#African trade beads

[aeniith]

Earrings with bone (African trade beads), Czech glass, and wood. All wires have option of being 24k gold plate, silver plate, titanium, or stainless steel. $15 a piece.

[blackhistorystoryteller]

ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE HEAD OF OBA

THE BENIN KINGDOM

THE LOOTED TREASURES BY THE BRITISH EMPIRE

BLACK HISTORY IS DEEPER THAN SLAVE TRADE

The head sculptures of the Oba of Benin, also known as the Benin Bronzes, are a collection of intricate bronze and brass sculptures created by the Edo people of Nigeria. These sculptures typically depict the reigning Oba (king) of the Benin Empire and were produced over several centuries, with some dating back to the 13th century.

They are renowned for their artistic and historical significance, representing the cultural heritage and power of the Benin Kingdom. These sculptures often portray the Oba wearing coral beaded regalia, symbolizing his divine status and authority.

Many of these artifacts were taken from Benin during the late 19th century by British colonial forces, and they are now scattered in museums and private collections worldwide. There have been ongoing discussions and negotiations regarding their repatriation to Nigeria to restore their cultural heritage.

The head sculptures of the Oba of Benin remain a testament to the rich artistic and historical legacy of the Edo people and the Benin Kingdom.

HOW THE BRITISH STOLE FROM THE EDO TRIBE

1. British Punitive Expedition: In 1897, a British expedition, led by British officials and soldiers, was sent to the Benin Kingdom (in what is now Nigeria) with the stated objective of punishing the Oba of Benin, Oba Ovonramwen, for resisting British influence and trade in the region.

2. Sacking of the Royal Palace: During the expedition, the British forces entered the royal palace in Benin City, where many of these intricate bronze and brass sculptures were housed. The palace was looted, and numerous artifacts, including the Benin Bronzes, were taken.

3. Confiscation and Dispersal: The looted artifacts were then confiscated by the British authorities and later distributed to various individuals, museums, and institutions. Many of these artworks ended up in European museums and private collections.

The theft of the Benin Bronzes remains a contentious issue, as these artworks are considered cultural treasures of the Edo people and Nigeria as a whole. There have been ongoing discussions and demands for the repatriation of these artifacts to Nigeria, which has gained momentum in recent years as part of broader efforts to address historical injustices related to colonial-era looting.

The head sculptures of the Oba of Benin, like many traditional African artworks, hold deep symbolic significance within the context of the Benin Kingdom and its culture. Here are some of the key symbols and meanings associated with these sculptures:

1. Royal Authority: The Oba's head sculptures symbolize the authority and divine status of the reigning monarch, who was regarded as a sacred figure in Benin society. The elaborate regalia, such as coral beads and headdresses, worn by the Oba in these sculptures signifies his royal and spiritual power.

2. Ancestral Connections: The sculptures often depict the Oba with distinctive facial scarification patterns and detailed facial features. These features can represent specific ancestors or dynastic connections, emphasizing the Oba's lineage and connection to past rulers.

3. Historical Record: The sculptures also serve as historical records, documenting the appearance and regalia of the Oba during their reigns. This provides valuable insights into the history and evolution of the Benin Kingdom over the centuries.

4. Spiritual Protection: Some sculptures may incorporate elements like beads and cowrie shells, which were believed to have protective and spiritual qualities. These elements were worn by the Oba not only for their aesthetic value but also for their symbolic protection.

5. Cultural Identity: Beyond their specific symbolic meanings, the head sculptures are integral to the cultural identity of the Edo people and the Benin Kingdom. They represent the rich artistic traditions and heritage of the kingdom and its rulers.

It's important to note that the symbolism of these sculptures is deeply rooted in the cultural and historical context of the Benin Kingdom, and their interpretation can vary among different individuals and communities.

[kemetic-dreams]

Repost from @amplifyafrica

•

📚Let’s take a journey through the evolution of braids, exploring how this timeless art form has grown and transformed over millennia.

🇳🇦3500 BC: The Himba People of Namibia- For the Himba, braids were, and still are, a vital part of their culture. Each braid served as a social emblem, communicating everything from age and status to tribe and wealth. The tradition has been passed down through generations, remaining an integral part of the Himba identity.

🇳🇬x🇲🇱x🇬🇳x🇸🇳x🇳🇪500 AD: The Fulani People of West Africa-The Fulani people, spread across West Africa, are known for their intricate and distinct braid patterns. Traditionally, Fulani women would braid their hair with a central part, creating symmetrical patterns often embellished with beads, shells, and silver jewelry.

🌍 15th Century: The Transatlantic Slave Trade - As African people were forcibly taken to the Americas during the transatlantic slave trade, they carried their cultural practices, including braiding, with them. Some braids were even used as a means of escape—patterns like cornrows were mapped out to resemble paths to freedom.

✊🏽20th Century: The Black Power Movement-Braids made a powerful resurgence in the 1960s and 1970s during the Black Power Movement. Icons like Nina Simone, Angela Davis, and Cicely Tyson wore braids as a statement of pride in their African heritage. The style became a symbol of resistance against European beauty standards, reclaiming and celebrating black identity and culture.

📌21st Century: A Global Phenomenon

Today, braids have transcended their cultural origins, becoming a global phenomenon. From runways to red carpets, braids are celebrated worldwide for their beauty, versatility, and cultural significance. However, it’s essential to acknowledge and respect their deep-rooted history. Braids are not just a fashion statement—they are a connection to a lineage that spans continents and centuries.

#Braids #AfricanCulture #HairHistory #BlackExcellence #CulturalHeritage #BeautyWithMeaning #NaturalHairCommunity

[rustboxstarr]

🏖Grown Ups🏖 part 2

Summary: You've been pulling away from Eddie recently its not until summer vacation that you finally find your way back to him.

Pairings: Dad!Eddie Munson x PlusSize!Mom!Reader

Warnings: Smut, Fluff, Angst. Swearing, use of Y/N, kinda hints that reader is tall, and not blonde but if that aint u just ignore it haha, Steve once again being an insightful mama hen, accidental hurting animals (the bird scene), slightly persuasive of venturing out of comfort zone (friend to reader) but its all in good nature, age gap one sided flirting, accusations of cheating, talk of depression, oral m receiving, soft dom!Reader, mention of blood, sexy photos, talks of masturbation, P in V, sexual powerplay, mean degrading, blood, slapping, angry makeup sex for deep set feelings after a long time, smoking, R comes from abusive home, crying, bad views on emotions from R, talk of death, loosing a parent, homelessness, allusion to deadly overdose.

Wordcount: 22 k

A/N: Holy hell this took some time, life has just been beating the crap out of me lately but thank you all so much for all the support and love and patience, it means so much to me ❤️

Eddie is not a dick ok, he doesn’t only think about sex all the time, he just comes off as one because its smut hahahaha.

Lets just ignore the fact that big girls chafe haha.

Eddies tall now because I said so, sorry not sorry, he's like 2 cm taller than me, sue me for having a preference.

Love yas!

Part 1

Drawings I made for the fic for some visuals 😊

Grown Ups masterlist

Check out my other works!

Max (35), Lukas (35) - twins Eric (6) and Billy (6)

El (35), Mike (35) - no kids

Dustin (35), Suzie (35) - Willow (11 months)

Eddie (41), You (40) - Ophelia (10) and Roxette (7)

Gareth (37) - single, no kids

Luke -unnamed freak (39), Simone (38) - Tom (5) and Oliver (3) - not that it matters but Simone is african american so the kids are mixed incase it might be nice to visualise 

Jeff (37), Tracy (45) - Ariana (16) (Tracy's daughter)

Will (35), Winter (33) - no kids

Steve (40), Nancy (39) - Mercy (11), Lousie (9), Rachel (7), Marcus(5), Bianca (3) and Dustin (2)

Jonathan (39), Charlotte (41) - Emma (6), Charlie (4) and Lilly (2)

Robin(39), Vickie(39) - no kids

Argyle (40), Eden (38) - no kids

Holly (26)- no kids

-----------------------

The sun was blaring down on the two men as Steve hovered behind Eddie going through the motions of checking the vital parts of the engine to the Harrington-Wheeler Chrysler minivan. 

Sweat beads threatened to drip down Eddies forehead under his damp bangs, his hair tied back in a low bun as he bent over the hood, grime building up under his nails and staining his fingers as he picked and pulled at parts, finally he stood up, cracking his back, only prolonging the inevitable as Steve watched him expectantly. 

“Your oxygen sensor is malfunctioning” he wiped his hands off on his trunks, making a mental note to wash them later, “And that means?...” Steve crossed his arms and leant forward to inspect the different mechanics he had no idea about “The engine computer won't be able to correctly set the air to fuel ratio, which means lower fuel economy, higher emissions and a high probability of damage to other components, such as an overheating the catalytic converter” Eddie stated as if it was the most obvious thing in the world, his professional vocabulary shining through “Jesus dude english” Steve groaned, all the unfamiliar words working up some anxiety in his chest, worrying he would have to trade in a new car which would undoubtedly cost them a lot just when they'd gotten settled and comfortable with the economy. 

“You're gonna have to get it replaced” Steve relaxed but only a little bit “but you're not taking this hunk of junk out on the road” just as Steve was about to complain about how they needed the car to get back home a rusty Chevrolet Chevette whizzed over the gravel, screeching as it came to a stop, haphazardly parking squint between two cars, cutting off his train of thought as he mimicked Eddies reaction of wincing at the loud noise. 

The formerly cherry red now prominently rust door opened and a short blonde figure in a low-cut, cropped, baby pink tanktop and daisy dukes emerged with a wide grin on her face “Holly!” Eddie greeted as he turned to face Nancy and Mike's younger sister who he hadn't seen in nearly 10 years “Hiiii!” she waved happily as she closed the door and walked over to the pair “Lovely to see you” Steve let his arms fall to his sides as Eddie closed the hood to the car “You too Steve. So what you two up to?” 

Her arms crossed at the wrist as she played with her bracelet, looking up at Eddie with wide doe eyes “Just checking out Steves tin can” Eddie chuckled as he did a quick scan of the girl in front of him before meeting her eyes, a smirk tugged at her lips as she made a subtle show of pushing her breasts together further with her crossed hands. Steve frowned behind Eddie's back as Holly continued her pleasantries “Oh that's right you’re a mechanic, real man's job” she gave a sultry smirk as it was Eddie's turn to frown slightly in confusion, “What do you do again Steve?” Steve cleared his throat and stood up straight “Uh I’m an accountant” for some reason Holly's comment made him suddenly insecure about his job. He felt the need to puff out his chest to stand up for himself in some strange way. Holly only hummed in response, “Uh Mikes over there and I think Nancy's inside” Eddie pointed towards the beach. Holly gave a wide smirk and walked off with a wave of her slim fingers. 

Eddie cleared his throat “Uh ok anyway, yeah you can't take the car out on the road but I can pop by an auto shop and pick up the parts, saves you a fortune of doing it here” they both began strolling over to the beach again as they went over the costs for the parts. 

-

Your eyes drifted from looking out over the lake with the squealing kids and laughing adults to see Holly make her way over to the group of what you all still considered to be the kids, namely, Dustin, Suzie, Max, El, Mike and Lucas scattered on towels soaking up the sun. Gareth sat beside you deep in a monologue about some car he was working on, if you were completely honest you weren't really listening, simply content in being in the sun during summer, away from work and enjoying time with your kids and Eddie, still on a high from being reconnected with him. 

You were pulled out of your peaceful bliss when you felt a tug on your hair, turning around to be met by the man himself, your husband, who smacked a kiss to your forehead, further lightening your mood as Dustin clapped his hands together. “So, who’s coming on the hike? There's a tree swing which I think the kids would like, goes over the water” he grinned as he looked around. 

-

Soon enough Luke and his eldest Tom, Dustin with his Willow, Steve and Nancy with Mercy, Louise and Rachel as well as Robin, and you and your little family -save for Roxette who was left in Ariana's room as they gossiped about the music industry- were gathered outside the cabin as Dustin pushed off, leading the group behind him. “Knew you'd wear the shorts” Eddie breathed in your left ear as you watched Ophelia run off to chatter happily with Steve's girls.

You giggled as you felt a strong large hand squeeze at your right asscheek, “They're are the only ones I had, seeing as someone thought my cargos were their cargos and switched them out for their own denim ones” you pulled at the black denim fabric on his thigh as evidence to your point “Maybe I did it on purpose” he grinned as he slipped around to walk next to your left, slipping his fingers between yours to hold your hand. “I would hope so, I still have hope for your fried ass brain, be nice to know its not too far gone that you can't tell the difference between an article of clothing twice the size of yours” you grinned up at him, gum peeking through at the front where it threatened to fall out from the loose bite around it. 

“How dare you? I was like the smartest person in our grade” he grinned wickedly at his joke as he slipped back behind you to walk on the narrow path through the woods, switching to his left hand to hold yours without being in an awkward twist. “First of all, that would be me, I mean hello? Trailer trash, near drop out and community college degree” you flashed a grin towards him before staring intently at your feet to make sure you wouldn't trip “But sure, they held you back three years to make sure you held up the average 4.2 GPA” he squeezed your hip at your cheek causing you to giggle again. 

“Y/N can we talk?” Nancy rushed over once the path opened up again, leaving Steve behind you both as she looked between you and Eddie. “Sure” you grinned knowingly and let your hand slip from Eddies. 

“What you think they're talking about?” Eddie asked as he watched Robin hold back to join the two of you, abandoning her conversation with a bunch of the kids. “What do you think, dumbass?” Steve snorted as he witnessed Robin jumping up and down excitedly “Why does everyone have to know what's going on all the time?” Eddie rolled his eyes “In her defence, you've been scheming with us on how to get her into bed, but I will admit she and Nancy have been talking about it for a while” 

“What?”

“Well I mean Nancy gives hints, she keeps talking my ear off about girl code and how she swore she wouldn't tell anyone” 

“I’m sorry, are you that interested in my sex life?” he gestured towards Steve's obvious distaste for the aforementioned ‘girl code’.

“No, but I can't be the only one who enjoys listening to my wife's gossip” 

“Ok true, but wait why would she talk to Nancy about this and not me? I’m the husband, and like the actual person who it concerns!” he threw his hands out in annoyed defeat as Steve shrugged. “Don’t forget, Robin too, but she really won't tell me shit” Eddie sent him a glare at his remark. “Girl talk? Guess she just feels more comfortable talking about it with another girl. I mean, do you tell her everything?”

“Yes” Eddie deadpanned after drawing his eyes away from your giggling “Oof, eh well maybe like, establish some… rules? I don't know, just like make her aware you're willing to listen”

“Why do you know all of this? Weren't you like super unpopular with the ladies after the breakup senior year?” 

“First of all, I’m smart and I communicate with my wife” he gave a knowing glare at Eddie, as if to tell him something you should be doing more “And secondly, so were you, she's like the only one you've been with” 

“Didn't have to be popular, been with the same girl since I was 17” he grinned smugly. 

“Hey Ophi, when we were kids your parents used to talk us into doing the craziest stuff” Dustin's voice was heard over the chatter of the group as he leant down to pass Willow over to your daughter for her to carry. “That's right” Eddie grinned a few metres away, “Yeah, I remember one time we, uh got our shower curtains, put ‘em in shopping carts and went shopping cart sailing” he stood up once he saw Ophelis was secure with his daughter and flashed a grin towards you. 

Luke laughed as you shouted out a “Yeah!”, “Wait, how did you steer?” Tom piped up in confusion “Well we-we didn’t” he grinned towards his son “How’d you stop?” Louise turned, walking backwards to give her attention to Luke. “You just smashed into something” Eddie explained “That was the fun part” you piped up as Eddie found his place walking next to you again. 

“We used to shoot bottle rockets at each other” Robin laughed “You always go for the guy’s face cuz’ you wanna blind him” she smirked as Mercy frowned, “Okay, no that's a little much pal” Steve patted her on the shoulder “No! No I know, kids, don't do that” she covered “You know what, erase, reboot” she waved her hands back and forth as she mimicked the sound of a cassette rewinding, Rachel and Ophelia laughing at her antics. 

“Oh ho ho ho! The rope swing!” Dustin pointed as you all arrived at your destination “Oh rope on a tree baby! You know what that means” Luke inched towards the swing as Dustin held onto it excitedly. “We get to hang ourselves?” Mercy's bored voice sounded “Mercy” Steve scolded as Eddie interrupted “Are you kidding me? You see a rope and a lake and that doesnt wanna make you go nuts?” he pointed towards lake Michigan which you were now only further up the coastline of.  

“It makes me wanna- you- you- you know what? Let me show ‘em, let me show ‘em” Luke stuttered excitedly as he shuffled down the cliff and towards Dustin. “Yeah baby” Dustin forced the rope over to Luke to grab onto “Dude, get on the top rock!” you shouted as he began to steady himself, multiple adults chiming in with yeah’s at your suggestion. 

“Class is in session” Luke made a deep teacher's voice as he prepared to jump from the rock “Who wants to see a double flip!” he shouted as he ran off the edge of the rock, “Whee!” he exclaimed as everybody egged him on “Too high!”

“Now drop!”

“This was a mistake!”

“I can’t let go I’m to scared!” he shrieked as he turned back around on the rope, smashing right into a thick tree. He screamed guturally as he let go of the rope, doing a flip in the air and landing on the forest floor with a loud thump, he rolled over with the slope of the hill ramming right into a bush, rolling right over a high edge and thudding loudly onto the last bit of earthy floor before the shore of the lake. 

The previous crowd shouting with sympathy pain silenced as he came to a stop. “That was awesome!” his son shouted excitedly, suddenly Luke popped up and into view, his face scrunched up in pain as he shrieked “Oh god! Oh god! My leg snapped!” he held onto his thigh as he shrieked, a grey and brown bone protruding from his skin, “Oh my god! The bone’s sticking out! I need help!” he continued as everyone began shrieking in horror. 

“It's a stick! I got you!” he threw the supposed bone away with a clap of his hands, squirming his body in an attempt at a victory dance. Some sighed in relief as some laughed “AAHAHAHA that was good!” Dustin pointed at him as Steve, you, Eddie and Robin all laughed. 

“Daddy that bird is hurt!” Rachel squealed as she pointed past Luke to something nestled between the leaves behind him. The bird flapped and chirped in strain as it attempted to rise from the ground, “Oh my god” Robin shimmied down the rock towards the bird “We’ll go get a shoebox when we get back” Nancy comforted her daughter as she clung to her leg, hiding her face. 

Eddie too shimmied down towards Luke as Robin picked the bird up and placed it in a makeshift pillow which was her hoodie. Eddie reached a hand out to help him up as he asked “Hey, did you really land on that bird, man?” he watched as Luke stood up and dusted himself off “Um.. I’m not sure. I-I did hear a chirp and then a crunch-like noise, but.. That could have been anything” he shook his head dismissively as Eddie snorted “Okey”. 

The group of hikers made their way back as all the kids flocked around Robin to get a look at the bird.

“After lunch I’m gonna head into town with Steve, need to get a part for the engine” Eddie caught up to you again and bent slightly down to speak to you, “Oh ok, us girls were talking about heading to that shopping mall outside of the town later” you pulled your shorts up and tugged your t-shirt down since both had adjusted after talking a large step over a fallen tree “Alright great, I’m sure the girls’ll be fine, I’ll ask Luke if he can keep an eye on them” he said as he fell behind you. 

-

You and Eddie took it upon yourselves to cook lunch, near 10 bags of fresh pasta boiled in two large pots as Eddie heated up a hefty amount of tomato sauce. Once Robin had set out all the plates and cutlery she leaned over and whispered to Eddie “Geez, she’s really bossy” she referred to the multiple orders you had nearly shouted out and multiple warnings not to touch the food. “I heard that” you deadpanned as you stirred the pasta, Eddie only laughed “Don't worry, she’s a lot more bossy when we do other things too” he smirked, earning him a smack to the back of the head from you. 

Soon enough everyone had eaten and 11 of you packed into two cars, save for Holly and Ariana who were getting to know each other in their now shared room. You with Nancy, Tracy, Simone, Charlotte, Suzie and Eden in Jonathan and Charlotte's minivan and El, Robin and Vickie, and Max in her car. The mall wasn't too big, mostly clothes shops but too many to all collectively decide on so you all split up. 

A cute little independent shop was where your group was headed. 

“Oh. My. God! Y/N this is perfect for you!” Charlotte squealed as she held up a dress from the maternity section where she had already found a collection of things to try on “What, maternity clothes?” you laughed as you walked over to her, so far all you'd found was a cute set of panties with a matching teddy which you had reasoned you may as well treat yourself too since it seemed you were becoming more comfortable with yourself again. “Yes a maternity dress but seriously you would look gorgeous in this” she passed over the black silky smooth t-shirt fabric flowing from a hanger. You held it up to look. 

Sleeveless with a turtleneck and shapeless, something you usually shied away from as it made you look like you were wearing a garbage bag, but sliding the fabric through your hands you discovered it had slits up the side, decidedly high up on the sides, no doubt past your thighs. 

“Babe this would look horrible on me” you sighed as you motioned it back to her, she didn't take it, instead she insisted “Girl this is going to look absolutely stunning on you, at least just try it on” she compromised. “Fine” 

You picked up a few more things before you, Charlotte, Simone and Nancy went to try all of your chosen items on. 

You most definitely felt the confidence boost as you put the dress on, hips and thighs half on display, the slits hem resting just above your hip, but as you looked in the mirror that confidence washed away. Hip dips, stretchmarks and cellulite were all on display, sure you loved your body and had no issue showing it, but on your own terms, this was definitely a dress for skinny curvy girls, and your point was proved further as you turned to the side. Plump round breasts which honestly yes they looked fucking good, but below that your stomach, devided by your bellybutton and forcing the fabric out. At least the dress wasn't skin tight, the fabric hung from the roundest part of your belly, the bottom, not sucking right back in to show the roundness of it but you weren't keen on the rolls showing. 

“Is it on?” Charlotte squealed excitedly as she and the others sat on a pouffe outside, all done with their try-ons, “Yes” you sighed as you turned to look at your front again “Ooh show me, show me!” you sighed again as you hung your head, walking out to show the outfit. “Oh my god, that dress was like made for you” Simone commented as you walked out. “Yeah, Eddies going to love that” Nancy told you with wide eyes. “Babe, it looks amazing! You have to buy it!” she clapped as you made your way over to the full length mirror on the floor, twisting and turning.

“Really?” you asked anxiously as you examined the back, rolls on show and bra straps clearly digging into your fat. “Yes! Come on, it's only like $15!” you contemplated it, it wasn't much money, and you sure had spent more on clothing that you never wore “Eh what the hell?” you shrugged. 

You visited a few more stores and were all sat excitedly talking about it as you made your way home. “You should wear that dress tonight” Charlotte piped up from the back as you drove her minivan. “It’s a restaurant with kids, it's not appropriate” you laughed as you pulled into the parking lot of the cabin, “So? We’ll all wear what we bought. We’ll all be inappropriate, Simone you shoulder wear that strappy mess you call lingerie” you all laughed at her response as you parked up. 

She kept pestering you all the way out the car, getting the other girls to join in and agree on wearing their new outfits not lingerie which Simone stated clearly “Fine! Fine! I’ll wear it!” you laughed as you entered in the huddle “Wear what?” Eddie chuckled as he slid over to you, dropping a kiss to your lips and naturally grabbing the bags to let you slip your shoes off. “Just this dress Charlotte made me buy” Charlotte in question smirked all smug as she leaned in “You're gonna die when you see her in it” you felt on the spot as Eddie turned with a matching smirk as the pair looked at you “Oh am I?” you only rolled your eyes and grabbed the bags, ruffling Ophelia's hair as you made your way up to check on Roxette.

-

Thankfully the dress covered up all the hickies, was all you could think as you looked yourself in the mirror, you’d decided against the new lingerie as you riffled through your new things, you weren't 100% ready for it yet but that was ok, instead your worn your usual dark black t-shirt bra and an matching thong which had also been picked up today, only for the purpose of the dress, topping the outfit off with your old beat up converse. 

Before leaving for the trip you'd packed some of your old jewellery which hadn't been worn in months, now you were thankful for it, it really pulled the outfit together. A beaded black bracelet with a star hanging from it, a black chain necklace with a ruby in the shape of a crystal tower upside down hanging low from your neck and a collection of different earrings in your various ear piercings. All matching your simple winged eyeliner, mascara and blood red lips. 

“Mom, you look like a vampire!” Roxette squealed excitedly as she ran over to you at the bottom of the stairs, you laughed at her comment, pulling her greedy hands away from you as she grabbed onto the fabric. “You look really pretty mom” Ophelia smiled from her spot on the couch next to her dad who was now fully distracted from his conversation with Steve. 

You could feel his eyes rake over your body painstakingly slow, drinking you up. He cleared his throat as he blinked, remembering that not only were a bunch of people around but his kids too “You look really beautiful” he breathed as his eyes found yours. “Thanks” you beamed as you followed Roxette who was dragging you over to the dining table. Surprisingly what mattered the most was the opinion of your daughters, and all insecurity was shunted away as they showered you in their own version of praise. 

You felt comfortable within yourself as you sat down next to Argyle to see the comic he was telling Roxette about. Not feeling the pair of wide eyes staring at you from across the room as his daughter tugged on his arm. The only way to describe Eddie right now, was speechless. He couldn't even begin to comprehend what he was seeing. The thighs, the stomach, your tits so clearly visible from the side, round and plump. Snake tattoo framed by vines spread wide on your right thigh while a spider creeping out of a skull occupied your left. The girls initials on the back of your left arm, the flower with the eye further down, the dripping moon on your upper arm, and on your other the large spider web on your forearm, a spider resting in its creation, the dagger dripping blood above it next to the butterfly with the eye. 

Eddie always liked to joke about your fascination with spiders and eyes but right now all he could do was stare at them all in a daze. He couldn't say all of his favourite parts, nor nearly all, because every part of you were his favourite parts, but most of them were on display. All for Eddie to drink up and fascinate himself with. Not only did you look so incredibly sexy but also so goddamn pretty, beautiful, breathtaking, he couldn't decide. The gods above he didn't believe in had created this devine goddess and on top of that you were his wife??

Compliments were exchanged between all the girls who wore their brand new outfits as well as some teasing directed towards not only Eddie but Jeff, Luke and Jonathan whose wives all had worn something slightly frisky. Finally after lots of back and forth everyone set out in their cars to Woodmans. 

Eddie looked behind him to see both girls hot in an argument about why being the knight while playing princesses was better than being a princess and decided the coast was clear. He would love to shower you with dirty compliments but he couldn't, so the best he could do was lay a hand high up on your thigh and grasp on tightly as a sign of affection. You grinned and turned to him as he gave you a meaningful look, desperately trying to convey his message. The message being, If I could, I would fuck you right here, right now. 

“Dad, you're hurting mom!” Roxette screeched from the backseat as she witnessed the skin under his hand turning a deeper shade, he quickly retracted his hand and placed it firmly on the steering wheel “No I’m not” he retorted, as if he himself was a 7 year old child too. “Yes you are, and mommy had bruises too, did you do that” she strained against her seatbelt as she attempted to look her father in the eye, you snorted before turning in your seat “No baby, I’m ok, he's not hurting me” you explained. “See��� Eddie smugly chimed in as Roxy stuck her tongue out at him. 

He cleared his throat as everyone made their way into the restaurant, both girls running off to talk to their friends “So uh are you not wearing any underwear?” he whispered into your ear as his free hand landed on your hip, the other occupied with holding your hand behind you “Wouldn't you like to know” your neck craned to give him eye contact as you turned, beginning to smirk as you felt his hand slip under the fabric in search of something “Is-” his fingers found the hem of your thong, slipping under it and following it down to the crook of your cheeks where it disappeared in between them “Is that a thong?” he frowned down at you in surprise “Well my normal underwear wouldn't work with this” you explained as his hand found your hip again and you adjusted the fabric to sit back over your ass. 

A guttural groan left Eddie's throat as you all entered the restaurant. 

The restaurant was packed with people but luckily the server brought you to a room at the back which was mostly empty, seating you all down in a cluster of tables. Dim cozy lights shone up above as 80s music played from tinny speakers. There was a lot of ruckus, convincing kids to sit down and everyone finding their seats, Luke telling his kids he was going to sit over with the grownups at a long table while they sat with the other children.

“Hey Dustin” Mike called from across the table, “Remember when we used to come here late at night after we got wasteeed!” he grinned as he sat down next to El, Lucas and Dustin hushed him just as Eric piped up “What's wasted?”, “Nice one Wheeler” Lucas groaned, “Uh wasted, uh, kids is, something that happens.. When you have a hankering for ice cream” Lucas explained to the kids now all listening in. 

“I wanna get wasted” Billy stood up excitedly “I wanna get totally wasted!” Louise exclaimed, “I wanna get wasted every single day of my life!” Emma chimed in. “I wanna get chocolate wasted” Roxetted agreed, “No you don't need to get wasted, it's ok” you patted her on the back as Eddie grinned, watching you walk over from the kids table and sit down next to him. 

An old round lady made her way over tugging a notebook out of her apron, “Alright everybody, you know what let me make this easy” Luke explained as silence fell over the group, “41 burgers and 41 fries, okay? And uh.. That’ll be for me, what are you guys having?” he laughed as a shared collection of awws and laughs sounded around the room. Individual meals were ordered on separate tabs despite Will and Winters offers of paying and soon enough all the food was eaten and most of the kids and adults were off playing games in the arcade across the building. 

-

“So Eddie” Holly scooted over on the bench once Robin and Vickey walked off to play the games, now sat right next to Eddie whose conversation with Dustin had been broken off to go change Willow's diaper. “Hm?” He asked, looking up from his drink and turning his head towards her “Tell me more about your job, I never got a chance to ask before” she smiled as she crossed her legs and faced towards him, her knees pressing firmly against Eddies thigh. 

“Uh pretty self explanatory really, just fixing cars days on end” he shrugged, instinctively moving his leg away at the contact but turning his torso towards her to give her his attention.  “Mmm” she hummed “I bet it's really tiring, your poor muscles” she reached a hand out to grab his shoulder, squeezing lightly a few times before letting her hand linger. “Uh, it's- uh… it's not too bad” Eddie frowned, confused at the action. 

Next to him you were brought away from your conversation with a few others turning to see Holly squeezing at your husband's shoulder. Not only was she touching your man but he was also letting her? You frowned as Holly leaned in “I could help loosen them up if you want” she smiled a sultry smile as she looked up at Eddie with glossed over doe eyes “Uh no thanks, my wife usually does that” apparently the mention of you didn't have the intended effect, Holly only leaned in further, her hand sliding down his shoulder to grasp at his bicep. 

“Is your wife here?” her voice was dropping lower by the second as her hand slid further down to plant a firm grasp on his thigh. “Yes” you leaned past Eddie to look Holly dead in the eye, she quickly ripped her hand away from his thigh “So would you please stop flirting with my husband” you frowned in disgust as Holly stuttered. “I-I uh, I’m so sorry” she looked down towards her lap. So far you hadn't ever spoken to Holly, you hadn't seen her since you were roughly 20 and she was a mere 6 years old but now that you had you found you weren't particularly fond of the 26 year old nonetheless. 

Holly scuttled off embarrassed, pushing through the double doors to the room and out into the general restaurant area. “Thanks” Eddie breathed as he turned towards you, you only hummed annoyed in response as you turned back to the others. Eddie frowned at your reaction, bending down to give a kiss to your cheek in yet another thanks, you however made no reaction as you started talking to Luke. 

Just as he was about to ask you what was wrong Steve leaned over the table to get Eddie's attention, sliding over a check in thanks for his work on the minivan earlier in the day. 

He didn't get any more chances to talk to you as it seemed both of you were busy talking to other people at all times, he furthermore couldn't talk to you since you and Roxette were sat with Steve and Nancy surrounded by some of their kids in their newly working car on the way home, trading places so that Ophelia, Mercy, Louise and Emma could all sit together in your car.

Anxiety was bubbling up in Eddies chest, he had just gotten you back he didn't want to lose you again.

-

Finally after putting the girls to bed much too late you both got a moment of peace. Eddie whispered a hey as he wrapped his arms around you the second you came through the door from brushing your teeth. “Hi” your tone was flat when you answered him, already pulling away to put your things down. “What's wrong?” he sighed as he sat down on the foot of the bed, watching as you rummaged through the bags to find your sleep shirt. “Nothing” your tone was still flat but it let up in an exasperated “I’m just tired”. This time as you took your clothes off, Eddie wasn’t oggling like some teenager, he knew that I’m just tired and he knew it was bullshit. 

Once you'd thrown the t-shirt over your head he beckoned you over, pleased when you stood between his thighs and letting his hands run up and down the backs of your own instead of ignoring him and going to bed. “I just” you sighed “Just Holly, really bugged me” you rolled your eyes at the fact that it affected you so much, it didn't normally. Normally when you heard someone flirting with Eddie you’d feel smug, knowing you had him first, but maybe it was seeing it hands on, literally, while you were right next to him. Blatant disrespect for your relationship. “Ah, well I don't think she knew we were married babe, either way you know I only have eyes for one girl” he squeezed teasingly at your ass as he grinned up at you “I know” you rolled your eyes at his cheesiness before a slight grin crept up on your features. 

“Besides now you know how I feel” he ran his hands up your sides to hold onto your clothed hips “How you feel?” you asked confused, “Yeah, guys are always fuckin’ staring at you at bars and shit” 

“No they're not” you laughed, “Oh believe me, they are, I know that look, I’ve done that look” he widened his eyes as he stared up at you, but you only chuckled in response “Sure babe” you pulled away from him and rounded the bed, walking over to your bedside table, slipping all your jewellery off but leaving your wedding band and engagement ring on. 

“I’m serious, it's the same way Greg looks at you” he stood up, pulling his shirt over his head and tossing it to the bench next to the bags. “Greg?” you turned around frowning as you unclipped your earrings. “Yes Greg, any excuse to stare at your ass in those pencil skirts and he takes it” he unbuckled his belt as you pulled the covers away from the bed, sitting up against the headboard. 

“Oh please, he’s married and I'm really not his type, have you seen his wife?” you countered as he pulled his pants down. Greg's wife was short, skinny and blonde, basically the opposite of you. “Oh trust me, you're his type” he rolled his eyes as he placed his jeans next to his shirt, “Keep rolling your eyes, maybe you'll find a brain back there because you've clearly lost yours” you scoffed eyes following Eddie as he walked over and slipped under the covers and sat next to you. 

As he removed his rings and watch he spoke “He stares at you like you're something to eat, and I bet he just loves spending late nights at the office with you” you scoffed once again, sliding down in the bed and laying on your side with you back to him. “You're ridiculous” 

“Am I?”

“Yes”

“Is it really that ridiculous that I’m just a little bit worried that some sleeze is hovering around my wife, spending long nights working on a supposed project, not only that but the fact that I haven't even seen my wife the past six months?” you gasp in offence as you turn around to face him, sitting up with your legs to one side, bedcover gathering around your waist “Are you saying you think I’m cheating on you?” your glare is menacing, but not enough to break Eddie.

“Well are you? I mean we havent had sex in fucking forever”

“We had sex yesterday!” 

“Yeah and that was the first time since christmas, its june. Maybe you’ve been so busy fucking him huh?”

“How fucking dare you? No I am not cheating on you you absolute asshole, I’ve been fucking depressed. But only King Eddie is allowed to feel down is that it? You're the only one who gets to say no yeah?”

“You've been depressed?” Eddies anger dissipated instantly as he watched your ragefilled eyes “Fucking obviously!” you threw your hands out. “I-I didn’t know..” he mumbled shamefully as he looked down towards his lap “Of course not, because you're too busy trying to get me naked to even notice” your hands rub angrily over your face. 

“I- Of course I noticed, I just didn’t know it was that bad. Why didn't you tell me?” His heartful gaze was too much to bear as he looked up at you with sad eyes, you looked away to fiddle in your lap as you sheepishly admitted “I didn't want to bother you” tears were threatening to build up by your waterline so you furiously blinked them away. Eddie moved in front of you to sit on his knees, warm hands wrapped around your shoulders bringing you into his naked chest “Baby you could never bother me. I-I know you didn't grow up in a household where you could talk about your feelings but I’m not your mom, I’m your husband, you can tell me anything ok?” you felt him kiss your forehead as you were brought back down to the bed. 

You were having trouble registering his next words, his previous statement building a sensation through you, shoulders tensing, and stomach knotting as warning bells sounded in your head that you were about to crumble. 

“I’m here for you, always. But you just have to talk to me” with one arm around you he used his other to manoeuvre the cover to sit over the both of you before wrapping his arms tightly around you. “Ok” you whispered against him “Ok?” he breathed back “Ok”.

You pulled away from him to look up at his face, eyes swimming with infinite love for you, pink lips tugging into a smile. You kissed those same lips, smiling up at him once you broke apart, both the furious insistence that you not let his words get to you and the fact that his smile could light up a room made the worry slowly melt away. Eyes flitting down to his lips deciding to kiss him again, and again, and again until suddenly you were moving on the mattress to straddle his hips. Slowly hardening cock pressing against your thong as a hand came down to grab desperately at your ass. 

Well that switched up quickly, he thought, but he couldn’t bring himself to continue the conversation. A subconscious decision he would find out later, might not have been the best idea. But his body worked faster than his brain, skin on fire with the feeling of you against him.

A groan left Eddie's throat as your tongue licked at his lips, begging for entrance while simultaneously beginning to grind against him. “Hmmph fuck” he breathed as his hand slid under your shirt, grabbing hungrily at your tit. You continued like that for a near minute before a wicked idea popped into your head, sure it was cruel but it was too fun of an opportunity to pass up. 

You pulled away from him and sat up, a look of surprise spreading over Eddies face as his hand slipped from under your shirt “I don't wanna do this” you breathed, “What?” he whispered, you could hear the confusion in his voice “This” you gestured between your bodies “We don't have to if you don't want to, we can just you know, do it another time” his hands found yours in an attempt to reassure you. “No Eddie like… at all” it was so difficult not to burst out laughing as Eddie looked up at you extremely confused, slight hurt and disappointment peaking through his gaze.

“But-but we had sex” he was trying to wrap his head around the whole thing, not understanding how you switched up so fast, again, you initiated the kiss after all. “Just because we had sex doesn't mean we have to” one of his hands left yours to run through his hair in an attempt to cool his annoyance. “But if we both want to?” you shrugged “I guess, but I don't want to” the fact that you weren't climbing off him was just confusing him further “So were just.. back to no sex?” 

“I dunno Eddie, it's just not the same” you sighed. 

“Not the same?” he was deeply frowning now. 

“It's not… fun… anymore” you had to avoid his gaze in order to stifle off your laughing. “It's not fun?” he inquired, voice raising in pitch to show his utter confusion. You couldn't help let out the snort bubbling from the back of your throat. You looked up at him and suddenly burst out in full laughter “Oh you fucking-” he breathed a sigh of relief as you laughed maniacally. 

“You should have seen your face!” you wheezed as he wrapped his arms around you, bringing your body shaking with laughter back down to him “Not nice” he pouted. You looked up “I’m sorry” you mimicked his pout “You want me to make it up to you?” cupping his cheek as you spoke before sitting up and running your hands down his chest and stomach slowly. Eddie cleared his throat when he understood what you were insinuating “Ahem I mean only if you want to” you flashed him a cheeky grin as you slid down his thighs. 

Bending down to peck at his lips you began trailing kisses down his torso, it was his turn to be embarrassed now so you opted for leaving a trail of hickies all the way down to the hem of his boxers, looking up at him with those eyes he always swore would be the death of him as you effectively palmed him over the fabric. 

This was too god to be true, not only had he gotten to eat you out, and then fuck you after months and months of desperation, but you were now sliding further down his thighs, planting yourself on his calves about to give him a fucking blow job. Yep, it was too good to be true. 

You hummed seductively as you pulled his boxers down under his balls to reveal his excruciatingly hard cock, precum beginning to collect and dribble from his concealed tip, pooling just under his navel. He let out a strained sigh as he felt your soft lips connect with his undercarriage, a soft kiss to the velvety skin which had him near panting. 

In an agonisingly slow pace you kissed down his shaft, each kiss further spurring his heavy breathing on until a soft moan left his throat at the sensation of your tongue sliding up hot from the bottom of his shaft to the top. Your soft fingers wrapped lightly around his tip, one lazy stroke bringing his angry red tip to view beneath the skin, he couldn't help the borderline loud groan as he felt your tongue kitten lick at his slit, humming at the taste of his precum. “Mmm you missed this baby?” your voice was smooth and sultry like velvety smoke as you spoke, pulling back to adore the view of Eddie's half lidded eyes staring up at you in desperation and need as his hands gripped the sheets so hard his knuckles were threatening to turn white. “Y-yeah” he stuttered, trying his best at keeping his voice level and not letting it fall into a high pitched whine, inevitably revealing his pathetic need for you to touch him. A need which was unfamiliar to him, something so strong he hadn't felt it since he was a teenager and it was his first time doing this, it was intimidating. 

“Yeah? You been thinking about this alot?” you stroking him lazily up and down was not helping him mask his desperation, each time revealing his tip before hiding it again, much too slowly for his liking. “Fuck, so much” he let his eyes flutter shut, soaking up each and every sensation of your hands on him instead. “Yeah been thinking about my lips wrapped around this big cock? Sucking as if my life depended on it?” at this point you were revelling in his poorly hidden desperation and spurring it on was only feeding your ego more. “Look at you, so desperate. Maybe I should hold off more, watch you work yourself up until you're just a whining mess beneath me more often? I’ve barely touched you baby” you hummed, tightening your grip only slightly. 

“No!” Eddie almost shouted at your suggestion, eyes snapping open to look at your evil smirk. “P-please don't- don't do that” all you did was hum at his pleading. Bending down you softly wrap your lips around his tip, sucking with minimal effort yet it still has his hips bucking up into you, forcing nearly half his cock down your mouth, only stopping with the resistance of the back of your throat. 

You hum in faux annoyance as you release him with a pop, “So desperate, you have no self control baby” to further accentuate your point you pin him with a harsh stare and a pout as he opens his eyes again “I’m sorry” the whisper is so quiet it nearly goes unrecognisable as spoken words to your ears, but you hear it and you grin wickedly as you soak up the scene before you. Your husband beneath you with your hand wrapped around him as another rubs softly up and down his thigh, bringing the sparse hair with you and then smoothing it over again. His slack jaw betrays the absolute bliss he's experiencing at the feeling of pushing at your throat only seconds before. Eyes glossed over and dripping with infinite adoration but also pure unfiltered hunger. 

You hum again at his response, wrapping your lips around the tip and forcing his hips down with your free hand at the prospect of him bucking up into you again. A strangled whine leaves his throat as he writhes beneath you, his neck stretching taut to reveal thick muscles as his eyes roll to the back of his head. There's a thought to bring your hand up and squeeze at those same muscles but you dismiss it as his hips start to shake slightly, the task of forcing them down more pressing than choking him slightly. 

You bob up and down on his tip a few times, what makes up only a near fifth of his cock threatening to be too much for your mouth to handle. A desperate whine leaves his lips as you pull off him with another pop, his eyes opening once again to understand why you released him, they fall closed again, crinkling at the corners as he screws his face up when he feels your hot tongue run over one of his balls. 

“Fuck!” he's way too close to being loud enough that everybody else will hear him at this point. You bring him into your mouth, sucking gently while still lazily stroking him, he’s releasing a mix of whines and whimpers when your tongue traces patterns on the soft skin before moving to the other after a few seconds, giving his other side the same treatment. 

You release him again to watch his screwed up face, his hand not soon before finding yours and grasping onto you in a bone breaking hold. “Look at you” you tut “So desperate, whimpering even” you chuckle lightly as he opens his eyes to glare at you “Hm” you hum in faux pity as you sit up slightly, hand on his hip working its was up to cup his cheek, sliding down and pulling at his bottom lip with your thumb, watching it slap back into place. “Don't worry baby, just tell me what you want”. 

“N-need you..” he closed his eyes in embarrassment after voicing his request “Need me to do what pretty boy?” he whines at the pet name, writhing beneath you in desperation as he tried to will his mind to stop blocking him for telling you what he wanted. “S-suck” is all he manages to get out. You ponder the idea of pushing him further but he looks so desperate from where you're sat, you decide to indulge him, humming pitifully before bending back down and wrapping your lips around his tip, sucking him down to half his length and then back up again. 

You repeat the process revelling in the desperate groans and now only occasional whines as you tongue at his cock. The hand not holding yours finds its rightful place at the root of your hair, tugging slightly as he guides you up and down. You increase your pace and hear his groans go louder as well as feel his thighs tensing tremendously. “Shh baby you gotta be quiet” you whisper as you come up for a deep breath. He works his fingers out of yours to bite down on his flexed knuckles. You hum in approval and go back to his cock, determined to take him deeper you force him down to the back of your throat, taking deep breaths through your nose each time you pull up. 

With your now free hand you opt for massaging his balls lightly, close to laughter as his hips buck up, this time not restraining him. 

For only a mere 15 seconds you get to continue before you feel his whole body shake beneath you, one particular thrust of his hips unveiling his angry red head, millions of nerves on fire as they brush over your tongue and throat causing his inevitable orgasm. That and the fact that his hand is pressing your head down as far as you'll go, forcing his cock right down your throat, while his sack tenses in your hand, is the only sign of him no longer teetering over the edge but about to fall right off it. It’s all the warning you get before hot spurts of cum shoot down your throat as he groans loudly against his hand.

It feels as though your lungs begin to close up as his neverending release continues. Finally however his shaking simmers under your touch and you pull off him quickly, panting to find your breath again. As you pull away his hand slips from your hair to thud against the mattress. 

Once you've found a steady pace of breathing again you look down and chuckle breathily, Eddie's face is still screwed up and he's biting down hard on his knuckles, no doubt leaving marks. His abs are prominent as he still clenches his stomach, as well as all his other muscles. Your hands sliding smoothly over his torso has him fully relaxing beneath you, he's still panting heavily after his orgasm but each breath slowing by the second. 

You grin as you climb off him and fall onto the mattress next to him, even after you've pulled his boxers back up and wriggled your way under the duvet he's still in the same position, finally softening his features and letting his hand fall to his side. With his eyes still closed you pick up his hand to inspect the deep red indents in his skin, beads of blood collecting in each. 

Eventually he opens his eyes to find you grinning down at him “Holy shit” he breathes as he rolls over on his side, wrapping his arms around you and pulling you to his chest. “I have never seen you that desperate” you giggle as he grasps onto your hand against his chest “Shut up” he chuckles as he closes his eyes and snuggles his forehead against the top of your head. “I mean jesus dude”, he only hugs you tighter in response. 

Suddenly he pulls away from you, looking down at you intensely “Wait, was this all a distraction?” you frown at his words “Do you actually not want to have sex anymore?” his face is painted with worry and desperation for an answer. “Jesus Eddie can’t I just suck your dick?” you laugh, his face relaxing into exaggerated and with a shrug he says “No you can” you giggle again and nuzzle your face into his chest. 

-

Just as the night before it seemed that no matter how you fell asleep you always ended up on your side with Eddie curled up behind you. Eddie woke up suddenly, rushing out of bed to get to the bathroom as he passed his kids in the hall making their way to your room, not stopping to say good morning before ripping the door open and shuffling inside. 

“Moooom” you awoke with a scream as you found Roxettes widely grinning face less than an inch away from your own, “Jesus christ” you sighed as Roxy laughed and made her way over to her sister rooting through the bags. “What’s this?” Ophelia asked curiously as she held up a blood red lace teddy, you jumped out of bed ripping it away from her hands and shoving it into a ball back into the bag it came from. She frowned “It's just underwear” you sighed as she continued frowning “It didn't look like underwear”, “Well it was”.

As Eddie came back to the room he was greeted by the full view of your ass as you bent over to look through the bag next to Roxette who was now viewing her two outfit options she had laid out on the bed and Ophelia nagging you to find her swimsuit. He cleared his throat, alerting you all to his presence “Oh hi, can you go check downstairs if Ophelia's bikini is there?” your voice was rushed as you quickly turned back to look through the bag. “Sure” was all he said before he was out the door without a second thought. 

As you suggested Ophelia find her clothes for the day while Dad looked for her swimsuit, the Dad himself leisurely made his way across the hall and down the stairs. Gareth burst out laughing as well as Luke and Jeff who were all sat around the kitchen table. “What?” he asked as he made his way over to the couch, spotting the swimsuit immediately. “Real sexy man” Jeff commented as Eddie stood back up, suddenly realising he was in nothing but his boxers he instinctively covered his crotch with both hands. “Guess she got you back then” Luke gestured to his chest and down his stomach laughing as Eddie looked down to see the trail of hickies down his torso. 

“Man fuck all of yall, least I’m getting some” he gave the group the finger as he promptly walked past the armchairs and up the stairs. 

“Dad you have bruises too” Roxette slapped a hand to Eddie's stomach, causing him to groan as he threw the bikini at Ophelia, unintentionally throwing it at her face, she frowned as she picked the items off her head. “Mhm, yep” he pulled the shirt you had thrown at him in response to his attack on your daughter, over his head. 

-

Breakfast had been eaten and Eddie said his goodbye as you gathered the girls and took them down with you to the beach. Pulling all his things out of his pockets he haphazardly tossed them onto the coffee table before joining Jeff, Luke, Gareth, Steve and Jonathan out on the dock where they were throwing the canoes into the water. 

Within 10 minutes they were all in their boats and paddling away, Eddie and Jeff sharing one, Luke and Steve, and Garet and Jonathan sharing the others. 

“This reminds me of when we were 14 going out on Lovers lake” Eddie commented as they slowed down a few hundred yards away from shore, “Got my first boob that time we all went together” Gareth supplied proudly, “I know you did, it was my wife, and may I add accidental” Eddie grumbled as the group laughed. “No regrets, perfect tits” the group exploded with laughter as Eddie threatened that he had no issue jumping out of his canoe and pulling Gareth out of his. 

“Alright Emmerson, that all you think about? Chicks?” Luke laughed, “Yeah relax dude most of us got daughters” Steve added, “That's all you guys think about too, especially this guy” he pointed towards Eddie “Difference is, I can do something about it”

“That's not true! Alright it's true” Eddie laughed.

“You wanna know what I fantasise about?” Luke asked as he stared at the back of Steve's head, turning to Gareth and Jonathan he continued, “Candy-bars”

“Candy-bars?” Jeff laughed, “No, I had a bad blood sugar test at my last checkup and Simone cut me off” Luke threw his hands out in slight annoyance as he explained. “You're a grown ass man, how do you deal with that?” Jeff accused as Luke placed his paddle in the boat and leaned back with his hands behind his head “Oh, I got my own hidden stash, I’m not stupid” the group laughed as he continued “Seriously, I got it all. I got Reese’s, Butterfingers, 3 musketeers. I hide ‘em under my clothes in the bottom of the hamper” he demonstrated with his hands before rowing again “It's great because the smell in my sweat socks masks the chocolate smell”

“And the looks of your underwear match the chocolate stains” Jonathan laughed, earning the same reaction from the rest of them. “Hey, hey, hey, hang on, guys I gotta make a sissy” Steve held his hand out, seemingly not distinguishing between his kids and a group of men when it came to his wording. The group began protesting as Steve repeated himself in a shout “I gotta make a sissy!”

“Come on, you made three already!” Jeff groaned, “It must be just oozing out at this point” Steve gave Jonathan the finger as he stood up in the boat “Shut up I’m trying to concentrate”. “It’s taking a piss, not the SATs” Eddie rolled his eyes “Yeah you should know, you took 21 of them”

“Fuck off” 

Steve screwed his face up in concentration as the group heard his intermittent stream, Eddie held his hand out in confusion “Are you peeing or is a diesel truck turning off? What the hell is that?”

“Listen to hamper bottom” Luke laughed “I think he’s sending a message in morse code” he held his finger up “Getting old. Stop. Can’t pee. Stop. Reeks like asparagus. Stop. Even though I didn't even have any. Stop.” he laughed as Eddie spoke “The good news is these girls are gonna have to say hi to it” he waved as a motorboat full of girls in bikinis drove by. “What’s up ladies?” he grinned. 

“Hey girls!” Gareth waved enthusiastically, the group of girls shouted complaints at the men as Steve awkwardly waved at them, “They don't all look like that ladies” Jonathan grinned. Just as Luke was about to say something Steve turned, spraying a little bit over the front of his t-shirt before turning back to the water “Aah! Come on!” he whined. 

-

After a near hour round trip they made it back, Luke swearing as he ran off to throw on a clean shirt, without warning Eddie ripped his own off, tossing it onto the wood as he slipped his shoes off and cannonballed right in between you, Ophelia and Roxette. Both girls squealed as you splashed him in the face when he resurfaced. “Asshole” you shrieked as you pounced on him, dunking his head under the water with force from behind. 

Before you had a chance to react you felt Eddie's hands wrap around your thighs and before you knew it you were hoisted into the air on his shoulders. You didn't even get a chance to breathe before he flung you off to back-flop into the water. As you resurfaced both girls were already hounding their father for him to do the same for them, you giggled as you watched him throw your eldest off him. As he continued you gazed around the beach, the water filled with happy little kids splashing away as the group canoeing collected on the wooden chairs not far from the various towels scattered over the beach with various occupants. 

Out of the corner of your eye you noticed Holly sat next to Ariana watching intently, you rolled your eyes and chose to ignore her, instead joining in with throwing the kids about. 

-

The kids had set up a blanket fort in the attic and were all gathered munching on their sandwiches as the adults ate their lunch in the mixture of a dining and living room. “Oh Rob, can you pass me my wallet” Eddie raised his voice as he sat next to most of the younger ‘kids’ by the dining table, Robin looked up from her conversation with Charlotte and Winter on the couch and motioned towards the black leather on the table, “Yeah that one” Robin picked it up and flung it across the room towards him as something slipped out and floated to the floor in front of Gareth who was making his way to the fridge for a beer. 

Eddie caught his wallet and frowned as he saw Gareth bend down and pick up a polaroid, “Is this you?!” he exclaimed in surprise, clutching the photo Gareth turned to you in one of the arm chairs “Huh?” you asked as you looked up. Before Gareth had the chance to show you Eddie was jumping over the table, knocking a glass of juice over in the process and ripping the polaroid away from Gareth's hands with a “Give me that!”

“Holy shit!” Gareth exclaimed as Eddie shoved the photo back into his wallet “What?” you placed your plate on the floor and stood up, walking over to Eddie who was now giving Gareth a death glare. You pulled the wallet from Eddie, opening it up to see the same family photo from when the kids were 4 and 7 in the plastic pocket. Examining it further you realised a collection of polaroids were shoved in one of the pockets for dollar bills. 

You gasped as you pulled them out, looking up to Eddie's embarrassed and awkward face as he shoved his hands in his pockets. You felt Gareth leaning over your shoulder as you looked through them and quickly pulled away from him. “I thought you kept these at home” you whispered angrily as Gareth chuckled and continued his mission of getting a drink. 

“Well I didn't” Eddie answered sheepishly as you continued looking through them. A whole collection of photos from one particular night where both girls had been away at a school sleepover, leaving the house empty for the both of you in late September of last year. It seemed the photos had been kept in the order they had beentaken in, a couple showing you in lacy black underwear with thigh garders connecting to your hips, one in the doorway and one stood between Eddies thighs, a few more of you giving Eddie a blow job, one of Eddie eating you out, one of your bare pussy, one of you on your back holding your legs up to your chest, pussy on show as well as every other intimate part of you, four of just your naked upper body, laid on the bed, staring up at the photographer with an assortment of fuck me eyes and wide, open mouth, eyes rolled back’s and one last one, crumpled up seemingly the one Gareth had seen. 

You on your back, breasts free from their confines and spilling to the side, eyes closed and a happy smile on your face, and long thick ropes of cum painting your stomach and chest. 

“Is this the one he saw?” you whisper, it seemed the rest of the group had gone back to their conversations after the interruption “Yeah..” you give a bratty and annoyed grunt as you shove the photos back into Eddie's wallet and thrust it into his chest angrily. He takes it and makes a show of stuffing it into his pocket before you turn away and sit back down in your arm chair. 

He was so fucked, and it seemed not only he knew it but the rest of the table who were looking at him with awkward sympathy, as well as Gareth grinning wickedly, not only from the photo but your reaction to it. He wasn't sure what to do, you were making it quite obvious you didn't want to talk to him given the fact that your back was now turned to him, half twisted in your chair. He felt like he should talk to you about it, apologise, but instead his feet steered him back to the table, “Shit” he mumbled under his breath as he saw Dustin bent down cleaning up the juice with a rag “Here let me” he grabbed the towel and continued mopping up the spilled drink, wringing it out in the sink and hanging the towel up on the oven handle he caught an annoyed glare from you which made him fold in on himself as he sat back down. 

He took his chance to talk to you as he heard you excuse yourself to the bathroom, cornering you just outside the door. “Babe, I am so sorry” he pleaded as you turned to face him, you looked behind him to see Mike walking down the hall and quickly grabbed his hand, pulling him into the bathroom and locking the door. 

“Are you ok?” his voice was soft as he spoke to you, leaning up against the counter as you turned and made a beeline for the toilet. “I’m fine, I’m just..” you took a second to think over your words as you pulled your calf-long green flowery skirt up and in turn your underwear down, “embarrassed” you finished as you sat down. “I’m sorry, I wasn't thinking when I asked Robin to throw it” he spoke as you began peeing. 

“It’s fine” you sighed as you wiped and stood up, bumping his hip with yours to get him to move away from the sink. He wrapped his arms around you as you washed your hands. “Is it actually fine or is this one of those times where you say it's fine but it's actually not?” his eyes found yours in the mirror, moving with you as you dried your hands and spun around in his grasp. “It's actually fine” you couldn't help the small tug of your lips as you looked up at his wide eyes. 

A smile painted his features as he saw your face “They been in there the whole time?” you snort slightly when he nods, “What do you even do with them?” definitely a stupid question, but for some reason you wanted to hear him say it. “What do you think I do with them?” he laughed “I jerk off to them, obviously” he rolled his eyes playfully as you grinned. 

“That what you do when you spend an hour in the shower without it even running?” your eyebrows tugged down as you tried stifling an ever wider smirk, “Yeah as if you hadn't already figured that out” you shrug as he fakes a look of exasperation “At least you're not making the water bill worse than it already is” he rolled his eyes again. “Keep rolling your eyes, maybe you'll find a brain back there” The sentence this time said under slightly nicer circumstances. Your grin breaks into a giggle as he begins tickling you. 

After some shrieking at him to stop he finally does, and when you catch your breath you look up at him again “What else do you jerk off to?” he snorts a laugh at the sudden change in demeanour but looks down at you with some trace of seriousness “Mostly just that kind of stuff” he shrugs, he definitely had a lot more photos stashed at home, but he had to admit that little collection was by far his favourite “Really? For six months? Jesus Christ, aren't you bored of my body yet?” 

“I’m beginning to think you're the one with no brain now, I’d never get tired of your body” he squeezes you ass playfully, beaming when you giggle again.

“I just remembered I brought my yoga tape, we could do a little yoga sesh tomorrow, what do you think?” is the first thing you hear as Charlotte makes her way up to you with a beaming smile, pearly whites on show as she holds her hand together above her stomach hopefully. “Sure, sounds fun” Charlotte jumps happily as you feel Eddie kiss your cheek before walking back to the dining table. 

-

Eden and Argyle set up games for the kids outside as the rest of you are scattered about the property. You smile as you hear shrieking from the kids playing tag, happily chatting to a group on the wrap around porch as Vickie paints your now acrylic nails. She's gone through most of the people who wanted their nails done by now, including Eddie who got black and white spider webs painted on his natural nails, over the moon that she got so many people to practise on in preparation for her new job as a nail tech. 

“Hot” Eddie grins as he leans over your shoulder to see your medium length, almond shaped, blood red extensions, you grin up at him and peck his lips when he bends down, your kiss cut short as he shuffles to the side to let Roxette through, sick of running around she lets out a loud sigh as she finds a seat in your lap. “Whatcha doooin?” she asks as she inspects Vickies work “Getting our nails done, you wanna?” she happily nods and tells Vickie “Can I have black? Like monster nails, this long!” she shows an exaggerated length by holding her hands apart a near foot, Vickie looks up at you concerned as you turn to your daughter, “Maybe not that long baby, how about something like this” you show on your own nails, now finished as Vickie switches the UV light off, demonstrating half the length of what you have. 

She sighs but agrees and you ask Vickie if that's ok, to which she nods before going to work on a fresh set of nails. 

“Dad look!” she squeals as she finds him laying in the grass next to Jonathan, Argyle and Dustin who's playing with Willow. “Wow!” he exclaims in mildly faux excitement, “Aren't they a little long?” concern paints his features as he holds onto her hands “Moms are longer” is all the argument she gives before running off to watch Ophelia get her nails painted bubblegum pink. 

-

The clock neared 9 pm as everyone sat gathered in the empty boathouse to watch Dustin's homemade movie screen, Star Wars: A New Hope playing in the projector as it shows on the white bedsheet hanging on the wall. Most of Hellfire spent the afternoon dragging down couches and armchairs from the basement, setting out snacks and drinks as well as multiple blankets and pillows to set up movienight. Pizza had been ordered and now you were comfortably snuggled up to the arm of a couch as Roxetted curled up in your lap, watching intently. Ophelia sat with the Harringtons barely paying any attention as they whispered to each other excitedly. 

Next to you sat Eddie who had Jeff and Tracy on his other side, all munching away on their slices of pizza, both Jeff and Eddie watching intently as you and Tracy giggled at their intense gazes despite them having seen the movie hundreds of times. From the other side of the room Robin waved a pack of cigarettes at you, a silent invitation for you to join her, you grinned and nodded before bowing your head down to whisper “Think you can sit with Dad for a little bit?” in Roxettes ear. She nodded and with her eyes never leaving the screen she shifted over, pizza slice hanging from her mouth while she plopped down in Eddie's lap. 

The scene was absolutely comical, Eddie automatically moving his plate out of the way and settling her in his lap while both of them never wavered in their watching the movie. You left both of them to awkwardly climb over people on the floor, whispering sorry’s until you got to the door. 

Robin handed you the packet of cigarettes and you lit one as you walked off the peer and onto the grass, sitting down next to her. “So Vickies becoming a nail tech” you kept your voice quiet, it seemed a shame to disturb it as silence fell over Muskegon, the only sound being the movie playing softly in the background. “Yeah, she's real excited, I’m proud of her” you smiled at the love Robin had for her girlfriend. “How’s it going with the ring?” when Robin had first announced that she was going to propose you, Nancy and Steve were all over the moon, squealing excitedly and talking nonstop about the wedding. 

“Picking it up on sunday next week, called today” she grinned “Yeah that's why I asked doofus” suddenly the door opened and you both turned to see Nancy making her way across the wood panelling making grabby hands as she got closer. 

-

The three of you sat chatting for a near 40 minutes until the door opened again, gaining the attention of all three of you, you stood up when you saw Eddie carrying Roxette, her arms flung over his shoulders as her head bobbed with each step. “Want me to take her?” you whispered once you got to them, you smoothed your hand over her curls which she had inherited from her father, “You sure?” he stood with his side to you, showing her peaceful face as she slept in his arms. “Yeah, go watch the movie” you whispered back. She stirred as he handed her over to you with a thanks, you waved a hand to the girls, telling them you'd be back in a few. 

Walking back with Roxette in your arms proved to be heavier with each step but eventually you made it down to the basement and placed her on the mattress next to Ophelias, making sure to be as quiet as possible as to not wake the other kids who had been unfortunate enough to miss the movie due to their age. Slipping her shoes off as well as her jean shorts and tucking her into bed you gave a kiss to her forehead. When you were certain she was asleep you tiptoed back out the room and up the stairs. 

-

Once the movie was over and most of the stuff from the boathouse was brought back inside you both tucked Ophelia to bed. “Ugh I forgot I have to shower” you groan once you step over the threshold to your bedroom walking straight to the bench across from you to pick up your toiletries and towel. “I gotta shower too but you go first I’ll just wait here” Eddie says as he sits down on the foot of the bed, “We can.. shower together if you want” you suggest as you make your way back to the door. 

Nah this was just too much, only a few days ago he wasn't even touching you and now you wanted to shower with him? Was he high? Was this all a dream? Was he gonna wake up tomorrow to find himself back on day one of this trip, disappointed because you hadn't wanted to do anything despite the change of scenery? 

“Hello?” you wave a hand in front of his face, “Huh what?” he shakes his head and looks up at you “I said we can shower together, if you want to?” 

“Hell yes” he stands up so quickly you think he might fall over, but instead he just rushes to snatch his towel up and tap your ass to get you out the door. “How are you already hard??” you whisper as he eagerly tears his shorts down and steps out of them, hard cock slapping his stomach before standing out proudly, “I’m getting to shower with my wife” he says with wide eyes as he pulls his shirt over his head, leaving him in nothing but a silver chain, a deep red pick with your name written in acrylic resting below his collarbone “You do realise shower means shower right? It's not a codeword for sex” you explain as you pull your thin corroded coffin t-shirt over your head. 

“Still, it's you, naked” he grins as you unclasp your bra, you roll your eyes playfully as he watches you like a child promised candy. “Well get in then” you gesture to the shower, pulling your bra off and letting it fall to the floor. He walks slowly, eyes never leaving your figure as you pull your skirt down. “Jesus Eddie, you've seen me naked like a million times” you laugh after he knocks his shins into the bathtub wall, he grins sheepishly as he steps over it. 

He shakes his head as if to force out all of his dirty thoughts before turning the shower on, the fact that Eden had just stepped out of the shower minutes before played in his favour. He stepped under the stream of warm water after checking the temperature with his hand, running his hair back and away from his face he soaks up the feeling of the water pattering against his skin. 

He turns instantly when he hears you step over the small wall and into the bath, not giving you a second to hang your toiletry bag up next to him before circling his arms around you, inevitably pressing his hard cock against the soft dough that is the middle of your stomach.

You reach behind him and fumble blindly until you manage to hook the bag onto one of the metal bars connecting to a shelf already full of wash products. When you pull your arm back you wrap it around his neck to join your hands behind him. 

Eddie hums happily and squeezes you tighter, when the hug stretches to 20 seconds long you pull away from him, “As much as I do like hugging you I did actually come in here to shower” he rolls his eyes and groans as he lets you move around him to stand in the firing range of the water. 

His hand stops you before you can wrap your fingers around the shampoo bottle, non-verbally telling you he would do it, you shrug and smile at him. You tip your head back slightly as he squirts a hefty amount of frosty gel into his hand, rubbing both together before smoothing them down the surface of your hair. 

You let an open mouthed hum escape your lips as the tips of his fingers begin massaging your scalp, you feel his hands twitch for a second at the sound before no doubt pushing through and continuing his work in your hair. 

You decide not to tease him by making the sound again, instead you stay quiet and enjoy the sweet and in some way, very much needed, moment between the two of you. It seems Eddie drags the time out of washing your hair because by the time his hands retract you’ve closed your eyes in a lull while a content daze creeps through you. 

You whisper a thanks as you turn around, you close your eyes and bring your arms up to run your fingers through your hair and rinse under the water. Not noticing as Eddie's eyes trail down your body. Soaking up every beautiful sight that he’s rewarded with, from your relaxed face, down your thick arms, soft skin pulled with the weight of gravity, to the litter of fading hickies running down your neck to your collarbones, further to your now slightly perkier tits, weight following your raised arms. Down to your soft stomach and hips, he leans back to examine you further, wispy hairs curling over your mound, plush squishy thighs to your calves. He always argued with you when you called them chicken legs and watching you now even strengthened his point that you were wrong. 

He snaps his eyes back to yours as you pull your head forward and open your eyes. This time you don’t reach for the next item in your routine, instead you turn around as Eddie pulls the conditioner from the plastic pocket. 

Once he’s gone through the motions of running his hands through your hair, smoothing product into the strands you motion for him to switch places. He stands expectantly before you as you sigh, “Babe I hate to break it to you but you're like 6 foot 3, you either gotta bend down or sit on your knees” you chuckle as you can feel him roll his eyes at you. “Mm, you want me on my knees, kinky” he grins at you from over his shoulder, bright teeth on show as he grins wider at your mimic of his reaction, you roll your eyes. 

The first thing he says as your fingers come into contact with his own scalp is “Ugh I’ve missed this” his feet slotted between yours after he folded himself down to his knees against the ceramic. “What having someone else wash your hair cuz’ you’re too lazy?” chuckling you work your fingers through his hair, making sure to get every square inch, partly to prolong the moment just like he had but also because you know damn well he is actually too lazy to wash his precious curls properly. You giggle as he nips at your thigh gently, “Shut up, I wash my hair” he grumbles, “You sure? Because there seems to be a lot of dandruff here” another nip to the thigh has you laughing again, the volume dampening quickly when you remember there are people on the other side of both walls. 

“Shut up” he laughs, for a long time that sound hadn't had any particular effect on you, but in this particular moment, you feel the formerly black, now neutral, vines colour in a bright shades of golden orange hues. Happiness flowing through you from your chest as his genuine, honest laugh plays like music to your ears. 

You let the gold take over you, all the way up to your mind as you rest content with Eddie's head in your hands for a few minutes. Both of you sulk at the all too soon retraction of your hands, after rinsing your hands you let them trail from his shoulders as he stands up, you smack his ass playfully before he turns to face you. Just as he opens his mouth to give a snarky remark you beat him to the punches, “How, how are you still hard? All I did was wash your hair!” you gesture your hands toward the near 8 inches which keeps the two of you apart, he shrugs happily as he washes the product out of his hair. “I’ll give you three guesses” he smirks down at you. 

In retaliation you spin around and back up into him, forcing him against the shower wall and in turn you under the water “Hey, wha-”, “Need to get the conditioner out” you shrug as you let the mixture of cream and water run down his front. “Not fair” he fakes a pout as he wraps his arms around you “Can you at least move?” without his hands ever leaving you, the two of you shuffle around and switch places. 

He’s trying so hard, he really is, but he can't stop himself from pressing up against you and slotting himself between the globes of your ass. Even though his dirty mind was being painstakingly presented to you he still wanted to respect your obvious hinting at no sex. But as he feels himself surrounded by your wet skin he can't help the moan that slips from the back of his throat. 

You sigh and turn in his hold once your hair is clean “Do you want me to suck your dick? Is that what this is?” there's a hint of annoyance painted across your features as he looks down at you “What? No! I just, I dunno’, babe you're naked, its extremely difficult to practise self restraint right now” you stare up at him expectantly “We don't have to do anything just let me feel you” the shrug he gives up doesn't portray any sort of casualness as his face pleads with you. 

“Fine” you grin and point a finger at him “But when you're actually on your knees, begging, I will be giving you an ‘I told you so’” he sticks his tongue out in retaliation with a “Try me” murmured through a smirk. “You really wanna go down that road?” you raise your eyebrows, feeling smug as Eddie makes a face of nonchalance “Alright, no sex and no touching and I’ll give you 20 bucks” you wait expectantly until Eddie pulls away from you, hand held out in offering “Heh deal” and you shake on it. 

“Now you just stand there and look pretty so I can get on with my shower” you hide a sneaky smirk as you turn and pull the body wash from the bag, face neutral as you turn again with a handful of soapy liquid. Eddie's smug face falls way too fast as he watches you transition from lathering it onto your arms to smoothing your hands over the swell of your tits. 

You grin evilly at him but it goes unbeknownst to him as his eyes are trained on the way your plump flesh moves rhythmically with your hands. “Giving me my 20 bucks yet?” you tease as you hold your tits up, bouncing them slightly against each other. Eddie shakes his head as if snapping himself out of his trance and manages to meet your gaze “Never” he whispers with narrowed eyes. You shrug and continue your way down your torso. 

You know you have him when you turn around, spreading your legs wide and bending down to work your way up your calves. The muffled squeak you hear from behind as Eddie is met by your pussy on full display furthers your knowledge of winning this little impromptu contest, but when you hear a sharp intake of breath and the sound of feet pattering once, twice, away from you, you begin to falter, maybe he’s stronger than you anticipated. 

You stand up annoyed and quickly spin around, met by Eddies guilty looking face and a hand ripping away from his dick you groan mildly “I said no touching, that includes yourself”, “I wasn't!” he quickly jumps to offence “You're a shit liar babe” you laugh, “Fine, you get your $20, now can I please touch you” he holds his hands together as he begs. “Hmm, well I am finished with my shower..” Eddie beams, “But I do need to brush my teeth” you pretend to wonder as his smile falters. 

“If you can wash yourself at the same time.. Fine” his smile shines brighter than the one before it “But you only have so much time, the waters already getting cold and I wanna’ go to bed warm” before you can even say anything else you're being flipped around and bent over by two strong hands at your hips and back. You only just manage to brace yourself on the wall before you feel the head of his cock pressing at your hole, the whine that rings throughout the room resembles one of a bratty teenager as he slips inside all the way to the hilt. 

As he arches his back in strain all you can feel is his hips against yours and his cock buried deep within your walls until he lets out a heavy breath above you and his forehead rests between your shoulder blades. “Did you.. Did you just cum?” you laugh breathlessly, “No” it's an annoyed grumble against your skin “Oh my god! You totally did!” you eyes widen as you twist your neck to find a wet mop of curls splayed across your skin “How?!” he shamefully admits that the scalp massage and press of your tits against the back of his head may have been a little too much for him, and that he may or may not have slipped up for a couple of minutes. 

You slap a hand to your mouth as you roar with laughter, still echoing within the four walls as Eddie slips out of you and you turn around, “Shame, I was looking forward to a good showerfuck” you tut but break out into a sympathetic grin as you realise he’s properly ashamed of himself, with a hand cupping his cheek you reassure him “Baby it's ok” when his face contorts into a pained one you tell him “Seriously baby it's ok, happens to the best of us” he rolls his eyes at you. 

You press a kiss to his lips and then to his forehead before you tell him to switch places with you so you can do the bodywash. His shame melts away as your hands slide over his inked skin, smooth fingers running over the anatomical angel, wings spreading far over his shoulder blades, its feet resting over a series of tattooed vertebra that runs down his own spine. 

-

After what must have been half an hour shower the both of you tiptoe across the floorboards in your towels, quickly changing into fresh underwear and wrap yourselves up with each other after you've dropped a t-shirt on to the floor next to your side of the bed for tomorrow morning. Just as any other night you’re back in his heavy arms, that alone would be enough to make the daze of sleep take over you but it seems it's not enough. You feel as Eddie drifts off into dreamland behind you, his breathing evens out into soft puffs of air and his arms loosen their tight grip around you. 

20 minutes after initially getting into bed you snap your eyes open, stifling a groan of annoyance as you pinch your eyes shut in frustration. The air in the room was humid and stifling, Eddie's arms suddenly felt like they were suffocating you despite them only resting gently around your waist, the comforter only adds to the pressure and within seconds you start to feel like you're being smothered. Technically you could try harder at falling asleep, you could push Eddie off you, kick the blankets away and crack a window but once your eyes focus on your leather handbag leaned up against the wall it's over for you. You slowly slip out of bed, extremely cautious of your husband's sleeping form surrounding you. You throw the shirt over your head and begin your search for the pack of cigarettes hidden at the bottom. 

The soft whine that leaves Eddies throat has your movements halting, bent over in a strain you slowly turn your head to find Eddie rolling onto his back, when it seems he's fallen back asleep you resume your desperate search, a relieved sigh whispers throughout the room as you finally find what you're looking for. When you open it you find that the usual AC/DC lighter shoved between the rolled up papers is gone, you roll your eyes. Before you get the chance to root through your bag further you catch a glimpse of Eddie's zippo in the jumbled mess that was the contents of his pockets poured onto his bedside table. 

Making an effort to be as quiet as possible you make your way around the bed, just as you level with his knees you stop dead in your tracks, another whine echoes in the room, this time frustrated as Eddie turns back on his side and blindly starts patting his hand around your vacant spot. In his sleep filled haze he seems to register your absence because his eyes snap open as his head forces back to examine the empty mattress. The sound of a floorboard creek makes him whip around to face you, he frowns. You can't help but smile as you examine his face, he’s cast in darkness but you can still make out the shape of his furrowed brows above half lidded eyes, predominantly black irises peeking through under his long lashes, his soft laugh lines, etching deeper with each year that passes, a tug of his full pink lips, pursing them as the corners pull down slightly. Your smile turns embarrassed as he sits up “What are you doing?” his voice is laced with sleep, a deep throaty husk as he presses a knuckle to his eyes. 

“Was just going for a smoke, go back to sleep” you whisper, arriving at your destination and pulling his lighter from a tangle of childish hair bobbles, loose change and a deteriorating pack of gum. “Mm mm” he shakes his head “I’ll come with you” before you get a chance to protest he's already pushing the comforter off of him and setting his feet to the floor with a groan. 

Without another word uttered into the silence of the night his hand finds yours and leads you out the door, quietly down the other end of the hall across from you and out onto the balcony. It seems the night air has a positive effect on the both of you, you immediately feel your hot skin cool down as the cold rushes to Eddie's own skin, waking him up. He adjusts his eyes and finds one lonely chair on the old wood, he pats his thigh once he's sat down, gesturing you over. 

You hold the small flame up to Eddie's awaiting cigarette perched between his lips, watching as the rusty colour of orange and red lights up within the tobacco. Eddie's arm wraps around you once again after you tossed both the carton and zippo onto the floor. The cool night breeze brushes against your legs while the scent of smoke, chia shampoo and conditioner, tangerine body wash, a fading old spice and redwood and a musk you could only describe as uniquely Eddie fills your senses. 

You allow yourself to soak up the moment, relaxed in Eddie's lap, a strong arm enveloping your waist, deep blues painting the sky, purely and simply at ease. “I think we should talk” his words break the comfortable silence, your neck stretches to look up at him, head resting on his shoulder “About what?” the softness of his voice eases any worry that most definitely could have bubbled up in your stomach if his tone had been any different when speaking those five words. 

“Sweetheart, I know you have a hard time telling me how you feel about things, but I think it's important you try. I had no idea what you were going through, I still don't. But I feel like it's something I should be made aware of, you know? We need to be able to tell each other things so that we’re on the same wavelength.” you turn your eyes up to the sky as you sigh at his words. 

This was going to be difficult. Throughout your whole childhood you had been told time and time again that showing any trace of feelings was a definite sign of weakness. Even the fact of registering your feelings as not only feelings but allowed, permitted, was something you were partly deeply uncomfortable with and something that was scarcely new to you. Untread territory. A deep breath reaches Eddie's ears as you prepare for the unpreventable fate. 

“She died” you barely manage a whisper as you confess to the incident which happened months ago. The words tasted sour on your tongue, bitter, you hadn't spoken those words to anyone, saying them now made you shudder. “What?” he's having trouble wrapping his head around what you've just said, “My mom.. she died, uh december 18th” both cigarettes left forgotten you find yourself tearing up. The stupid emotions showing your vulnerability only fuels anger, a bead of salty fluid drops down your cheek, you wipe it away in frustration. Why were you even crying? Crying about a mean old drug addict who had abused you all your life, verbally, physically, emotionally. Why were you shedding tears for the woman who kicked you out at 16 after losing your job at the gas station, the job that paid for the trailer you never bared to call a home, the job that paid the bills, the food, the dangerous toxins which she put into her body. 

The woman your own kids believed to have passed away in your early childhood, the woman who you insisted on shielding them from. The same woman who broke down every single part of you until she left you to fend for yourself, to build yourself back up, bit by bit, piece by piece, day by day. 

“She.. she died?” his hot breath fans across your cheek as he nuzzles his face to the side of yours “Why didn't you tell me?” his words are muffled as his lips ghost over your skin. For once in your life you feel yourself let go, if only a miniscule fraction of what normalcy is, you let yourself experience your feelings, with one single hiccup. “I don't know” the sadness in your voice makes his heart break, but still you refuse to let it tremble. “I just, I didn't know how to feel, what to think, I needed time to figure it out” your eyes flutter shut as you manoeuvre your face into the crook of his neck, stubbing your cigarette out on the wall behind him and dropping it to the floor. 

Eddie copies your movements and rests his cheek to the side of your head, he stays silent as he waits for you to continue, “I knew logistically people are sad when their parent dies, but it just made my head spin, I didn't feel sad, I couldn't, not for her.” your voice vibrates against his throat as you speak. 

Eddie knew the two largest reasons as to why you couldn't feel sad, she didn't deserve it, and you simply weren't able to access those emotions. You found some comfort in his awareness, had you been forced to explain everything in intimate detail you would only feel worse. “And the kids didn't know so I couldn't just go around moping so I guess I just… distracted myself?” he knew the reason as to why for that too, endless thoughts swirled around his head as he managed to come to the conclusion that you had been lost, you probably still were. So confused as to how or why you were feeling the way you did, refusing to address the issue head on and finding any way to cope. 

Your hours spent in silence -at home, at work, at any activity you could find and drag out the time with, at events, hanging with all your friends, dinners at Wayne’s- had closed you off, in the moment it may have worked but a nagging thought at the back of his mind told him it didn't. Not for you, not for him, not for the girls. So many thoughts threatened to make his head explode, and in the mix of it was roaring guilt. Guilt from not taking a second to ask how you were, guilt for not realising there was something deeper nestled below the surface, guilt for not only the idea he constantly convinced himself was untrue but actually accusing you of cheating, guilt for selfishly missing you in all ways possible and guilt for only focusing on that. 

“I’m so sorry” unlike yours his voice shook as he spoke, arms wrapping tighter around you in agony. “Why? You don't have to be sorry” he couldn't see the confused frown spread over your face, but it was there. You simply couldn't wrap your head around why a whole other human being was feeling sorry or even affected by your problems. “I-I didn't do anything, or-or say anything, you were clearly struggling and I never knew, I wasn’t there for you” his own water lines began to flood, just as you had he distracted himself, by running a hand up and down your arm. “I didn't do or say anything” you admit, “I should have told you, I just, I was worried, that you would have.. expectations from me, how I would feel, act. Not only that but I think there was just this gnawing thought that you would think there was something wrong, with me, if I didn't do the normal thing and grieve” his hand was now soothing up and down over your hair. 

“Baby, look at me” his hands pulled lightly at your shoulders, gesturing you to turn and straddle him, face to face. “She has never earned the right to your grief” his thumb swiped under your eye as you let out a sob and a hot searing tear rolled down, “She never did a single thing to earn even a glance from you” as your eyes closed tight he continued, “What you did was normal. It was normal for you, there's nothing wrong with not knowing how to go through some things in life, and there's nothing abnormal with trying to process it in your own way” your shoulders threatened to collapse against him but he held on softly to one as he cupped your cheek. “You just need to remember that I'm always here for you, you can tell me anything. I won't judge you, or expect anything from you.”

For the very first time, you actually sat down and accepted your feelings, you accepted them, talked about them and learned to understand them, all thanks to the one person you had shut yourself away from the most. For over an hour you talked, both showing and explaining the raw emotions you found within yourself. By the second hour you walked through the details of what had gone down and at the end you felt a weight lift from your chest as well as some understanding for yourself. A promise was made, to not only communicate with him but also to learn how to access and express what was going on in your head, in therapy. Something that initially seemed so frightening but was slowly dampened with another promise, that Eddie would come with you if you needed him. 

Your mother, or rather the woman who had birthed you but failed to raise you, had been forcefully put in rehab years ago. An expensive resort, you found yourself still keeping her afloat with your hard earned money as you sent in monthly payments. An old ‘friend’ had shown up and before the personnel had a chance to alert you to it, she had escaped. Run off with her friend to, what was probably her opinion, be free. Once some hours had passed they had tried calling you, too busy slaving away for your promotion at work you had missed every single one. When they finally got hold of you, the soft pitiful voice on the other end of the line explained to you how she had been found, collapsed only a yard from the abandoned house occupied by the homeless, with no pulse. 

It was bound to happen, but just because it was destiny that you would come from a broken home didn't mean you yourself had to be broken. An absent father who had bolted the second the pregnancy had been announced to him, and a mother who for 16 years had constantly reminded you of how unwelcome you were in her life. Even up till your thirties where she would filter in and out of your life unwanted. You had kept the secret from your friends and boyfriend for three months, living under the bridge by the docks with only the clothes on your back and a few newspapers you found. You had lied to your friends and explained that your mother had donated all your clothes as punishment for coming home after curfew, a curfew you didn't have and probably wouldn't have been cared about if you did. For 2 months and 3 weeks you lived off a duffle bag of Eddies band shirts and sweatpants. It was bearable, the life you had at the time, even with the thunder storms and hammering rain, but by peak december when the cold was at its worst you realised that wearing multiple layers wouldn't cut it and shamefully knocked on Eddie's door, asking for a place to stay. 

Wayne had become the father and mother you never had, and you would spend your entire lifetime trying to pay him back, but nothing could ever come close to the love he showered you with, the money he spent, the food, clothes, shelter he gave you. 

The time showed 1:26 am when you finally made it back to your room, the cold biting at your skin forgotten until the warm duvet swallowed you whole, a reminder of how extremely cold you were. Wrapped in Eddie's arms, cheek pressed to his chest, you soon fell asleep, no longer sad or gloomy, but tired and happy, every vine in your body glittering with fierce gold. “I love you” the soft whisper from below him made him realise that the words accompanied by your voice were strange to his ears. He hadn't realised it at the time but you had stopped saying those words to him in what must have been mid spring. Tears pricked at his eyes again as he beamed “I love you too” 

(A/N was thinking of leaving it here but I know we’re all horny fucks here so OBVIOUSLY I have to continue)

-

You awoke with a light, happy heart, and just like every other fucking morning, as the little spoon again. Instead of calling them in you pulled yourself out of bed and answered the knock at the door, wrapping your girls up in a warm hug before they had a chance to whiz past you to their clothes. It might have been that you were content with the duration of the hug but it was more probably the fact that both girls were wining and squirming trying to get away from you when they felt they'd been pressed together for too long that you broke apart. You chuckled as you let them go and climbed back into bed, Eddie was still fast asleep, it seemed the giggling voices of two happy little girls weren't enough to wake him from his slumber. 

Although he seemed not to be fully passed out when you shimmied back down the covers once the girls had left, because he hummed happily, and automatically wrapped around you in a warm embrace. After a while he fell back asleep, arms clutching you close to his chest in contentment, his nose buried in the scent of your hair. You began to grin when you felt something familiar poking at your behind, Eddie's morning wood was appearing just as the sun began to rise. Jitters built throughout your body at the sensation, you were no doubt used to waking up just like this, even during your rough patch, but for maybe the first time since the early stages of your relationship, it wasn't just funny and exciting but thrilling. The feeling of Eddie's slowly hardening cock pressing up against you sent tingles up your legs, awakening butterflies that situated in the bottom of your stomach. 

He must have been wavering between being half asleep and fully judging by the fact that he groaned loudly as you wiggled your hips to situate him between your ass cheeks. The groan spurred you on and you forced your hips against his, earning a tighter hug to hold you infinitely closer to him. Your grin widened when he let out a second groan as you forced yourself back again, one final time had his eyes fluttering open and his hand snaking up under your shirt to squeeze softly at your boob. “Morning” your voice was soft to his ears since it came out in a whisper. 

For the first morning in a while the deep raspy “Morning beautiful” had your thighs clenching. Maybe you should talk about your feelings if it made you feel this connected to Eddie and especially this desperate for him. “Love the sound of your voice in the mornings” you chose to push the feeling of spewing random and intimate -to you- thoughts, right down. Forcing them out of sight and allowing you to properly express yourself, even though it may have been an admittedly mild statement. The action, telling him exactly what you were thinking. “Mm you do?” he hummed behind you to which you nodded, hair brushing up and down against his nose. The grin you were fighting off made you once again feel like a teenager, talking to your crush… Holy shit were you flustered? 

“Maybe I should talk like this more often” he was slowly waking up now, slight hints of clarity lacing his voice as he stirred behind you, “You really should” your cheeks were heating up now, Jesus Christ you hadn't felt like this since you were an actual teenager, talking to the same man, at that time a boy. “Mm it doing it for you?” he hummed, despite the obvious comic tone in his words the sound sent fiery lightning straight through your body as you let out a stifled girly giggle “It really is”. 

You felt yourself swoon as his hips pressed against yours, a pleased hum followed from his lips as you took a deep breath to centre yourself. “Fuck, you don’t know how good this feels” had the ruckus downstairs from all the kids and newly awoken parents been closer the words would have fallen on deaf ears for it was all but a whisper, a mumble from soft plush lips grazing your scalp. All you could do in response was hum, the feeling of Eddie's thick fingers massaging the soft skin of your breast, catching your nipple between them and near searingly hot skin pressed flat against your back along with his throbbing cock grinding against you left you speechless. 

The tingles fluttering throughout your body were only growing more violent when Eddie let out a long groan of relief, the pent up frustration echoing through the room as strong arms held you even closer to him. Eventually, it got too much to bare, as soft whimpers began to escape your lips, matching up perfectly to the near obnoxious groans the man behind you was making, you slid your hand from under your cheek to slightly aggressively grab onto the hand massaging your boob, leading it down your front till his fingertips nudged the hem of your brazilians. 

Immediately he got the hint and carefully slunk his fingers under the offensive undergarment and soon enough callused fingers were running lazily up from your hole to your clit, collecting you slick and rubbing slow circles into the nub he since long ago had no trouble finding. A needy moan broke from your throat and you were quick to cover your mouth by turning your head and smooshing your bare face into the worn fabric of the pillow beneath you. Your now free hand slunk up behind you to grasp on firmly at the roots of Eddie's curls. His own display of arousal rang through the room before he followed your lead and buried his face further into your hair. 

“Shit, fuck, babe, need- need to be” his voice broke off before he had a chance to fully voice his request, your hand was already pulling at the hem of his boxers, prompting him to wriggle awkwardly while his hand was still attached to you. Within seconds your back was arched, your thigh was lifted into the air and your panties moved to the side as a small hand wrapped around his base, leading him to the opening of where you needed him most. The both of you synchronised in desperate whimpers as he sheathed inside you and bottomed out, once he was fully seated you took a deep breath to steady yourself before laying your leg back down.

The added pressure of your thighs squeezing together causing for a delightful sensation as your pussy pulsed around him. Not before long he was rocking into you, matching the slow rhythm of his fingers. 

This, this was utter and complete bliss. A lazy morning with your lover, early morning sun filtering through the thin flower curtains, the rambunctious sound of happy children only to be heard as white noise, heavy strained breaths pleasing your ears, warm skin on warm skin, wrapped up in soft colourful sheets with Eddie slowly thrusting in to you. Yeah this was the best fucking feeling. 

Soon enough the faint thuds against the very depths of your pussy became repetitive, each pause of Eddie pulling back and thrusting back in shorter when his hips sped up. With each passing second you realised that the thickness of the plush pillow wasn't enough to muffle your moans, the lone hand resting under your cheek came up to plaster over your mouth, forcing it hard against the chubbiness of your cheeks. Once again Eddie was on the same page as you, with his mind and body quickly awakening, the arm squished between the mattress and your body ripped quickly out from under you, a clenched fist coming up to his lips as he bit down hard onto the skin. 

Each thrust was growing faster and faster, deeper and deeper, harder and harder, and in turn the slow circles on your clit, matching the pace of his hips with the added pressure increasing. “Fuck babe, roll over” with the help of his body forcing you in the right direction you rolled onto your stomach, a frustrated whine leaving your lips at the loss of Eddies fingers harshly pressing into your clit before you had the chance to cover your mouth again. 

Your whine was left discarded as Eddie manoeuvred himself on top of you, his thighs straddling the backs of yours, his left hand slipping under your armpit and lacing his fingers with your own right hand. Before you knew it, plush lips were kissing repeatedly up and down your right shoulder and up the side of your neck. Just as he began thrusting again his free hand planted a deathgrip on your hip, callused tips of his fingers pressing harshly into your skin, no doubt leaving a bruise. 

Your left hand found its place splayed across your mouth once again just as the thrusts became hard and evenly spaced. “Fuck feel so good baby, fuckin’ -shit” his breath fanned against your ear, a mewl from the back of your throat only spurring him on. “Fuckin’ love these curves, you’re so sexy” you had long since passed the point where you’d flush with embarrassment at the compliments showered upon you about your body, instead his words had the intended effect, muffled moans became much less muffled, the volume breaking through the barrier of your hand. “Fuck princess you gotta be quiet, think you can do that for me?” you most definitely couldn't, but you sure as hell would try. The deep husky voice whispering against you skin as he kissed it, knuckles gripping tightly onto your own, hand holding firmly onto the meat of your hip and his dick thundering in and out of you overtook all senses, all you wanted to do right now was worship this man who made you feel so Mother. Fucking. Good. So yes, you sure as fucking hell would try. 

“Good girl” you could feel the smug smirk against the slope of your neck at your eager nod, could hear it in his voice, knew he was just filling up with pride at the feeling of your whole body tensing with the force of not letting out the excruciatingly loud moan you were so desperate to set free. “So good for me, takin’ me -fuck- so well, oh fuck holy shit” despite how badly he wanted to shower you in endless praise he couldn’t help the endless string of swares as he felt your pussy clamp down around him at his words. 

“Fuck fuck fuck, oh shit, oh my fucking god” his neck went slack as his forehead landed on your shoulder with a thud, hips working faster than ever at the feeling of your pulsing around him, intensified with the hard incessant squeeze. You couldn't pass it up, you just couldn't, you knew exactly what to do to get him riled up, despite his whole body working in overdrive you wanted, no, needed to know what would happen if he was pushed just a little further towards his limits. Throughout heavy pants once your hand was lifted only slightly from your lips you managed to get out the words “Seems hmmghf seems you’re enjoying this more than me right now” a smirk slowly spread across your lips. 

“You sure about that sweetheart?” his voice was strained as he spoke and it only made the tingling between your thighs strengthen. “Yeah” you breathed, “I don't know about you, but with time things get… old”

“Old huh?”

“Boring” with every ounce of power you had in your body you managed to even your voice in a smooth breath, unnamused and bored. “You can't please me anymore. It's the same old dance every time. It gets boring”

“Oh I can't please you anymore?”

“Not in the slightest. Judging by this maybe I should go find another man, someone who knows what he’s doing. Someone new, exciting, better.” before your grin had a chance to widen at his “Oh you fucking-” a strong hand gripped tightly onto your roots and you were yanked up to a sitting position. 

He pulled the flimsy t-shirt your thrown on earlier over your head before the hand holding yours found your hip in no time, leaving identical bruising on your other hip while the tension in your scalp quickly soothed as his other hand no longer gentle forced itself under your panties, diving straight for your clit to circle it fast and harsh. “Oh yeah? That's how we're gonna do this?” with the upper hand, amusement sounded in his voice between the heavy pants he was releasing. But the fact that both your legs were pressed together betweens his was not working in his favour. He wanted so badly to just let loose and scream at the feeling of your thighs tightening you around him but he was trying his hardest never to let the pants transition into deep groans or even loud moans. As he waited for your answer his hand smoothed up your side to plant a firm grasp on your left boob, “Y-yeah” how it was even possible you were even more worked up than he was, your pants faster and louder, threatening to echo deafeningly throughout the room and reach unexpecting and innocent ears. 

Just knowing there were people around who could hear you if you dared raise your voice, who could catch you made it all the more exhilarating. 

Your head lolled onto his shoulder with your eyes closed and mouth open in a mute scream as your body moved up and down with each push of his hips, in sync with the low squeaks of the old bed frame. “Yeah you wanna be in charge? Go ahead sweetheart” the smug and evil laugh vibrated through his chest at the sound of your pathetic whine in protest “You sure?” the mocking tone only made you squeeze harder around him. The squeaking increased as Eddie breathed, “Fuck” had it not been for the fact that you were almost completely silent you wouldn’t have heard it, but you did and it flipped a switch inside you. Even though you were clearly the whining mess at the hands of your husband, you did in fact have the upper hand despite his insistence that you didn't. 

It had most definitely been a while, but you decided you most definitely wanted to push him to his limits, you wanted to see him angry. With some extreme power you didn't know you withheld you managed to clear your head from all the sensations and purely focus on speaking, knowing you would be rewarded by it soon enough. “You act so tough” the near clear tone of your words caught him off guard, “You give off this idea that you're all big and strong. But you're all bark. No bite” you slowly opened your eyes to watch him out of the corner of them, “What did you just say to me?” fury began to swim in his eyes as his jaw twitched with the tightness of the grit of his teeth. 

“You heard me.” a loud exhale managed to escape your lips but you forced yourself to reel back in your head and stay focused on your mission, “Everybody thinks you're this mean, inked up, scary metalhead who could crush anyone into a pulp within the matter of seconds, but on the contrary you're just a mushy wuss who plays dress up, watches cartoons and likes baking every sunday with his wife” ok maybe the jab at him playing princesses with the kids might have been a little harsh, but it was no doubt working. 

For a moment, it left him speechless. His hips were still working furiously but his grip on your chest slackened. Even before the dry spell it was on rare occasions where you were this mean, this assertive. It threw him right off course.

He managed to regain his mental footing however, “Who the fuck do you think you are right now?” the grin spreading on your delicate features only fueled his anger, “I’m the woman whose body you've worshipped and will continue to worship until the day you die. I’m the woman, the only woman who can get you on your knees, begging, whining for you to touch me” hmm, might have been the wrong direction, judging by the fact that he too was now grinning. The squeaking only increasing with each passing second.

Dammit, you had to rethink your tactics. His hand found your hip again as he watched your tits bounce with amusement. Before you had the chance to even mull over how to play this next his words cut you off, “I know you like to think you're the one who calls the shots sweethea-” “Shut up” he frowns at you as he instantly shuts his mouth in sheer shock. “I am the one who calls the shots, just the other day you were whining and whimpering like a pathetic little baby and I hadn't even touched you” now that seemed to be working. His confused frown shifted into one of anger again, “And I don't think I even need to remind you how you got all hard and needy from just the prospect of getting to see me naked, let alone shower with me”

It was definitely working when an angry twitch of his lips graced your presence, each word blowing oxygen into the bottom of the slow burning fire rumbling in his stomach. “I don't think I need to remind you this either, but I will” you sat up now, his cock still working its way in and out of you, still proving how desperate he was, twisting your neck to face him you forced a sneer “-you came within two seconds of slipping inside me” hot fury glared at you from once almond brown soft eyes, now black with a stare unwavering. “Pathetic” you landed the final punch with a scoff. 

“Get off me” the hands once gripping you with need and desperation now held onto you with pure rage, manhandling you to slip off him and almost collapsing onto the ground. Shit, did you take it too far? Did you read the signs wrong? Was he actually not into it? Worry glossed your eyes over as you watched him stand up. “I’m sor-” you tried to apologise as you found your balance “Shut. The. Fuck. Up” without warning he was in front of you, pushing you at your shoulders to bounce onto the bed. With harsh movements he brought you to the edge of the bed, forcing your thighs up. 

He looked you dead in the eye as he said the words “Not so tough now are we?” and then he broke into a wide smug smirk, soaking up every inch of your shocked face. “Wha..?” you breathed, a breath that quickly turned into an even more shocked, gasp. Without any caution or warning whatsoever he ripped the soft, expensive polyester lace that lay delicately over your stomach. Within a second he ripped the other side, his fingers finding the discarded -now backpiece- easily, pulling it out from under you and tossing it towards his nightstand. 

“Those were expensive!” you chastised him but all he did was smirk even wider. Despite his previous manhandling and legit throwing you around the touch of the tip of his cock running through your folds was soft, gentle. The sensation made you shiver as you felt it brush over your clit before returning back down again and repeating the process as he spoke. “That's the thing sweetheart, you act like a brat and you get treated like one” his words were laced with malice before the loud moan you let out had Eddies eyes shifting to the door, just out of view of his peripheral before zoning back in on you. Watching smugly at the once again evident shock on your face after he had just pushed himself into the hilt. The head of his cock brushing dangerously at your cervix from the force he was putting at his hips to get as deep as possible. 

The tut he let out at your reaction only made anger bubble up within yourself too, “Tsk tsk, thought you could be quiet” this time your sneer was 100% real, “Not when you just force yourself inside me with no fucking warning” your backtalk only made him more angry. He retaliated with another hard snap of his hips against you, this time you were ready, biting so hard into your bottom lip you were sure you would soon enough be drawing blood but it didn't matter, he wasn't going to win, maybe before but not now. 

His knees were beginning to ache from the awkward bend he was in to reach you on the bed, being tall seemed it didn't always come with its perks but- “Wanna see your face when you cum for me. See you fall apart for the only man who can make you beg and whine, like a pathetic. Little. Baby.” He threw your words right back in your face just before he began a furious pace of his hips, same if not more furious than when had last been inside you a minute ago. You thanked whoever made that stupid old bed for it at least not squeaking when moved the other way. 

His cock stretching you out at the new angle, the head of his cock hitting that stupid ‘danger zone’ was now sending you careening towards a fast and undoubtedly strong orgasm. Damn him. Not only that but you found as you bit down harder you did in fact manage to draw blood. “Yeah that's it” his smirk was still shining brightly on his soft and once kind features. The right hand that had been situated on your hip moved up to grab onto your tit once again while he watched the other one bouncing up and down. If the sound of the rest of the house had registered to him before it definitely wasn't now. Now all he could focus on was the way every part of your body bounced with each thrust, had it been under any other circumstance he most definitely would have praised you endlessly on how he loved the bounce of your tits, your soft stomach, your thighs, but right now it didn't even cross his mind to voice his opinions on it. The fiery anger grew more threatening at your next words “Piece of shit” you gritted out, the metallic taste of your blood sour in your mouth “Fucking pervert, bet you just love watching me like this, at your mercy or whatever” you scoffed, “Is it giving you your ego boost?” 

The hard slap landed at your cheek had you gasping but not regretting your words, no, far from it. This was exactly what you wanted, you had a feeling treating and being treated rough was something very much needed for the both of you. All sorts of built up feelings being released in a strange form of love rather than distance or petty arguments. This was much better, not only in the absolutely earth shattering way his cock was pistoning into you and every other sensation of this moment but the fact that it could be channelled into complete euphoria for the both of you and not hurt feelings. 

Strong fingers wrapped around your throat as he responded “Such a fucking slut, let anyone else do this to you? ‘Cause you seem to be taking this very easy” you rolled your eyes at him “Obviously not. Jesus christ I really regret marrying someone so fucking dense” pressure was added to your throat as another hand left your hip, fingers splayed over the soft pudge of your stomach as his thumb connected to your clit. 

If there had been any slight worry that he might actually be angry it would have dissipated the second his skin came in contact with your own slick one. “Hah! No you don't. You and I both know no one could treat you this good” he began to sense the loss of air you were experiencing and drew his hand up to your face, fingers resting at the back of your throat while his thumb sat just in front of your ear. “Drop anything to be at your aid, treat you like a goddamn goddess. No one could ever love you like I do.”

And there it was, love. His anger was beginning to melt, he’d gotten everything out and now all he could look at you with was adoration. “No one could ever love me like you do” you confirmed, a soft smile only hinting at your lips as you stared up at him. In less than a second his hand below your navel disappeared and was found slinking under your back, lowering himself down to capture your lips in a deep passionate kiss.  One hand circled under his arm to grasp onto his shoulder blade as the other ran through his hair. Multiple long kisses venturing between soft and hard were shared as well as breathy I love yous’s before you whispered a breathless and whiny “I’m gonna cum” Eddie breathed a heavy sigh of relief “Oh thank god” and soon enough the orgasm you had been teetering over the edge of for a long time came crashing down on you, biting into Eddies shoulder to suppress a loud moan as he led one final thrust before hot spurts of cum painted your walls.

[women-throughout-history]

Sarah Baartman

Sarah Baartman's tragic story is a heartbreaking narrative of exploitation, racism, and the dehumanisation of an African woman in the early 19th century. Born in South Africa's Eastern Cape in 1789, Baartman faced a life marked by hardship and loss. Orphaned at a young age, she entered domestic service in Cape Town after her partner was murdered, and their child died.

In 1810, under questionable circumstances, Baartman signed a contract with British ship surgeon William Dunlop and entrepreneur Hendrik Cesars, agreeing to travel to England to participate in shows. Her distinctive physical features, characterised by extremely protuberant buttocks due to steatopygia, made her a spectacle in London's Piccadilly Circus, where she was exhibited in skin-tight, flesh-coloured clothing adorned with beads and feathers. The fascination with her large buttocks reflected the prevailing fashion of the time, but Baartman's public display in so-called "freak shows" also highlighted the darker undercurrents of racism and colonial exploitation.

Baartman faced a tumultuous life in Europe, performing on stage, enduring private demonstrations, and facing questions about whether she willingly participated or was coerced. The British Empire had abolished the slave trade in 1807, but Baartman's treatment raised ethical concerns, leading to a court case against her employers, although they were not convicted.

Moving to Paris in 1814, Baartman continued her exhibitions under the nickname "Hottentot Venus." She faced further exploitation, possibly engaging in prostitution, and ultimately succumbed to illness, dying at the age of 26 in 1815. The postmortem exploitation continued as Georges Cuvier, a naturalist, dissected her body, preserving her skeleton, brain, and genitals. These remains were exhibited in Paris's Museum of Man until 1974, a grotesque testament to the objectification of Baartman.

The journey of Sarah Baartman's remains back to her homeland was a protracted one. Finally, in 2002, after years of advocacy and efforts, her skeleton, brain, and genitals were repatriated and laid to rest in the Gamtoos River Valley, where she was born. Baartman's story remains a symbol of the intersection of racism, sexism, slavery, and colonialism, prompting debates and discussions about the historical exploitation and the ongoing fight against injustice.

[ceiling-karasu]

Other Countries in the AUs: Part Two, Plus OCs

Chambelli Koh (Flower Hill, Urdu)

(Hyena AU, mostly)

Background:

A nation in Africa, with a large population of Urdu speakers, explores the world, and forms an alliance with Chaand Hadia, as they are also Urdu speakers with some of the same values. To the left of Chaand Hadia, a colony of African Spotted Hyenas is formed to allow for easier trading.

But the country the hyenas came from is now defunct (joined up with another country peacefully), as suggested by the flag above, granting independence to the colony, which expanded into its own country as more hyenas join.

The Weasels took over the coastlines of Chambelli Koh with the help of the Wolf Unit, establishing a few bases there, but found a lack of workers they could intimidate into working the fish farms. The Wolf Unit then took over several villages, forcing the larger hyenas and other residents into working as troops for the unit, assuming that they are as blood thirsty as them, with the promise that they will not go after 'weak prey' like Flower Hill. The central government is playing the long game in allowing this to happen. After all, it is only a few villages on the coast, and discretely sabotaging the weasels and wolves will result in victory in the long run. Besides, the hyena soldiers will revolt, eventually, and no one will be able to stop them.

I have the idea that Nurse Eomin from her AU will have been conscripted from the coastline when she was visiting family. The Weasel Unit has no idea she is actually a resident of Flower Hill, just as they have no idea that the hyenas have an incredibly strong bond with the hedgehogs to the point of a few romances.

Location and Geography: Shares a border with Chaand Hadia. Mostly fertile farmland surrounded by mountains, but has a rich coastline of fish.

Government: Stratocracy, although local villages may have their own rules. Central government usually, but coastlines are controlled by the weasels

Economy: Mostly just an agricultural and mining society. They trade minerals and weapons to Flower Hill in exchange for silk, and to Chaand Hadia in exchange for paints and dyes.

Demographics: Much of the country is striped and spotted hyenas. Other species include Swinhoe's striped squirrel, three striped ground squirrels, red squirrels, deer, ermines, pigs, sheep, goats, and monkeys.

Culture: Peaceful, but pragmatic and can switch to warlike. Dark humor with loud laughter is a staple of the populace, but the art scene is booming.

Foreign Relations: Mostly Isolated for now, as most creatures are scared of them, and they are a relatively new nation. They are also far louder and m ore brash than everyone else.

Relation to Flower Hill: Flower Hill was concerned by these massive newcomers, so they invited the hyenas to engage in diplomatic discussions. It was discovered that both countries are called 'Flower Hill,' in their own languages, completely by accident, breaking the tension. The hyenas were impressed and thrilled that the hedgehogs were not at all terrified of them and happily formed peace treaties

Traditional Clothing Style (When not in Military attire): Hanbok, shirts, blouses, large robes, and pants, elaborate beaded necklaces.

Hyena OCs

It's not going to be a serious or long AU, once I get to it. I might combine it with the Nope AU and create a series of stories involving Chambelli Koh and Flower Hill. Otherwise they will be mentioned as existing in the AU, maybe in passing, but they won't be big players in The Rod That Blocks the Lightning, if at all.

Really, the name for this one will probably be One Mind All the Time. The hyenas are super intimidating and powerful, but if they are not in a fight, then they are big friendly goofballs who share one brain cell. But still smart, in the way they can plan for a battle, as well as subtly indicate to Flower Hill that they are being coerced.

Honestly, I could set the location of the prison for the Kidnapped Scientist AU somewhere around in this country, perhaps. Or at least near one of their borders.

Jindo Dog Island

This isn't made up, I just straight up took an actual island around Korea. It was supposed to be a one off gag for an inconsequential chapter, but afterwards I had ideas!

Location and Geography: Down near the Southern part of the Weasel Territory, but not part of it. Island nation with lots of fertile farmland and mixed with birch trees.

Government: Imperialistic, yet willing to trade with other countries.

Economy: Large soju exports, necessitating large wheat and rice fields, as well as a large variety of fruits and vegetables for taste. They also have a large export of xylitol made form imported birch trees, although their uses for it remain mysterious, as it is not used in the soju. Sugar, fruits, silk, and vegetables are large imports.

Demographics: Jindo dogs, pigs, deer, mice

Culture: farmers, loving the peaceful life, paintings, but everyone is conscripted for a short period of time when they become adults, and are very reserved to outsiders. They have never been successfully invaded, but young males of important families are expected to enrich themselves with travel to foreign countries so they can better run the family and the nation, so the country is not completely shut off and behind the times.

Foreign Relations: Open to trade, but due to being an island nation, they have a massive imperial fleet of a highly trained navy. This is also how they are able to trade soju safely despite being so close the weasel territory, in addition to the Myeongnyang Strait, which provides heavy protection to the islands. Stories abound of assassins from the country poisoning enemies with mysterious powders, but the diplomats assure that those are simply rumors. It is only a coincidence that enemies who tried to invade their country, or seriously talked about invading tend to wind up mysteriously dead or in comas.

Relation to Flower Hill: Flower Hill gives them wood and silk, and they trade with exquisite soju. Flower Hill has been sure to treat visitors from there very well for generations, in order to secure alliances.

Traditional Clothing Style: Loose clothes, pants, dresses. Higher classes wear robes, everyone has armor they can use.

OC Character: Jinro the Jindo Dog

Gender: Male

Country and Alliance: Jindo Dog Island

Attire: Western clothes

Skills: Cooking, soju production

Job: drifter, cook

Backstory: He and his twin, Hite, were born to the nation's largest soju production factory in the kingdom. On a trip, he was conscripted by the Weasel Unit as a cook. He escapes with a group of friends he makes in the barracks. Now, as per tradition for the family, he wanders to earth searching for new food and soju recipes.

Just a funny guy I'm going to have wander in and out of stories.

Wolf Country

I don't really have a whole lot of ideas on this right now that I have not spoken of in my previous post. To be honest, I don't think the actual country will feature too much, if at all, since the action is around Flower Hill and other nations nearby.

But, I'm guessing the wolves represent America, and the alligators/crocodiles are Mexico that has been occupied by the Wolf Unit. I'm still working on personalities and such for this group, but I'm guessing they are very strong, and see the smaller animals as weak and beneath them.

I want to call this one Steven or Miguel.

I still say the alligators/crocs are good for underwater reconnaissance in the absence of the underground study data, Dr. Dudeoji, or his assistant, Bamsaegi. Disarming mines Flower Hill has planted in the water is also probably a good use for them. They are, however, cold blooded, and this comes with its own problems when doing their jobs.

It is possible that the alligators/crocs may want to take over Flower Hill for themselves, but they would want to get out from under the thumb of the Wolf Unit first.

[reasoningdaily]

Neo-Griot

Kalamu ya Salaam's information blog

HISTORY: Indians, Slaves, and Mass Murder: The Hidden History

Indians, Slaves, and

Mass Murder:

The Hidden History

by Peter Nabokov

The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America by Andrés Reséndez Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 431 pp., $30.00

 

An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe, 1846–1873 by Benjamin Madley Yale University Press, 692 pp., $38.00

Carl Lumholtz: Tarahumara Woman Being Weighed, Barranca de San Carlos (Sinforosa), Chihuahua, 1892; from Among Unknown Tribes: Rediscovering the Photographs of Explorer Carl Lumholtz. The book includes essays by Bill Broyles, Ann Christine Eek, and others, and is published by the University of Texas Press.

1.

The European market in African slaves, which opened with a cargo of Mauritian blacks unloaded in Portugal in 1441, and the explorer Christopher Columbus, born in Genoa ten years later, were closely linked. The ensuing Age of Discovery, with its expansions of empires and exploitations of New World natural resources, was accompanied by the seizure and forced labor of human beings, starting with Native Americans.

Appraising that commercial opportunity came naturally to an entrepreneur like Columbus, as did his sponsors’ pressure on him to find precious metals and his religion’s contradictory concerns both to protect and convert heathens. On the day after Columbus landed in 1492 on an island in the present-day Bahamas and saw its Taíno islanders, he wrote that “with fifty men they could all be subjected and made to do all that one wished.” Soon the African trade was changing life in Spain; within another hundred years most urban families owned one or more black servants, over 7 percent of Seville was black, and a new social grouping of mixed-race mulattos joined the lower rungs of a color-coded social ladder.

Columbus liked the “affectionate and without malice” Arawakan-speaking Taíno natives. He found the men tall, handsome, and good farmers, the women comely, near naked, and apparently available. In exchange for glass beads, brass hawk bells, and silly red caps, the seamen received cotton thread, parrots, and food from native gardens. Fresh fish and fruits were abundant. Glints in the ornaments worn by natives promised gold, and they presumably knew where to find more. Aside from one flare-up, there were no serious hostilities. Columbus returned to Barcelona with six Taíno natives who were paraded as curiosities, not chattel, before King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella.

The following year, Columbus led seventeen ships that dropped 1,500 prospective settlers on Caribbean beaches. As they stayed on, relations with local Indians degenerated. What was soon imposed was “the other slavery” that the University of California, Davis, historian Andrés Reséndez discusses in his synthesis of the last half-century of scholarship on American Indian enslavement. First came the demand for miners to dig for gold. The easy-going Taínos were transformed into gold-panners working under Spanish overseers.

The Spaniards also exploited the forms of human bondage that already existed on the islands. The Caribs of the Lesser Antilles, a more aggressive tribe, regularly raided the Taínos, allegedly eating the men but keeping the women and children as retainers. A similar discrimination based on age and gender would prevail throughout the next four centuries of Indian-on-Indian servitude. As Bonnie Martin and James Brooks put it in their anthology, Linking the Histories of Slavery: North America and Its Borderlands:

North America was a vast, pulsing map of trading, raiding, and resettling. Whether the systems were pre- or postcontact indigenous, European colonial, or US national, they grew into complex cultural matrices in which the economic wealth and social power created using slavery proved indivisible. Indigenous and Euro-American slave systems evolved and innovated in response to each other.*

Taínos who resisted the Spanish were set upon by dogs, disemboweled by swords, burned at stakes, trampled by horses—atrocities “to which no chronicle could ever do justice,” wrote Friar Bartolomé de las Casas, a crusader for Indian rights, in 1542. Against the Caribs the Spaniards had a tougher time, fighting pitched battles but capturing hundreds of slaves as well. Columbus sailed home from his second voyage with over a thousand captives bound for slave auctions in Cádiz (many died en route, their bodies tossed overboard). He envisioned a future market for New World gold, spices, cotton, and “as many slaves as Their Majesties order to make, from among those who are idolators,” whose sales might underwrite subsequent expeditions.

Thus did the discoverer of the New World become its first transatlantic human trafficker—a sideline pursued by most New World conquistadors until, in the mid-seventeenth century, Spain officially opposed slavery. And Columbus’s vision of a “reverse middle passage” crumbled when Spanish customers preferred African domestics. Indians were more expensive to acquire, insufficiently docile, harder to train, unreliable over the years, and susceptible to homesickness, seasickness, and European diseases. Other obstacles included misgivings by the church and royal authorities, which may explain Columbus’s emphasis on “idolators” like the Caribs, whose status as “enemies” and cannibals made them more legally eligible for enslavement.

Indians suffered from overwork in the gold beds, as well as foreign pathogens against which they had no antibodies, and from famine as a result of overhunting and underfarming. Within two generations the native Caribbean population faced a “cataclysmic decline.” On the island of Hispaniola alone, of its estimated 300,000 indigenous population, only 11,000 Taínos remained alive by 1517. Within ten more years, six hundred or so villages were empty.

But even as the Caribbean was ethnically cleansed of its original inhabitants, a case of bad conscience struck Iberia. It had its origins in the ambivalence of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella over how to treat Indians. In the spring of 1495, only four days after the royals advised their bishop in charge of foreign affairs that slaves “would be more easily sold in Andalusia than in other parts,” they ordered a halt to all human enslavement until the church informed them “whether we can sell them or not.” Outrage was more overt in the polemics of Las Casas, who had emigrated to the islands in 1502. He had owned slaves and then renounced the practice in 1515. After taking his vows as a Dominican priest, he helped to push the antislavery New Laws of the Indies through the Spanish legal system in 1542.

Slaving interests used a succession of verbal strategies for justifying and retaining unfree Indian labor. As early as 1503 tribes designated as “cannibals” became fair game, as were Indian prisoners seized in “just wars.” Hereafter labeled esclavos de guerra (war slaves), their cheeks bore a branded “G.” Automatic servitude also awaited any hapless Indians, known as esclavos de rescate (ransomed slaves), whom Spanish slavers had freed from other Indians who had already enslaved them; the letter “R” was seared into their faces.

In 1502 Hispanola’s new governor, Nicolás de Ovando, made use of an old feudal practice for ensuring control over workers’ bodies. To retain native miners but check rampant cruelty, Ovando bestowed on prominent colonizers land grants (encomiendas) that included rights to tribute and labor from Indians already residing there. Although still vassals, they remained nominally free from “ownership.” They could reside in their own villages, were theoretically protected from sexual predation and secondary selling, and were supposed to receive religious instruction and token compensation of a gold peso a year—benefits that were often ignored. Over the next two centuries the encomienda system and other local forms of unfree labor were used to create a virtually enslaved Indian workforce throughout Mexico, Florida, the American Southwest, down the South American coast, and over to the Philippines.

The story of Native American enslavement told by Reséndez becomes confused by the convoluted interplay of indigenous and imported systems of human servitude. Despite his claim of uncovering “the other slavery,” when speaking of the forms of bondage imposed on Indians he fails to acknowledge that there was no monolithic institution akin to the “peculiar” transatlantic one that would become identified with the American South, which imported Africans auctioned as commodities. Even the distinction some scholars draw between such “slave societies” and “societies with slaves” (depending on whether slave labor was essential or not to the general economy) only partially applies to the highly complex, deeply local situations of enslaved American Indians. For these blended a dizzying variety of customary practices with colonial systems for maintaining a compulsory native workforce. If Reséndez is claiming to encompass the full tragedy of Indian slavery “across North America,” he does not distinguish among the different colonial systems of Indian servitude—enabled by Indian allies of the colonizers—that existed under English, French, and Dutch regimes.

During the seventeenth century, as some Spaniards continued to raise the question of the morality of slavery, silver mines opened in northern Mexico, and the demand for Indian manpower increased. This boom would require more workers than the Caribbean gold fields and last far longer. Now the physical effort turned from surface panning or shallow trenching to sinking shafts hundreds of feet into the ground. More profitable than gold, silver was also more grueling to extract. Miners dug, loaded, and hauled rocks in near darkness for days at a time. Around present-day Zacatecas, entire mountains were made of the gray-black ore.

To meet the growing labor demand, Spanish and Indian slaving expanded out of the American Southwest, sending Pueblo and Comanche slaves to the mines, and seizing slaves from the defiant Chichimec of northern Mexico during particularly violent campaigns between the 1540s and the 1580s. From the beginning of the sixteenth century to the first decade of the nineteenth, twelve times as much silver was extracted from over four hundred mines scattered throughout Mexico as was gold during the entire California Gold Rush.

At Parral, a silver-mining center in southern Chihuahua and in 1640 the largest town north of the Tropic of Cancer, over seven thousand workers descended into the shafts every day—most of them enslaved natives from as far off as New Mexico, which soon became “little more than a supply center for Parral.” After the state-directed system for forcibly drafting Indian labor for the Latin American silver mines, known as the mita, was instituted in 1573, it remained in operation for 250 years and drew an average of ten thousand Indians a year from over two hundred indigenous communities.

As Reséndez shifts his narrative to the Mexican mainland, however, one is prompted to ask another question of an author who claims to have “uncovered” the panoramic range of Indian slavery. Shouldn’t we know more of the history of those Indian-on-Indian slavery systems that Columbus witnessed and that became essential for delivering workers to Mexican mines, New Mexican households, or their own native villages? Throughout the pre-Columbian Americas, underage and female captives from intertribal warfare were routinely turned into domestic workers who performed menial tasks. Through recapture or ransom payment some were repatriated, while many remained indentured their entire lives. But a number were absorbed into their host settlement through forms of fictive kinship, such as ceremonial adoption or most commonly through intermarriage.

Among the eleventh-century mound-building Indian cultures of the Mississippi Bottoms, such war prisoners made up a serf-like underclass. This civilization collapsed in the thirteenth century and the succeeding tribes we know as Choctaw, Cherokee, Creek, and others perpetuated the practice of serfdom; Cherokee war parties added to each town’s stock of atsi nahsa’i, or “one who is owned.” The custom continued across indigenous America, with child-bearing women and prepubescent males generally preferred. Their husbands and fathers were more commonly killed. Reséndez hardly mentions the subsequent participation of those same tribes in the white man’s race-based “peculiar institution.” They bought and sold African-American slaves to work their Indian-owned plantations. Once the Civil War broke out there was a painfully divisive splitting of southern Indian nations into Confederate and Union allies.

As with Carib predation upon the Taíno, it was not uncommon for stronger tribes to focus on perennial victims. In the Southeast, the Chickasaw regularly took slaves from the Choctaw; in the Great Basin, the Utes stole women and children from the Paiute (and then traded them to Mormon households that were happy to pay for them); in California, the northeastern Modoc regularly preyed upon nearby Atsugewi, while the Colorado River–dwelling Mojave routinely raided the local Chemehuevi. These relationships between prey and predator might extend over generations. Only among the hierarchical social orders of the northwest coast, apparently, were slaves traditionally treated more like commodities, to be purchased, traded, or given as gifts.

Indirectly, the Spanish helped to instigate the next upsurge in human trafficking across the American West. Their horses—bred in northern New Mexico, then rustled or traded northward after the late seventeenth century—made possible an equestrian revolution across the plains. In short order the relationships between a few dozen Indian tribes shifted dramatically, as the pedestrian hunter-and-gatherer peoples were transformed by horses into fast-moving nomads who became dependent on buffalo and preyed on their neighbors. In white American popular culture the new-born horse cultures would be presented as the war bonnet–wearing, teepee-dwelling, war-whooping stereotypes of Wild West shows and movie screens. Among them were the Comanches of the southern plains and the Utes of the Great Basin borderlands.

By the mid-eighteenth century, the Comanche military machine had put a damper on Spanish expansionism. Their cavalry regiments of five hundred or more disciplined horsemen undertook eight-hundred-mile journeys northward as far as the Arkansas River and southward to within a few hundred miles of Mexico City. The slaves they plucked from Apaches, Pueblos, and Navajos became their prime currency in business deals with Mexicans, New Mexicans, and Americans. At impromptu auctions and established crossroads, Native American, Mexican, and Anglo slaves were being sold, some undergoing a succession of new masters. Until the US government conquered them, the Comanches held sway over a quarter-million square miles of the American and Mexican borderlands.

Reséndez argues for continuities in this inhuman traffic right down to the present day. But his abrupt transition to the present after the defeat of the Comanches only reinforces our sense that his effort has been overly ambitious and weakly conceived, as if achieving the promised synthesis for so complex and persistent a topic has simply (and understandably) overwhelmed him. His treatment of the multinational practices of Colonial-period slavery is spotty, and the ubiquitous traditions of native-on-native enslavement seem soft-pedaled.

Reséndez loosely estimates that between some 2.5 to five million Indians were trapped in this “other slavery,” in which overwork and physical abuse doubtlessly contributed to the drop of 90 percent in the North American Indian population between Columbus’s day and 1900. But somehow little of all that torment comes across vividly in The Other Slavery. We are told that Navajos called the 1860s, when their entire tribe was hounded for incarceration in southern New Mexico, “the Fearing Time.” Aside from that hint of the collective emotional impact from the victims’ side, we get few testimonies that reflect the anxiety and terror behind Reséndez’s many summaries of human suffering, tribal dislocations, furtive lives on the run, and birthrights lost forever.

A more convincing sense of the racial discrimination and hatred that bolstered and perpetuated the slavery systems discussed in Reséndez’s book comes from even a melodramatic film like John Ford’s The Searchers (1956), while the terrors of surviving in the late-eighteenth-century West amid roving bands of merciless slave raiders are better evoked in Cormac McCarthy’s Grand Guignol masterpiece Blood Meridian(1985). Reading Reséndez’s account one hopes in vain for something similar to Rebecca West’s quiet comment in Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (1941), her chronicle of Yugoslavian multiethnic animosities: “It is sometimes very hard to tell the difference between history and the smell of a skunk.”

2.

Indian slavery becomes a contributing factor in An American Genocide, the UCLAhistorian Benjamin Madley’s extensive argument that genocide is the only appropriate term for what happened to native peoples in north-central California between 1846 and 1873. For American Indians, slavery in the New World took many forms that persevered over four centuries while changing according to local conditions, global pressures, and maneuvers to evade abolitionist crusades. Genocide—the elimination of entire groups—might seem easier to evaluate. Yet which historical episodes of mass Indian murder qualify as genocide has become a matter of debate.

Madley shies away from the hyperbolic accusations of genocide or holocaust often made in simplistic discussions of American Indian history. The definition that he invokes with prosecutorial ferocity is the one produced by the United Nations Genocide Convention of 1948, which defines genocide as, first, demonstrating an intent to destroy, “in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group,” and, second, committing any of the following acts: killing members of a group; causing them serious bodily or mental harm; inflicting conditions that are intended to cause their destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures to prevent births within the group; and transferring children of the group to another group. Whereas the large unspecified “group” referred to in this post–World War II statement was, of course, defined by the Nazis, Madley’s is smaller and, even then, it is composed of many hundreds of indigenous units, each an autonomous, small-scale cultural world that was decimated or destroyed.

Madley has documented his charge of genocide by years of scrolling through local newspapers, histories, personal diaries, memoirs, and official letters and reports. These revealed what many indigenous groups endured at the hands of US military campaigns, state militia expeditions, impromptu small-town posses, and gold miners, as well as ordinary citizens who hunted natives on weekends. Most western historians and demographers could agree that genocidal behavior toward a North American Indian population occurred during the nineteenth century. But Madley has concentrated on the killing in California during the bloody years between 1846 and 1873.

Edward S. Curtis: Mosa—Mohave, 1903/1907; from Edward S. Curtis: One Hundred Masterworks. The book is by Christopher Cardozo, with contributions by A. D. Coleman, Louise Erdrich, and others. It is published by Delmonico/Prestel and the Foundation for the Exhibition of Photography.

The factors that led to this American tragedy are worth recalling. Many Indian communities had already been defeated in their resistance to servitude during the Spanish Mission and Mexican Rancho years. The United States victory over Mexico in early 1848 opened the way to the last great American land rush. Until California became the nation’s thirty-first state in 1850, there were two years of lawlessness. The Anglo-American settlers whose wagons began rolling into the region carried anti-Indian attitudes imported from colonial times. The discovery of gold in early 1848 multiplied that immigration and aggressive settler colonialism. There was pervasive racism toward the state’s diverse and generally peaceful native population. They were denigrated as animal-like “Diggers”—a pejorative term based on their food-gathering customs. Political, military, journalistic, and civic leaders favored creating a de facto open season on its native peoples.

When the state’s first legislature convened, it passed a number of orders that, according to Madley, “largely shut Indians out of participation in and protection by the state legal system” and granted “impunity to those who attacked them.” The legislature funded, with $1.51 million, state vigilantism coupled with exhortations from top officials, including two state governors, to war against Native Americans. Near the beginning of this campaign, California’s first governor, Peter Burnett, pledged that “a war of extermination will continue to be waged…until the Indian race becomes extinct.”

At the time of first contact with whites, the native California population amounted to some 350,000, perhaps the densest concentration of Indians in the country. But they were divided into at least sixty major tribes that, in turn, were made up of scores of small, independent, autonomous villages that spoke upward of a hundred separate languages. After the epidemics, mission programs, land losses, and peonage of the Spanish period, about 150,000 Indians remained on the eve of the US takeover. By 1870 the number of California Indians had been cut to under 30,000, a population loss that would continue until it bottomed out at under 17,000 by the turn of the century.

When gold was struck near present-day Sacramento in January 1848, Indians were occupying some of the most desirable natural environments in North America. The size of these Indian groups ranged widely. The proximity of so many autonomous villages made bi- or even trilingualism not uncommon. But especially in the north-central region—with its abundant acorn groves, salmon-rich rivers, valleys plentiful in fruits, roots, and seeds, foothills teeming with game, plentiful marine life, wildfowl and associated plants along the sea coast and wetlands—their small, self-governing and self-sufficient villagers could thrive in their homelands. However, the combination of Spanish and American invasions would cost the Indians and their fragile ecologies dearly. Meadows bearing life-giving nutritious seeds and roots were put to the torch for conversion into agricultural fields and cattle pastures, streams were poisoned by the sludge from mining, and forests were cut for lumber.

To characterize these fairly self-contained worlds, the dean of California Indian studies, anthropologist Alfred L. Kroeber, coined the term “tribelet.” But when it came to describing the sufferings of these California tribelets during the Gold Rush, Kroeber wrote dismissively of their “little history of pitiful events,” which, as an ethnographer drawn to “millennial sweeps and grand contours,” he felt unable to comment upon.

That did not stop one of his colleagues, the anthropologist Robert Heizer, from doing so. Heizer’s revelatory They Were Only Diggers (1974), along with his other anthologies, compiled newspaper clippings and reports on the myriad killings and other brutalities experienced by the region’s Indians. Together with a state demographer, Sherburne Cooke, he began documenting the unpublicized story of the California Indian catastrophe. Now Benjamin Madley, building upon the ethnohistorical work of Heizer and Cooke, has delved more systematically into the outrages of the period.

His chronicle opens with accounts by Thomas Martin and Thomas Breckenridge, members of John C. Frémont’s early expedition, which invaded what was still Mexican-held territory. In April 1846, along the Sacramento River near the present-day city of Redding, Frémont’s troops encountered a large group of local Wintu Indians. With the command “to ask no quarter and to give none,” his troops encircled the Indians and began firing at everyone in sight. Breckenridge wrote: “Some escaped but as near as I could learn from those that were engaged in the butchery, I can’t call it anything else, there was from 120 to 150 Indians killed that day.” Martin estimated that “in less than 3 hours we had killed over 175 of them.” A third eyewitness account found by Madley raised that estimate to between six hundred and seven hundred dead on land, not counting those, possibly an additional three hundred, slaughtered in the river. “The Sacramento River Massacre,” he writes, may have been one of the least-reported mass killings in US history, and “was the prelude to hundreds of similar massacres.”

So begins Madley’s calm, somber indictment. One after another he describes the cultures and the histories of tribes that were victimized, and he profiles the victimizers. Many of the atrocities were committed not only by US soldiers and their auxiliaries but also by motley companies of militiamen that murdered young and old, male and female indiscriminately—and often with an undisguised glee that comes through in Madley’s abundant selection of quotes.

Rape was rampant, and natives were intentionally starved, tortured, and whipped. Under the new California Legislature’s Government and Protection of the Indians Act of 1850, any nonworking, publicly drunk, or orphaned and underage Indians could become commodities in an unfree labor system that was tantamount to slave auctions. The act’s impact on the young meant that ten years after its passage, thousands of California Indian children were serving as unpaid “apprentices” in white households.

For over a quarter-century, Madley shows how the region became a quilt of many killing fields. Of the estimated 80 percent decline in the California Indian population during these years, around 40 percent has been attributed to outright “extermination killings” alone. Yet each of these tribes and tribelets functioned as an independent cultural world. Each was knit together by strands of kinship and deep attachments to place, as well as oral traditions about both that were passed on from generation to generation. Strewn across California were not only human bodies, but entire worldviews.

At the start of the Gold Rush, the Yuki Indians who lived at the heart of the region had well over three thousand members; they were reduced to less than two hundred by its end. The same decline occurred among the Tolowa Indians to the northwest, while the Yahi people were practically wiped out altogether.

In the hateful rhetoric of many nineteenth-century military, religious, and bureaucratic hard-liners quoted by Madley, the word “extermination” was often used. Yet this outcome was considered no great tragedy for an entire people who were uniformly and irredeemably defined as savage and subhuman.

Madley’s nearly two hundred pages of appendices are the most complete incident-by-incident tally ever compiled of Indian lives lost during this terrible period. Asking for names would have been impossible; instead we get numbers of deceased and places where they perished—one or two with brains smashed on rocks on a particular day over here, thirty to a hundred shot to death and left floating in a river over there. This scrupulously detailed epilogue is the equivalent of a memorial wall that we are visiting for the first time.

[mybeingthere]

A necklace of yellow-colored material with solid colored beats throughout the necklace

Jacqueline Irène Lillie (French, b. 1941)

Austria, Vienna, 1992

Glass filaments, glass beads, knotted silk

Diam: 28.8 cm92.3.47, 7th Rakow Commission

Internationally recognized for her innovative, sculptural work in beads and mixed media, Jacqueline Lillie is the first artist to receive a Rakow Commission for jewelry.Originally inspired by the early 20th century jewelry produced by the Wiener Werkstätte (Vienna Workshops), Lillie’s interests have expanded to include African and native American jewelry, Russian Constructivist painting and graphics, Art Deco design, and the wide-ranging products of the Bauhaus. Her intention, she says, is not to revive earlier styles but to “produce work that reflects attention to minute detail and a subtle use of color.

”Lillie’s jewelry often takes the form of neckpieces or brooches constructed of single or multiple beaded spheres, ovals, and squares that she combines with metal. She also makes beaded bracelets and other articles of adornment. Her beading is characteristically tightly woven, usually in geometric patterns.

The Rakow Commission neckpiece is an unusual work for her in that she combines two distinctly different types of glass products: fiberglass monofilament and glass seed beads. The layers of glass fibers and multicolored beads are reminiscent of the lengths of trade beads strung on raffia palm fibers that are commonly found in West Africa. Yet, her necklace is a contemporary statement that emphasizes the versatility of glass, a material both traditional and modern.

https://info.cmog.org/rakow.../jacqueline-irene-lillie

[dyggtheway]

Black Contribution to Fashion and Wardrobe in the West: Past, Present and Future

How We Arrived | A Brief Recount with Many Threads

Fashion is a form of communication that reflects the identity, culture and values of individuals and groups. Fashion is also influenced by the social, political and economic contexts of different times and places. Throughout history, Black people have contributed to fashion and wardrobe in the West in various ways, from creating original styles and trends to challenging stereotypes and discrimination. In this article, we will explore some of the aspects of Black contribution to fashion and wardrobe in the West, and how they might shape the future of fashion.

The Origins of Black Fashion

Black fashion has its roots in the diverse cultures and traditions of Africa, where clothing was not only a functional necessity, but also a symbolic expression of status, religion, ethnicity and aesthetics. African textiles, such as kente, adire, bogolan and shweshwe, were made with intricate techniques and patterns, and often dyed with natural colors from plants and minerals. African clothing, such as dashikis, kaftans, boubous and agbadas, were designed to fit the climate and the lifestyle of the people, and often embellished with beads, shells, feathers and metalwork. African fashion also reflected the influence of other cultures, such as Arab, European and Asian, through trade, migration and colonization.

The Impact of Slavery and Colonialism

The transatlantic slave trade and the colonization of Africa by European powers had a profound impact on the fashion and wardrobe of Black people in the West. Enslaved Africans were stripped of their cultural identity and forced to wear the clothing of their oppressors, which was often cheap, coarse and ill-fitting. However, enslaved Africans also resisted and adapted to their situation by modifying, embellishing and personalizing their clothing, using scraps of fabric, buttons, ribbons and jewelry. They also preserved and transmitted some of their cultural heritage through their clothing, such as headwraps, turbans, bandanas and scarves, which were worn for protection, modesty and dignity. Some enslaved Africans also managed to acquire or make finer clothing, especially for special occasions, such as weddings, funerals and holidays, which allowed them to express their individuality, creativity and pride.

The Rise of Black Fashion Movements

The abolition of slavery and the civil rights movement in the 19th and 20th centuries gave rise to various Black fashion movements that challenged the dominant norms and standards of beauty, and celebrated the diversity and richness of Black culture. Some of the examples of these movements are:

The Harlem Renaissance: A cultural and artistic movement that emerged in the 1920s and 1930s in Harlem, New York, where Black artists, writers, musicians and intellectuals created a vibrant and influential scene that showcased their talents and achievements. The Harlem Renaissance also influenced fashion, as Black people adopted and adapted the styles of the Jazz Age, such as flapper dresses, zoot suits, fedoras and pearls, and added their own flair and elegance. Some of the icons of this movement were Josephine Baker, Billie Holiday, Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston.

The Black Power Movement: A political and social movement that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s in the United States, where Black people demanded their rights, freedom and justice, and asserted their identity, dignity and self-determination. The Black Power Movement also influenced fashion, as Black people embraced and reclaimed their African roots, and expressed their solidarity and resistance. Some of the styles of this movement were Afros, cornrows, braids, dashikis, leather jackets, berets and sunglasses. Some of the icons of this movement were Malcolm X, Angela Davis, Huey P. Newton and Kathleen Cleaver.

The Hip Hop Movement: A cultural and artistic movement that emerged in the 1970s and 1980s in the Bronx, New York, where Black and Latino youth created a new form of music, dance, art and fashion that reflected their realities, experiences and aspirations. The Hip Hop Movement also influenced fashion, as Black and Latino youth innovated and experimented with different styles, such as baggy jeans, sneakers, tracksuits, baseball caps, gold chains and graffiti. Some of the icons of this movement were Grandmaster Flash, Run-DMC, LL Cool J and Salt-N-Pepa.

The Influence of Black Fashion on the Mainstream

Black fashion has not only been a source of inspiration and empowerment for Black people, but also a source of influence and appropriation for the mainstream fashion industry and culture. Black fashion has often been copied, imitated and commodified by white designers, celebrities and consumers, who have profited from the creativity and originality of Black people, without giving them proper credit, recognition or compensation. Some of the examples of this phenomenon are:

The minstrel shows: A form of entertainment that originated in the 19th century in the United States, where white performers wore blackface and exaggerated costumes to mock and stereotype Black people and their culture. The minstrel shows also influenced fashion, as white people adopted and adapted some of the clothing and accessories of Black people, such as hoop skirts, bandanas, gloves and canes, and used them for amusement and mockery.

The orientalism: A form of representation that originated in the 19th and 20th centuries in Europe and the United States, where white artists, writers and scholars depicted and distorted the cultures and peoples of Asia, Africa and the Middle East as exotic, mysterious and inferior. Orientalism also influenced fashion, as white designers, celebrities and consumers adopted and adapted some of the clothing and accessories of these regions, such as turbans, kaftans, kimonos and harem pants, and used them for fantasy and fetishism.

The cultural appropriation: A form of exploitation that occurs in the contemporary globalized world, where white designers, celebrities and consumers adopt and adapt some of the clothing and accessories of marginalized and oppressed cultures, such as Native American headdresses, Indian bindis, African prints and dreadlocks, and use them for fashion and fun, without respecting or understanding their meanings and histories.

The Future of Black Fashion

Black fashion has a long and rich history that reflects the struggles and achievements of Black people in the West and beyond. Black fashion also has a bright and promising future that offers new possibilities and opportunities for Black people to express their identity, culture and values. Some of the trends and developments that might shape the future of Black fashion are:

The Afrofuturism: A form of imagination that envisions the future of Black people and their culture in relation to science, technology and innovation. Afrofuturism also influences fashion, as Black people create and wear clothing and accessories that combine elements of their African heritage and their futuristic aspirations. Some of the examples of this trend are the movie Black Panther, the singer Janelle Monáe and the designer Mowalola Ogunlesi.

The sustainability: A form of awareness that recognizes the environmental and social impacts of the fashion industry and its practices. Sustainability also influences fashion, as Black people create and wear clothing and accessories that are made with ethical, organic and recycled materials, and that support local, fair and diverse production. Some of the examples of this trend are the brand Lemlem, the model Adwoa Aboah and the activist Dominique Drakeford.

The diversity: A form of inclusion that celebrates and respects the differences and similarities among Black people and their culture. Diversity also influences fashion, as Black people create and wear clothing and accessories that reflect their various identities, such as gender, sexuality, class, religion and disability. Some of the examples of this trend are the magazine CRWN, the actor Billy Porter and the designer Sinéad Burke.

Black fashion is a powerful and dynamic phenomenon that has contributed to fashion and wardrobe in the West in many ways. Black fashion is also a potential and transformative phenomenon that can contribute to fashion and wardrobe in the West in many more ways. Black fashion is not only a form of communication, but also a form of expression, resistance and liberation.

Amid a period when history classes might opt to reinterpret the Black influence, fashion schools are progressively integrating Black fashion history into their curricula, all credited to the efforts of committed educators. These educators employ diverse methodologies—lectures, discussions, and practical projects—to impart the narrative of Black fashion history. Additionally, they actively strive to broaden the spectrum of Black fashion designers and styles presented within the classroom setting.

Here are some of the experts, educators and advocates for continued education in the evolutionary process of Black Fashion:

- Dr. Jonathan Square, assistant professor of Black Visual Culture at Parsons School of Design and founder of Fashioning the Self in Slavery and Freedom, who teaches courses on Black beauty culture and Black fashion history, and organizes events and exhibitions on these topics

- Dr. Tanisha C. Ford, associate professor of Africana Studies and History at the University of Delaware and author of Liberated Threads: Black Women, Style, and the Global Politics of Soul, who explores the connections between fashion, activism and social movements, and co-curated the exhibition Black Girlhood and the Power of Belonging at the Delaware Art Museum.

- Dr. Monica L. Miller, associate professor of English and Africana Studies at Barnard College and author of Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity, who examines the role of fashion in shaping Black identity and culture, and co-edited the book Black Dandyism: A Reader.

- Elizabeth Way, associate curator of costume at The Museum at FIT and co-curator of the exhibition Black Fashion Designers, who researches and showcases the work of Black fashion designers from different eras and regions, and organizes public programs and publications on Black fashion history.

*see also The Experts Bringing Black Fashion History to Fashion Education: https://fashionista.com/2023/10/experts-teaching-black-fashion-history by Fashionista:

Empowering Movements in Black Fashion

The unique expression and activism within Black culture persistently shape fashion's diversity and interconnectedness. This influence resonates through the multicultural fabric of humanity, impacting even mainstream trends, notwithstanding past challenges of appropriation and insufficient acknowledgment.

Discover the world of Black fashion and become an active participant in its vibrant tapestry! Here are actionable steps to engage with and support Black fashion:

Attend Exhibitions: Showcasing Black designers and movements. 

Support Black-Owned Businesses: Empower Black entrepreneurship by consciously choosing to support Black-owned fashion brands.

Educate Yourself: Explore the rich history of Black fashion, discover how these contributions have effected your style.

Black fashion is a global style panorama. Thank you for reading, comment, like and follow.

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For Hew Locke’s exhibition, Listening to the Land, at P.P.O.W. he has created intricate sculptures and paintings that are fascinating in person.

From the press release-

Locke is known for exploring the languages of colonial and post-colonial power, and the symbols through which different cultures assume and assert identity. Furthering the themes explored in his celebrated commission The Procession at Tate Britain, and his concurrent installation Gilt on the façade of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, this exhibit engages with contemporary and historical inequities while reflecting on the landscape and history of the Caribbean. The exhibition draws its title from a poem by Guyanese political activist and poet Martin Carter which situates itself between two opposing forces of the landscape – sea and forest. Locke’s show features new sculptures and wall works with recurring motifs of stilt-houses, boats, memento mori, and share certificates referencing tensions between the land, the sea, and economic power. Reflecting on these links, Locke notes, “The land was created to generate money for colonial power, now the sea wants it back.”

Translating to ‘land of many waters,’ Guyana and its physical, economic, and political landscape serve as one of the primary sources for Locke’s work. Having spent his childhood in this newly independent nation, the artist witnessed first-hand an era of radical transformation. Now, the country teeters on the precipice of an oil boom and is one of the world’s fastest growing economies. Juxtaposing personal meditations on the climate crisis with political commentary on the history of a globalized world, Locke contemplates the ways in which colonies were exploited to accumulate capital, and observes how Guyana’s economic future lies in the exploitation of its waters. Locke’s new boat sculptures The Relic and The Survivor embody this broad worldview as the two battered wrecks drift through time and history. Evoking the fragmented and diverse legacies of the global diaspora, the boats’ patchwork sails are interspersed with photo transfers of 19th Century cane cutters and banana boat loaders, while their decks are loaded with cargo that could allude to colonial plunder, trade goods or personal belongings.

Based on an abandoned plantation house, Locke’s newest sculpture Jumbie House 2 features layered images that unveil the spirits that haunt this colonial vestige. Presented alongside are a series of painted photographs of dilapidated vernacular architecture across Georgetown and rural Guyana. Constantly under threat of being washed away by storms or rising sea levels, these crumbling structures echo anxieties surrounding climate change and historical erasure. A new series of mixed media wall works, Raw Materials, is derived from antique share certificates and bonds. Locke richly decorates the appliques with acrylic, beads, and patchwork to draw attention to the complex ways in which the past shapes the present. The image of an 1898 Chinese Imperial Gold Loan behind painted Congolese figures connects the global economy at the height of Empire to current Sino-African trade networks. In another work, a painted representation of a Nigerian Ife mask, alongside an image of David Livingstone, is layered on a French-African Mortgage Bond from 1923, connecting exploration and exploitation of African land, to current conversations surrounding the repatriation of artifacts. Taken together, the works in Locke’s Listening to the Land echo William Faulkner’s adage “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

This exhibition closes 4/1/23.

The Procession, mentioned above, can now be seen at Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, in Gateshead, England until June 11th, 2023.

Gilt, also mentioned above, is on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art until May 30th, 2023.

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The Timeless Elegance of Handmade Necklaces: A Celebration of Artistry

In the realm of jewelry, handmade necklaces stand out as a testament to human creativity and craftsmanship. These exquisite pieces are more than just accessories; they are expressions of individuality, skill, and cultural heritage. As consumers increasingly seek personalized and meaningful adornments, handmade necklaces have become a symbol of elegance and artistic expression. This article explores the charm, significance, and enduring appeal of handmade necklaces.

Craftsmanship and Artistry

Handmade necklaces are crafted with meticulous attention to detail by skilled artisans who pour their creativity and expertise into each piece. Unlike mass-produced jewelry, which often relies on machines, handmade necklaces are the result of manual techniques that require precision and patience. From selecting the finest materials to executing intricate designs, every step in the process reflects the artisan's dedication to quality and artistry.

Artisans use a variety of techniques to create handmade necklaces, including metalworking, beading, wire wrapping, and stone setting. These methods, often passed down through generations, showcase the unique skills and creativity of the maker. The result is a one-of-a-kind piece that bears the personal touch of the artisan, making each necklace a work of art.

Unique Appeal and Personal Expression

One of the most compelling aspects of handmade necklaces is their uniqueness. Each piece is crafted with care and attention to detail, resulting in a necklace that is distinct and personal. This individuality allows wearers to express their style and identity, making handmade necklaces a popular choice for those who value originality and authenticity in their accessories.

Handmade necklaces often incorporate a variety of materials, including gemstones, beads, metals, and natural elements like wood or shells. This diversity of materials allows artisans to create pieces that reflect different aesthetics and themes, from minimalist elegance to bold and vibrant designs. The imperfections and variations inherent in handmade work add character and charm, further enhancing the beauty of each necklace.

Cultural Significance and Heritage

Handmade necklaces often carry deep cultural significance, reflecting the traditions and heritage of the artisan. Across the world, necklace-making techniques and designs are influenced by cultural symbols, beliefs, and historical events. For instance, African bead necklaces often incorporate bright colors and patterns that tell stories of tribal identity and heritage, while Native American necklaces may feature turquoise and silver, symbolizing spiritual protection and harmony.

By wearing handmade necklaces, individuals can connect with and celebrate different cultures and traditions. These pieces serve as a bridge between the past and the present, preserving cultural heritage and keeping age-old traditions alive.

Sustainable and Ethical Choice

In an era of increasing environmental awareness, handmade necklaces represent a sustainable and ethical choice. Many artisans prioritize the use of eco-friendly materials and processes, such as recycled metals and ethically sourced gemstones. By choosing handmade necklaces, consumers support local artisans and small businesses, promoting fair trade practices and contributing to the economic growth of communities.

The Growing Popularity of Handmade Necklaces

The demand for handmade necklaces has been on the rise, driven by consumers' desire for authenticity and quality. Online platforms and artisan markets have made it easier for people to discover and purchase unique handmade pieces from around the world. Additionally, social media has given artisans a platform to showcase their work and reach a wider audience, further boosting the popularity of handmade necklaces.

Conclusion

Handmade necklaces embody the perfect blend of artistry, tradition, and personal expression. Their unique appeal lies in their ability to capture the essence of the artisan's craft while resonating with the wearer's individuality and values. As more people seek meaningful and sustainable alternatives, handmade necklaces continue to shine as timeless and treasured accessories in the world of fashion. Whether as a gift, an investment, or a personal keepsake, handmade necklaces remain an enduring testament to the beauty and creativity of human craftsmanship.

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Igbo-Ukwu Archaeology

Glass production: Igbo-Ukwu has one of the oldest glass productions in West Africa. The archeology of Igbo-Ukwu had over 600 prestige objects including complex cast copper-alloy sculptures and more than 165,000 glass and carnelian beads. The most common glass among the 138 analytical results for Igbo-Ukwu beads is soda-lime glass produced using plant ash.Glass beads from Igbo-Ukwu

Igbo-Ukwu is a historically significant archaeological site located in southeastern Nigeria, in what is now Anambra State. The site is renowned for its remarkable discoveries of ancient artifacts that date back to the 9th and 10th centuries AD. The archaeological findings at Igbo-Ukwu have provided valuable insights into the early history and cultural achievements of the Igbo people and their interactions with other civilizations in the region. The artifacts may be associated with the traditional Kingdom of Nri and its priest-king, the Eze Nri.

The significance of Igbo-Ukwu lies in the following aspects: Sophisticated Artifacts: The excavations at Igbo-Ukwu revealed a collection of highly sophisticated and elaborately crafted artifacts, including intricately designed bronze, copper, and iron objects. These artifacts demonstrate the advanced metallurgical skills of the ancient Igbo people and their ability to work with various metals.

The Igbo-Ukwu artifacts predate certain other well-known Nigerian bronze sculpture traditions such as those of Ife and the Benin Kingdom and have contributed to our understanding of the development of metallurgical techniques in Africa.

Cultural Exchange and Trade: The presence of exotic materials like glass beads and imported ceramics at the Igbo-Ukwu site suggests that the people of Igbo-Ukwu were engaged in trade and had connections with other cultures and civilizations, both within and outside of Africa.

Evidence of Social Complexity: The intricate and finely crafted artifacts found at Igbo-Ukwu suggest the existence of a sophisticated and socially complex society. The level of craftsmanship and the variety of artifacts indicate the presence of skilled artisans and a hierarchical social structure.

Influence on Igbo Art and Culture: The artifacts discovered at Igbo-Ukwu have had a profound impact on the understanding and appreciation of Igbo art and culture. They have inspired contemporary Igbo artists and craftsmen and contributed to a sense of cultural identity and heritage.

Recognition of African Achievements: The discoveries at Igbo-Ukwu challenged the outdated notion of Africa as a continent with no significant history or cultural achievements. The site's findings have demonstrated the richness and complexity of ancient African civilizations. The archaeological site of Igbo-Ukwu was first discovered in 1939 when a group of villagers accidentally came across the artifacts while digging a trench. Subsequent excavations conducted in the 1950s and 1970s uncovered a wealth of cultural treasures. The Igbo-Ukwu artifacts are now housed in various museums, including the Nigerian National Museum in Lagos.

Overall, Igbo-Ukwu remains a vital archaeological site that continues to contribute to our understanding of ancient African civilizations and their contributions to human history. 9th Century Igbo-Ukwu face pendantDouble egg pendant, leaded bronze, 9th-10th century, unearthed in Igbo Ukwu, AnambraBronze ornamental staff head, 9th century, Igbo-Ukwu

Glass production: Igbo-Ukwu has one of the oldest glass productions in West Africa. The archeology of Igbo-Ukwu had over 600 prestige objects including complex cast copper-alloy sculptures and more than 165,000 glass and carnelian beads. The most common glass among the 138 analytical results for Igbo-Ukwu beads is soda-lime glass produced using plant ash.

[aangussca]

Gallery visit: MOMA (6.7.24) - PART 1

Ja'Tovia Gary's THE GIVERNY SUITE (2019, sculptural installation -settee, twenty-five painted frames, altar to Yemaya (candle, seashells, anchor, fruit, plate, vase, flowers, glass jar of molasses, glass jar of rum, and fabric), altar to Oshun (candle, mirror, cowrie shells, fruit, cinnamon sticks, plate, vases, flowers, glass jar of white wine, glass jar of honey, and fabric) - and short film (39 mins 51 secs))

Description: "Filmed in Harlem, New York, and in Claude Monet's gardens in Giverny, France, THE GIVERNY SUITE is a cinematic poem that advocates for the safety and bodily autonomy of Black women. Employing techniques including hand-painted film animation and montage editing, Gary first developed the work during an artist residency in Giverny, where the gardens offered a space of respite. Centrally featured are person-on-the-street interviews in which the artist approaches women at the intersection of Lenox Avenue (also known as Malcolm X Boulevard) and West 116th Street and asks, "Do you feel safe?" These interviews are interspersed with footage of singer Nina Simone, performer Josephine Baker, political activist Fred Hampton, and Diamond Reynolds recounting the killing of her boyfriend Philando Castile by police in 2016. The installation also includes antique furniture as well as altars dedicated to the Yoruba deities Yemaya and Oshun. "Healing is at the root of the work," Gary explains. "Making art is a transformative process that transmutes pain or trauma into something beautiful, useful, functional, instructive."

Positioned near the entrance are two altars devoted to West African orishas: Oshun, the river deity, who represents divine femininity, love, and beauty, is depicted in bright yellow; and Yemaya, the fierce protector of women, who is associated with oceans, fertility, and creativity, is represented by the colors white and blue. Both deities originate from the Yoruban spiritual practice Lucumí, which was carried over to the Americas by African peoples during the transatlantic slave trade. In this work, French Colonial-style antique frames and a slanted settee gesture to colonization's complex legacy as well as the comforts found in many Southern Black grandmothers' homes, including the artist's own."

Mike Kelley's Deodorized Central Mass with Satellites (1991/1999, sculptural installation - plush toys sewn over wood and wire frames with styrofoam packing material, nylon rope, pulleys, steel hardware and hanging plates, fiberglass, car paint, and disinfectant)

Description: "In 1987 Mike Kelley began to make sculptures from stuffed animals, which he described as "the adult's perfect model of a child": cute, clean, sexless. However, Kelley's plush toys, purchased secondhand from thrift stores and yard sales, were discarded and soiled from use. Seemingly beyond redemption, they are darkly humorous monuments to lost innocence and repressed trauma. Deodorized Central Mass with Satellites was among Kelley's last works to feature stuffed animals. The toys are clustered in a cellular arrangement of one "central mass" and thirteen "satellites." To avoid eliciting an emotional or sentimental response from viewers, Kelley sewed the animals face-in. They are surrounded by ten brightly colored, abstract sculptures the artist called "deodorizers," which release a pine-scented mist into the air. By contrasting the degraded consequences of consumer excess with the slick, reductive forms of modernism, Kelley taunts the hierarchies between high art and mainstream culture, between obsessive hygiene and moral decline."

Montien Boonma's House of Hope (1996-1997, sculptural installation - herbs, spices, natural binders, cotton string, painted wood, and steel)

Description: "In House of Hope (1996-1997) Montien Boonma invites us into an immersive space filled with thousands of prayer-bead strands hanging above a pyramid of painted wooden steps. The surrounding wall painting suggests clouds or incense smoke from Buddhist temples. The artist crafted his pigments and beads from traditional Thai medicinal herbs and spices; the aromatic materials suffuse the gallery with scent. Boonma sought to create an atmosphere of bodily sensation: "When you enter a temple, it makes you warm… there's the feeling that we will be given help-like having a father and mother to protect us. Boonma created this installation after his wife died from cancer in 1995. Her diagnosis the year before led the artist to immerse himself in Buddhist rituals of devotion and healing. "I was asking for a lot," he said. "I was asking for the world to stop." Boonma's "house" explored the possibility of hope in a time of environmental disaster, industrialization, and the rise of global epidemics--crises that persist in the present, and which the work allows us to confront in new ways today."

Hague Yang's Sallim (2009, sculptural installation - steel frame, perforated metal plate, caster, aluminium venetian blinds, knitting yarn, acrylic mirror, IV stand, light bulbs, cable, electric fan, timer, garlic, dishes, hot pad, and scent emitter)

Description: ""There is a mysteriousness and spirituality in the most banal things. So my interest might be to reveal or make a crack in that mundaneness and show a glimpse of the miraculous, artist Hague Yang has said. This gallery brings together artworks by Yang and others that reimagine everyday environments through introspective reflection and material restraint. These works evoke spectral architectures, or spaces where what is absent may be as resonant as the visible or tangible. Created primarily during the 1990s and early 2000s - a period marked by new forms of global interconnectivity that blurred distinctions between public and private spheres - these works focus on the intricacies of daily life as a means to reflect, capture, or magnify experiences of time, space, and the self.

This sculpture, whose Korean title roughly translates to "homemaking," is a life-size model of the kitchen in the artist's former Berlin apartment, where she lived as well as worked. Describing Sallim as a "skeleton" of the original space, Yang has included sculptural elements that suggest utilitarian fixtures, such as a radiator and water boiler. "Some of them are very representative of a kitchen," she explains. "But some of them are blunt and rather puzzling." The artist has recreated not only this domestic environment, but its invisible sensorial experiences: scent emitters release smells of food and digestion, like coffee, bread, and excrement, while a fan circulates air.""

Otobong Nkanga's Tied to the Other Side (2021, woven tapestry)

Description: "Nkanga often portrays the natural world as a site of valuable knowledge for humans. Her tapestry Tied to the Other Side, set in an ambiguous landscape, employs abstracted shapes and textures to unfurl a universal narrative: the cycle of life, death, and rebirth. On one end is an arrangement of fragmented limbs sprouting from dense vegetation. Over time, shown in the image's progression from right to left, these body parts fall into states of decay and slowly become the spiritual energy source for radiating lights at the other end of the tapestry. This light, the artist seems to illustrate, will one day nourish the earth and spawn new life. She explains: "Even in death there is the possibility of regeneration. Nothing is lost; everything is used again.""

Andy Warhol's Campbell's Soup Cans (1962, acrylic paint and metallic enamel paint on canvas)

Description: "When asked why he chose to paint Campbell's soup cans, Warhol offered a deadpan reply: "I used to have the same lunch every day, for twenty years, I guess, the same thing over and over again." That daily meal, universally available throughout the United States, is the subject of this work. Warhol made the 32 canvases - one for each of the flavors of soup then sold by Campbell's - using a combination of projection, tracing, painting, and stamping. Repeating a nearly identical image, the work at once stresses the uniformity and ubiquity of the product's packaging and subverts the common characterization of painting as a medium of invention and originality."

Rosa Barba's 'states of matter' works

Row 1: Uncertain Theme - and Therefore Abstract (2021, steel, glass, motor, and 35mm film), At home with the Locust People (1974, acrylic paint on canvas)

Rows 2 and 3: Aggregate States of Matters (2019, projected short film (21 mins 14 secs))

Description: "With her film installation located further in this gallery, Rosa Barba poses a question: how can a form of visual expression convey the environmental and social impact of an issue as fraught as climate change? For this work, the artist interviewed members of Indigenous Quechua communities in Peru, who have had to adapt their daily practices due to the melting of a nearby glacier. Abandoning journalistic conventions like voice-over narration, she interweaves text and images of the country's wide-ranging terrain. In doing so, she questions the traditional binary of nature and culture, engaging with philosophical, spiritual, and cultural approaches to the changing environment and to time itself. Through custom technology, Barba also explores how film archives and transmits knowledge and information; her use of celluloid - an increasingly obsolete material that degrades with each revolution through a projector - resonates with the fragility of cultural memory and the natural landscape."

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