#*waters brain lichen*

[cannibalhellhound]

✨It's finished✨🦭

I love how disturbing leopard seals are to people.

In my opinion, they're amazing and I love them.

Now, for my Selkie au stuff >:D

Ice is a leopard seal because 1. I love them 2. He loves biting people and makes it other people's problem 3. His Iceman glare will freeze your soul (both in seal and human shape) and make you feel like you're nearing death.

[david-watts]

I haven’t really bitched about this yet but I have to at this point but. the guy who built the shower fucked up big time as we know and it’s going to destroy the floor fairly soon if we can’t get it repaired but! apparently if we just dry the floor (which has lichen growing on it!) and put silicon in the door it’ll be fine. guess who’s saying that! the same woman who threw out the paperwork (illegally, btw, there’s a certain amount of years you need to keep certain paperwork, and whilst grandpa did keep everything for twenty-one years which is iirc a very specific thing to do with minors and estates. definitely to do with a beneficiary coming of age. that doesn’t mean you should bin all paperwork asap. anyway it’s like eighteen months til we could legally bin that particular stuff but she did it anyway and it would’ve been sensible to keep it longer even if there hadn’t been problems with the thing since it was constructed). like. unless she wants to get the floor replaced she needs to quickly learn that we need to get someone in to fix this

[lattesqueeze]

KISS PROOOOMPTS

For any pairing, may I have either "i think this is the part where you're supposed to kiss me" or “lifting your lover up”?

KISS PROMPT FOR YOU MY LOVE

Thank you so much for asking 🥰 i love you!!

Here's a little Landoscar snack for you!!

Somewhere in the distance, a blend of old classics and current electro-pop mingled into one echoing pulse, married together with the laughter and chatter of people eating, drinking, and enjoying their evening. The evening was warm. The sky was completely dark, but the lights of the Italian town cast a warm and inviting glow over the cobbled streets. Despite the late hour, divine smells of cooking blended in a burst of sweetened tomatoes and sugary cinnamon. 

Two young men, one tall and pale, one a little shorter, with an unruly mop of brown curls, made their way slowly along the street. Like most of the other people in the town, they were enjoying the relative chill of the evening. The day had been almost unbearably hot, and the heat still radiated from the stone walls around them. A light mist of rain surrounded them, but it brought nothing but cool relief. 

As the two came to the centre of the stone bridge, coated in lichen and years of built up dirt, a distinctive pop snapped their attention to somewhere over the water. A shower of golden sparks descended over the river. Another pop, and a multicoloured supernova materialised in the sky, only for a second. 

The slightly taller of the two, Oscar, stopped and turned his whole body to face the direction of the fireworks. 

“It’s like one of my sisters’ rom-coms.” Oscar said with a hushed chuckle. 

Lando snorted. 

“Yeah? With the rain and all?” 

“Yeah, the fireworks, the music. You know.” Oscar looked dreamily out over the water, watching the sparkling explosions. 

“Well, if this is a rom-com, I think this is the part where you’re supposed to kiss me.” Lando said with a casual shrug. 

If Oscar had been looking more closely, or paying more attention to anything other than Lando’s mouth, he would have noticed the way Lando fidgeted with his sleeve cuffs to disguise the shaking of his hands. He would have noticed the barely-noticeable flush of Lando’s cheeks, and the way he refused to meet Oscar’s eyes. Perhaps he might even have noticed the way Lando looked down at his feet, shy, and wet his lips to a shine with the tip of his tongue. 

As it was, Oscar really wasn’t paying much attention at all to what Lando was doing. He was rather preoccupied with the white noise and static that had washed over his brain. 

Lando cleared his throat softly and looked up at Oscar with a half-squint. Oscar seemed to register this, and his brain reconnected to the rest of his body. He took just one step towards Lando, tentative. 

At that very moment, three things happened in unison. 

First, the light drizzle morphed with a vengeance into a heavy, summer shower. Squeals of pedestrians caught in the downpour echoed around the street, but neither Lando nor Oscar noticed. It was mere seconds before they were the only people left out in the rain, with everyone else having scurried to shelter. 

Second, the firework display seemed to enter its finale, with a cacophony of bangs and booms, and a never-ending flurry of sparks in every colour of the rainbow. Accompanied by music, the chatter of the busy street, and the sound of the rain, the fireworks display was vibrant and chaotic and Lando and Oscar were missing it completely. 

Lando and Oscar were entirely wrapped up in each other. Lando had backed himself against the waist-high wall of the bridge, and Oscar pinned him there, arms encircling his waist. Oscar, in an unprecedented burst of confidence, had wiggled his knee in between Lando’s thighs, and had his hands firmly planted on Lando’s hips. He had gazed at Lando for just a moment, watched as his pupils dilated to swallow up much of the lightness of his iris, before leaning in to gently take Lando’s lips between his own. 

Lando sighed into the kiss, and licked insistently at Oscar’s lower lip. Oscar’s lips parted, and Lando took to biting on his swollen lower lip, never quite letting him breathe fully. Just as Oscar seemed to have coached Lando into a bit of a rhythm, Lando pulled away and leaned back.

“I’ve been waiting for this.” He said with a cheeky, impish grin.

“You could’ve said.” Oscar rolled his eyes. 

“Yeah, could’ve.” Lando shrugged. “This was more fun though.”

Lando hopped backwards, so he was sitting on the wall, giving him just a little bit more height. He draped his arms around Oscar’s neck, pulling him close again. His fingers ventured further afield, winding themselves tightly into the longer hair at the base of Oscar’s neck, eliciting a sigh of pleasure. He gave an experimental tug, forcing Oscar’s head back a little, exposing his neck. 

Lando took the opportunity to kiss along Oscar’s jaw and down his neck, nibbling gently to leave little pink blooms where a mark would show itself later. Oscar dug his fingers deeper into the flesh of Lando’s hips with a groan, doing his damnedest to pull Lando ever closer. Lando released his grip on Oscar’s hair, instead letting his hands wander along Oscar’s neck and jaw. 

The fireworks ended with one final flourish, and the rain seemed to have worn itself out. Lando and Oscar pulled apart and stared at each other, giggling. Oscar’s hair was plastered flat against his forehead, and Lando’s curls threatened to be weighed down into some semblance of a bowl cut. 

With a final wet kiss on Oscar’s unsuspecting mouth, Lando jumped back down off the wall, and steered Oscar away with an arm around his waist. Their hotel rooms - and the promise of dry clothes - awaited.

[ashes-writing-corner]

Happy new year guys! I'm back with my first bit of writing of 2024 and it's an update to Ghosts that We Knew! I hope you all enjoy!

Taglist: @stargatenovus

Tw: talk of suicide, organ donation, mention of hospital visits.

Ghosts that We Knew

Part 11- The File and the Call

The heart in your chest was pounding up a storm when you got to the bakery and cafe again. You didn’t want to go to the apartment, not for this. Ellie was still in school, and Ghost had no reason to suspect something was up. You hadn’t told him anything about your virtual meeting with Soap, despite wanting to. For now though, you needed to figure this out on your own. But the question plagued you: If Ghost was your donor, why in the world didn’t he tell you? 

You wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps he didn’t know. It was plausible, as being dead could seriously screw with one’s memory you imagined. But then again he remembered that he died two years ago not that long ago. He had tried to take your mind off of it actually. 

It had worked. 

You hadn’t thought of it in a little over a month now. So perhaps he did know.

There was only one way to find out, you knew as you unlocked the door to your business and went inside, only to lock the door behind you. You made yourself a nice cup of tea, the way YOU liked to make it. Ghost wasn’t there to stop you from heating the water in the microwave for it. While you waited, you took a file out of your computer bag, short but with important information. You didn’t have access to your donor’s entire medical history, as that was technically illegal, but with no next of kin, access to the files was significantly easier. Apparently he had signed release forms for his info. However it was only to be given to his donors. He had tried to look out for them in a sense. 

Your memory of that night was still rather fuzzy, even with time passing and all the therapy you had gone through. It was believed your brain blocked it for your own mental protection. It made sense. Your mind was trying to protect itself. A part of you wondered if maybe you were ready to know this. You already felt like your heart wasn’t your own. In reading this, it would only affirm those feelings and ingrain them further into your mind. You knew that knowledge was like a lichen growing on a rock, and what was known couldn’t be unknown…

The microwave sounded, pulling you from your thoughts with a startle. You took a deep breath and left the file to finish making your tea. You needed to be calm for this. You needed to be able to take in this information, and do it as calmly as you could. When you finished making your tea, you finally sat down to look at the information. You took a deep breath as you opened the file. 

And there was the name: Simon Riley. 

Right off the bat you felt the color drain from your face. The file held his basic information, mostly from his last physical, as well as his last psychiatric analysis. He was apparently a very good liar, as he was deemed mostly sound, though the suicide attempt that caused his discharge was noted. He had everyone fooled that he was fine. But the mind had a tendency of catching up with everything else. Maybe that was what happened. He just couldn’t take it all anymore. You went back to reading, very much like what you were reading was an interesting novel. You found that he was in the military, the SAS specifically. That surprised you quite a bit. 

“Holy shit…he was special forces. No fucking way” You kept reading, though some information was still classified and therefore redacted and blacked out. 

Understandable. You were sure the government or perhaps his superiors had their reasons for keeping a good chunk of his information away from the public, even to his donors. But the revelation that he was in fact special forces had you reeling. If you didn’t feel unworthy of the organ beating in your chest before, you sure as hell didn’t feel worthy of it now. You then read the report about his death. 

No surprise, suicide. 

According to the report, Simon had attempted to hang himself in his apartment, specifically in the hallway closet- 

“Holy shit…that explains why he has an affinity for that closet…Fuck…” 

-But the attempt was botched, and all he had succeeded in doing was suffocating himself into a coma. He was found by a neighbor and brought to the royal infirmary in an attempt to save his life. When it was confirmed he was an organ donor, the hospital had to keep him alive as long as possible, as was UK policy, until someone needed his organs. He was there for a year before his first match came. 

You. 

You were the first to get an organ from him, and the most vital one at that. 

Slowly things were coming back. In short flashes, you remembered being rushed to the hospital, how your mom and sister were there with Ellie. There was a lot of rush, and a lot of panic. That was to be expected of course. Among the chaos, the yelling, the noise, and the panic, you swore you could hear someone telling you not to worry. 

“You’ll make it love…don’t listen to them…”

You thought it was a doctor or something, or maybe it was in your head. Maybe that was what death sounded like? But then you thought…what if he was haunting you from the get go? What if that was him you heard? You phone buzzed, pulling you from your thoughts. Looking down, you saw it was Soap. 

You sighed, quick to answer. “Hey…what's up?” 

“I just told the guys about yer situation. We’re all willin’ ta meet if ya wanna talk”. 

“Actually I really could use someone to talk to right now” You admitted, feeling a bit nervous about this whole thing. 

“Whats wrong? What happened?”

“Mister MacTavish-” 

“Please, call me Johnny, or Soap. Either one’s good with me”. 

“Sorry. Johnny…I um…I just got my donor’s file and you called it. Ghost is my donor”. 

“Damn, good call I guess. Listen, Y/N, don’t think for one second he’d be pissed about this. He knew this was what was gonna happen. We just didn’t expect all this, to ever meet one o’ the matches. If anything, he’d be-”. 

“Then why didn’t he tell me? I think he knows…I just haven’t been able to think about it” you didn’t mean to cut him off but this was so damn meta, “I already felt like this thing wasn’t mine, and never truly would be. This just reaffirms it”. 

“Maybe he doesn’t know. We’d have ta talk to ‘im ta find out. When you wanna meet? Travel’s a bit crazy right now with holidays and whatnot”. 

“Whenever you guys have time. I can give you the address to my cafe and bakery, as I think it’d be better to meet here first. If we wanna talk away from him, this is probably the best place to do it”. 

“He doesn’t follow you?” 

“He can’t, so he says. He doesn’t have the energy to. It takes a lot out of him to manifest, and even more so travel I’d imagine. Johnny…I just feel like I’m going crazy. I had this familiar feeling about him when he first appeared to my daughter and that feeling hasn’t diminished. And now that I know why, it feels too obvious. I have his heart, I’m living in his apartment” you paused, gathering your thoughts a bit, “What if I’m meant to do the same thing he did?”. 

“Don’t you dare say that! I won’t hear it!”. 

“I…I’m not saying that I’m going to, but I’m worried about it. I just don’t want history to repeat itself”. 

“It won’t. I won’t let that happen. Not me. Not Price. Not Gaz. None of us. Whatever ya need, we’re here for ya. I promise. I failed Simon the first time, I’ll be damned before I fail you”. 

His conviction was a surprise for you. You had just met him a few days prior and he was already talking to you like a loyal friend. Like you had always known each other. You understood for him this was about redemption, but you honestly appreciated it all the same. At least it seemed he wanted to help, and that was more than enough of a comfort for you. 

“We can meet sometime after new years. Or hell we can do it sooner if we wanna do the meeting like this”. 

“It’ll be far more personal if we met for real. Plus I wanna make sure you and the kiddo are okay. Ghost has a soft spot for kids, always did, but I know hauntin’ can be a serious deal for kids, even if the spirits don’t harm ‘em”. 

“Were you haunted?” You asked out of genuine curiosity. 

“I have a very complex relationship with the spiritual world. I wanna say I was haunted years ago, but if ye’re tryin’ ta ask if I believe in ghosts, yes. Simply put. Hang tight, we’ll see you after new years. Don’t tell him about this. And hey, Y/N?”. 

“Yeah?” 

“Don’t be angry at him. If you wanna be angry at anyone, it should be us. It should be me. I helped drive him to that point. Unintentional as it was, it still happened that way. And trust me, ye’re gonna have a lot more to be angry at me about when we meet up”. 

“What do you mean?” 

“I’ll tell ya once me and the guys get there. I’ll need an address so we’ll all know where ta go”. 

“I’ll text it to you”. 

“Thanks. Be safe, try to stay sane, and don’t lose it on him. If you wanna confront him, do it gently. He deserves that. He saved yer life ya know”. 

You let out a soft sigh. “I’ll try. Thank you, Johnny. Be safe and have a great new year”. 

“Same ta you”. 

Johnny hung up, leaving you with your emotions and thoughts, of which there were plenty of. The problem was how to process them. You’d have to talk to Ghost about this, there wasn’t any other way around. You didn’t want to do it angry, but you couldn’t help but feel the least bit betrayed. 

If you enjoyed please consider leaving a like, comment, tag, or reblog ^.^ I'll see you guys in the next one :D

-Ash

[spinchip]

NEVER THE DARK

Chapter 8

Read on Ao3

Prologue - Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4 - Chapter 5 - Chapter 6 - Chapter 7

warnings: body horror, grief

GRIEF IS NOT A FEELING// BUT A NEIGHBORHOOD.

Jay wakes up to the smell of something savory wafting to his nose. He sits up slowly, stretching his arms over his head until his joints popped loudly, swallowing against the dry taste in his mouth. He looks over the campfire. A small pot has been strung up over the flames with a series of branches tied together with black lichen, a thick brown soup bubbled away inside and gave off a frankly mouth watering smell.

Lloyd is sitting at attention, stirring the soup every few seconds.

“Morning. You made breakfast?” He asks, running his hands through his hair to de-tangle it.

“Absolutely not.” Lloyd informs him, “Birdy’s the brains of this operation. He went to forage for spoons.”

“Spoons?”

“That’s what he said.” Lloyd shrugs, “He and I caught some fish this morning, and he dug up some beans too. He’s been preparing it for hours.”

Birdy appears a few seconds later holding a bouquet of flowers.

“Are those for me?” Jay jokes, “Or should I wake Cole?” He teases, smiling as Birdy ducks his head in embarrassment.

“They’re for everyone.” He tells him, sitting down and breaking off a petal. It literally snaps free from the stem, “Spoon flower. They get stiff near the end of their season, perfect for make-shift utensils.”

“Huh. That’s pretty cool.” He comments,”You sure know a lot.”

“I have been here a while,” Birdy reminds him, popping off the rest of the petals, “And it was not all my findings. There’s a self-proclaimed polymath high up in Oasis’s hierarchy. Samiras right hand man. He has made a lot of significant discoveries… Hopefully you never get to meet him.”

The smell of food finally rouses Cole, who sits up already drooling, “That smells amazing.” He hums, inhaling deeply.

“I don’t have bowls, so we’ll just have to split the pot.” He says apologetically as Lloyd wakes Nya and Kai.

“Hey, I wasn’t expecting anything. I’m not complaining.” Cole says easily, scooping up the first bite of soup and tossing it down the hatch. “Oh, wow! This tastes like pot roast.”

“Fish here is more like a red meat.” Birdy nods, pleased as the others dig in.

“So what’s the plan to avoid Oasis?” Lloyd asks once everyone ate their fill and camp was sufficiently broken down.

Birdy brushes any leftover sand off his pants, “There is no plan. There is only one exit that will not detour our journey by weeks, and it leads directly into Oasis’s territory. We are relying on pure luck that a patrol doesn’t stumble on us coming out of the caves. If we’re caught, they will take us directly to Samira.”

“Luck.” Jay echoes, “I don’t know if you know this, but it was our lousy luck that got us stranded here in the first place. I think we’ll be making an appearance in Oasis’s jail today.”

With a shake of his head, Birdy starts to lead them through the tunnels. The river at the bottom swells and shrinks randomly, to the point where there are times they’re wading through it. Jay drew the short straw of the bunch, which really was just him realizing too late the team was splitting into pairs. Kai and Nya were walking side by side behind Cole and Lloyd, leaving the only empty spot right next to Birdy. His spot. It’s not like he doesn’t like the guy- he’s been nothing but helpful this whole time- but the mask is… well, it’s creepy. And Birdy is awkward. All attempts at conversation outside the oddities of the realm had really fallen flat, and if there’s one thing Jay liked to do it was talk.

He looks around the caves, swiveling his head every which way, trying to find something to catch and keep his attention. He so badly wants something to fidget with. He finds himself rubbing his hands together and caving around the urge to pick at the skin around his nails. His mood darkens as they walk. He can’t help but think that this shouldn’t have happened. The museum fight was just such a mess. She ran right past them for FSM’s sake…

“Are you alright?” Birdy asks near silently, able to speak lowly enough that the others don’t catch on.

Jay feels himself bristle, “Oh, Yeah,” He snorts, “Like i’d spill my heart to you. You won’t even show us your face.” He lashes out. Birdy flinches barely, just enough that you wouldn’t have noticed if you weren't a specially trained ninja with eyes like a hawk.

Birdy moves on quietly and doesn’t say anything else unless it’s a warning about treacherous ground. Despite himself, Jay starts to feel bad. He wasn’t technically in the wrong. Birdy didn’t really have the right to ask about that stuff. He’s a total stranger! Just because he’s leading them through the Realm doesn’t mean Jay has to spill his heart to him! But he can hear his moms voice in the back of his head- You could at least be polite, Jay! We have manners in this house! There’s no need to get snippy.

“We… lost someone a few years ago,” He starts quietly. Birdy turns his head ever so slightly, enough to signal to Jay he’s listening, “He was home. He kept us all together. We’ve just been going through the motions without him, pretending to be this big happy family and no one acknowledges that we’ve been barely hanging on since he died.”

Birdy crosses over a wide branching path from the river, reaching back to grab Jay's hand for stability over the wet stepping stones, “You are not happy here? With your partners?”

“I…” He sighs, “It’s different now. I love Cole and Kai with everything I have, but it’s not right without Zane. We aren’t balanced. Kai moved out of our bedroom. When we argue Cole never has my back anymore.” Jay struggles to find the right words.

Birdy stays quiet so Jay can finish, “I just don’t think we’ll ever have the strength to fight without him. Not for our relationship, and certainly not as Ninjagos greatest heroes. Even this mess here and now is proof. We only ended up in this place because we still haven’t compensated for his loss.” He looks down at his red nails beds, bitten to bleeding, “And then what? Do we die too? What’s the point of that?” he says bitterly.

Long moments pass as Birdy waits. Jay doesn’t go on. He actually thinks Birdy isn’t going to say anything in response- which, well, fair. It was kind of a lot. Pretty heavy stuff. He hadn’t meant to spill like that, but once the ball was rolling he couldn’t stop it and Birdy was just so surprisingly easy to talk to. He opens his mouth to apologize when Birdy finally breaks the silence.

“It is hard,” He begins slowly, “To feel so alone.”

Its Jays turn to flinch. Birdy sliced right down to his core, looking at the things he said and picking out the root of the problem instantly.

“I understand.” He says carefully, “When I was sent here, I lost everything. My family. My home.” He runs his thumb over the handle of his staff, feeling the grooves in the metal, “I spent so much time just surviving, putting one foot in front of the other. I had no one in this world, and I never will. I was truly alone- but there is understanding in loneliness when there is no one around. It is a unique type of pain to feel lonely surrounded by the people you love. Hiding behind grief, Putting up a barrier and pushing them away, it feels better because at least then the loneliness feels justified.”

Jay doesn’t look at him.

“When you saw the beast in the forest, you were ready for a battle.” Birdy says meaningfully, “It did not look like you wanted to run away.”

“I was just surviving.” Jay parrots simply, for once at a loss of words.

“No,” Birdy says immediately. He reaches out and grabs Jays hand, stopping him from picking as his nails, “You were fighting for your family, and you must let them in so they can fight for you too. Do not throw this away, Jay- You do not want that.”

“You don’t know anything about me.” Jay reminds him sharply, jerking his hand back defensively.

Birdy pulls away and looks straight ahead, ”I know.” He moves forward several long strides and Jay has to half-jog to catch up.

"What about you?" Jay pivots, "You lost everything. You're basically in hell. Why keep going? Why go through the trouble of helping a bunch of strangers?"

There's another long pause, this time Jay's sure Birdy's not going to respond when he breaks the silence, "This isn't hell." Is all he says, and nothing more.

He jogs forward suddenly, breaking away from Jay fully. In front of them, a wall of vines has grown thick and long, tendrils dragging along the stone floor. Birdy pulls them aside like a curtain to reveal a thin shaft of natural light, and a tall cavern climbing sharply into the sky. A few feet above Birdys head the purple-gray stone transitions to dirt and earth where the walls are covered in deep black holes. Jutting out of the patches of soil between burrows are long, fat tubers. The ends are sliced down flat while still allowing a substantial chunk to poke into the corridor above them. At the very top Jay can see the now-familiar rolling clouds.

“This is our stop.” Birdy announces, craning his head up to the sky.

The others filter in through the vines, the hole wide enough for them all to fit comfortably. “So where’s the elevator?” Jay asks.

Birdy dips his head in a way that implies a courtesy smile before railroading on, “We climb.”

“Oh, this’ll be a piece of cake!” Cole grins, stepping up to the wall and prepping the best pathway up in his mind.

Reaching out to stop Cole's hand from touching the wall, Birdy chokes up on his staff and informs them, “You must not put your hands or feet into the holes.” He says seriously before sticking the tip of his staff into the closest one. Immediately a spray of fire lights up the cave, a slender headed animal darting halfway out before retreating back inside, huge slicing claws leaving gouges on the side of its burrow. “Magma Moles. They do not attack unless threatened, and encroaching on their home is the easiest way to do so.”

Cole gulps, “Noted!” He laughs awkwardly, restarting with a different pathway in mind. After a moment, he nods to himself and leaps up into action, scaling up the wall like he was born for it.

The others go after him. Birdy starts second, using the vegetables as hand and foot holds to haul himself up on the other side of the pit. It’s a slow, arduous process. Jay takes a deep breath and starts up, pacing himself because the climb is a long one. He glances around at the others, all of them in different stages of the climb. They’re all doing as expected despite the slickness of their handholds. Steady progress. Cole leads Kai and Nya up slowly and carefully while Jay skitters up after Birdy.

In the mouth of the burrow right next to him the darkness shifts. There’s half a second of fear before Jay realizes he’s not under attack, “Aw, hi little fella!” He greets, face to face with one of the mole-like rodents. It’s far tinier with any adult with fluffier spotted fur- a puppy!

It’s not one of his smarter moments. He can admit that. He reaches out and pets it.

The little thing allows it for a moment before it gets a good whiff of Jay's human-stink and connects the dots that the loving stroke is not from a beloved family member. At this realization, it lets out a long high pitched squeak, one that makes Jays ears ring- and below them, the cave erupts into fire.

“Climb!” Birdy orders frantically, “They are pack animals, that was a cub's distress call!”

AKA, they just threatened a baby, and now the village was ready to roast them alive. Jay's heart rate jacks up as he begins to scramble up the wall, dodging streams of fire by a hair's width. Despite the panic, he realizes there’s a pattern- about 3 seconds of fire max with a 5 second minimum cool down time. He watches each hole and, in the brief moments after the fire stream stutters out he uses the holes as launch points to haul himself up quicker. Cole grabs him by the hand the moment he’s close enough and yanks him out of the hole hard enough to make his shoulders ache, the others clawing their way up heart beats after.

They scramble away as the moles all synchronize their next blast and a pillar of fire shoots up from the pit, scorching the trees on the edge of the clearing they found themselves in.

Kai groans as the fire putters out and flops on his back, exhausted, “Way to go Jay!”

“No one warned me the babies would be so cute!” He defends where he’s sprawled out in the dirt, trying to breathe.

Birdy on his feet, leaning on his staff. “You forgot the first rule already.” He laments.

Nya and Lloyd huff out a laugh, leaning against each other. The cave entrance is only just now returning to dim darkness, the streams of defensive fire finally dimming as the animals chitter and chirp to each other. The light, however, was a beacon to anyone who might be passing by. It would have been less obvious to shoot off a flare gun and announce I’m over here, come get me! Through a megaphone.

They hear them coming moments before they see them, the thick forest hiding them from sight for a few precious moments. Birdy straightens and adjusts his grip on his staff, but when he glances back, his grip loosens. Jay looks at them- exhausted from the mad scramble, singed or burnt, tired because well, let's face it, sleeping on rocks wasn’t exactly comfortable… they weren’t the strike team they usually were, and the band of warriors approaching them sounded fresh and ready for a fight.

There is a familiar swishing sound that Jay registers half a second too late to warn anyone about. Birdy hisses in pain, dropping his staff. The throwing knife thankfully bounced off his fingers instead of severing any, but Birdy still has to shake out the sting as the patrol group finally emerges from the woods to surround them.

The apparent leader of the little group swaggers forward, “Well well well, what do we have here? Little Birdy's come back to play?” He’s a wolf armed with a huge morning star in one hand, but what sticks out most to Jay is that he sneers at them with teeth that have grown together into chunky blocks of bone. His mouth doesn't close right because of it, the smirk lopsided.

“Wox.” Birdy greets, squaring his shoulders and standing tall, “You’re looking well.”

Wox throws his head back and laughs, the roof of his mouth studded with more rows of flat bone teeth, “Flattery won’t win you any mercy, mate.” He crosses his arms, and it’s only now that Jay realizes that what he initially thought was a flail was just the man’s hand, the bones of his fingers fused and studded with random claws and bits of shattered bone.

This is the first set of people since Maurice that they’ve gotten to see the effects of entropy in action. Wox is not the worst off of the group. Jay has to will himself not to flinch as he continues to notice new and unique ways the people around them have been mutated horrifically. The girls to his left- he can’t look at her hands. He thinks he might be sick. Exposed bone, extra limbs, Cronenberg body horror that will haunt his dreams he’s certain. He’s sweating.

The others in the patrol spread out, and the Ninja get to their feet immediately. They huddle together as the crew herds them into the center of the clearing like sheep. Jay's hand rests on the handle of his weapon, but Birdy glances back and shakes his head minutely.

“We’re just passing through.” Lloyd explains, stepping up beside Birdy.

“Passing through?” The girl at Wox’s side snorts, her jaw hanging on by only a few thin pieces of elastic looped around her head, “You can’t just pass through Oasis, greenie. You gotta talk to the boss, get permission, you see?”

Wox steps forward, “Which Birdy knows, don’t he?” He says pointedly, glaring at the man. “But I suppose that’s where you were heading, weren’t ya- to see Samira. You wasn’t gonna just sneak on by, right?”

Birdy stays quiet, thinking. “…That is correct.” He says tensely.

“Well good. We’ll lead you there, make sure you arrive safely.” Wox uncrosses his arms, the mass of bone that was one his hand dragging across the dirt.

Birdy glances back at them, holding the look like he wants desperately to tell them something but can’t, before turning back, “Lead the way.” He grabs his staff off the ground as they’re wrangled through the woods.

Jay’s close enough that when Lloyd turns his head to Birdy and asks, “What’s the plan?” He can plainly hear when Birdy says nothing at all.

They pass through the trees in tense silence.

Jay squares his shoulders and prepares for the worst. That's how it always goes, after all.

[rhosmeinir]

Fictober 2023 #15

Prompt #15 - "Fine, explain it to me."

Fanfiction: Good Omens

Rating: T

Warnings: Suicidal ideation, suicide attempt, self harm

Pairing: Ineffable Husbands/Aziracrow

Other Notes: In which Crowley has had enough. 1202 words. Written with gratitude to this tweet for inspiration!

A storm was gathering over Dartmoor. Anyone with any sense was indoors, and the moor-dwellers were generally among that type; they knew too well the dangers of being caught out in bad weather, when even the most wizened among them could become lost and wrong-footed in haze or fog and end up in a bog featherbed, never to wake again. Even the ponies had sought shelter, sensing something unnatural about this particular storm.

Only Crowley stalked the blasted heath, the wind that whipped the heather raking its vicious fingers through his hair. His hands were shoved deep into his pockets, shoulders hunched against the cold, clothing tattered and torn by both weather and disregard. He’d retreated to the moor some time ago from London —he no longer knew how long, what was the point of time, anyway?— when the city and its people and its untidy Whickber street bookshop had become unbearable. Crowley had thought it might be a good place to hide, to think, to gather himself, to figure out how to go on. He had been correct about all but the last. 

Dartmoor’s isolation had given Crowley plenty of space and quiet to examine his thoughts, his feelings, his life. The moor was beautiful, he thought even now, as the wind lashed the first stinging drops against his face: it kept not secrets, told no lies, and offered its bounty without pretention. Heather, gorse, scrub trees, and even the ancient oaks of Wistman’s Wood simply were: they required no acknowledgement, and did not care if outsiders could not see their beauty. Lichen and moor grass endured in defiance of and in partnership with the weather, and the adders that curled up in the refuge of tors knew only peace and safe haven.

It was beautiful, but to him, Crowley had finally concluded, there was no point. No point to his thoughts, his feelings, his life. Could you even call it a life, at this point? There was nothing left to do, no orders to carry out. No wars left to fight: he was an exile from everywhere he might’ve ever considered fighting for. There was no one left to care about, or to care about him, if anyone ever had. Nothing left to create, nothing to destroy, but the one thing over which he had control.

Crowley halted next to the destination of his intent. Sunk into the ground was a ring of rough-cut stones, surrounding what looked at first like a pool of water. But it was more than that: an ancient well, its origins vanished in prehistory. More recently, it had been adopted by one of the moor’s early churches, and to this day, the local priest stopped by regularly to bless it. A deep, endless, pit of Holy Water. As Crowley stared down at the water, its surface rippling in the drizzle, he thought how fitting it was that it appeared so innocuous. A suitably banal end.

He looked up at the sky, and sighed. With a faint rustle, Crowley freed his wings, allowing their black-feathered mass to spread out behind him. It was always a relief, and he figured he might as well enjoy a last few unrestricted breaths. Long fingers reached up to curl around the thin silver scarf, and pulled it from his throat. Crowley dropped it to the ground beside the well. He didn’t expect that anyone would ever come looking for him, much less track him here, but if they did it would at least answer their questions. The demon folded his wings tightly against his back, and without hesitation, stepped into the well.

Crowley plunged into the water, exhaling forcibly as it closed over his head. To his astonishment, he was not instantly obliterated. Had time stopped? Was this a delayed reaction, due to making the choice himself? In the few split seconds it took for these questions to race through his brain, he realized both that he was not dying, and why. He may have been a demon who had jumped into a pit of Holy Water, but he had been forgiven.

The despair that had brought Crowley to this place turned to rage, and he kicked upwards with all his might. One tremendous gasp later, he clawed his way out of the well, dirt and moss forcing themselves beneath his nails as he grappled with the earth to regain his feet. In all his contemplation on the moor, he had avoided asking questions, throwing them out into the Universe, making his turmoil known. But as he lunged to his feet the demon could hold himself back no longer, and threw back his head and arms with a deranged laugh.

“Fine!” Crowley howled to the Heavens, “Fine, explain it to me, Angel! How am I supposed to live?”

But before he could await an answer, Crowley began to realize that the Holy Water was having another effect, if possible even more unexpected than the first. His wings, black and ragged since the Fall, were transforming. From the roots at his back they flushed first grey, then white along the skin beneath them, then up each quill, shaft, and barb, until each vane began to blush white. Crowley let out a wordless, strangled scream, whipping his wings about as though he might shake the color from them. 

A nearby tor beckoned, and Crowley dashed to it. He beat his wings against its stones, mindless of the sickening cracks and pain that accompanied them, until by dint of shattered bones he could draw every bit of his wings to the front of his body. His fingers ripped through the snowy plumage, viciously plucking the feathers until his fingers were raw and bleeding. Until his fingers’ blood mixed with that of his wings, until the ground was thick with soiled plumes, until not a single feather was left on the ruined limbs that had once granted him flight. Until he was sobbing in rage and despair and pain the manic fear of being alive, trembling on the ground in the rain that had how become a soaking deluge.

Somewhere in Heaven, Aziraphale was weeping. When the Supreme Archangel wept, it was a Holy Rain, and it came down on Crowley like the Flood. It soaked him to the skin, and began to mend his hurts. The bones beneath the battered flesh of his wings slowly knitted together, causing his back to arch with both pain and the realization of what was happening.

“No!” Crowley screeched, one hand clawing at the sky as his body contorted with the healing. Then feathers began to sprout, carpeting his renewed wings with plumage thick and lush, white and shining, and in the rain they reflected a many-hued, nebulaic sheen. “AZIRAPHALE!” Crowley screamed. The weight of the wings against his weakened body nearly toppled him over backwards, and with a violent contortion, Crowley flung himself forward. Overbalancing, he landed on his forearms, skidding on the saturated ground.

“Aziraphale,” Crowley repeated to the Earth, in a cracked voice his time, shoulders shaking as the new wings sheltered him from the angel’s tears. The demon’s tears were Holy now too, but did not burn as they rolled down his face.

[sparksinafrica]

I never checked before I stepped into the ring cast by the firelight, but as I did I noticed a figure dart off into a corner of shadow.

I knew from the glimpse of the pale round buttocks and large hips in moonlight, she was naked. And dirty. Barefoot and had probably been open to the elements for a few days. Her hair was tangled and there was dirt halfway up to her knees.

She had been watching me the whole time,licking her lips occasionally like some kind of cat. Her nose tilted up to the air I realized she was sniffing the blood that ran down my shoulders from the thorn scratches earlier. Standing .. I now saw again there was a long tail flicking behind her. My mind couldn’t comprehend what was going on. “Obviously it’s a plug, “ she rolled her eyes at me. That stung.

The campfire setting and smoke did not help my watering eyes. As I stared at her erect little nipples I could hear her in my head. Rummaging through my brain like she was looking for a missing sock. I tried to fight back and she finally let go. Smirking to herself she stuck out her pink raspy tongue and curled it around her finger. An electrical surge shot through me as I imagined the feel of that tongue on my cock head. “I control your mind now” she said. I ignored the ridiculous statement.

Through the dancing flames I saw her sitting on a log. Her smug grin was obvious.

She knew how her body had got my juices flowing and had a proposal.

“I’m always open to negotiations” I mused to myself.

Glancing back across the hissing flames. I saw her roll over on her little log. I caught the glint of a single wet dribble as she flicked her tail up at me. How dare she assume to command me. We will review that momentarily. I will break her.

I rushed her, knocking her off balance and startling her. She twisted and landed with both hands flat in the dirt. She looked back over her shoulder with a mix of disbelief and lethal threat.

I stared into her eyes and watched her mouth change shape as slapped my hand between her leg and squeezed her mound like I was feeling the freshness of a bread roll. She was livid. I pressed a finger down , wriggling and probing to try find the entrance of her engorged swollen hole. Her juices were almost too hot to touch and it startled me. Flaying and frantic she tried to spin back around but I pressed my body on top of her back and grabbed her neck with both hands. Her skin was cool underneath mine and I could feel her muscles were tensed. She lay motionless as my thighs nonchalantly ushered hers apart, pressing forward to pin her knees under the log. One last attempt was made as she lashed out backwards .. I could feel the sting of a long nail scratch across my cheek.

I forced the back of her neck down hard, bending her over her log. She squealed and groaned as her nipples rubbed against the course bark underneath her. Grinding and squashing them down till the pulled up with flakes of lichen embedded. Walking my hands down to her hips carefully,fingers digging into her flesh hard and bruising ,I grabbed the base of her tail and lifted it .. pulling and coaxing her backside up into the air. The pucker stretched upwards, straining white and thinning , but would not release. Her eyes began to water and she gasped loudly.

She flung herself backwards and sunk her nails into my shoulders .. I yelped at the pain but dared not move to make it worse. Her grip was astonishing. And we sat there for a moment .. both latched on and unwilling to release. The breeze told me that I had at least 3 deep scratches weeping down my back. She hadn’t felt my iron hard shaft an inch from her love holes yet and giggled, turning to me as best she could she whispered “ you are stuck now .. and I’m going to bite the fuck out of you as soon as im free “.

I slid my hand around her throat.. yanking her head back and twisting her ear to my mouth harshly as I growled “ you are stuck now … and I’m going to fuck the bite out of you well before you’re free.”

[arts-butthound]

Alright, since @omniblades-and-stars was brave enough to post a piece of her original fiction the other day, during her WIPs game-I figure I can post an original WIP of my own that I'm fairly happy with. I am scared, but no guts no glory no progress:

A carcass heavy on his back, his spear cumbersome at his side, the hunting pack on his hip bulging with supplies. The creature’s blood slowly trickled down his neck and into his leathers, trails of red that painted him with the fingers of life.

The world was empty around Nuatek, with nothing but the quiet of his footfalls and the carnivorous worms above. Gravel and dirt under his boots, lichen clung to the ground in patches, water dripped onto the rocks close by. It had been a long hunt and the khatak had put up a respectable fight-the raked scratches in his skin still seeped with blood. Its saber-like canines grazed across his shoulders. The meat was sweet and filling, the teeth were of value to any ivory craftsman, the bones would make good broth, and its jeweled reptilian skin would fetch a high price from any fool with half a brain. The animal would be able to feed them for weeks at the very least. Best to cure most of it for the time of hibernating. But tomorrow, he and his sister would feast. But Nuatek had gone further from home than he would have liked, miles further than fretful screams could reach him, miles further than he could spot any fire light. If this had not been such a valuable prize, he would not have risked it.

The expanse flowed from narrow to vast. The worms lit every crag now, in a cavern wide enough to be unable to see the opposing wall, but they would not be above forever. As the expanse turned back into narrow tunnels, the worms would fade. Darkness would swallow him and Nuatek would have to crawl.

He could count hours before he reached home.  The blood was beginning to make him sticky and uncomfortable. Whether it was his own, he could not tell anymore-the blood of beast and man mingling- it was beginning to congeal. The water then. It sounded close enough and by the smell, it was a large enough body to at least rinse off with. Taking care to leave no drag marks, Nuatek changed his course towards the dripping sound.

The pool nested along a wall in the great cavern, a good ten feet long and hardly up to his thighs if he stood in the middle of it, if his gauge of depth was anything to go by. He shrugged the heavy body from his shoulders. Pulled his leathers and shirt off. With the relief of the weight, his shoulders groaned as he rolled and squeezed them. First he splashed water onto his face and over his head, pulled it over his arms and rinsed the sweat out of his hair. Cool. Soothing. The water stung his scratches as he rubbed more into them. Something nagged at him though. A sound he knew but which had rarely served him well. Breathing, frail and almost choked-but it set his nerves off nonetheless. What could not easily be seen was to be feared.

Nuatek’s fingers slowly gripped the shaft of his spear and he held it firm in the coarse skin of his palm. The breathing was close by and his eyes cut through the dim light like scythes. The shape appeared as some boulder that had come dislodged from above. But it moved, slowly. Shallow. He drew close, wading through the water with spear tip aimed, and was met with a strange perfume wafting from the body. His eyes narrowed and Nuatek became ramrod still. Not only a woman, but one so foreign looking that she could only be from one place. Her skin was the same color as the roots in the ceiling and hair darker than he’d ever thought possible. He’d heard the old stories, but never thought he’d see them come to more than that.

[doorrobloxstuff]

Can. can you. can you.. seek x figure headcannons if you. if you may…..

Yes tumblr sexyman Seek helps me get those followers and also I have brain worms about this pair.

Seek x Figure Headcanons.

POWER 👏 COUPLE 👏

I have multiple backstories for em because there’s various flavors of seek and figure but they all love eachother so dearly.

Seek literally calls it “Dearest figure” “Figure beloved”

Figure calls Seek either “Goopy” or “squishy”

“Seeky..” ,,,

One of Figure’s favorite things about Seek is how quiet it’s body is. No screeching or yelling.. just dripping and oozing..

Sometimes it uses Seek as a pillow..allowing its head and ear-holes to sink in so it can deprive itself of all the sounds..

That and its voice,,,,,cascading and resonating like ripples on water in it’s head.

One of Seek’s favorite things about Fig is It’s heartbeat. Seek loves to crawl up its chest and listen to it. The welcoming warmth of it’s ribs..

Figure has long arms and yes they are used for holding Seek in them and IN TURN Seek will use all them hands to give Figure a thousand pets from all angles.

Seek can literally give Figure a thousand kisses. Figure’s livin the dream.

Also Seek loves to coo over the bits of lichen that grows on Figure. Occasionally they grow small white flowers every once in awhile and it steals Seek’s heart away.

“Dearest, your blooming again.” “I am? :0”

Self care is figure sprinkling bits of bone dust on them so the flowers stay healthy.

OH BTW SEEK IS THE ONE WHO TAUGHT FIGURE HOW TO BREAK THE CHAINS FROM THE CRUCIFIX.

 Seek will act as Figure’s eyes sometimes. Especially when they hunt together. Gods forbid when they do because they are unstoppable side by side.

Seek is actually quite sensitive to touch, so no Figure does not chew/bite on Seek as a stim but rather it gives Figure a bone to chew while Seek talks about an interesting thing it found on an intruder.

Figure often takes advantage of the touch thing and occasionally trills into Seek to make nice vibrating little ripples that feel like a back rub.

Occasionally (Infact seek does this Y/N fics too..) parts of Seek will cling to figure’s arms and legs so it can be with it at all times.

Fun fact, Seek used to do the “climb into Figure’s mouth thing” until one day Fig’s gag reflex was triggered and it got vomited out.

…True love conquers all..?

Now Seek prefers to wrap itself around it’s arms, chest and torso/legs or cling itself between Fig’s ribs like cobweb.

Still, Figure enjoys Seek being on it’s body and Seek enjoys being with Fig. If they could they’d be sharing one body for eternity but unfortunately they need to go and e a t.

Figure loves to listen while Seek just chats about all sorts of things. Occasionally being infodumped on by Figure when it ends ups bringing up the exact thing Figure is currently hyperfixated on.

Seek loves to wear tuxedos/jackets. Make itself look fancy even though it’s partner can’t see. Figure still compliments it.

The two drink wine from the basement and read books together for dates or chill out in the courtyard.

I like to imagine that Figure occasionally “Sees” seek by touching its humanoid body an idea of what they are lookin at. Now imagine it touches its face one day and Seek puts a hand on figures hand or face it’s just-aaaa!

I like to think they have children!!! However Seek keeps them hidden in different closets/attics until they can hunt on their own.

Screech is their child and possibly snare + the new purpleish entity that El-goblino mentioned.

Screech got the C H O M P and those are just baby teeth, the real sharp teeth have yet to grow in. That or it just has flat teeth.

Snare had the sharp teeth at birth..it’s also got one of Seek’s eyes and Figure’s mossy bits. You don’t really see the eye that often..

The mystery entity got the pinkish parts from figure + The eyes from Seek.

Both of them adore the litter of trash rats they have created.

:) enjoy

[cannibalhellhound]

Yes there's more Selkie stuff~ 🦭

Y'know how babies get curious about body parts when they first see them, and adults just let them play around? Well, this is basically big seal teeth and selkie pups being curious.

And a happy slidad because I'd die for that man

Also curious Mav hand (excuse him, his teeth aren't that big and Ice's are terrifying) and a very Done™ Ice (his hair has been tempered with don't look at it)

[yaboyyjay]

WATERFALL

Bryce (username: Mario) was listening to music when he received an invitation from his friend, Alexia (username: Cherry), to meet in full dive virtual reality.

Mario didn’t have anything else to do that evening, so he activated his wearable head-mounted display. Then, he paired the wireless, non-invasive input controller (or brain-computer interface) to the display, put it on his head, pulled it down over his eyes, and accepted the invitation.

He was standing in a full-scale model of M.C. Escher’s Waterfall, which had been rendered in a video game engine known for its stunning graphics that pushed the boundaries of VR without any performance issues.

He switched to continuous movement and—using the BCI controller—proceeded up a flight of stairs to examine the impossible machine from below. With an uncapped framerate, silky smooth sparkling water poured over the wood-textured wheel of the watermill. From a traditional perspective, water appeared to zigzag up two tribars and tumble down again—violating the laws of physics.

Bored but unwilling to leave, a few regular users in customized avatars were hanging out on the narrow, shallow, 20th century brick-mapped water channels. Others were leaping from truncated paths and searching for glitches.

Everything else was normal: a non-playable character stood on the flat roof of her home, calmly hanging laundry out to dry, while another NPC—the miller—gazed into the sky. Both seemed oblivious to the impossible waterfall, though they were programmed to comment extensively on the piece.

“Mario!” Cherry greeted from a balcony. Her avatar waved. Mario returned the wave, distracted by what appeared to be a cluster of moss and lichen, enlarged many orders of magnitude and swaying in the breeze.

He craned his neck, eye-trackers tracking his pupils to view two towering supports for the waterfall’s aqueduct. They were topped by two compound polyhedra: three intersecting cubes for one tower and three octahedrons for the other.

Seeing the shapes for the first time triggered an NPC: “Escher loved mathematics and art!” said the woman airing out laundry in an infinite loop.

“Newbie alert!” A regular yelled before leaping from a ledge.

Mario imagined scaling a pillar of the first and highest tower to view the solids. It would be tricky and he wanted to record the geometric wonders.

One problem: Waterfall’s developer had disabled recording. So Mario had to use a different recorder—one that wasn’t on the blocklist.

Mario left Waterfall and joined a sea of avatars in Google’s sprawling search engine. He was using Cherry’s theme, who’d customized everything to look like something out of Tron: a classic film from the Old World with an aesthetic of space, with structures representing social networks scattered across the virtual landscape.

Billions were in the flow of browsing. Mario pulled up a list of stores, then followed directions in his heads-up display to Daydream View, a store selling recorders that bypassed most blocks.

He was auto-greeted by the mascot of Daydream View. With a powerful search engine, it answered most questions before anyone could finish asking them. Except for a few visitors browsing VR video game recorders and other expensive items, the store was all but empty.

After several minutes of browsing, Mario downloaded a VeeVue Recorder and Editor for 20 credits. Then he exited into organized chaos to make his way back to Waterfall; into a world of ads, bots, and users with custom avatars. He didn’t feel like walking so he switched to top-down view, which presented every site from above, then selected Waterfall before diving back into his avatar.

He spawned in with an unrecognizable device that may or may not have been a recorder. Cherry was gone but the site retained a steady stream of visitors coming and going insofar as the mental cost was low.

Mario examined the machine. The aqueduct, which started at the waterwheel, flowed endlessly behind it.

From where he was standing the illusion was broken: directly overhead were ledges of the two tribars. Water flow stopped at each ledge. The bottommost aqueduct formed an L, the middle a Z-like shape, while the uppermost aqueduct was a ledge from which water tumbled down unto the wheel. He shifted his gaze to a curl-up lounging under an arch of a small bridge, which connected the flat roof of a house to the watermill.

A fictional animal invented by Escher, it was programmed to watch Mario with two stalked, beady eyes, then—true to its name—curl up and roll around the villa and climbing expanse of terraced farmland.

“The curl-up is elongated and armored with several keratinized joints,” described the miller. “It has six legs, each with what appears to be a human foot. It has a disc-shaped head with a parrot-like beak and eyes on stalks on either side. It can either crawl over a variety of terrain with its six legs or press its beak to the ground and roll into a wheel shape.”

Mario wondered who was watching. Waterfall’s developer logged every event “to help improve the experience”, which involved tracking users to determine their interests. He suspected Waterfall’s developer would sell his information to businesses, who’d spam his inbox with advertisments.

Nevertheless, he wanted to record everything. It’ll be worth something to someone, he thought. But that wasn’t the only reason he wanted the video. There was also the satisfaction of bypassing obstacles to make it. ThreeVee, the internet’s largest VR video-sharing site, needed a video of Escher’s Waterfall, and Mario wanted to deliver.

_______

Mario spawned at the bottom of a stairwell; an entry to the quaint villa. At the top of the steps was an open space. Behind him, to his right was the home with a large balcony, where the woman was hanging clothes. To his left were some steps descending unto a rooftop, where the miller stood with his back against a railing.

He changed into his favorite parkour outfit and took a deep breath from muscle memory. He wasn’t going to actually run. Instead, he would activate the neurons that triggered locomotion by thinking about running, while the BCI controller translated neuronal signals to movement in VR.

Without hesitation he opened VeeVue and began recording.

________

Mario is gazing up at the waterfall in first person.

From his perspective, the environment blurs as he inhales, sprints, and jump-kicks off a brown painted wall. Then he twists in mid-air to grab the ledge of a small arched walkway serving as a bridge to the mill.

Both of his arms are extending into the field of view, gloved hands gripping the bridge. He hangs for a beat before climbing with his heart rate, then stands to record the top of the walkway.

A trio of regulars are sitting on the only steps to the bottom water channel. One of them glares at Mario and flashes an obscene emote.

“Nice recorder, newbie. How much did you pay for it?”

But Mario jumps over them, splash landing in the channel.

"Hey—!

He breaks into a sprint, aqua blue water sloshing around red running shoes. The brain-reading technology is controlling every step as he stops at the L channel’s drop and whirls 180 degrees, spinning the colorful environment.

Jumping vertically, he grabs the ledge of the second level water channel and pulls himself up.

Then he's free-running the waterway. As he turns a hard corner, the highest tower looms.

Keep running.

He cat-leaps to grab the uppermost ledge with one hand only to slip and splashdown flat, submerging briefly. Two regulars peer over the top ledge and laugh as he springs up gasping for air, overwhelmed by the fear of drowning.

He looks above them: part of the simulated sun is occluded by Escher’s compound of intersecting cubes.

“Mario?”

He’s glancing over the side of the channel to get a bird’s eye view of Cherry’s avatar.

“Up here!” Their eyes meet as he leans slightly over the ledge to flash a victory sign.

“Are you using a recorder?” she tut-tuts. “Those are—”

“No,” Mario lies. He’s backing up to the first corner of the second level water channel.

“Haha,” sneers one of the regulars. “10 credits says he’ll fall again.”

But Mario is running, the sound of his footsteps breaking the surface tension of the water. He gathers speed and leaps, this time catching the ledge with both hands. Inhale.

Exhale.

He pulls himself into a sitting position and the regulars vanish, exiting in unison.

“Pay up!” Mario announces.

But they're gone and he's laughing over the trickle of the waterfall, the birds perched at the height of the tower, and the gentle breeze taken from stock sound clips starting at two credits each.

_______

The top level was supported by four columns that were covered in graffiti tags. Mario would’ve had to shimmy up a column to reach the highest point of the fall.

But balancing on the top level, against the flow, had taken more brain power than he’d expected. He stumbled while reaching for a column, the horizon tilting at a dizzying angle until he fell down the fall, the recorder capturing it all.

“Oof!”

He laid there for a moment, then pulled himself up from where the wheel-powered aqueduct began.

“Ouch...” Cherry said as he exited the channel and vaulted over the railing some three meters to the ground, where several visitors had gathered.

“Did you tag a column?”

“How much fall damage did that take?”

“Waterfall is a lithograph by the Dutch artist M. C. Escher,” the miller said abruptly. “First printed in October 1961. It shows a perpetual motion machine where water from the base of—”

“Skip intro!” Three or four visitors shouted at once.

Mario stopped recording. Paranoid, he glanced around for a moderator that would boot him if they detected a Daydream recorder which, while recording, had changed his avatar’s eyes from a custom color to bright crimson red.

The small crowd of visitors and regulars dwindled with their curiosity. Cherry’s avatar was sitting lotus style in front of Escher’s moss and lichen garden. She could’ve been doing anything from talking to friends to paying off owed credit. Either way, she was absent, and would likely remain so until kicked off the site for going idle.

Mario walked close enough to her avatar for a message to pop up: “Switch to this outfit?” He agreed and was instantly clothed in the same getup configured for male avatars.

He wore a casual, lightweight, sleeveless, slim fit zip-up hoodie over a vantablack printed teeshirt bearing a single, stylized word in hex color red: “CyberPunk”.

Ironically advertising the subculture, the teeshirt hung over a pair of techwear: on-brand harem pants hiked up to his knees and covered with cyberpunk flair.

Dangling before the teeshirt were three necklaces: RGB colored microcircuit boards attached to a thin chain. They’d clink together as he walked, his hands covered in fingerless leather gloves.

“Decent outfit.” Mario said to Cherry’s blank avatar. She’d muted her eye trackers.

_______

Mario decided he’d recorded enough. Falling made him want to try again, but first he wanted to upload his run to ThreeVee.

He stepped back into the infinitely branching traffic of Google, joining the flow once more—billions of avatars travelling at different rates. Some walking, some running, many zipping around on light cycles.

The entire place was alive; the search engine, an organism. Social networks were represented as complex superstructures. Facebook and Twitter towered higher than the graphics engine could render.

“Amazing, huh?” Cherry spawned beside him, exiting Waterfall. She’d changed outfits.

“Yeah, for a walking simulator,” Mario replied. “How is it practical to travel this way?”

Like Cherry, Mario was using the free version of the Tron theme. Light cycles were included in the premium version, although they were cosmetic and wouldn’t travel any faster than what he’d paid for.

“I like it,” she opined. “Makes it more immersive.”

Mario received a notification but ignored it, breaking into a sprint.

Cherry did the same, closing the gap immediately. Browsing at faster speeds, she’d outrun him if she knew where he was going.

“What’s the hurry?” She glided next to Mario, running in parallel. She could see her legs and feet. Her legs were covered in bionic leggings, white, black, and gray, with just a hint of red, detailing metal joints, pistons and other industrial artifacts. Her feet were covered in glow-laced running shoes, each step leaving a digital footprint that could be identified and traced.

“The video of the climb and fall,” he said finally. “If it goes viral, maybe businesses will want to sponsor the content.”

Another notification. This time Mario checked the sender. It was an advertisement for a smart car: autonomous, with maximum communication capabilities, friendly, personalizable and, of course, electric.

Mario deleted the message. Yet the first one went unnoticed as he continued sprinting with traffic towards ThreeVee, represented as a megasize movie theater. It was a tronesque megastructure, with sharply angled architecture and searchlights waving across the digital sky: a landmark surrounded by hundreds of competitors.

But before he could get there Cherry received a notification. She checked it and stopped in the middle of traffic, hundreds of avatars zipping by or walking around her automatically.

“Wait, Mario!” Cherry yelled. Yet Mario continued on, sprinting past Bandcamp’s band camps and through popup ads for channels on YouTube. Then he stopped at ThreeVee and scattered the floating multishaped iterations that had taken an interest in him.

Tracking bots.

“What part of Do Not Track don’t you understand?” Mario yelled at the bots. Many of them scattered, while others merely evaded his swats and returned to their orbits.

On cue, an ad splashed across his visor to upgrade the Tron theme: “No More Tracking Bots,” standing out in bold electric green. For a few credits a day, he could have access to premium features including light cycles and a dozen other abstract modes of transportation.

The recommendation popped up frequently in the free version, but this time he decided to upgrade. His surroundings immediately shifted to the highest possible resolution.

Fetching a bright, electric green baton from his harem pants, he transitioned into a light cycle; a 5th generation personal transport bike. Using a few basic mental commands, he beelined away from ThreeVee, merging with traffic to track Cherry’s footprints.

________

The light cycle may have been a cosmetic upgrade for browsing, but handling one was an out-of-orbit experience.

Using the BCI controller, Mario increased the speed of the vehicle by pushing its front and rear ends further apart. The front wheel was locked forward, so steering was done by tilting the entire bike. When attempting certain maneuvers, a pair of small fins would spring out just behind the vehicle to aid either balance or braking.

A throwback forward, it was a ride worth every credit.

Cherry’s footprints became more vibrant until they stopped at Waterfall. As Mario rode the bike into the site, vanishing in a spark of electric blue light, he remembered the unchecked notification winking in his heads-up display.

_______

Waterfall was crowded with visitors.

Mario skipped up the steps and looked around for Cherry. Then, he opened the newest notification to read its message, noticing that the one he'd ignored was from Waterfall.

“Hey,” it was Cherry. “Did you get a notification from Waterfall?”

“Yeah,” Mario replied, switching to live chat. “Thought it was spam.”

Cherry appeared in the top right corner of his heads-up display. “Where are you? There are too many users outside.”

“What’s going on?” He looked over the crowd. Visitors were walking, running, and climbing ledges to reach the top ledge, where the water fell.

“Meet me inside the Laundry Lady’s house,” she replied.

Weaving through visitors, Mario slipped through the door, entering Escher’s House of Stairs with a start.

_______

“Whoa,” was all he could manage when greeted by the home’s surreal interior. He’d never seen anything like it: upside-down and rightside-up staircases ascending and descending to doorways. More than 40 curl-ups crawling the stairs and rolling around, coming and going through one of more than a dozen open entrances and exits.

Cherry was straddling the carapace of a curl-up that was clipping into a wall—a glitch likely caused by the influx of activity. Other curl-ups followed their program, doing what Escher had imagined.

It was an impressive and logic-defying masterpiece and, except for the strange ticking sound made by walking curl-ups, it was quiet.

“What’s up?” said Mario, still perplexed by the home’s interior. “Why’d you come back here?”

“Check your messeges,” she replied.

Mario opened his inbox and was greeted with Waterfall’s Terms of Service.

“These Terms of Service govern your access to and use of Waterfall.” Mario read aloud.

“By submitting, posting or displaying content on or through Waterfall, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, reproduce such content in any and all media or distribution methods now known or later developed. This license authorizes us to make your content available to the rest of the world and to let others do the same. You agree—”

Mario shook his head. He didn’t remember agreeing with anything.

“I never—” he started.

“Keep reading,” Cherry urged.

He continued to read, some parts to himself, other parts aloud.

“...that this license includes the right for Waterfall to provide, promote, and improve Waterfall and blah blah blah...”

His eyes glazed over until he read, “...such additional uses by Waterfall is made with no compensation paid to you with respect to the content that you submit through Waterfall as the use of Waterfall by you is hereby agreed—”

A curl-up bowled by Mario, almost knocking him off a ledge.

“...as being sufficient compensation for the content and grant of rights herein.” He finished.

“So...what does this mean?” But Mario knew what it meant before Cherry could rejoin with, “There should be a video attached. Watch it.”

Hesitantly, he checked and saw that his video had been included in the latest advertisement for Waterfall. A video he was being compensated for merely by using the site.

The video had been edited, but much of it was there: his view of the regular flashing an obscene emote while calling him out for using VeeVue. The view of his first unsuccessful cat-leap to the highest ledge, which made him gasp for air. Laughter and mockery from regulars. The bet that he’d fail again.

Then, the fall. Mario stopped the video.

“Wow...” He said, preparing a response. But Cherry hopped off the sunset orange curl-up.

“Yes, they stole your video—” She began.

“They stole my video...” Mario repeated in dismay.

“Yes.” Cherry said. “But check outside. You’re popular!”

Mario was confused until a few visitors entered the house and looked in his direction.

“Hey! It’s him!” One of them said.

“That was an good run,” said another. “Where’d you get those parkour gloves?”

And another: “I recently installed a new BCI controller. How long before I’ll be able to jump like that?”

_______

Mario wasn’t sure how to respond. Being new to the full dive VR experience, he’d assumed less about his mental ability to get around.

"I, uh, fetched the gloves from Precision,” he started to answer. He then realized why they were impressed: training a brain input controller was a difficult process. The advertisement had embarrassed him, but it also showed prospective visitors his ability to move through virtual space using a controller.

It turned out Mario’s ability had taken most visitors some time to imitate, the majority failing the first jump-kick for need of more practice.

“How do I get out of this place?” Mario looked around, confused.

“Take an upside-down left over there,” Cherry pointed in a vague direction.

He spun around while she laughed.

“Dork. You get out the same way you came in”.

Another curl-up rolled by him. This time he stepped out of the way of its path-finding program.

“Precision?” The visitor remarked. “Their gear’s priced higher than space junk!”

“You’re just poor!”

They argued as Mario exited to the waterfall, where visitors seemed to have doubled in size. He looked over the crowd. Newbies were awkwardly climbing, falling, and running about practicing with their BCIs.

He’d started a trend. One he needed a clue to promote.

“Hey!” Someone said, pointing. “It’s the guy from the ad!” Everyone within range turned in the direction of his avatar.

“No it isn’t,” a visitor objected.

“Yes. That’s the dude who fell. Hey, Lance!” they shouted at another visitor who’d been trying climb a wall. Lance paused to look at Mario.

“Isn’t that the guy from the Waterfall ad?”

Mario was speechless as word of him spread exponentially from visitor to visitor like some kind of virus. Nevertheless, a clique of regulars cast their doubts:

“He’s not that good.”

Mario glanced up. The regulars were sitting in their previous spot on the ledge of the third level.

“He fell, remember?”

Someone booed and Mario felt the blood rushing to his face. Suddenly it hit him: he could do it again. He could complete his run to the top of the cubes.

He changed outfits, control scheme, and sucked in air from muscle memory.

“He’s gonna run!” Someone yelled from under the small bridge. “Get out of the way!”

Just like before, Mario ran towards the wall and jump-kicked to the bridge. Then he sprinted, leapt, flipped and climbed his way to the top ledge.

“Whoa,” the two regulars stood up and made room for him.

“How’d you do it?” One of them demanded.

“Cheater,” came an accusation. “He hacked his controller.”

But the climb had been challenging and he struggled to focus. Balance, he thought.

This ledge is mine.

________

Mario stood. So long as he didn’t move, the water current inched him towards the fall.

Balance. He concentrated while eyeing the graffiti-tagged column. Then, he sprang towards it and climbed compulsively. The crowd looked on and, from ground level, Cherry saw her friend climbing higher and higher.

“Yeah!” She shouted as Mario reached the top of the cubes and...

Vanished.

________

“What?!” Bryce yelled into an empty apartment. He’d crashed back to the VR dashboard, his GPU running hotter than a nuclear summer.

It took a minute or so for him to reorient himself with being back in the real world. He removed the head-mounted display, unpaired the brain input controller, and checked the time.

It was 3 o’clock in the morning.

A ringtone sounded. It was Alexia.

“Bryce? What happened?”

“I’m having some technical issues.” Bryce put on a pair of smart glasses, which settled comfortably in the small groove in the bridge of his nose, made by the display after hours of wear.

“They’re saying you were kicked for using a recorder”.

Bryce removed the glasses, rubbed his eyes, replaced the glasses and peered through a window. City lights strobed as his pupils adjusted to reality’s infinite depth.

“Staring at the city?” she guessed after sending him a message. “Looks like you’re about to crash in real-time.”

“Yeah,” he resigned. And with that he disconnected the call.

After commanding Google Home to shut off the lights, Bryce checked Alexia’s message. It was an invitation to M.C. Escher’s Relativity.

He laughed, saved the invitation, and hand-rolled his wheelchair to bed.

______

Hexel art by Andrew Hicks

[narcatsisst]

GOOBER CAT FREN, I AM CRISISING CRISIS RN

*INHALES*

OKAY IMA OPEN UP TO SHIT TO YOU I TRUST YOU AND YOUR BLOG OKEY POOK THE WILLIAM AFTON OF MY LIFE HAS ALWAYS BEEN FUCKING COUNTRYHUMANS THIRD REICH.

EVER SINCE LIKE 6TH GRADE HE ALWAYS COMES BACK NO MATTER HOW MANY TIMES I DEFEAT HIM HE ALWAYS COMES BACK T-POSING BEHIND ME OMNINOUSLY TO KICK ME IN THE FUCKING THROAT I HATE HIM SO MUCH I WANT TO PUT HIM IN A JAR OF WATER AND FURIOUSLY SHAKE HIM TILL HE HAS BRAIN DANMAGE I WANT TO USE HIM AS A FUCKING STRESS BALL YET CUPID HAS ALWAYS THOUGHT THAT BITCH AND I WERE LIKE ONE OF THOSE STUPID ENEMIES TO LOVERS TYPE SHIPS FOR SOME GOD AWFUL REASON EVEN THO I LEGIT DO NOT WANT ANYTHING TO DO WITH THIS BITCH I HATE HIM

LICHEN LOOKS VERY SIMULAR TO THAT BITCH YET NOT VERY PERSONALITY SIMULAR TO THAT BITCH? I DONT EVEN KNOW???? WHAT IS LICHEN HIDING IS LICHEN EVEN REAL??

LICHEN WHAT THE FUCK

"THE WILLIAM AFTON OF MY LIFE HAS ALWAYS BEEN FUCKING COUNTRYHUMANS THIRD REICH." this sentence has never been spoken before. maybe, just MAYBE, this is a long shot, but Lichen could be an evil clone of the other guy. im JUST saying.... /silly

[zarithial]

*scrambles back into your inbox with all my confidence and sets down my slugcat ocs*

What do their pallets give off? 👀👀👀

ooohohohohohoh Yeessss Okay. Amalgamation's palette tastes like lichen, decaying tree growth and murky water. in an eerie forest spring kind of way. very yummy Collector's tastes like marshmallow and lemon. soft with a zing. i like it!

Saviour! this is a tough one to discern what the brain says but i think... tastes like steel, ozone and ash.

Crossroader's palette tastes like.... strawberry jam and whipped cream. the alternate eye colour adds a dash of orange to it too! very interesting flavour. I love all of these designs, thank you for showing them!!

[outofangband]

Flora, Fauna, and Environment of Neldoreth (Updated and Added To)

,Flora, fauna, environment/geography of Arda

I did Region here!

Originally requested by @actuallyfingolfin

I did try to organize these more into sections of the forest (openings and glades, margins and edges, moist or shaded soil, etc) and I don’t know if it will be of interest to anyone else but if anyone is interested in sending me a section of a habitat or location for me to elaborate on I will. Or a season!​

I put a lot of work into this!

Neldoreth is a forest of beech trees, part of Northern Doriath and contained within Melian’s Girdle. It was here that Lúthien was born and later imprisoned to prevent her from rescuing Beren. It was bordered by the River Esgalduin on the South towards the Northeast and and River Mindeb on the West, both tributaries to Sirion. The tallest beech tree in the forest was Hírilorn and it was here that Lúthien was imprisoned.

Doriath has three forests making up its kingdom; Neldoreth, Nivrim, a small forest of mostly oak trees West of Sirion and Region, in Southern Doriath, a forest of mostly holly where Menengroth was located.

I’ve been thinking a lot about potential biomes ecoregions for Beleriand and the other realms. Ecoregions are patterns of ecologically and geographically defined regions. A comparable biome are temperate broadleaf and mixed forests with English lowlands beech forests being a potential ecoregion.

I also have specific headcanons mentioned here about far Eastern Doriath closer to the river Celon which I will talk about when I do far Eastern Doriath and the lands North of Iant Iaur. These are closer to North Atlantic moist forests and even humid mixed forests. 

Neldoreth is a lush, deciduous forest with moderate to heavy rainfall depending on the season. Snowfall is rare.

There are a number of genuses directly referenced in canon in relation to Neldoreth; beech, chestnuts, oak, elm, hemlock, species of fern, grasses, the flower Niphredel which was a creation of Tolkien himself but inspired by snowdrops (though having more petals creating a star like flower) and the white field rose.

The beech trees were likely a combination of European, Chinese and Japanese blue beech and dwarf beech with other trees dotting the boundaries and occasionally mixing with the beeches in groves throughout Neldoreth. These include common ash, common hornbeam, sycamore, sessile oak, common oak, fluttering elm and horse chestnuts.

The forest floor is covered in ferns such as alpine lady fern, bracken, hay scented fern, hard fern, hart tongue fern and mountain wood fern as well as common aloe moss, bog groove moss, red bog moss and more  . There are also grassy groves and openings such as those mentioned in the Lay of Leithian. It is possible these were created through the magic of Melian. Woodland opening and transitional habitats are particularly interesting to me.  Woodreeds are one possible example. Spindle, nettle leaved bellflower, bitter vetch, grow on the Western edges of the forest South of Mindeb 

Bluebells,, wood anemone, primrose, dog’s mercury, yellow archangle, snow drops, yellow wood violet, wood sorrel, greater starwort, and enchanter’s nightshade are a small selection of flowering plants. 

As I said, send a section of the forest or a season and I can go into more detail! 

Large bitter cress, water aven,  flag lilies, purple marshlocks, common stinging nettles wild parsnip, wild thyme, marsh ragwort and brooklime (among many others, see below) grow in abundance by the banks of Esgalduin and smaller tributary streams. 

Barnacle and beard lichens, script lichen, beechwood sickener, earthstar, common bird’s nest fungus, inkcap, fly agaric, yellow brain and velvet shank are a selection of the fungi and lichens that can be found in Neldoreth. 

As a number of butterflies feed upon beeches and the other trees common to Neldoreth, Neldoreth is home to a variety of butterflies and moths. Large and light emeralds, winter moths, purple shot copper, cherry bark moth, mourning cloak, wood white, large tortoiseshell, wall brown  olive skipper, common blue as well as gothic, ghost, silver ground carpet, dot and poison hemlock moths

There are also a variety of beetles, bees, and praying mantis like insects. (Insect species are so numerous it’s hard to given even a small sample but I’m always happy to make specific posts about insects or any other category of a place)

Bumblebees including tree bumblebees, pollen beetles such as in the genus Meligethes, violet click beetles, oak and speckled bush crickets, rose chafer, hawthorn shieldbug, and  biolumenescent fungus gnats (I talked in my post about Western Beleriand about this but while biolumenescnese is more common elsewhere in Beleriand, there are a few biolumenescent species in Menengroth and the woods of Doriath. 

Lemon slugs and white lipped snail can also be found and I was talking with @tol-himling about the possibility of stranger species of gastropod being possibly brought over or arriving with Melian. 

Birds live by the banks of Esgalduin and throughout the woods itself. White throated dipper, garden and willow warblers, song thrush,  common nightingale, nuthatch, gray headed woodpecker, white backed woodpecker, black woodpecker, little bunting, indigo bunting, song sparrow, wood duck and shovelers being some examples.

I also headcanon that there are prehistoric (from today’s perspective) species of birds including small, brightly colored flightless birds that nest in the ferns and glades of the forest.

Palmate newts, great crested newts, agile frogs, moor frogs and small tree frogs are found in vernal streams branching from Esgalduin and Mindeb with agile frogs and dark gray and green toads living away from the water in undergrowth for much of the year. 

Neldoreth doesn’t have many larger mammals but there are Chital, water deer and barking deer  like species, stoats and lesser weasels, reed vole, water shrews, bush dogs, hedgehogs (mostly European but others too), and flying squirrels (among others)

Dormice especially hazel dormice and grass snake (obviously these are different kinds of animals but I grouped them together because of their habitat) on the margins and towards the river. 

I do think in other places of Doriath there are giant elk that do occasionally travel through Neldoreth. There are other species that do not exist today, I mentioned tapir like creatures as well as saber toothed cats (though these are found mostly to the wild and dangerous North of Neldoreth, North of Iant Iaur) and other stranger creatures (I’d be happy to share some headcanons on non existent species or more speculative ecology if anyone wants!)

Esgalduin, the river that runs through Doriath dividing Neldoreth from Region, North to South,  is an ecosystem and habitat in itself. If there’s interest I’d love to do a post specifically about it so I don’t over condense here? But there are a variety of aquatic plants, fish and other creatures there. 

As always, requests and asks are open and welcome!

[foxgirlchorix]

thinking about “ok actually what fursonae/[x]girlsonae do i want to have”

this will probably end up mostly being ‘basic bitch’-y. i admit to mostly only looking as deep as single species in, like, reptiles and mammals, and i expect a lot of this will revolve around “what if was humen shaped”

my first basic bitch move: im probably not gonna have anything microscopic. no disrespect to bacteria archaea and most eukaryotes but im sorry i dont have the power

this is going to be long!

okay. first

ediacaran biota: there is absolutely no way i can do them justice. but i love them so dearly and need to be them

slime molds: slime molds are really cool but i dont know if i can do them justice. thing to keep in mind though!!

lichens: lichens are the fucking best. the only problem here is this character is probably some sort of rockgirl with lichen growing on her... which i suppose isn’t a BAD problem to have

ferns: ferns can be fun and weird. they’re a big group with a lot of variety so i think a ferngirl is feasible! considering arborescent ferns like the cyatheales.

conifers: FUCK YOU THERE ARE THERE ARE DECIDUOUS CONIFERS. i could be an amazing larch

water lilies: water lilies are kind of gender and wow that looks utterly meaningless as a phrase. but like. they are!

cassytha: i like parasitic vines! cassytha are a good example but i’d be open to other parasitic vinegirls

triuridaceae: i really like flowering achlorophyllous plants. and you say they get their food by digesting intracellular fungi? delightful. also they look SO WEIRD

bromeliads: core problem- there are carnivorous and myrmecophyte bromeliads but they aren’t in the groups of bromeliad i find cutest. otherwise like come on who doesnt want a bromeliadsona

plane trees: i love those awful hell achenes

venus flytraps: i mean there’s SO much fun stuff to be had with a dionaeasona! they’re what a lot of people think of when they hear “carnivorous plant” for a reason.

ivy: ivy are wonderful!

violets: violets are among my favorite flowers especially when they’re really really tiny and especially when clustered

pomegranates: pomegranates are my absolute favorite fruit and they’re very pretty and have very pretty flowers and did i mention they’re very pretty

fungi: the core problem with fungi is the part one’s interested in is the fruiting body, and unlike with (at least some) plants the aboveground part is mostly inconsequential. however i’m thinking of bracket fungi, earthstars, and chanterelles. it is downright criminal of me to go into as much detail as i did with plants and will be doing with animals but not as much as with fungi so it’s going to have the longest description thing

sponges: i can’t do sponges because the concept of a spongesona has been monopolized by the paramount corporation with the character “bob”

comb jellies: comb jellies are so cool and the extremely underrepresented field of “jelly sonas” (DO NOT CONFUSE WITH SLIMEGIRLS) deserves my mark. theyre so good

hydrozoans and jellyfish: there is so much cool variety here. you’ve got tons of bioluminescent stuff, colonial porpitas and siphonophores, some freshwater stuff, a few that have photosynthetic symbiotes, and even some active predators. the life cycle of larva -> asexual polyp -> medusa -> sexual polyp is so cool, though there’s stuff missing various of those phases obvi

vampire squid: the joined arms are really cool and i like them, so i think vampire squids are my preferred cephalopods for sona purposes. you know ursula?

chitons: there isnt enough respect for chitons. i like them and i hope i will be able to make a girl

bryozoans: i love bryozoans if i had a brain i would study them!! people don’t think about them enough. i love the whole lots of specialized zooids thing and i love that some can ‘walk’

tardigrades: overplayed and overhyped, but i do like them. eight legys

dinocaridids: i LOVE THEM SO MUCH. i need at least one dinocaridsona. maybe an anomalocaris but there are SO MANY GOOD OPTIONS

trilobites: i’m not as interested in trilobites, but it’s kind of obligatory don’t you think?

sea spiders: i must confess a fondness for sea spiders. they’re probably too stick-y to be a good girlbasis

horseshoe crabs: beloved beasties. i think about as hard to girl as a turtle

spiders: everyone’s spidergirls are pretty much always kinda modeled off of tarantulas, with a big wide opisthosoma. that’s all well and good, who doesn’t love fat asses, but a more elongated form like orb weavers could be fun for a spidertaur! a weirdly shaped one (like triangular ones!) might be fun too. also i love when spidertaurs have the human legs be pedipalps

centipedes: everyone loves disturbingly large centipedes!

dragonflies: idk why but i like dragonflies a lot. hell if i know how to girl them though

wasps and bees: both of these deserve a sona. maaaybe ants too. the point is i like the eusociality and theyre more aesthetic to me than termites

rays: rays are kind of perfect for ‘you call this a mermaid, but it’s actually just a really big [animal] with a small human torso on top??’. i love this idea and want to use it

sharks: the possibilities are endless. you could have a typical sharkgirl with a nice fat tail, an angel shark like my ray girl concept, or also i like whale sharks i should do a whale shark

ichthyosaurs: you may not like it, but this is what peak performance looks like. the IDEAL choice for a girl who doesn’t want a dolphinsona but also wants something a bit spicier than a sharkgirl. definitely thinking a mermaid-like setup here. she would be incredibly annoying about ‘well i’m a reptile and a mammal and i look like a fish so you have to guess my pronouns now’. what the hell does that mean

mosasaurs: mosasaurs are a bit overplayed in the ‘omg big animal so scary’ field, but it might be worth playing into that? maybe skew things a little whale-ways

snakes: snakes are a classic for a reason! maybe go with a marine snake, or else just commit to the largest snake ever for a worldserpentsona (beloved)

crocodiles: many people have said what i’m about to say- crocodiles are worth it. i can and should commit to a crocodilesona. for fat tails around the world

pterosaurs: a pterosaur sona is downright needed. and there are SO MANY CHOICES!! definitely something in clade caeliadracones if only because that’s a great name

tyrannosaurs: i have to admit it- tyrannosaurs are iconic for a reason. these reasons dovetail pretty well into having a tyrannosaurgirlsona! plus because shes not a normal tyrannosaur i can give her as many feathers as i want

microraptorines: i think they’re so cute and i want “four” wings

enantiornithes: i love them so so so so so much. like i know at least part of it is ‘grass is greener on the other side’ but they’re fucking great. there are so many of them and i love them all

pigeons: i already have a pigeonsona. i have like 10 because angels. but i love pigeons

swifts: i like swifts a lot i think itd be fun to have a sona thats just a whole fucking bunch of swifts

shrikes: i may not have the stomach to be a shrikegirl. but i should try

corvids: MESS WITH THE BEST, DIE LIKE THE REST. magpie angel swoop on you one million times forever

bats: bats are cool and underrated. a bat sona would be fun- maybe a megabat like a flying fox?

cats: i actually already have a couple cat sonas but they’re about as well deifned as ‘hehe... 8′3″ looks like cat face and is a height”. considering perhaps a bigcat-sona and maaaybe a lynxsona

bears: bears <3 i could do it and there will could be more

foxes: my 4d foxgirl is all the fox sona i will ever need <- girl who will create 10 more fox sonas in the next 15 seconds

dolphins: my hatred of dolphins is played up for comedic effect. even so... its orca time

lemurs: every once in a while i think ‘what if lemur sona’ but i get so so scared

[quotes-by-dilanka]

Living Like Weasels by Annie Dillard

A weasel is wild.

Who knows what he thinks?

He sleeps in his underground den, his tail draped over his nose.

Sometimes he lives in his den for two days without leaving.

Outside, he stalks rabbits, mice, muskrats, and birds, killing more bodies than he can eat warm, and often dragging the carcasses home.

Obedient to instinct, he bites his prey at the neck, either splitting the jugular vein at the throat or crunching the brain at the base of the skull, and he does not let go.

One naturalist refused to kill a weasel who was socketed into his hand deeply as a rattlesnake.

The man could in no way pry the tiny weasel off, and he had to walk half a mile to water, the weasel dangling from his palm, and soak him off like a stubborn label.

And once, says Ernest Thompson Seton--once, a man shot an eagle out of the sky.

He examined the eagle and found the dry skull of a weasel fixed by the jaws to his throat.

The supposition is that the eagle had pounced on the weasel and the weasel swiveled and bit as instinct taught him, tooth to neck, and nearly won.

I would like to have seen that eagle from the air a few weeks or months before he was shot: was the whole weasel still attached to his feathered throat, a fur pendant?

Or did the eagle eat what he could reach, gutting the living weasel with his talons before his breast, bending his beak, cleaning the beautiful airborne bones?

I have been reading about weasels because I saw one last week.

I startled a weasel who startled me, and we exchanged a long glance.

Twenty minutes from my house, through the woods by the quarry and across the highway, is Hollins Pond, a remarkable piece of shallowness, where I like to go at sunset and sit on a tree trunk.

Hollins Pond is also called Murray's Pond; it covers two acres of bottomland near Tinker Creek with six inches of water and six thousand lily pads. In winter, brown-and-white steers stand in the middle of it, merely dampening their hooves; from the distant shore they look like miracle itself, complete with miracle's nonchalance.

Now, in summer, the steers are gone. The water lilies have blossomed and spread to a green horizontal plane that is terra firma to plodding blackbirds, and tremulous ceiling to black leeches, crayfish, and carp.

This is, mind you, suburbia. It is a five-minute walk in three directions to rows of houses, though none is visible here.

There's a 55-mph highway at one end of the pond, and a nesting pair of wood ducks at the other. Under every bush is a muskrat hole or a beer can.

The far end is an alternating series of fields and woods, fields and woods, threaded everywhere with motorcycle tracks--in whose bare clay wild turtles lay eggs.

So, I had crossed the highway, stepped over two low barbed-wire fences, and traced the motorcycle path in all gratitude through the wild rose and poison ivy of the pond's shoreline up into high grassy fields.

Then I cut down through the woods to the mossy fallen tree where I sit. This tree is excellent. It makes a dry, upholstered bench at the upper, marshy end of the pond, a plush jetty raised from the thorny shore between a shallow blue body of water and a deep blue body of sky.

The sun had just set. I was relaxed on the tree trunk, ensconced in the lap of lichen, watching the lily pads at my feet tremble and part dreamily over the thrusting path of a carp.

A yellow bird appeared to my right and flew behind me. It caught my eye; I swiveled around—and the next instant, inexplicably, I was looking down at a weasel, who was looking up at me.

Weasel! I'd never seen one wild before.

He was ten inches long, thin as a curve, a muscled ribbon, brown as fruitwood, soft-furred, alert. His face was fierce, small and pointed as a lizard's; he would have made a good arrowhead.

There was just a dot of chin, maybe two brown hairs' worth, and then the pure white fur began that spread down his underside.

He had two black eyes I didn't see, any more than you see a window.

The weasel was stunned into stillness as he was emerging from beneath an enormous shaggy wild rose bush four feet away.

I was stunned into stillness twisted backward on the tree trunk.

Our eyes locked, and someone threw away the key.

Our look was as if two lovers, or deadly enemies, met unexpectedly on an overgrown path when each had been thinking of something else: a clearing blow to the gut.

It was also a bright blow to the brain, or a sudden beating of brains, with all the charge and intimate grate of rubbed balloons. It emptied our lungs.

It felled the forest, moved the fields, and drained the pond; the world dismantled and tumbled into that black hole of eyes. If you and I looked at each other that way, our skulls would split and drop to our shoulders.

But we don't. We keep our skulls. So.

He disappeared.

This was only last week, and already I don't remember what shattered the enchantment.

I think I blinked, I think I retrieved my brain from the weasel's brain, and tried to memorize what I was seeing, and the weasel felt the yank of separation, the careening splash-down into real life and the urgent current of instinct.

He vanished under the wild rose. I waited motionless, my mind suddenly full of data and my spirit with pleadings, but he didn't return.

Please do not tell me about "approach-avoidance conflicts." I tell you I've been in that weasel's brain for sixty seconds, and he was in mine.

Brains are private places, muttering through unique and secret tapes-but the weasel and I both plugged into another tape simultaneously, for a sweet and shocking time.

Can I help it if it was a blank?

What goes on in his brain the rest of the time? What does a weasel think about?

He won't say. His journal is tracks in clay, a spray of feathers, mouse blood and bone: uncollected, unconnected, loose leaf, and blown.

I would like to learn, or remember, how to live. I come to Hollins Pond not so much to learn how to live as, frankly, to forget about it.

That is, I don't think I can learn from a wild animal how to live in particular--shall I suck warm blood, hold my tail high, walk with my footprints precisely over the prints of my hands?--but I might learn something of mindlessness, something of the purity of living in the physical sense and the dignity of living without bias or motive.

The weasel lives in necessity and we live in choice, hating necessity and dying at the last ignobly in its talons. I would like to live as I should, as the weasel lives as he should.

QAnd I suspect that for me the way is like the weasel's: open to time and death painlessly, noticing everything, remembering nothing, choosing the given with a fierce and pointed will.

I missed my chance. I should have gone for the throat. I should have lunged for that streak of white under the weasel's chin and held on, held on through mud and into the wild rose, held on for a dearer life.

We could live under the wild rose wild as weasels, mute and uncomprehending. I could very calmly go wild. I could live two days in the den, curled, leaning on mouse fur, sniffing bird bones, blinking, licking, breathing musk, my hair tangled in the roots of grasses.

Down is a good place to go, where the mind is single. Down is out, out of your ever-loving mind and back to your careless senses. I remember muteness as a prolonged and giddy fast, where every moment is a feast of utterance received.

Time and events are merely poured, unremarked, and ingested directly, like blood pulsed into my gut through a jugular vein.

Could two live that way? Could two live under the wild rose, and explore by the pond, so that the smooth mind of each is as everywhere present to the other, and as received and as unchallenged, as falling snow?

We could, you know.

We can live any way we want.

People take vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience--even of silence--by choice. The thing is to stalk your calling in a certain skilled and supple way, to locate the most tender and live spot and plug into that pulse.

This is yielding, not fighting.

A weasel doesn't "attack" anything; a weasel lives as he's meant to, yielding at every moment to the perfect freedom of single necessity.

I think it would be well, and proper, and obedient, and pure, to grasp your one necessity and not let it go, to dangle from it limp wherever it takes you.

Then even death, where you're going no matter how you live, cannot you part. Seize it and let it seize you up aloft even, till your eyes burn out and drop; let your musky flesh fall off in shreds, and let your very bones unhinge and scatter, loosened over fields, over fields and woods, lightly, thoughtless, from any height at all, from as high as eagles.

We could, you know. We can live any way we want.

People take vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience--even of silence--by choice.

The thing is to stalk your calling in a certain skilled and supple way, to locate the most tender and live spot and plug into that pulse.

This is yielding, not fighting.

A weasel doesn't "attack" anything; a weasel lives as he's meant to, yielding at every moment to the perfect freedom of single necessity.

I think it would be well, and proper, and obedient, and pure, to grasp your one necessity and not let it go, to dangle from it limp wherever it takes you.

Then even death, where you're going no matter how you live, cannot you part.

Seize it and let it seize you up aloft even, till your eyes burn out and drop; let your musky flesh fall off in shreds, and let your very bones unhinge and scatter, loosened over fields, over fields and woods, lightly, thoughtless, from any height at all, from as high as eagles.