specialist. Once more, I thought, odd. For what reason does the specialist need to converse with me about passing gas?

My PCP jumped on the line and asked me a progression of inquiries - Where is your torment? Would you be able to rests? Is it accurate to say that you are experiencing difficulty relaxing? I answer with, over my left bosom, no - resting is excessively excruciating, in light of the fact that when I do, I am experiencing difficulty relaxing.

She said that I have to get to the trauma center and that she will call the clinic with respect to my appearance. I'm heartbroken, what? I was shocked. Furthermore, indeed, after this, I'm actually thinking, "this for gas?"

She stated, "You have a potential pneumonic embolism and I need you to go to the ER to preclude it."

Recalling this discussion, I need to state, I had no clue about what she was discussing at that point. In any case, I handed-off the data to my significant other and we went to see my mom. I revealed to her that I needed to go to the emergency clinic per my physician's instructions. My mother took the infant and I kissed Olivia disclosing to her that I would be directly back. Much to my dismay that I just misled my girl.

At this point, the torment was getting more serious. I looked into the ER and saw that I was taken right back, in spite of different patients in the lounge area. They began checking my vitals - pulse, oxygen admission, tuning in to my heart - all the typical stuff you see on TV.

Medical attendants had put those stickers with snaps on them and I was being snared to a machine. The medical attendant requested that I rests. At that point it hits me, I was unable to rests since I was unable to relax. It hurt - my chest was harming. Tears began to shape and I was believing that I was having a coronary failure. I was heaving out, "I can't relax! I can't relax!"

I took a gander at my better half and I thought, "I'm unfortunately you may be a single parent since I am passing on". Up until this point in my life, I had never broken a bone, never had an emergency clinic remain and now I genuinely felt that I was passing on.

They sat me back up and that was better. I was all the while having torment however I could inhale little heaves of breath. The ER specialist said that he planned to send me for a CT examine. He imagined that I had a blood coagulation in my lungs. A blood coagulation. In my lungs. What? How? Why?

The ER specialist affirmed after the CT examine that I did actually have a blood coagulation in my lungs and I was admitted to the medical clinic. I began to cry, I just had an infant, settled up with the clinic two or three days prior and now I was back.

Obviously, I was intellectually depleted, genuinely frail and seriously discouraged. I kept on siphoning for bosom milk while in the emergency clinic. My significant other would return the milk to Olivia consistently. She wouldn't take to recipe and I felt it was my obligation to give her what I could. I felt remorseful for being endlessly from her and it is as yet something that frequents me right up 'til the present time.

Let me simply state that my mom was our lifeline. I was, and keep on being, so thankful to my mom for dealing with Olivia while I was in and out of the clinic. My folks even moved to Pennsylvania from Texas and found a house two or three squares from our own.

I was put on blood-thinners and was informed that I would be on them for as long as a half year, possibly more. I went through an additional five days in the emergency clinic while attempting to recuperate from the blood coagulation. I was told later that a blood coagulation might have murdered me and I cried some more.

Forgoing the medical clinic didn't imply that I was from the forested areas. I was set up with a medical caretaker who might go to our home day by day to keep an eye on me and take blood work. I spent a greater part of the night and a decent bit of the day resting. At the point when I wasn't resting, I was siphoning. Because of my nonappearance, Olivia didn't take to breastfeeding and likely clung to my mom more so than she had with me. In any case, I siphoned. In my psyche, it was the main thing that associated us as mother and little girl and it was the least I could do.

Around a month and a half subsequent to having had the infant, I saw that my C-area scar was delicate, more so than expected. In certain spots, it gave the idea that puss was framing. I brought this up to the specialist and in light of the fact that I was on blood thinners, it had returned to the ER.

Turns out, my C-segment had gotten tainted. Spots along the scar showed up marginally green even. The specialist had the option to draw on my gut a diagram where the disease showed up, similar to a guide of a nation. I'm informed that they will regard me as though I have MRSA.

As per WebMD, "Methicillin-safe Staphylococcus aureus ( MRSA ) is a bacterium that causes diseases in various pieces of the body. It's harder to treat than most strains of staphylococcus aureus - or staph - in light of the fact that it's impervious to some generally utilized anti-infection agents."

The blood more slender that I was being treated with in pill structure, was currently going to be in infusion structure. Evidently, if the requirement for medical procedure were to emerge, the inversion of the impacts of the blood more slender works faster whenever controlled through infusion.

I'm commonly a glass half-full individual however on that day, I really wanted to imagine that the world was against me. I was back in the medical clinic, away from my infant girl, experiencing blood cluster torment and now my C-area entry point was tainted and I needed to get infusions at regular intervals. Gracious and these infusions were given in my gut. Indeed, my stomach. This is where you get these infusions. I was feeling very crushed.

[missanthropicrn]

Imperfect Garden

Hey look at me running right up to the due date on an assignment. Takes me back to college!! I was the Secret Santa for @inkwelldried, and apparently one of the few that did a fic!

The menu of options given to me was dizzying and I honestly went with what gave me an opportunity to 1.write my favorite character, and 2. dance around a subject I know super well: death and dying. So... I guess this isn't the perkiest of fics but... It's Akio and Ruka, and I enjoyed writing it! I hope you like it, or at least find it interesting!

Warnings: There's nothing graphic at all and I actually meant for it to be not clear whether there was history there or not but Akio is gonna Akio so there's the underage thing implied.

Imperfect Garden

Death was here, clinging to the tables, the bed, the floor, oppressive and inescapable. It was a fog brought indoors, creating a haze about the room that Akio didn't necessarily dislike, but knew to be deceptive. The dying always think more clearly than everyone else.

“Chairman.”

Much more clearly. Exhaustion weighed down Ruka's eyelids, so that his lashes partly obscured his view. Jaundice left his skin otherworldly, yellow, and dehydration loosened it against a bony frame. He touched his face self-consciously, but if the sight of him alarmed Akio at all, he hid it well.

“You’re an old man, Ruka.”

“Just when I'd started getting good at being a teenager.”

“Unfortunately, those two conditions are not mutually exclusive.” His voice was startlingly loud for the room it filled. Or so it felt at first; it was only unhushed, and Ruka had forgotten what people sounded like when they weren't dancing around his condition. The bed creaked as Akio leaned against it, unaccustomed to the weight of flesh. Ruka watched him shift from one foot to the other, making himself comfortable. A chair was nearby, obscured by a mess of blankets, but Ruka knew it wouldn’t have mattered. Akio was exactly where he preferred to be. “Your nurse doesn’t think you're long for this world.”

“She saw me fold over my own legs this afternoon. It didn't inspire confidence.”

“Perhaps not in her. But if you ask me, I would say you don’t appear interested in death just yet.”

“Who would be?”

“Everyone, in the end. Of course, it’s the ‘in the end,’ part that people struggle with.” His gaze traced the thin tubing that began at an unfriendly looking machine and ended in Ruka's arm.

“Mm. It's strange to think at some point I'll be finished dying. The wait feels like an eternity, now that eternity isn't worth anything. Or...is there something Ends of the World can do about it that the Chairman cannot?” Ruka smiled, and Akio tipped his head, as if ceding a victory.

“That’s a question you should have asked me a long time ago.”

“I was afraid to. You might have said yes,” he murmured, attempting a wry tone. The hoarseness of his voice, gone dry with lack of use, didn’t quite manage it.

“And now, I might say no. The journey to acceptance is farther along than you think, though you're not so far gone that you would refuse a detour. I suspect you understand by now that taking the longer way will bring you to the same destination, whether I interfere or not. But… that's not why you're asking, is it?”

The head of the bed groaned, pulling Ruka upright. The movement brought on a wave of raspy, dry coughing. As he fought to catch his breath he heard a brief exchange between Akio and a nurse, and a tray being set down and swung around the bedside in front of him. What he glanced at warily, he reached for with a delight that surprised him.

“Real tea. Pu-erh? How did you get them to steep it right?”

“Explicit instruction.”

That was a smile Ruka didn't expect to see, all teeth and promises, and thrown by it, he turned his attention to what Akio had brought instead. His fingers were thin, but so was the teacup, a frail and delicate thing ready to droop with the weight of its contents. They drank in silence, while Ruka’s senses sluggishly tried to do the exquisite tea justice. He had mostly made his way through his cup before he bothered to notice the not-pattern of shimmering gold that decorated it. And Akio’s. And the teapot. He turned it in his hands, examining more closely. Veins glittered along the fault lines of what had clearly been shattered before.

“Kintsugi. Taking a broken thing and making it whole; a teacup mended with gold, to celebrate the flaws it has overcome, rather than pointlessly trying to conceal the obvious. People are no different, I find. A broken creature pulled back together may try to hide their flaws…”

“...but they should gild them instead.”

Akio’s laugh started somewhere in his diaphragm and ended in the pit of Ruka's stomach. It had not always been welcome there, but here and now, it made him more human than he'd been in weeks. His visitor seemed oblivious to his condition, speaking with the same purry, careless sensuality he'd had back at the school. That was centuries ago; back then, Ruka had been whole, bright-eyed, and confident, a beautiful youth brimming with potential. That was over. Ruka was sure whatever Akio had come for, it wouldn't be any good. Still, it felt wonderful to be on edge again. His thoughts stretched, waking from a drug-addled sleep. He'd forgotten what it felt like to think in anything but past tense, and warily, he let his mind wander to long-abandoned places: the present, and even worse… the future.

Akio, appearing satisfied with something, drew from his pocket a gold chain taut with the heavy weight of the locket it bore. Ruka's hand stretched out automatically, and the corners of his mouth turned down. It felt damp around the edges, waterlogged, but he didn't bother opening it.

Ruka's back straightened, scraps of stored up strength coalescing into defensiveness. It was definitely going to be necessary now, even if his clipped speech was not. “There really was no hope for her escaping Ends of the World. How were you going to resist a talent like that?”

“Do you think I tried to?”

Wrinkles around Ruka's eyes deepened as he squinted; the room was uncomfortably bright now that he was looking at it. Their appearance intrigued Akio. Seemingly unaware of the impropriety of his touch, he traced the thin line of a blue eyebrow down to where the wrinkles gathered, soft fingertips smoothing them out briefly before letting them form again. The contact was curious at first, only melting into sensuality as his fingers fell away, nails skirting down the side of Ruka’s face. Ruka shook his head, the beginning of a smirk on his cracked lips. Any other reaction, he thought, would be a waste of effort.

“She's a brilliant duelist. One of the most powerful I've ever seen." He nodded toward Ruka's hand. "But her full potential lies trapped there, close to her, and utterly out of her reach. She knows, as we know, that she cannot grasp it without breaking the locket. And she will break with it. I'd have the shards break into shapes I can use.”

The effort of sussing out Akio's motives lifted a heavy fog Ruka hadn't noticed was there until it wasn't. Every little beep and blip of the machines around him pressed into his attention, and the air felt crisp, electric. Perhaps it was the tea. He poured himself another glass, surprised by the weight of the teapot, and more so by his carelessly, successfully, lifting it. The astringent smokiness of it captured his senses for a brief, wonderful moment before he returned to reality. Akio had been watching him, evidently pleased with something. If it was because his eyes had cleared, whitened, and regained some of the spark of life, Ruka didn't know it.

“You would take this away from her? But she won't duel without it. It's what drives her.”

“Indeed it is. Arisugawa is set to duel once more, after which it would be best for all involved if miracles became less of a priority in her life.”

“So she will lose. She's just… a whetstone for the Sword of Dios.”

Ruka couldn't remember when Akio had moved from resting against the bed to sitting on it, but now he leaned back, his arm draped on the bedside table. “Does that anger you to know?”

“Not at all. Miracles are not what Juri needs.”

Akio laughed. “She doesn’t know that. Or...she doesn’t believe she knows it. You are at the mercy of the ticking clock, far outside the reach of Dios’ power. And for it, you have something she lacks. The perspective of hindsight.”

“Call it what it is,” Ruka murmured, flexing his fingers around the locket. “It's the perspective of the dying.”

“Yes...that’s another way to put it.” A curious expression passed over Akio's face, as if he'd momentarily forgotten Ruka was yellow, emaciated, and bedridden in front of him. To tell the truth, Ruka had briefly forgotten this himself. Akio pressed on, “Your insight is precious. A beautiful consequence of bitter mortality. It’s something that can’t be grown in a perfect garden. So I must, at times, have it brought in.”

That smile again. The one that promised so much more than the obvious, as much as the obvious appealed. How could Akio smile at him like that? Like nothing had changed, like he was still a beautiful young man with a bright, tempting smile of his own. Didn't he see how Ruka looked? This was somehow worse than the reserved care others took with him. It made him miss, and regret, and want, and served no purpose...

“The correct answer to whatever I offer, of course, is no...”

“I'm well aware of that, Akio. Wisdom is no protection from you.”

“Yet, here I am, at your end, knowing you won't refuse me.”

Akio’s voice had turned all velvet and smoke, and it brought back memories Ruka thought he had no use for anymore. Good and bad, pleasure and pain, hope and failure. The Dueling Game came rushing back to him, bringing it with it a thirst no tea could ever quench. Akio knew it, too: he recognized that flirtatious satisfaction. It was in the way he leaned back, encroaching on Ruka’s space. Recollection flooded the hollowed out spaces in his mind. He knew this look. His agreement was a foregone conclusion.

Ruka broke the gaze Akio had captured to stare down at the locket. There was no point asking why it was in his hands now, he thought, trying to temper a gnawing eagerness with cynicism. The fingers framing its shimmering gold were twig-like, all visible veins and paper-thin fingernails. They curled around the imagined hilt of a sword, aching with a sudden, overwhelming eagerness to test its weight.

“Sharpen the blade she wields. Bring her to the arena. And let it break her.”

“What do I get out of this?” Ruka cringed at his own voice. It was louder than it had been, and it was hungry, and hopeful, and he knew that was not going to help him.

“Saving her from herself is not enough?” Akio lifted his hand before Ruka could answer, falling just short of silencing him with a touch to his lips. “You will be given a gift only someone who has received it themselves can give. Something only we would understand. An escape, whatever the cost, from the overwhelming dread of dying.”

Ruka’s expression soured, his gut grasping what reasoning hadn’t caught up to yet. “....and death?”

“Death has already claimed you, and that I can’t change. But come to the school, accept its illusions, and you will, until that moment, live as you lived before. Whole, and human, and not bound to a bed melting before your very eyes.”

A slow inhale. A dry mouth. Fingers twitched again, swearing this time they could feel the soft grip of worn leather. Of his sword. Ruka’s chest hitched, and pain blossomed with the motion, bouncing around against his aching ribs. For a split second, he feared the worst, but he was mistaken. It was, much to his surprise, laughter.

“But it won't be real. I'll still be dying.”

"No. It won't be real. Will it matter, if you believe it?"

"How can I believe I'm not dying? I can't even walk. I can't.." Ruka gestured to the tubing hanging from his arm.

“Had I asked you when I walked in what color the walls were, you wouldn’t have been able to tell me. And had you not been busy trying to guess my angle, you would have choked on the tea.” Akio’s fingers returned again to the yellowing skin at the corner of an eyelid, this time spreading into Ruka’s hair, nails lightly scratching his scalp. “Dying is an active process. So is forgetting. You can pick between them, and it is in my power to make either convincing.”

“Yes.” The word escaped Ruka’s lips in an explosive breath, before he let himself think better of it. When he uttered the word again, it was heavy with doubt, and Akio grinned at the sound of it.

"Guilt is for the living, Ruka. You know that better than anyone." A thumb stroked Ruka's temple, and he shivered. He found, somewhere, the energy to shiver, as well as the energy to respond to the inviting purr of Akio's voice. "I admit, I find you quite captivating the way you are. But there's no shame in wanting to escape the heavy burden of mortality."

Though neither budged, Ruka felt the space between them close. It had always felt that way, like Akio controlled the air's willingness to divide them. Ruka parted his lips, licking them, unsurprised by now to find them smooth and supple, though they'd felt like sandpaper an hour ago. Fingers tightened behind his head, and he found himself grinning, a lazily inviting expression testing itself on his face. This he remembered: that the prize was always in resisting the temptation. There was no fun in it if you didn’t let yourself be lured in, a little.

Akio laughed, indulgent and almost chiding. His fingers drew back, running through smooth, short locks of dark blue. "What happened to your hair?"

Ruka blinked as he withdrew, a familiar combination of tension and relief in it, before shrugging a little awkwardly, watching Akio's fingers. "I was...doing especially poorly last month, and the hair had matted. The nurses were forced to cut off what they couldn't untangle." He smoothed over the back of his head self-consciously, half-aware that he couldn't see the veins in his hands as they approached. "Will it grow back when I forget that?"

Akio pursed his lips, considering this, and Ruka imagined he could see either state as readily as the other. He laughed, exasperated as the answer became obvious.

"No, I don't think so. It suits you."

[derekmsheen]

The Death Of Michael Sheen PT. 2

About ten minutes into an article about Guantanamo, my dad opened his eyes and looked at me. He swallowed and licked his lips, trying to bring moisture back to his mouth in an attempt to communicate. I just sat, stunned, as he struggled to speak.

“I love you, Joshua…I miss you, son.” He smiled weakly, before his eyes dulled closed. I set down the magazine and walked slowly backwards into the hallway, still staring at the place my dad was, just a second ago.

I waved a nurse over and told her about the miracle I just witnessed and soon the room was filled with physicians and nurses, all of them busily looking at charts and vital signs.

Later that evening he would wake up one last time, while my uncle watched over him, and told his brother “Please kill me. I am in so much pain, Robert. Please end this.”

The next morning he called all of us and asked us to meet him at the hospital, where he shared my father’s last spoken message and told us that they have decided to take him off life-support.

It wasn’t hard for all of us to agree that it was the right thing to do, but it still left a dull ache in my stomach.

I had never before had a reason to contemplate the depths of that kind of loss and over the next few days it began to consume me.

I suddenly had so many regrets.

Everything was so final and the thought that I could not change the course of our relationship now, suddenly became amplified. I felt truly alone and wasn’t really sure why? I mean, we’d never gotten along; he had taken advantage of me so many times. Left me in the wind, put his own needs before mine and was generally a selfish bastard. But right now I felt prepared to bargain and I would have given anything to have just two more minutes with him. To tell him I was sorry for not forgiving him, for not just accepting what he was and loving that.

For being so obstinate. For thinking that there had to be more and holding our relationship hostage until whatever my expectations were, magically appeared.

I suddenly realized that it was me who made all of this so difficult and the remorse washed over me like a tidal wave.

This was where my mind was and it might help explain what I did next...

My cousin Lisa grabbed me and hugged me so hard she pushed all the wind from my lungs. Her face was damp with tears, “I’m so sorry D. At least Uncle Mike isn’t in pain anymore. He’s in a better place” she said as she tried to manage a smile. I immediately thought he probably wasn’t anyplace or if he was in a place, it probably wasn’t a very pleasant place. I feel like my uncle read my thoughts, because he spoke up right away, “Derek, I want you to know your grandmother and I prayed with him, before he passed. He was very peaceful when he left us.”

Then he added “They haven’t transferred him yet. We thought you might want a few minutes to say goodbye. He’s still in his room.”

Without even thinking, I said ‘yes’.

Up until the moment the elevator doors opened on the floor of ICU, I hadn’t really felt anything. I was more numb and dull than sad. My mind was a chaotic jumble of rationalizations, distant memories and resentment while I tried to reveal nothing to my family that could be interpreted as grief or weakness. I hadn’t noticed just how passive and controlled I had become around my own family. I had the cool, calm exterior of a veteran serial killer.

One of my father’s doctors approached me and extended his hand, “You must be the son?” His voice was gentle yet masculine and I instantly thought he could host a sports radio talk show, if medicine failed him.

I shook his hand and said “Thank you, yes, I’m Michael’s son”.

He replied “I’m sorry for your loss. If you’d like a moment alone with him, we haven’t moved him yet.”

I nodded and whispered “Yes please” and I followed him down the hall, towards my father’s room. The shades on the observation window were drawn closed and he grabbed the door’s handle and slowly opened the door for me, then followed in behind me. The room seemed to be a different color now. More greenish, the lighting seemed less harsh like they had a dimmer switch installed to help set the mood. The room was so quiet without all of the machines buzzing and pumping and beeping, it was almost unnerving. On the single cot lay my father’s body, in repose. He was dressed in a clean hospital gown and the sheet was drawn down to his waist. His eyes were closed (probably postmortem, while they were dressing him and getting him ready for viewing). The doctor gently put his hand on my shoulder and told me they would let me have about ten minutes alone with him to say goodbye and that I could lock the door from the inside, and keep the shades drawn if I wanted some privacy. Then he turned and left the room as I stood at the foot of the small bed, staring at the lifeless body where my dad used to be.

That familiar feeling was coming over me, the one right before you cry. Where your stomach starts to burn, your breathing becomes shallow and the muscles in your face start to contort even as your body protests. The tears dampened my cheeks as I stood still and wept, while my body shook in heaving sobs. I managed to get some control over my grief and pulled a chair close to the bed, sat down and with some hesitation, reached for my father’s hand. It was cool and heavy and offered no resistance to being held. It felt alien, like skin filled with wet sand.

I squeezed it, told him I loved him and that I wished we could have been closer. I apologized for not making it easier for him and as the tears began to dry up I also told him how mad I was at him for missing so much of my life. Then I sat in silence for a few moments, still holding his hand.

I looked at his face, the skin was now turning a jaundiced yellow and I remembered reading how this was caused by the blood pooling in his back and neck, due the lack of circulation. In just a little while total rigor would set in and his hand would no longer be limp and heavy, it would probably feel like a mannequin’s hand, or so I assumed.

Suddenly, I was filled with a sense of hopelessness as the thought occurred to me that there weren’t many pictures of us together. Actually, there were a couple: one or two from when I was a baby, when he’d come to visit us at his parents house. These were taken right before he would go to prison and miss the rest of my childhood. In one picture he’s holding me, I’m around six months old. He looks so genuinely happy and the smile on his face was one of sheer joy. In the other, he is laying on the carpet with me, watching me crawl towards something and he looks so riveted by the action.

He looks like my father, the way I always wished I could remember him.

One other photo was taken at his girlfriend, Cathy’s, birthday party. We’re both laughing and my hair is long. I feel like it was taken in 1995-96.

The last photo is from the Christmas he was allowed to come home, just before he went into a coma. He’s in a motorized wheelchair as the halo holds his head up. It’s me, my Uncle, my sister and grandmother and he is smiling.

That was it. There was no other record of he and I together and a wave of loneliness washed over me. I found myself letting go of his hand as I got up from the chair and moved across the room to the door. I locked it and then double checked the handle to make absolutely sure it would not open. Then I walked back over to the bed and looked down at Michael. My mind was rushing through a series of fundamental and ethical arguments as I climbed on the bed with him. I pulled my phone from my pocket and flipped it open. I pushed the button with the picture of the camera and the screen now showed me mine and my dad’s face.

‘Just one picture for me’ I told myself, ‘just something for when I feel sad or alone’ I began to rationalize as I aimed the camera and made sure the flash was off.

I pushed the button a second time and heard the fake shutter sound that alerted you a picture had been taken. I looked at the screen to confirm and there I saw my face next to his. Something didn’t look right.

I took a second photo and this time I tried to smile a little, not too much. I didn’t want it to appear that I was happy, just peaceful.

On the third photo I decided to move his arm up and put it around my shoulders.

By the fifth and sixth photos I had turned his head to face me and I closed my eyes too, so we both looked like we were blinking when the photo was taken.

I took one last photo of us holding hands and then I cried one last time, in my father’s arms.

I tried to put everything back the way I had found it, including the way he was posed. I made sure to pull all the wrinkles out of the sheet and make it look crisp again.

Then I whispered in his ear “Goodbye dad. I love you.”

I walked to the door, unlocked it and made my way back out into the hall. My hand was in the pocket where my phone was hiding and I was clutching, making sure it stayed in my pocket while I attempted to make eye contact with my family and appear like a normal, healthy grieving son and not the ghoul I had just become.

My uncle told me they would be getting together the next day to start working on arrangements for the service and he would call me when they settled on a date. I hugged them all, told them I loved them and we all made our way back down to the elevators without saying another word. Once I reached the parking garage, I sat in my car and pulled out my phone. I flipped open the lid and the last picture I took filled to tiny screen of the Nokia. It was just me holding my father’s right hand, while his left arm cradled my neck and head. Then I closed the phone, satisfied, and drove home.

I told my wife about sitting with dad and she held me while I wept on her shoulder. I wanted so badly to share what I did, but no matter how hard I tried, I could not find a sane explanation for what I’d done. It would just be my secret.

That night, after she went to sleep, I went back downstairs and opened my phone. I scrolled back and forth through the series of photos while listening to Cat Stevens and wondered how long I could hold onto them before I cracked.

My father’s funeral took place on a Thursday and Alanya came with me. We drove to the same church where we had my grandfather’s funeral. It was a standard Catholic church with a font of holy water and a big wooden cross with a suffering Christ nailed to it, on the wall facing all the pews. It was a brief service as my dad didn’t really have many actual friends that weren’t either currently serving time or who felt comfortable being at a public event where there might be undercover officers, posing as mourners.

My Uncle Robert delivered the eulogy and as he shared I sat and thumbed through my photos. Before he reached the end, I’d decided to hit ‘Delete’.

‘Are You Sure?’ my phone prompted.

I wasn’t, but I hit ‘YES’ before I could stop myself. A feeling of emptiness washed over me as I realized I couldn’t take it back, but eventually it calmed. I knew I’d done the right thing, even if I regretted it.

I was designated a pallbearer, along with my cousin David, my uncle and two church members I had never met. There was something so final about closing the door of the hearse and watching it drive away to the crematorium.

That was it. I now belonged to the dead parent club.

At the reception, I had to fake my way through plenty of “sorry for your loss”’s and “he was such a good mans” and lots of hugs from people I assume were only there to help fill seats at the church’s request and were now being rewarded with free cold cuts and a veggie tray for their trouble. Alanya stayed close and we tried to make each other laugh by pointing out mourners and giving them a backstory about how they knew my dad.

“Over there, by the fresh fruit, that’s Jerry. He worked at the passport office and helped my dad get a fake driver’s license.”

Stifled laughter.

“Oh, her? Why that’s Sandy Oglethorpe. She was the only female guard when your dad was in juvey. She’s retired now, but she always had high hopes for him.”

We made our goodbyes and once in the car I felt compelled to tell her, but I hesitated and before I knew it she’d driven us to a Rainforest Cafe, where I proceeded to get day drunk on rum.

I miss my dad and I’m glad I chose to remember him when his skin was pink and I wasn’t in the commission of a crime.

Also, did you know that the Rainforest Cafe is the best place to go when dealing with grief? It’s true. There’s no way to process loss when surrounded by animatronic gorillas

[sending-the-message]

White Noise by Sergeant_Darwin

I’ve never been much of a man. I barely crack 5’6”, can’t handle my liquor, and I’ve never been in a fight in my life—but when Lainie got pregnant, I decided it was time for a change. I started working out. I learned how to change the oil and tires on the Buick. Hell, I even bought a pistol. I was going to protect them, Lainie and my unborn child both, whatever it took.

I could tell Lainie thought it was all a little silly, my newfound quest for manhood. It was easy for her to say. She was doing her part. Carrying the burden of life inside her, while all I could do was hold her hair, in the early stages of pregnancy, as she puked into the toilet—and sometimes I even fucked that up. She seemed to think she could do it all herself, and she was probably right. When I brought home the gun, she was livid. All we needed, she said, was a baseball bat. And someone strong enough to swing it, she might have added.

I took it back the next day and bought a Louisville Slugger instead.

The baby came without a hitch—little Annika, looking just like her mommy—and what we lacked in protection, Lainie made up for with near-neurotic preparation. She had it all; the books, the vitamins, the breastfeeding techniques. But perhaps her favorite new mom-toy came in the form of a Kiddos Baby Monitor that she got at the baby shower. I can’t remember who gave it to her.

It gave off a small hum, scarcely a whisper, every single night. Vague static; white noise—interrupted, only on occasion, by a cough or hiccup or whimper from sweet Annika. She wasn’t a fussy baby at all. The monitor rested on Lainie’s nightstand, securing my wife like a second quilt. A small red dot, indicating the device was alive and well, dimly bathed the room in crimson, and an optional display provided a blue-tinted camera feed aimed at Annika’s crib. We could hear her, we could see her, and all was well in paradise.

Oh, there were tough times, sure. The jaundice was bad and it led to things even worse. Pneumonia. Strep. Infections no fun for an adult but an enormous goddamn deal for a baby. We spent plenty of time in the hospital. The nurses all loved Annika. They always remarked on what a well-behaved baby she was.

The marriage grew stale, but what marriage doesn’t? The sex was rare and forced, just another thing for Lainie to check off her to-do list. Was it ever really not that way, though? I tried to remember, but life before Annika seemed trapped in a cloudless haze. Becoming a father seemed to alter the very structure of my brain.

The first year came and went. The Kiddos Baby Monitor ran out of batteries, and we never bothered to replace them. Annika was crawling. Then walking. The first word, spoken at the dinner table, which Lainie and I were both there for: Mango.

The words kept coming. Mommy. Diaper. Full. They were all expected, yet all met with excited applause from her mother and me. And then, one day, while Lainie was at spinning class and I was doing the newspaper crossword on the couch, Annika piped up from her playpen with a word I did not expect.

Fa-ther.

I sat up, straining silently to listen, sure I had misheard. But then it came again, even clearer than before.

Fa-ther.

Most dads would be thrilled. I was confused, and frankly, a bit unnerved. I had no idea where she’d learned that. I was always ‘daddy.’ In fact, as far as I’d seen, nobody had ever so much as breathed that word in front of her. Yet there she sat, squawking away, giving voice to a word uncomfortably formal as though it were the most natural thing in the world.

Father. Father. Father.

Lainie didn’t seem as interested as I did. In fact, she seemed more than a little bit miffed—Annika had been growing more distant from her lately. This was the age children usually clung tightest to their mothers, yet Annika seemed to have no such proclivity. One doctor theorized that Annika might be having her needs met through another source—did she have a stuffed animal she was particularly attached to? A blanket, maybe? We could think of nothing.

We had her tested for autism. Hell, we had her tested for everything. Nothing could explain her level of detachment from us, nor her remarkably tame behavior. The professionals had never seen anything like it, but didn’t seem to think it much cause for concern.

“Count your blessings, friend,” one of them told me in a heavy English accent as he escorted me from his office. “Between you and me, nine out of ten kids her age is a right little shit.”

Still, we couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong. One night, Lainie had decided she’d had enough. She dug the old Kiddos Baby Monitor out of a box in the attic. She put new batteries in it, rewired the camera in Annika’s room, and for a few hours, the white noise hummed beneath our sleep once more.

I awoke to the sound of Annika babbling away in her crib. I turned toward the monitor, and my eyes swam, barely open, in the sea of crimson from its light. She was repeating the same word, again and again.

Fa-ther. Fa-ther.

I rolled over toward Lainie. She was still asleep—Annika wasn’t being very loud. I stumbled out of bed, wiping my eyes, and picked up the monitor. My fingers fumbled for the switch on the back, and when I flicked it, a dull blue glow sprang from nowhere. I squinted my eyes to see into Annika’s crib, and I let out a strangled cry. The monitor slipped from my hands and crashed to the floor. Lainie woke with a start, mumbling.

“Whatsamatter?”

But I couldn’t speak.

Someone was holding my daughter.

Without a word, I ran into the hallway, not even bothering to grab the Louisville Slugger from the closet. The door to Annika’s room was open. My socks slid out from under me and I crashed to the wooden hallway floor as I reached it, and as I lie prone I had a clear view into the bedroom.

Annika sat up in her crib, crying wildly for a change, startled by the noise. Nobody was holding her.

“I swear to God, honey—”

But Lainie wasn’t having it.

“The first night we start using the monitor again, and it just happens to be the night an invisible man breaks into our house? And leaves her placed all neat in her crib where he found her?”

“He wasn’t invisible, and I can’t explain it, Lainie, I’m telling you what I saw.”

“Alright,” she said, as though humoring a child. “What did he look like?”

At this, I drew blank. I couldn’t exactly describe him—I hadn’t looked long enough. I felt that I had seen him before, though. Somewhere. I felt that seeing him at all, even in a completely non-threatening context, would have made me deeply uncomfortable. But I didn’t know how to explain this to Lainie, this vague recognition. So I just shrugged. She scoffed.

“Jesus. What am I supposed to do with this.”

But the whole thing had her spooked, I know it. That night she told me—if you hear anything from the monitor, anything at all, you wake me up right away. So I did.

Father. Father. Lainie’s voice rang out above the dead white noise.

Lainie snatched the cooing monitor from her bedside table less than a second after I’d woken her. She sat up and flicked the switch.

Lainie shrieked a horrible sobbing shriek. She flung the covers from her and leapt from the bed in one fluid motion, leaving the monitor face-up on the sheet behind her. On it I could see the man, cradling Annika with a light bounce, more clearly this time. And in a flash I knew exactly who he was. And this time, I stayed right where I lay.

It took Lainie a long time to calm Annika down—that scream had put a good scare into her. I don’t think Lainie even noticed that I never came in. By the time she got back to our bedroom, the lights were on and I sat on the bed, spread out with a couple of her old college photo albums.

She walked into the room and stopped in her tracks. She looked at me, at the albums, and back to me. I think in that moment we both knew it was over.

“He wasn’t in there,” she said after a long pause. “I know what you’re thinking, but it wasn’t him. Nobody was in there.”

“Fine,” I said. “But he was on the monitor. You know he was on the monitor. Why, Lainie?”

She looked down at the albums, at the old pictures from which Will Harding’s dumb fucking face grinned up at both of us, feigning innocence.

“Father...”

She looked at me, and the guilt shone in her eyes.

“Will’s the father. Not me. Will Harding.”

She started to cry. I stood up and walked out of the room, pausing a few inches from her face to say, softly, almost sweetly:

“You’re a real bitch, you know that?”

Then I left the house and never walked back inside. Lainie brought all my stuff to my new apartment a couple days later. The divorce went through quickly; she didn’t want it but she understood. She, of course, got custody of Annika, having the tremendous advantage of not only womanhood but of actually being Annika’s biological parent. I didn’t fight it. It’s amazing how quickly I stopped loving both of them.

Will Harding was a big, brash man. He had tattoos, muscles, and watched football and drank beer and got mean when he did. That’s why Lainie left him, after two passionate, terrible years. She once told me she married me because I was everything Will was not. But it wasn’t long before she realized that by the same token, Will was everything I was not. I guess old habits die hard. And three months after Annika was born, so did Will. He found out that Lainie had had a baby and came to the house. She shut him out, screaming at him that he wasn’t the father, he wasn’t, he wasn’t. But he knew—she was lying. So he got real drunk and real mad and didn’t put on his seatbelt and on his way back to our place he sped his fucking Camaro up a curb and into a big brick mailbox.

Lainie went to his fucking funeral. She told me she was getting her teeth cleaned.

She sent me a Christmas card last year—she and Annika, smiling underneath a hearth in cheesy red sweaters, stockings hung on either side of them. I looked at the little girl I used to call mine, now seven years old, and felt nothing. I wondered absently if I should feel guilty, and if I’d somehow failed as a dad. But those thoughts, often though they came, never lasted long. She didn’t need another father—she already had one, after all, and she seemed to like him just fine.

[the-master-cylinder]

SUMMARY In 1893 London, popular writer Herbert George Wells displays a time machine to his skeptical dinner guests. After he explains how it works (including a “non-return key” that keeps the machine at the traveler’s destination and a “vaporizing equalizer” that keeps the traveler and machine on equal terms), police constables arrive at the house searching for Jack the Ripper. A bag with blood-stained gloves belonging to one of Herbert’s friends, a surgeon named John Leslie Stevenson, leads them to conclude that Stevenson might be the infamous killer. Wells races to his laboratory, but the time machine is gone.

Stevenson has escaped to the future, but because he does not have the “non-return” key, the machine automatically returns to 1893. Herbert uses it to pursue Stevenson to November 5, 1979, where the machine has ended up on display at a museum in San Francisco. He is deeply shocked by the future, having expected it to be an enlightened socialist utopia, only to find chaos in the form of airplanes, automobiles and a worldwide history of war, crime and bloodshed.

Reasoning that Stevenson would need to exchange his British money, Herbert asks about him at various banks. At the Chartered Bank of London, he meets liberated employee Amy Robbins, who says she had directed Stevenson to the Hyatt Regency hotel.

Confronted by his one-time friend Herbert, Stevenson confesses that he finds modern society to be pleasingly violent, stating: “Ninety years ago, I was a freak. Now… I’m an amateur.” Herbert demands he return to 1893 to face justice, but Stevenson instead attempts to wrestle the time machine’s key from him. Their struggle is interrupted by a maid and Stevenson flees, getting hit by a car during the frantic chase. Herbert follows him to the San Francisco General Hospital emergency room and mistakenly gets the impression that Stevenson has died from his injuries.   Herbert meets up with Amy Robbins again and she initiates a romance. Stevenson returns to the bank to exchange more money. Suspecting that it was Amy who had led Herbert to him, he finds out where she lives. Herbert, hoping to convince her of the truth, takes a highly skeptical Amy three days into the future. Once there, she is aghast to see a newspaper headline revealing her own murder as the Ripper’s fifth victim.

Herbert persuades her that they must go back – it is their duty to attempt to prevent the fourth victim’s murder, then prevent Amy’s. However, they are delayed upon their return to the present and can do no more than phone the police. Stevenson kills again, and Herbert is arrested because of his knowledge of the killing. Amy is left alone, totally defenseless, and at the mercy of the “San Francisco Ripper”.

While Herbert unsuccessfully tries to convince the police of Amy’s peril, she attempts to hide from Stevenson. When the police finally do investigate her apartment, they find the dismembered body of a woman. Now aware of Herbert’s innocence, the police release a now-heartbroken Wells. However, he is contacted by Stevenson, who has actually killed Amy’s coworker (revealed to be the dead body in Amy’s apartment) and taken Amy hostage in order to extort the time machine key from Wells.

Stevenson flees with the key – and Amy as insurance – to attempt a permanent escape in the time machine. Using Amy’s car, Herbert follows them back to the museum. While Herbert bargains for Amy’s life, she is able to escape. As Stevenson starts up the time machine, Herbert removes the “vaporizing equalizer” from it, causing Stevenson to vanish while the machine does not. As Herbert had explained earlier, this causes the machine to remain in place while its passenger is sent traveling endlessly through time with no way to stop; in effect, he is destroyed.

Herbert proclaims that the time has come to return to his own time, in order to destroy a machine that he now knows is too dangerous for primitive mankind. Amy pleads with him to take her along. As they depart to the past, she jokes that she is changing her name to Susan B. Anthony. The film ends with the caption: “H.G. Wells married Amy Catherine Robbins, who died in 1927. As a writer, he anticipated Socialism, global war, space travel, and Women’s Liberation. He died in 1946.”

DEVELOPMENT Meyer first came to fame in 1974 for his best-selling Sherlock Holmes novel, The Seven-Per-Cent Solution. Two years later, he adapted his book for the Herbert Ross-directed film and earned an Oscar nomination for his screenplay. When the book was published, Meyer heard from a lot of people including Karl Alexander, whom he knew from his days at the University of Iowa. Alexander had started a book inspired by The Seven-Per-Cent Solution and wanted Meyer to read the 65 pages he had written revolving around Wells and Jack the Ripper time traveling.

Meyer loved the idea of H.G. Wells creating a real time machine and having Jack the Ripper and Wells using it. “That was back in the days when I had time to read other people’s stuff,” Meyer recalls. “I was fascinated by it. I had some thoughts. I gave him some notes about it. I thought I was putting it out of my mind and then realized as days and then weeks were going by, that it was an idea I really couldn’t let go.”

And he had one of this middle of the night brainstorms telling himself, “You’re an idiot! Why don’t you just option what he wrote?” Meyer gave Alexander the completed script and the novelist utilized the script to complete his novel Time After Time, which was published in April 1979. Meyer hooked up with producer Herb Jaffe. “When Universal had optioned The Seven-Per-Cent Solution book, they optioned it on condition that I write the screenplay,” Meyer says. “I just took the same idea and stepped it up one and said, ‘Yes, you can have the screenplay, but I have to direct the movie. Orion and Warner Bros. said yes more or less on the same day. They teamed up and split it, with Warner Bros. getting to distribute.”

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PRODUCTION Malcolm McDowell wasn’t Meyer’s first choice for Time After Time. He originally envisioning British actor Derek Jacobi — who was then enjoying acclaim for the British series I, Claudius — as the charming, bespectacled Wells. “I was looking for a non-muscle-bound, spandex-clad hero,” says Meyer, who made his feature directorial debut with Time After Time. “I was looking for somebody who was cerebrally endowed,” Meyer adds. “I wasn’t looking for a macho guy. I was willing to cast against type if I could. We now think of I, Claudius as a classic. But when I brought it up to Warner Bros., nobody had seen it. Nobody knew who he was.” It was one of his 3 a.m. brainstorms that led him to McDowell. “I remember sitting bolt upright [and thinking,] ‘Now, that’s a weird notion.'”

“When I raised the idea of him with Warner Bros., they said they knew who he was, but he always played the villain. I said, ‘Well, that’s what’s going to be so interesting. This is called acting. This time, he’ll play the hero.”’

Warner Bros. also was pushing for Mick Jagger to play Jack the Ripper. “I thought no one would lose themselves in the movie if Jagger were cast,” says Meyer. “We’d be watching Mick Jagger, not the Ripper.”

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McDowell was attracted to the material because he was looking for something different than the sex and violence in Caligula, in which he played the title character. While preparing to portray Wells, Malcolm McDowell obtained a copy of a 78 rpm recording of Wells speaking. McDowell was “absolutely horrified” to hear that Wells spoke in a high-pitched, squeaky voice with a pronounced Southeast London accent, which McDowell felt would have resulted in unintentional humor if he tried to mimic it for the film. McDowell abandoned any attempt to recreate Wells’s authentic speaking style and preferred a more dignified speaking style.

The cast all gave high marks to Meyer as a director. “I remember him saying — he did it in front of the whole crew — ‘Listen, you all know I haven’t directed a movie before,'” recalls David Warner. “‘So you know more about making movies than I do. I love movies. If there’s any suggestions or anything you see me doing that you think isn’t quite right, please tell me. Don’t be afraid to tell me.’ I really liked him for that. I really respected him. He didn’t pretend he knew everything, which is a very good quality, I think.”

H.G. Wells walks by a TV store. All you have to do is show television. It parodies itself All I had to do was light it and photograph it right.” H.G. Wells has stopped at a McDonalds to try to get some lunch. He watches the man ahead of him in line, a truck driver type, and listens as the man orders: Truck driver: “Gimme a Big Mac, an order of fries, and a small Coke to go, please.” Wells, imitating the trucker, orders next: “Gimme a Big Mac, an order of fries, an ” he finishes in his native clipped British: and tea, please.”

Time After Time really operates on five levels,” says Meyer. “It’s science fiction. It’s a thriller homicidal maniac being chased by a man of reason. It’s a romance Wells falls in love with a bank teller, and she’s the ultimate quarry of Jack the Ripper. It’s a comedy. And it’s an ironic social comment Wells decides he’s gone backward as much as he’s gone forward.

“The film’s jaundiced view is apolitical, H.G. finally says at the end, ‘Every age is the same. It’s only love that makes any of them bearable.”

“I hope I don’t sound pretentious or pompous when I say that our aims are somewhat more serious than the aims of most science fiction movies. More serious than what? Star Wars, for instance?

“No, no, Star Wars has a serious intent beyond its fireworks. It sought to recreate a mythology, of sorts. To me, Star Wars was King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table set in outer space. It worked, and it’s what makes that film so enchanting.

“Close Encounters also has a serious purpose, a very romantic idea that we are not alone.

“While I enjoyed Superman, I don’t think there was any real thematic purpose there. They flirted a little with the idea of Superman as Jesus Christ, but that was always there in the comic book.

“All three of those movies were finally and fundamentally supposed to reassure you. They all have positive, romantic themes Time After Time isn’t exactly a reaffirmation, but it does say that, well, that the Victorian era was as horrendous in its own way as this-” He gestures toward the editing screen where there’s a midtown San Francisco traffic jam. Meyer says to Donn Cambern, “Now I want this very noisy. We live in a noisy age.��� – Nicholas Meyer

SPECIAL EFFECTS

Early Prototype Model

Finished Result

Richard Taylor, lately associated with Star Trek: The Motion Picture is in charge of those mysterious time-travel effects. This is the first time I’ve ever directed a movie, and believe me, I went for the easiest thing to do. I didn’t want to bite off a lot of miniatures, opticals, Special effects and so on.” The only effects portions of Time After Time are the passages through time, which Taylor has committed to film in self-contained scenes which were inserted bodily into Meyer’s live-action work. “If the film addresses itself to the science fiction community–if there is such a thing as a science-fiction community it will do so on a unique basis. The only film this bears even remote resemblance tots a film called Alphaville, which did influence me some. Time After Time does not present, fundamentally, a very optimistic look at today.

MUSIC SCORE Meyer got the legendary three-time Oscar winner (Ben-Hur, A Double Life, Spellbound) Miklos Rozsa to compose the lush, evocative score and dusted off the classic Max Steiner-penned “Fanfare” to play over the Warner Bros. logo.

“I thought to myself, ‘This movie should have a musical accompaniment that reflects the personality of the protagonist,'” recalls Meyer. “The protagonist is a 19th century person. So, I was thinking, obviously, not of a rock and roll score. When I started to think about composers who would fill the bill, I was also looking for someone who had a gift for the fantastic. I loved the Rozsa score for The Thief of Bagdad and thought, ‘Yeah, this might be a winning combination.'”

But his glorious score was almost scrapped. “By the time it came toward preview time and mixing the movie, we had heard that Warner Bros. didn’t like the film. They didn’t believe in the film. And one other thing we kept hearing was that they wanted Bill Conti (Rocky, The Right Stuff) to write another score for it.”  

Meyer told Jaffe that they should take an ad out in the Hollywood trade papers to announce how much they loved Rosza’s score. “Why don’t we write Mickey a letter telling him how great his score is and then publish the letter? Herb Jaffe’s comment was ‘You’re learning.’ We published the letter and then they really couldn’t take the score away.”

It was one of the last films scored by veteran composer Miklós Rózsa, who received the 1979 Saturn Award for Best Music.

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RELEASE/CONCLUSION Despite the preview response and generally getting positive reviews — THR critic and columnist Robert Osborne wrote at the time that “such a scrambling of fact, fiction and imagination in itself deserves back-patting and, for the most part, the rendering is as delightful as the basic idea” — audiences didn’t storm the theaters. The film made only $13 million at the box office (about $45 million today).

“If they were an under confident before the screening, they became overconfident after the screening,” says Meyer. “They suddenly decided to open the movie really, really wide. They didn’t have the stars that would support that, and they weren’t giving it time for word of mouth to build. It was a success, it just wasn’t a huge success.”

McDowell believes the box office suffered at the time because advertising played up the Jack the Ripper storyline and not the love story. Earlier that year the grisly Holmes and Watson mystery thriller Murder by Decree had a Ripper plotline. “Our movie came out on the tail end of that, and nobody went to see that,” he speculates.

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Time After Time (1979) Pressbook & Posters

CAST/CREW Directed by Nicholas Meyer Produced by Herb Jaffe Screenplay by Nicholas Meyer Story by Steve Hayes Based on Time After Time 1979 novel by Karl Alexander

Malcolm McDowell as Herbert George Wells David Warner as John Leslie Stevenson/Jack the Ripper Mary Steenburgen as Amy Robbins Charles Cioffi as Police Lt. Mitchell Kent Williams as assistant Patti D’Arbanville as Shirley Joseph Maher as Adams

CREDITS/REFERENCES/SOURCES/BIBLIOGRAPHY hollywoodreporter Starburst#060 Cinefantastique v08n01 Starlog#031

Time After Time (1979) Retrospective SUMMARY In 1893 London, popular writer Herbert George Wells displays a time machine to his skeptical dinner guests.

[ask-de-writer]

SEA DRAGON’S GIFT : World of Sea : Part 30

SEA DRAGON’S GIFT

by

De Writer (Glen Ten-Eyck)

140406 words

copyright 2018

written 2007

All rights reserved.

Reproduction in any form, physical, electronic or digital is prohibited without the express consent of the author.

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Copyright fair use rules for Tumblr users

Users of Tumblr.com are specifically granted the following rights.  They may reblog the story provided that all author and copyright information remains intact.  They may use the characters or original characters in my settings for fan fiction, fan art works, cosplay, or fan musical compositions. All sorts of fan art, cosplay, music or fiction is actively encouraged.

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New to the story?  Read from the beginning.  PART 1 is here

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When Everything was readied to the diver’s satisfaction, she waddled to the rail in her flips and went over the side, hitting the water on her back.  She went under and surfaced head first.  After several deep breaths, she blew out all that she could and sounded like an Orca whale, jackknifing down, flips shooting straight up into the air.  She disappeared into the dark water.  Over three minutes later, she burst up through the surface, almost to her waist and sank back, just her head out of the water, breathing deeply again.  

She steadied and called, “The bow-cable is secure.  Lift fifteen feet with the big crane!”

They lifted as directed and the diver sounded again.  Shortly, she was back up.  While she was getting her breath, she signaled with a circled thumb and forefinger.  

“Lift twenty five feet with the portable crane!  Pull easy, there’s going to be a lot of water resistance.”  When they had done it, she went back down and looked to see that all was well before they hoisted the boat up.

The mast tip broke water with the forlorn, drowned lantern still hanging from it.  In minutes the cabin roof was in view and then the fore-deck and flooded cockpit.

“Hold!” called the diver and the cranes stopped.  “Get a bilge-pump!” She flipped her feet up and dove.  This close to the surface, they could see her stroking in a leisurely way with her feet and shooting the length of the boat, turning and coming back along the other side of it.  Surfacing again, she called, “Belay that pump!  Lift the stern, gently! — — Good!  Now lift all, dead slow!”  

She just lay back and floated, watching as the boat came up.  Water gushed in a foaming torrent from a perfectly round, six inch hole close to the bows and low on the bottom.

Chapter 9: The Dragon’s Kin

When Kurin and Sula went to the bazaar, about noon, they were greeted on all sides by whispers of, “There she is!  She’s the one that maps the bottom!  That’s why the Longin is doing so well!” and many other variants of that.  Including, “The Longin has a new Luck!” There were also malicious whispers of which the kindest was “Witch!” said by a group of Fauline sailors, looking at Kurin venomously.

There was a knot of Captains about Captain Mord, in front of the Council Pavilion.  Captain Sula strode through the group with such assurance that they gave way before her.  Kurin followed.  Reaching Mord, Sula turned to the other Captains, raised her hands for attention and said bluntly, “This is unseemly.  Let us go in and deal with your concerns in a quieter, more private, setting.”

She opened the flap of the Pavilion and held it while the other Captains filed in.  She took the center of the Council Circle, and turned until she had faced them all.  Only about a dozen of the over two hundred Captains of the Council were present, leaving many empty benches on the tiers of the cavernous pavilion about her.  She waved them all together into a close, intimate group.

Boldly, she said, “I have taken this liberty because I am not involved in your squabble.  What is the problem, that you assault Captain Mord in such a public fashion?  She pointed at the Captain of the Gula. You?”

“Rumor started yesterday that the Longin had some uncanny method of finding fish, and that is why she has been so successful.  We want her to cease its use and fish fairly, with the rest of us.”

Sula actually laughed, wiping an eye, she replied, “I did not expect comedy in such a Council as this.  Would it not make more sense to inquire how the fish were found, so that you could catch them, too?”

Several of the Captains gave hard looks at Barad, Captain of the Grandalor, and pointing said, “It was his idea to shut down the Longin’s fishing methods.  He called them witchcraft.”

“And you listened to him with no more proof than his word?  I have only been here with you folk for a few days, and already I have heard that he hates the Longin and her success.  

“I have heard as a food booth tale, told with much mirth, how he cheated himself of what has proved to be his best fishing waters while trying to swindle the Longin.  If this is what you use for evidence in this fleet, then twist a rope from the moonlight of Dorac, Carsis and Wohan.  We will use it to hang Captain Mord.  Captain Barad left his wits on dry land Gatherings ago, and now he has you beaching yours in his wake.”

“If you know so much,” asked the Captain of the Dolthin, sourly, “how do they catch so much more than the rest of us?”

“I would hazard a guess that they use lines and hooks and nets, like the rest of you.  They excel in knowing where to put them.”

Barad jumped on that, “And just how do they know where to fish? Witchcraft!  That’s how!”  He sat back with a self satisfied smirk.

“Actually, I think not,” replied Sula sarcastically.  “You should allow questions that you ask to be answered, instead of answering them yourself.  That method of inquiry leads you onto the reefs of unreason.  

“You must accept that the Great Sea Dragon, Blind Mecat, lived on board the Longin in human guise for nineteen Gatherings.  They may have learned from her, and now use their resources better than you.  

“Five Gatherings ago, the Dragon left, and in so doing, gave you absolute proof that at least two Great Sea Dragons are still about.  

“For the last five Gatherings, the Longin has been blessed with the Dragon’s kin.  The finding of the fish is her work, is it not?” She turned to Captain Mord as she asked the last.

He looked at her blankly, “The Dragon’s kin?  Cat had no children. We have not picked up any other — — What do you mean?”

Sula pulled Kurin to the fore.  “Here is the Dragon’s foster daughter. With her father dead and her mother gone mad beyond help, Kurin was taken in and raised for an entire Gathering by whom?  Blind Mecat. The Great Sea Dragon became her foster mother by the laws of both Winternight and the Corlis fleet.  Is not your law similar?”

A buzz of consternation showed that it was.  And that nobody had thought of it.

“So, now the question becomes this; do you reject the Dragon’s daughter and her gifts?  Will you risk the wrath of very real Dragons in the process or will you embrace her gifts, and in the bargain become wealthier?  I have no vote here, but I think the choice is obvious.”

Skua, Captain of the chronically poor Fauline asked jealously, “Will she do for us what she does for you, Captain Mord?  Exactly what is it that she does?”

“I will answer Captain Sula’s question first,” said Mord, nettled by Skua’s tone.  “Yes, Kurin has been responsible for our finding fish.  Unfortunately, it is far more complex than her simply pointing and saying ‘the fish are here or the fish are there.’”

Mord cast a jaundiced eye at the covetous Skua and scolded, “Skua, how we find the fish and the way that she helps us is protected Ship’s Business.  Our Master’s Council has studied the matter and determined that it is a skill, not a Craft.  She does not have to share it with anyone.  I can say that the part that is still secret involves something completely new in the way of dead-reckoning navigation.  She has been teaching some of us the skill, with varying degrees of success.”

Kurin tugged at Mord’s sleeve and whispered urgently in his ear for a few moments.  His eyebrows shot up and he smiled.  The assembled Captains did not like the look of that smile.  It was almost predatory.

When he spoke, they were sure of it.  “It is clear that a great part of the knowledge is no longer secret, due to a loose tongue.  The crew will vote this evening on how to share our knowledge and what parts of it to keep secret.  Tomorrow morning, here, I will tell you of the vote.  By the Articles of the Longin that is all that I am free to do at this time.”  He got up and taking Kurin by the hand, he walked out.  Kurin went to her booth and thanked Roper, who had opened and watched it for her.

TO BE CONTINUED

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[garuda-dreams-of-rain]

I’ve been hesitant to write down my impressions of the total solar eclipse because I honestly don’t know how to describe it. Talking about direct experience is so difficult, there simply aren’t adequate words to convey those deep levels of sensations outside of the land of poetry. Once you insert a layer of language you’ve created a constructed distance between you and your listener. That said, I want to give it a shot because IT WAS THE MOST AWESOME EXPERIENCE EVER!

We (my bestie, C, and her hubby, P), and I set off from Longmont, Colorado at five am. Normally, it’s about a 2.5 - 3 hour drive into Wyoming, so we planned for five. It took us 4.5 hours, mostly on frontage roads along a rather crowded interstate. With more than a bit of back seat driving from P, we got to Guernsey State Park and got a nice spot. The little town of Guernsey (population 200), did such a great job! They were so helpful and kind and really seemed as if they were enjoying having 50,000 people descend on their town, lol. There were thousands of people there but it was pretty quiet. People were hiking, and adjusting their telescopes, and just hanging out. Lots of dogs.

We were on a grassy, shrubby, hilltop (mountain, I guess at 5,000 feet) so we had a great clear view from horizon to horizon. Not a cloud in the sky. That part of Wyoming is high rolling grasslands with the occasional drift of limestone buttes. Dry, spacious and beautiful, with old, brittle cottonwood trees growing alongside small creeks lost in the tall grass; everything is cast in shades of green, gold and brown. Tons of sky. The smell of chapparell was very strong; the perfume of Wyoming, pine and sage, smelling clean and sharp. I saw a newly dead cow down in a shallow ravine and a picked over dead antelope by the side of the road. In the huge valley behind us was an enormous reservoir.

We set up our little tailgate lunch/party, fiddled with our cameras, affixed our special eclipse glasses to our faces, and looked directly at the sun. I had no idea the sun looked like that! I’ve never seen an eclipse before or used those special glasses. I’ve only seen paper sculptures or computer models of the sun, you know, in school or on tv.

It was just this small orange ball in the sky, but it was comforting to see it up there, boiling away and spewing out all this fabulous, warming, life creating radiation. And because of that little nuclear reactor in the sky, all this planet and all its creatures were made possible. Amazing. A little black nibble started to form on the top right. The moon! It was ungodly black. It looked like Vanta black. In the words of Nigel Tuffnell, “there is none blacker.” The excitement started to build.

So this little nibble starts getting bigger and bigger as the moon slides across the sun. It was about at 60% totality when we started noticing there was a change in the light. There was still plenty of light, daytime feel, but there was a change in the quality. It was grayer, steelier, with an odd, coldish cast to the air. But still perfectly normal, lol.

If you were an ancient person you might think a storm was starting to brew, like the way the sky changes before a Tornado happens. At about 85% totality it started getting noticeably chillier and white people’s skin started looking jaundiced. Actually yellow. Shadows were very sharp. Colors were muted. I expected it to be like twilight, but it really wasn’t. It was and it wasn’t. It was weird and kinda neat.

The moon continued its slide until there were just a few bright white beads of light along the edge. The remaining sliver of our sun winked out. We were standing at the edge of the circular shadow of the moon as it raced across the surface of our planet at 1500 miles per hour. Seventy miles in diameter, and in one minute we’d be at the very center of that circle. It was totality!

We whipped off our glasses and looked up. Somebody had thrown a cosmic switch in the nano second between the sun winking out and me removing my glasses. Suddenly, I was standing on an alien planet looking into the sky at an alien gray/black ball of sun. That was not my sun. It was twilight, but unlike any twilight I’ve experienced anywhere on this planet. A few stars had come out.

All around the horizon it was a rosy peach color that faded up into the dark blue sky. We were looking outside the shadow of the moon to where the sun was still shining, 35 miles away. Incredible!

I had never seen anything like that before. It was astonishing. The diaphanous corona was splayed out around the sun, with a great big swath extending off to the upper right. All around me I could hear people hooting and hollering. C burst into tears. All I could do was stand there, staring, saying, “oh my god,” over and over and, strangely, laughing.

It was beautiful. It was stupendous. My heart was beating so fast! It was wonderful in a way that only the most sacred experiences in life can be. It was like sitting with my mother as she died. It was like holding my niece for the first time. It was like the moment I discovered my own goodness (long thought absent) many years ago.

I’d never been so aware of the vastness of the universe, how small we are, how organic and elemental everything is, the connectedness of everything, even unto this seemingly simple orange ball hanging in our sky, the amazing events and coincidences that have happened over countless eons so that I could stand there, aware of my own existence and what was going on around me in those precious seconds. It was humbling, awesome, invigorating and every/any other thing you could possibly think of.

All too soon, two of the shortest minutes to ever exist, it was over. The sheer speed of the universe is frightening. But before the moon began to pull away again nature had one last surprise. A jet was coursing across the sky (my bets are that it was a NASA jet chasing the eclipse), and bisected the sun at the very moment totality ended. Lots of good screaming for that one!

The moon slid off the sun, that weird switch was thrown again and we were back on planet Earth. Things had returned to normal. Our sun had returned. I can completely understand how an ancient person might have freaked the fuck out.

What an exhilarating experience! Practically exhausted, slightly sunburnt and satisfied beyond belief, we sat down.

We hung out for a while watching the sun grow stronger and then drove eight hours home in the midst of the mother of all traffic jams with half a million other people all trying to get home, getting into a spectacular fight on the way because my bestie’s husband is a completely abusive asswipe, but that’s a story for another day. We drove through Nebraska, ffs. NEBRASKA! It took me 24 hours to recover, lol.

I highly recommend to anyone if you have a chance to see a total eclipse in your lifetime, take advantage of it! I don’t know if it will change your life or cause you to reflect on the nature of Life, the Universe and Everything, but it might!

Grade A+ Thanks, cosmos! 👋🏼

ps. This is not my photo. It was going around a couple days ago and I saved it. The photographer’s name is Miloslav Druckmüller. He is considered one of the best eclipse photographers in the world. This photo was taken on the Marshall Islands in the Pacific Ocean.