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darkdevasofdestruction · 6 years

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Connor Kenway x Angel!Fem!Reader

At the beginning of times,God created Heaven,and with it,his most trusty Archangels,with the aim of helping him pursue utopia and bliss for the incoming races on his beloved Earth,and thus,these divine winged beings,with the righteous will and judgement,obeyed their Lord's every command,without questioning it.

Centuries passed,humanity fell out of its grace,but He was merciful and loving,and offered them a change of redemption,in the after-life,and with every pure-hearted believer who would pass away,a new bright soul would ascend to the Garden of Heavens,be judged,and so they were entrusted with the smaller tasks,being named Angels.

These obedient followers with never-ending energy all seemed to fall into the same pattern,until one faithful day,when one surprisingly stood out of the crowd for being...different. Instead of minding her own business,perfecting her abilities in hopes of going up in ranks,as was the others' ambition,she wanted to do something more,something that would actually bring her joy is such a dull place bound by unbreakable laws,so she decided to perfect her art of manipulation of the weak or the soft-spoken,or even better,jest about unspeakable acts worth censoring in such a conservative place.

God,seeing her behaviour,decided to both teach her a lesson and grant her the wish,and thus,she was reincarnated in the Medieval times,as a fire-kissed maiden with loving yet difficult parents,at a court where she was meant to become the Handmaiden of the Castle's little lady. The girl was not satisfied with only an ordinary mortal life and started acting on her own accord,studying how to become a Maester,wanting to travel the world and see all that Earth has to offer.

Years passed and our little lady became a grown woman,at the ripe age of marriage,yet mischievous and ambitious beyond her times,and decided to inform her loved ones of her on-coming trip to the nearest kingdom,in pursue of knowledge,which wasn't well-seen.Nevertheless,there was nobody in power to stop the sly vixen as she began to walk the path of maturity.

Upon her return,her parents welcomed her warmly,but it was fleeting,as they had to have her know of the potential suitor awaiting her fateful return. She protested,not wanting to bother with such trivial and insignificant follies such as 'love' and 'family' and opposed to any explanation,turning the Fool down. Little did she know that day was her last day of human happiness,as a streak of misfortunes awaited her,for a wicked witch helped the Fool charm our Maiden with a love potion,the most powerful one to be created,and so the Minstrel had her grasped in his predator claws. She didn't seem to understand much of the situation,having had no previous experience with this concerning emotion,but decided to act as natural as possible,trying to make her paramour happy with everything in her power. All seemed to go well,for most of the part,until her day of birth came once again,and sticking to the tradition,invited all her friends,also servants to the House she was serving,and a newer apparition,her beloved. They drank ale,shared hilarious tales,sang with the bards and danced together,until dusk hit and they had to return home. The girl,once again,was happy...Until her one and only spun her around,yelling at her with malice,words dripping with venom and jealousy spewing from his filthy mouth,frightening and rooting her to the spot. Has she done something wrong?

Was there anything offensive in her behaviour?

Did she insult him,perchance?

Countless of questions seemed to rang through her head as she felt the symbol of weakness,a river of tears,streaming down her pale cheeks,whilst trembling and trying to come up with a reply to the monster in front of her. She left him there without anything spoken on her part,but a breakdown in her private chambers,as she tried to understand the reasoning behind such aggressive attitude towards her.

She believed that everyone deserved a second chance...and a third...and maybe even a fourth one,possible mistake learnt from Heavens,and forgiving the man,despite her mind telling her it was wrong,she stuck by his side for more moons than she could have ever imagined.

In the meantime,the glowing blood rose started to wilt at an alarming pace,faced with unneeded toxicity and bad treatment,and with it,she began hating herself more than ever before,understanding for the first time just how weak a woman is on Earth,compared to a lustful man's strength,and as she couldn't counter or stop his actions,despite protesting vehemently... She gave up.

For the first time in her life,she felt like giving up was the wisest option there was. Give up on fighting. Give up on protesting. Give up on happiness. Give up on thinking she was worth anything. Give up on believing love and genuine emotions exist. And... She gave up on herself.

Everything fell into the same dull pattern,until one day,she was slapped awake by her ambitions,and remember that even whilst hating herself,she still wanted her life to take a different turn and her career was still more important than anything on that tainted World. And so,the red-haired girl managed to gather the strength to break the charm all by herself,and got the Fool banished from the Kingdom,never to be seen again,much to her relief. Nevertheless,regrets and despair would forever haunt her,despising how frail and weak she was,uncharacteristic of her normal self,as she endured almost two full winters turned with a parasyte leeching on her positive energies,just as mistletoe,beautiful yet deadly,is destroying another plant for it to live better.

Not much time passed,wounds slowly getting stitched together with the help of her closest friends and family,and with that,a new trip was planned for her as a surprise,and she took the opportunity without any doubt,eager to absorb even more information.

The people around her were all open-minded,wise elders and shamans willing to show her the way of healing and how to become one with nature and accept herself. Contrary to her expectations,however,no matter what you do,curses and bad intentions follow everyone around,and when one of the travelers began fighting with his ill,miserable parents,wanting to stay behind and explore just a bit more,she decided to step in and offer him company on the small island,despite twilight threatening to appear soon. Feeling blessed,his parents thanked her endlessly,while the lovely elder witch doctor advised her not to stray too much from the path,and she went to his side,weary and skeptical,wanting to go to her temporary home faster.

It was just like how a panther waits its prey,prowling around,vulnerable and clueless of any evil intent around,using the environment to its,favour,and seeing her shivering due to the cold night,he wrapped his meaty arms around her small form,despite her protests. She soon found out the rotten apple was 10 years her senior and much stronger than he appeared,conflicts forming in her head,as she was not familiar with the path back,like he was,yet struggling in his grasp helped naught. And she gave up fighting. Again.

Hours passed,midnight stroke and Mother Moon was high on the sky,illuminating the place gracefully with her pure,silvery light,watching over the sinful,as on their way back,he gripped her noodle-like arms hard and forced himself onto her,the feeling of teeth smashing into her own and the disgust,making her want to have a star fall on her at that moment and crush her to death forever. No amount of struggle proved to be successful,but she cried no more.She just followed behind,at a fast pace,wanting to arrive at her new chambers faster and bury herself under the ground,feeling a strong,burning feeling of hatred towards herself and that shameful monster claiming to be human. Alone,once again,she began breaking down,yelling at Heavens and at the Lord to take her back or stop her suffering once and for all. Just what had she done so wrong in her life that she deserved all of this? Was her behaviour in Eden so bad? Was entertainment forbidden and punished like the Never-ending 7 Circles of Hell? Desperation was clouding her mind and judgement,and she soon accepted that she was not meant for a normal human life. Being forever by herself seemed to be a much better option regardless,and thus,a life of solitude and eternal hate awaited her. She began behaving worse than she realized,not talking to her friends that much anymore,not bothering with her difficult family who seemed to only want to apply even more unwanted pressure about how she is going to be the outcast and the laughingstock of the whole Country and she wouldn't behave like a normal woman,marry and bare the lordling's children,as it was expected.

She wanted to end it all,for it was too much pain to hold on to,her heart feeling heavy with over-flowing waves of torment,her lungs felt drowned,no amount of breathing seemed to make her feel alive anymore and she began wondering how lovely death seemed now,that all hope was lost for an unsightly creature like her. If she couldn't accept herself,why would anyone else bother with her eternal damnation and suffer along-side her,carrying her problems? Nobody deserves such a pitiful fate,so better end it all before any more misfortune starts stalking her.

For the rest of the year she kept her stoic facade,devoid of any emotion or compassion,only allowing herself to crumble the sturdy walls around her when alone,with only the shadows threatening to consume her.

~But miracles do actually happen,even to the less fortune of souls~

Seeing how much sadness he brought to the one pure soul he created,now tainted by Humanity's malice,He felt pity,and allowed a private parley between them. She would be able to became and angel and join the ranks once again,if only she can successfully finish a mission,one that required guiding another unfortunate soul to the light,one from a modern time of War between states.

The first step,now that she was back to her celestial self,was to observe the person and see if he truly was worthy of redemption. Flying on a cloud,she propped herself comfortable,at the first hour of the day,before the Sun even got the chance appear on the sky,watching the Native American’s life and memories,and with it,the familiar feeling of sorrow settled itself into her heart,and looking down at him,she was shocked to see him kneeling on the ground,his head on the ground,sobbing and cursing at the wind for his bad luck,yet praying with all his might to any existing deity that might give him a sign to keep on going...a reason to live. His mother dead,his father killed by himself,his mentor having died,and his many loved ones,away... Maybe,just maybe,despite everything he had lost,even himself....mayhap there is still something worth fighting for.

She remained stunned,gazing at him with pity,her dark eyes,like the infinite void,sparkling with interest and other unknown emotions towards this complete stranger ; he looked up,his kind chocolate eyes glistening with tears of hopelessness,until he widened his orbs,and much to her surprise,his gaze bore into hers.

So much time she spent observing him from up there,that she didn't realize the sunshine was bright enough to make her glow,having her position discovered. Scared,she fled back to Heaven,and contemplated her next move. Frankly,she wanted nothing to do with that pitiful assassin,for he too was in the same desperate situation she was in... On the other hand,however,there was something that made her think of him with no end.

The look in his dark eyes that held warmth,like when you go home after a cold winter night.They are hazelnuts and gingerbread men,hot cocoa and cinnamon,they are the comfort and warmth when you wrap yourself in a blanket and stay reading in front of a fireplace,drinking a hot beverage with extra honey,and outside it's freezing and snowing.

His eyes...The dark coloured eyes that she held herself as well,and she despised,she fell in love with.

His eyes...The one colour she hated most,and wished for any other one,she found genuinely mesmerizing and enchanting.

His eyes...So deep and caring,carrying a heavy burden of sorrow and pain.

His eyes...The ones she grew to love with all her heart.

His eyes...Him...The pitiful knight is shining armour that stood there,still hoping and searching for happiness,not having given up yet. He was strong,stronger than anyone she had ever met,either in her angel or human form,and she felt genuinely attracted,without wanting to. In truth,she was scared. Scared of what might happen if she lost him. She wanted nothing more than to make sure he did not suffer the same fate she did,made sure to use the small amount of magic she held,to make him smile for the first time in ages. Be it a lovely playful kitten,or a travelling crystal butterfly,a picturesque sunshine or a magnificent flower,she did it all for him.

That is,until one Archangel began to notice and expressed his displeasure towards her ridiculous behaviour,which only seemed to irk her to the point where she walked up to God himself,to request one last wish,before she would disappear.It was rather selfish and uncertain,but the Lord only smiled down at his little angel,patted her head and sent her down on Earth at the next sunrise,descending to Earth with a divine and elegant glow that would put even Mother Moon to shame.

In front of her,kneeling and staring up at her in wonder,he tried to make words come out of his mouth,but his chipped lips only seemed to form stutters,as he bit on the lower one,trying to stop himself from letting more tears stream down his chocolate-coloured cheeks.

She remained silent,knowing words would betray her,and smiled gently at him,touching his rough face with her pale,delicate hand,and seeing him lean into her warm touch with such glee in his eyes,much like a pitiful puppy who found a new owner,made her look away,suddenly feeling timid and a rosy blush threatening to cover her angelic features. She knelt to his level,her white wings fluttering,and putting her hands together,she made a small snowdrop form,letting him witness the beauty of nature by letting him have it,as a sign of purity and innocence.

Touched to tears by her kind gestures,he felt himself hug her tightly to his chest,not wanting to let her go anymore. He finally found the sign he was looking for and he was willing to brave anything is his path to make sure his Angel remained by his side,happy. He started planting soft kisses all over hear rosy face,forehead and fire-kissed hair,her angelic giggles becoming lullabies to his ears. His own face became redder than any Red Lily he had ever encountered thus far,and seeing this,she felt herself grin at him and kissed his forehead,as he kept radiating with happiness.

"I choose to throw away my immortality and powers,strip away my wings and ranks,only to be by your side,for as long as Earth will have us.Will you accept me,my darling brave warrior of justice?" she said with a playful grin and she cupped his mesmerised face,that held only love and wonder. "I can only thank Thee,Mother Moon,for sending your most beautiful and compassionate of daughters down here,to me.I vow to protect you,my sweet Cherokee rose,with every fiber of my being,no matter what dangers might occur." Connor vowed,placing his own hands over hers and gazing into her shiny eyes,overflowing with emotion. "Then,my sweet assassin,protector of righteousness,prithee,take care of me and teach me what love is,for I have faced so many misfortunes,I lost count,and let us seal this promise with a kiss" saying that,she looked down,allowing herself a moment of timidness,then leaned in,placing her lips over his,kissing him softly,as she felt his hands shaking just the littlest bit,getting the courage to reciprocate just as gently,almost afraid to break her,as if she was just a lovely mirage and he was actually on the verge of dying.

"I am yours,and you are mine,I swear it by any Gods existing on this World,and I never intend to let go of my beautiful butterfly.Thou art the greatest gift humanity could ever receive." managing to smile,bright and genuine,for the first time in his life,he kissed the firey girl,watching her immaculate white wings slowly dissipate into thin air,then embraced her,playing with her hair,kissing it,vowing to himself to become a better man and make her the happiest person walking the Earth. And so what seemed to be the tragic story of two different people from two parallel worlds proved to be the emotional reunion of two soulmates looking for each other,and only seeing the black,white and greys of life,until discovering the light at the end of the tunnel,and with it,a vivid palette of unlimited colours.

#Assassin's Creed #assassins #creed #connor kenway #connor #kenway #Ratonhnhaké:ton #love #story #angel #AU #medieval #times #imagine #assassins creed imagine #tragic #fluff #angst #angel au

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aspenbloomfieldyr2fmp · 4 years

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Tolkien

Who Was Tolkien?

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892–1973) was a major scholar of the English language, specialising in Old and Middle English. Twice Professor of Anglo-Saxon (Old English) at the University of Oxford, he also wrote a number of stories, including most famously The Hobbit (1937) and The Lord of the Rings (1954–1955), which are set in a pre-historic era in an invented version of our world which he called by the Middle English name of Middle-earth. This was peopled by Men (and women), Elves, Dwarves, Trolls, Orcs (or Goblins) and of course Hobbits. He has regularly been condemned by the Eng. Lit. establishment, with honourable exceptions, but loved by literally millions of readers worldwide.

Childhood and Youth

The name “Tolkien” was believed by the family to be of German origin; Toll-kühn: foolishly brave, or stupidly clever—hence the pseudonym “Oxymore” which he occasionally used; however, this quite probably was a German rationalisation of an originally Baltic Tolkyn, or Tolkīn. In any case, his great-great grandfather John (Johann) Benjamin Tolkien came to Britain with his brother Daniel from Gdańsk in about 1772 and rapidly became thoroughly Anglicised. Certainly his father, Arthur Reuel Tolkien, considered himself nothing if not English. Arthur was a bank clerk, and went to South Africa in the 1890s for better prospects of promotion. There he was joined by his bride, Mabel Suffield, whose family were not only English through and through, but West Midlands since time immemorial. So John Ronald (“Ronald” to family and early friends) was born in Bloemfontein, S.A., on 3 January 1892. His memories of Africa were slight but vivid, including a scary encounter with a large hairy spider, and influenced his later writing to some extent; slight, because on 15 February 1896 his father died, and he, his mother and his younger brother Hilary returned to England—or more particularly, the West Midlands.

The West Midlands in Tolkien’s childhood were a complex mixture of the grimly industrial Birmingham conurbation, and the quintessentially rural stereotype of England, Worcestershire and surrounding areas: Severn country, the land of the composers Elgar, Vaughan Williams and Gurney, and more distantly the poet A. E. Housman (it is also just across the border from Wales). Tolkien’s life was split between these two: the then very rural hamlet of Sarehole, with its mill, just south of Birmingham; and darkly urban Birmingham itself, where he was eventually sent to King Edward’s School. By then the family had moved to King’s Heath, where the house backed onto a railway line—young Ronald’s developing linguistic imagination was engaged by the sight of coal trucks going to and from South Wales bearing destinations like” Nantyglo”,” Penrhiwceiber” and “Senghenydd”.

Then they moved to the somewhat more pleasant Birmingham suburb of Edgbaston. However, in the meantime, something of profound significance had occurred, which estranged Mabel and her children from both sides of the family: in 1900, together with her sister May, she was received into the Roman Catholic Church. From then on, both Ronald and Hilary were brought up in the faith of Pio Nono, and remained devout Catholics throughout their lives. The parish priest who visited the family regularly was the half-Spanish half-Welsh Father Francis Morgan.

Tolkien family life was generally lived on the genteel side of poverty. However, the situation worsened in 1904, when Mabel Tolkien was diagnosed as having diabetes, usually fatal in those pre-insulin days. She died on 14 November of that year leaving the two orphaned boys effectively destitute. At this point Father Francis took over, and made sure of the boys’ material as well as spiritual welfare, although in the short term they were boarded with an unsympathetic aunt-by-marriage, Beatrice Suffield, and then with a Mrs Faulkner.

By this time Ronald was already showing remarkable linguistic gifts. He had mastered the Latin and Greek which was the staple fare of an arts education at that time, and was becoming more than competent in a number of other languages, both modern and ancient, notably Gothic, and later Finnish. He was already busy making up his own languages, purely for fun. He had also made a number of close friends at King Edward’s; in his later years at school they met regularly after hours as the “T. C. B. S.” (Tea Club, Barrovian Society, named after their meeting place at the Barrow Stores) and they continued to correspond closely and exchange and criticise each other’s literary work until 1916.

However, another complication had arisen. Amongst the lodgers at Mrs Faulkner’s boarding house was a young woman called Edith Bratt. When Ronald was 16, and she 19, they struck up a friendship, which gradually deepened. Eventually Father Francis took a hand, and forbade Ronald to see or even correspond with Edith for three years, until he was 21. Ronald stoically obeyed this injunction to the letter. In the summer of 1911, he was invited to join a party on a walking holiday in Switzerland, which may have inspired his descriptions of the Misty Mountains, and of Rivendell. In the autumn of that year he went up to Exeter College, Oxford where he stayed, immersing himself in the Classics, Old English, the Germanic languages (especially Gothic), Welsh and Finnish, until 1913, when he swiftly though not without difficulty picked up the threads of his relationship with Edith. He then obtained a disappointing second class degree in Honour Moderations, the “midway” stage of a 4-year Oxford “Greats” (i.e. Classics) course, although with an “alpha plus” in philology. As a result of this he changed his school from Classics to the more congenial English Language and Literature. One of the poems he discovered in the course of his Old English studies was the Crist of Cynewulf—he was amazed especially by the cryptic couplet:

Eálá Earendel engla beorhtast

Ofer middangeard monnum sended

Which translates as:

Hail Earendel brightest of angels,

over Middle Earth sent to men.

(“Middangeard” was an ancient expression for the everyday world between Heaven above and Hell below.)

This inspired some of his very early and incohate attempts at realising a world of ancient beauty in his versifying.

In the summer of 1913 he took a job as tutor and escort to two Mexican boys in Dinard, France, a job which ended in tragedy. Though no fault of Ronald’s, it did nothing to counter his apparent predisposition against France and things French.

Meanwhile the relationship with Edith was going more smoothly. She converted to Catholicism and moved to Warwick, which with its spectacular castle and beautiful surrounding countryside made a great impression on Ronald. However, as the pair were becoming ever closer, the nations were striving ever more furiously together, and war eventually broke out in August 1914.

War, Lost Tales and Academia

Unlike so many of his contemporaries, Tolkien did not rush to join up immediately on the outbreak of war, but returned to Oxford, where he worked hard and finally achieved a first-class degree in June 1915. At this time he was also working on various poetic attempts, and on his invented languages, especially one that he came to call Qenya [sic], which was heavily influenced by Finnish—but he still felt the lack of a connecting thread to bring his vivid but disparate imaginings together. Tolkien finally enlisted as a second lieutenant in the Lancashire Fusiliers whilst working on ideas of Earendel [sic] the Mariner, who became a star, and his journeyings. For many months Tolkien was kept in boring suspense in England, mainly in Staffordshire. Finally it appeared that he must soon embark for France, and he and Edith married in Warwick on 22 March 1916.

Eventually he was indeed sent to active duty on the Western Front, just in time for the Somme offensive. After four months in and out of the trenches, he succumbed to “trench fever”, a form of typhus-like infection common in the insanitary conditions, and in early November was sent back to England, where he spent the next month in hospital in Birmingham. By Christmas he had recovered sufficiently to stay with Edith at Great Haywood in Staffordshire.

During these last few months, all but one of his close friends of the “T. C. B. S.” had been killed in action. Partly as an act of piety to their memory, but also stirred by reaction against his war experiences, he had already begun to put his stories into shape, “… in huts full of blasphemy and smut, or by candle light in bell-tents, even some down in dugouts under shell fire” [Letters 66]. This ordering of his imagination developed into the Book of Lost Tales (not published in his lifetime), in which most of the major stories of the Silmarillion appear in their first form: tales of the Elves and the “Gnomes”, (i. e. Deep Elves, the later Noldor), with their languages Qenya and Goldogrin. Here are found the first recorded versions of the wars against Morgoth, the siege and fall of Gondolin and Nargothrond, and the tales of Túrin and of Beren and Lúthien.

Throughout 1917 and 1918 his illness kept recurring, although periods of remission enabled him to do home service at various camps sufficiently well to be promoted to lieutenant. It was when he was stationed in the Hull area that he and Edith went walking in the woods at nearby Roos, and there in a grove thick with hemlock Edith danced for him. This was the inspiration for the tale of Beren and Lúthien, a recurrent theme in his “Legendarium”. He came to think of Edith as “Lúthien” and himself as “Beren”. Their first son, John Francis Reuel (later Father John Tolkien) had already been born on 16 November 1917.

When the Armistice was signed on 11 November 1918, Tolkien had already been putting out feelers to obtain academic employment, and by the time he was demobilised he had been appointed Assistant Lexicographer on the New English Dictionary (the “Oxford English Dictionary”), then in preparation. While doing the serious philological work involved in this, he also gave one of his Lost Tales its first public airing—he read The Fall of Gondolin to the Exeter College Essay Club, where it was well received by an audience which included Neville Coghill and Hugo Dyson, two future “Inklings”. However, Tolkien did not stay in this job for long. In the summer of 1920 he applied for the quite senior post of Reader (approximately, Associate Professor) in English Language at the University of Leeds, and to his surprise was appointed.

At Leeds as well as teaching he collaborated with E. V. Gordon on the famous edition of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and continued writing and refining The Book of Lost Tales and his invented “Elvish” languages. In addition, he and Gordon founded a “Viking Club” for undergraduates devoted mainly to reading Old Norse sagas and drinking beer. It was for this club that he and Gordon originally wrote their Songs for the Philologists, a mixture of traditional songs and original verses translated into Old English, Old Norse and Gothic to fit traditional English tunes. Leeds also saw the birth of two more sons: Michael Hilary Reuel in October 1920, and Christopher Reuel in 1924. Then in 1925 the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professorship of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford fell vacant; Tolkien successfully applied for the post.

Professor Tolkien, The Inklings and Hobbits

In a sense, in returning to Oxford as a Professor, Tolkien had come home. Although he had few illusions about the academic life as a haven of unworldly scholarship (see for example Letters 250), he was nevertheless by temperament a don’s don, and fitted extremely well into the largely male world of teaching, research, the comradely exchange of ideas and occasional publication. In fact, his academic publication record is very sparse, something that would have been frowned upon in these days of quantitative personnel evaluation.

However, his rare scholarly publications were often extremely influential, most notably his lecture “Beowulf, the Monsters and the Critics”. His seemingly almost throwaway comments have sometimes helped to transform the understanding of a particular field—for example, in his essay on “English and Welsh”, with its explanation of the origins of the term “Welsh” and its references to phonaesthetics (both these pieces are collected in The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays, currently in print). His academic life was otherwise largely unremarkable. In 1945 he changed his chair to the Merton Professorship of English Language and Literature, which he retained until his retirement in 1959. Apart from all the above, he taught undergraduates, and played an important but unexceptional part in academic politics and administration.

His family life was equally straightforward. Edith bore their last child and only daughter, Priscilla, in 1929. Tolkien got into the habit of writing the children annual illustrated letters as if from Santa Claus, and a selection of these was published in 1976 as The Father Christmas Letters. He also told them numerous bedtime stories, of which more anon. In adulthood John entered the priesthood, Michael and Christopher both saw war service in the Royal Air Force. Afterwards Michael became a schoolmaster and Christopher a university lecturer, and Priscilla became a social worker. They lived quietly in North Oxford, and later Ronald and Edith lived in the suburb of Headington.

However, Tolkien’s social life was far from unremarkable. He soon became one of the founder members of a loose grouping of Oxford friends (by no means all at the University) with similar interests, known as “The Inklings”. The origins of the name were purely facetious—it had to do with writing, and sounded mildly Anglo-Saxon; there was no evidence that members of the group claimed to have an “inkling” of the Divine Nature, as is sometimes suggested. Other prominent members included the above—mentioned Messrs Coghill and Dyson, as well as Owen Barfield, Charles Williams, and above all C. S. Lewis, who became one of Tolkien’s closest friends, and for whose return to Christianity Tolkien was at least partly responsible. The Inklings regularly met for conversation, drink, and frequent reading from their work-in-progress.

The Storyteller

Meanwhile Tolkien continued developing his mythology and languages. As mentioned above, he told his children stories, some of which he developed into those published posthumously as Mr. Bliss, Roverandom, etc. However, according to his own account, one day when he was engaged in the soul-destroying task of marking examination papers, he discovered that one candidate had left one page of an answer-book blank. On this page, moved by who knows what anarchic daemon, he wrote “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit“.

In typical Tolkien fashion, he then decided he needed to find out what a Hobbit was, what sort of a hole it lived in, why it lived in a hole, etc. From this investigation grew a tale that he told to his younger children, and even passed round. In 1936 an incomplete typescript of it came into the hands of Susan Dagnall, an employee of the publishing firm of George Allen and Unwin (merged in 1990 with HarperCollins).

She asked Tolkien to finish it, and presented the complete story to Stanley Unwin, the then Chairman of the firm. He tried it out on his 10-year old son Rayner, who wrote an approving report, and it was published as The Hobbit in 1937. It immediately scored a success, and has not been out of children’s recommended reading lists ever since. It was so successful that Stanley Unwin asked if he had any more similar material available for publication.

By this time Tolkien had begun to make his Legendarium into what he believed to be a more presentable state, and as he later noted, hints of it had already made their way into The Hobbit. He was now calling the full account Quenta Silmarillion, or Silmarillion for short. He presented some of his “completed” tales to Unwin, who sent them to his reader. The reader’s reaction was mixed: dislike of the poetry and praise for the prose (the material was the story of Beren and Lúthien) but the overall decision at the time was that these were not commercially publishable. Unwin tactfully relayed this message to Tolkien, but asked him again if he was willing to write a sequel to The Hobbit. Tolkien was disappointed at the apparent failure of The Silmarillion, but agreed to take up the challenge of “The New Hobbit”.

This soon developed into something much more than a children’s story; for the highly complex 16-year history of what became The Lord of the Rings consult the works listed below. Suffice it to say that the now adult Rayner Unwin was deeply involved in the later stages of this opus, dealing magnificently with a dilatory and temperamental author who, at one stage, was offering the whole work to a commercial rival (which rapidly backed off when the scale and nature of the package became apparent). It is thanks to Rayner Unwin’s advocacy that we owe the fact that this book was published at all – Andave laituvalmes! His father’s firm decided to incur the probable loss of £1,000 for the succès d’estime, and publish it under the title of The Lord of the Rings in three parts during 1954 and 1955, with USA rights going to Houghton Mifflin. It soon became apparent that both author and publishers had greatly underestimated the work’s public appeal.

The “Cult”

The Lord of the Rings rapidly came to public notice. It had mixed reviews, ranging from the ecstatic (W. H. Auden, C. S. Lewis) to the damning (E. Wilson, E. Muir, P. Toynbee) and just about everything in between. The BBC put on a drastically condensed radio adaptation in 12 episodes on the Third Programme. In 1956 radio was still a dominant medium in Britain, and the Third Programme was the “intellectual” channel. So far from losing money, sales so exceeded the break-even point as to make Tolkien regret that he had not taken early retirement. However, this was still based only upon hardback sales.

The really amazing moment was when The Lord of the Rings went into a pirated paperback version in 1965. Firstly, this put the book into the impulse-buying category; and secondly, the publicity generated by the copyright dispute alerted millions of American readers to the existence of something outside their previous experience, but which appeared to speak to their condition. By 1968 The Lord of the Rings had almost become the Bible of the “Alternative Society”.

This development produced mixed feelings in the author. On the one hand, he was extremely flattered, and to his amazement, became rather rich. On the other, he could only deplore those whose idea of a great trip was to ingest The Lord of the Rings and LSD simultaneously. Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick had similar experiences with 2001: A Space Odyssey. Fans were causing increasing problems; both those who came to gawp at his house and those, especially from California who telephoned at 7 p.m. (their time—3 a.m. his), to demand to know whether Frodo had succeeded or failed in the Quest, what was the preterite of Quenyan lanta-, or whether or not Balrogs had wings. So he changed addresses, his telephone number went ex-directory, and eventually he and Edith moved to Bournemouth, a pleasant but uninspiring South Coast resort (Hardy’s “Sandbourne”), noted for the number of its elderly well-to-do residents.

Meanwhile the cult, not just of Tolkien, but of the fantasy literature that he had revived, if not actually inspired (to his dismay), was really taking off—but that is another story, to be told in another place.

Other Writings

Despite all the fuss over The Lord of the Rings, between 1925 and his death Tolkien did write and publish a number of other articles, including a range of scholarly essays, many reprinted in The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays (see above); one Middle-earth related work, The Adventures of Tom Bombadil; editions and translations of Middle English works such as the Ancrene Wisse, Sir Gawain, Sir Orfeo and The Pearl, and some stories independent of the Legendarium, such as the Imram, The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son, The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun—and, especially, Farmer Giles of Ham, Leaf by Niggle, and Smith of Wootton Major.

The flow of publications was only temporarily slowed by Tolkien’s death. The long-awaited Silmarillion, edited by Christopher Tolkien, appeared in 1977. In 1980 Christopher also published a selection of his father’s incomplete writings from his later years under the title of Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-earth. In the introduction to this work Christopher Tolkien referred in passing to The Book of Lost Tales, “itself a very substantial work, of the utmost interest to one concerned with the origins of Middle-earth, but requiring to be presented in a lengthy and complex study, if at all” (Unfinished Tales, p. 6, paragraph 1).

The sales of The Silmarillion had rather taken George Allen & Unwin by surprise, and those of Unfinished Tales even more so. Obviously, there was a market even for this relatively abstruse material and they decided to risk embarking on this “lengthy and complex study”. Even more lengthy and complex than expected, the resulting 12 volumes of the History of Middle-earth, under Christopher’s editorship, proved to be a successful enterprise. (Tolkien’s publishers had changed hands, and names, several times between the start of the enterprise in 1983 and the appearance of the paperback edition of Volume 12, The Peoples of Middle-earth, in 1997.) Over time, other posthumous publications emerged including Roverandom (1998), The Children of Húrin (2007), Beowulf (2014), Beren and Lúthien (2017), and most recently The Fall of Gondolin (2018).

Finis

After his retirement in 1959 Edith and Ronald moved to Bournemouth. On 29 November 1971 Edith died, and Ronald soon returned to Oxford, to rooms provided by Merton College. Ronald died on 2 September 1973. He and Edith are buried together in a single grave in the Catholic section of Wolvercote cemetery in the northern suburbs of Oxford. (The grave is well signposted from the entrance.) The legend on the headstone reads:

Edith Mary Tolkien, Lúthien, 1889–1971

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, Beren, 1892–1973

Source

https://www.tolkiensociety.org/author/biography/

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sae-you-sae-me · 7 years

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Hey guys! I had this crazy idea I can't get out of my head: RFA+V & Saeran in some disney scenario lmao. But! They're the 'princess' and MC is the 'prince' :D Just a random example to illustrate my point: Jumin is a rich and bored prince and only his tigress Elly is bringing him joy, but then this sneaky plebeian girl rolls up singing 'I can show you the world' lol

This is a really creative prompt! Hope you like these~

Zen:

(Cinderella)

Zen thought he was just a lowly boy in a household with his brother and mother

His mother wasn’t the kindest of people

She made him clean a lot and she rarely let him leave the house

She never praised him for his actions, and always put him down for his looks

It grew to the climax when you, royalty, invites him to a ball

His mother locked him up in his room and refused to let him out, attending the party herself

Then one day, a fairy–er–godmother named Seven visited him and freed him from his room

Using magic, Seven dressed him in the finest suit and placed two glass roses in his suit pocket and sent him on his way

His beauty caught your eye, but there was something else about this man that intrigued you

You asked him to dance, and afterwards you both retreated into the nearby garden

You saw his kind heart and knew there was something about him

But then the clock struck midnight, and he rushed away from you in a fluster

A glass rose had fallen, miraculously intact on the stairs

You determined to find this kind heart someway or another

Meanwhile, Zen returned to his life unsatisfied with everything, but managing nonetheless

When he finds out you’re searching for someone with a glass rose, he’s ecstatic

With the help of Seven, he manages to bypass his mother’s schemes and show you the matching rose

You two live happily ever after in a castle

Yoosung:

(Sleeping Beauty)

A prince with brown hair born to a kingdom and his name was Yoosung

His three fairy caretakers gave him gifts at his birth

Zen gave him beauty, which changed his hair to a bright blond

Jumin gave him wealth and wellbeing

Before the last gift could be given, an evil witch named Rika Morgana intruded and put a curse on him

So, as the last gift, the fairy V bestowed on Yoosung a blessing that made him go into a deep slumber instead of death

The king and queen still worried for their son, so they sent him with the three fairies to grow up away from troubles

Years later, Yoosung had a tendency to wander away from the small cottage

It was on one of these outings he met you, a princess from another land

He feels like he’s met you before, and instantly falls you *Cue Once Upon A Dream playing*

When he returns to the cottage and the fairies find out, they instantly separate you two to his chagrin

In his fit of anger, he runs away from the cottage and stumbles upon a castle

Morgana tricks him into pricking his finger and Yoosung falls into a deep sleep

But Morgana also pulled you in, luring you into the castle and becoming a dragon

She tried to kill you off but you persevered and slayed the dragon, suddenly motivated by saving Yoosung from his sleep

You rescue him by giving him true love’s kiss

You two return to the castle, reunite with Yoosung’s parents, and live happily ever after

Jaehee:

(Frozen)

Jaehee was in charge of a kingdom after your parents died

But she had these special powers that she was unsure of and didn’t know what to do with

So she did her best to suppress her power and hide…even from you

But finally the day came where she was coronated, and you two would finally bond…you hoped

You met a man there…he seemed amazing

He was a prince and you two just seemed to click, and his name was Jumin

But Jaehee disagreed when you said you wanted to marry him

The argument caused her powers to slip out and the whole kingdom fell in fear

So she fled, and you couldn’t catch up though you tried

On your way to find her, you met a tall, really handsome man who somehow joined you on your search

This man, Zen, seemed to give you advice about marrying a man you just met and how it was ridiculous and how men were beasts

He also had this quirky reindeer named Sveven

On the way, you also met this happy little ball of snow named Yoosung

With their help, you found Jaehee’s castle of ice and approached her

Things didn’t go well and you got shot in the heart with ice

Zen hurried you out of there to the magical trolls while Jaehee continued to detiorate in her fear

When he hears about the act of true love, he takes you home to Jumin

Only, Jumin betrays you for the sake of a kingdom and takes over for awhile

Finally, Jaehee embraces her power and before she can be annihilated by Jumin, you intervene

This act of love melts your heart of ice

You and Jaehee bond again and everyone lives happily ever after

Jumin:

(Aladdin)

He was a prince who was locked up in an extravagant castle

His father wanted him to marry, but Jumin wasn’t thrilled with the idea

One night, he kissed his tiger Elizabeth the Third before sliding over the wall in disguise to see the city

Not knowing much of commoner ways, he soon got lost, but thankfully a peasant girl intervened and helped him through

He had never felt a connection with anyone before you and he found the night flew by

Unfortunately, you were caught by his palace guards thanks to his father’s evil advisor Sarah Choi

Meanwhile, Sarah convinced his father, by nefarious means, to betroth Jumin to herself

You escaped prison, in the meantime, and followed a Sarah in disguise to find a genie lamp

You entered a cave with your monkey Saeran and passed a few obstacles

You befriended a magic carpet named Yoosung and found the genie lamp

The genie named Seven offered you three wishes, so you started your transformation to be worthy of Prince Jumin

With Seven’s help, you appear as a princess and go to Jumin

Your first meeting is rough, but you take him on a magic carpet ride and somewhere along the way he founds out you’re the peasant girl from the market place

Unfortunately, so does Sarah Choi

She plans your downfall but ultimately fails

You and Jumin end up together after all, despite your varying classes, and live happily ever after

Seven:

(Tangled)

Saeyoung was a prince with magical red hair

As a result, he couldn’t cut it or the hair would turn normal

Because of this, he was kidnapped by a cruel woman and locked in a tower while she claimed to be his mother

He was never allowed to leave and didn’t have any friends but his chameleon Vanderwood

Still he had this longing to see the stars near the castle

One day, while his evil mother was out on “errands”, he made up his mind to finally leave the castle

But his plans were thwarted when a thief broke into his house while on the run from the castle guards and their dedicated royal horse Saeran

“What brought you here? Fate? Destiny?”

“Your brother A horse.”

He makes an agreement with you that he would return your stolen crown if you took him to see the stars

You agree, though you try to get rid of him somehow

He has a bunch of mood swings, feeling happy at his freedom but also guilty for leaving

Unfortunately, you drag him into your own problems as you try to run away from your old partners in crime

Finally, you make it to the city where you reunite with your enemy…Saeran…who happens to be protective of Saeyoung

Still, since it’s his birthday you two get along and spend a day in the city

During this time, you realize you had fallen for him and you want to quit your old life

Your magical boat ride underneath the stars goes awry when Saeyoung’s mother intervenes

You get wounded, you cut his hair, but in the end everything ends up okay

You get free from your life, Saeyoung ends up with his happy family, and you live happily ever after

Saeran:

(Hercules)

You never really fit in anywhere because you had magical powers that made you super strong

After seeing you struggle, your parents revealed that you were actually the daughter of a god

But Hades intervened and drained you of your divinity, but your powers still remained

With this information, you went to training with the best of the best…Zen

With his help, you got even stronger and better

On your very first mission, you came across a damoiseua in distress

Only…the boy could handle himself

You found out the boy’s name was Saeran, and you were completely infatuated with him despite Zen’s warnings

Hades finds out Saeran met you and suddenly traps him into another agreement

Saeran is forced to lure you into a trap where Hades can get rid of you forever

But he finds himself falling in love with you on the way

When you and Hades face off, Saeran sacrifices himself, getting himself sent to the underworld

Desperate to get him back, you venture there and pull out his soul from the pool

In the process, you showed you were truly the daughter of a god and regained your divinity

With your newfound power, you sent Hades back into the underworld and are reunited with your divine parents

But…you wanted to stay with Saeran

So you gave up your immortality to stay with Saeran and live the rest of your lives happily

Winnie the Pooh

V is Winnie the Pooh

MC is Christopher Robin

Jumin is piglet

Seven is Tigger

Yoosung is Roo

Jaehee is Eeyore

Saeran is Rabbit

They all live happily…no drama happens…everyone has a happy ending

Check out our other headcanons~ Masterlist

#Anonymous #mystic messenger #mystic messenger zen #hyun ryu #yoosung kim #jaehee kang #jumin han #saeyoung choi #luciel choi #saeran choi #mystic messenger v #jihyun kim #mystic messenger scenarios #mystic messenger headcanons #mystic messenger imagines

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perfectdailyposts-blog · 7 years

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The “lethal beauty” of Evelyn Nesbit and the very first “trial of the century"

Evelyn Nesbit, whose stunning beauty enchanted the New York community of artists as well as the budding marketing world during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, was one of Charles Dana Gibson’s idealized “Gibson Girls.” She was desired by artists who wanted to paint and photograph her, by companies that wanted to use her image to advertise their products, and by men who wished to possess her, and yet ultimately her beauty proved to be more of a curse for Evelyn than anything else.

She was a top-rated artists’ model, actress, and chorus girl since the age of 14. She married multi-millionaire Harry Kendall Thaw when she was 20.But Nesbit’s fame took a very dark turn after the scandalous murder of architect and New York socialite Stanford White by Evelyn’s crazed husband, Thaw. The shooting happened on the rooftop of Madison Square Garden Theater in June 1906, and led to what the press called “the Trial of the Century,” the first time that phrase was used. The reason for the millionaire taking White’s life was his belief that White had raped Nesbit when she was 14.

Evelyn Nesbit in 1901.

Evelyn was born in 1884, in a town near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. After the death of her father when she was only 11, her mother, a housewife who had never done any labor, was forced to support Evelyn and her younger brother. Struggling to find a job and having a hard time separating her expectations from the reality of the job market, Mrs. Nesbit was never successful in maintaining an income and feeding her children. Quite often, the family of three lived in the houses of relatives, relying on their financial support. She left for Philadelphia expecting to find work as a seamstress, leaving her children at her relatives’ house in Pittsburgh.

Nesbit photographed by Otto Sarony, 1902.

Instead, Mrs. Nesbit became employed as a sales clerk at the fabric counter of Wanamaker’s department store, and after a few months, she took Evelyn and her brother Howard to join her. They both started working with their mother, and regardless of their age (Evelyn was 14, her brother 12 at the time), they worked 12 hours every day, for six days a week.

Around this time, Evelyn had an encounter with an artist who was stunned by the teenager’s beauty and evocative charm. This meeting led to Nesbit posing for a painting for which she earned one dollar (equivalent to approximately $27.50 in 2017). Realizing that there was another, much easier and more enjoyable way to make money, Evelyn decided to pose for artists. Even though her mother was never supportive of it and the girl always had to convince and beg, money won.

Käsebier, Gertrude (1903), Portrait (Miss N) (photograph).

Evelyn’s mother’s next destination was New York City, a place suitable for Evelyn’s dreams. Instead of the easy job that she was hoping for, Mrs. Nesbit faced even stiffer competition. Poverty and desperation led to the decision that Evelyn would become the financial supporter of the three, and hence the girl was sent to model for many artists. The first contact was James Carroll Beckwith, who willingly made a portrait of Evelyn, and it was after this that the world of artists opened its doors to her. She was the most desired model of her time.

Nesbit wearing a flower wreath headband. Photograph by Rudolf Eickemeyer, Jr.

She posed for Frederick S. Church, Carle J. Blenner, Herbert Morgan, Carle J. Blenner, Rudolf Eickemeyer, Otto Sarony, and many other New York artists. She became the most popular face on the covers of women’s magazines of the period, including Cosmopolitan, Vanity Fair, The Delineator, Harper’s Bazaar, Ladies’ Home Journal, and Women’s Home Companion. Inside the magazines, the teenage model was advertising face creams, toothpaste, and a range of other kinds of consumer goods. Evelyn’s face was printed on tobacco cards, postcards, beer trays, pocket mirrors, chromolithographs, you name it. Posing for calendars for Coca-Cola, Swift, Prudential Life Insurance, and other corporations, she became the very first pin-up girl.

Evelyn Nesbit represents “The Queen of Hearts” on a playing card.

She was the most sought after model, and her schedule was full, but soon, the teenager became bored with just standing for long hours, posing in front of artists, and so persuaded her mother to let her start an acting career. After an interview with John C. Fisher, company manager of the wildly popular play Florodora, which was performed at the Casino Theatre on Broadway, Evelyn got a part as a member of the show’s chorus line. Soon after, she won a part in The Wild Rose, again on Broadway. She was offered a contract for a year as a featured player in the role of the Roma girl “Vashti.” In the press, Evelyn was always praised for her beauty and her acting skills were rarely in the focus.

It was at this time that Stanford White arranged to meet Evelyn through friends. White soon befriended the Nesbits, providing them with a much bigger apartment, and also helping Howard get in the military academy. He helped the Nesbits financially, and in return, he was always around Evelyn. Even though he presented himself as a parent figure to her, it turned out that his intentions were not parental at all.

Stanford White

One time, when White was assured that Mrs. Nesbit was traveling to Pittsburgh, he invited Evelyn for dinner at his apartment. According to Evelyn’s later accounts of that evening, they were drinking champagne until she started feeling dizzy, and the last memory she had was changing into a yellow satin kimono. The next morning she woke up next to White, half-naked. She never mentioned this to anyone at the time, and White continued his fake role of protective parent.

Photograph by Rudolf Eickemeyer, Jr., 1901

When she was 17, Evelyn met the future movie star, John Barrymore, known as “Jack,” who at the time was trying to avoid his family path in the acting world and pursue a career as an illustrator and cartoonist. Unfortunately, it didn’t earn him a lot of money, at least not enough to be considered as an opportunity for Evelyn. So even though she was fond of him and was dating him for some time, their relationship displeased Mrs. Nesbit and White. White actually made a plan of separating the couple by arranging for Evelyn to enroll at a boarding school in New Jersey, and even though Barrymore proposed to Evelyn in front of her mother and White, she refused him.

A Fallen Idol (1919).

There were many men who vied for Evelyn’s attention, and she wanted to be sure that she would make a choice that would give her firm financial security. At the same time, she was involved with the polo player James Montgomery Waterbury, also known as “Monte,” the young magazine publisher Robert J. Collier, and the son of a Pittsburgh coal and railroad baron, Harry Kendall Thaw. In the end, Thaw’s money won Evelyn’s attention and soon after, they, along with Mrs. Nesbit, were on a trip to Europe. Despite all that Thaw’s money could buy, he was an unstable, strange person and instead of the glamourous trip to the European cities they had expected, Thaw made a fast-paced itinery to wear out Mrs. Nesbit so that she would leave her daughter alone with him. The subsequent growing tensions between mother and daughter finally did result in Mrs. Nesbit staying in London and returning to the U.S. while the other two continued on to Paris.

Harry Kendall Thaw.

While in Paris, Thaw asked Evelyn to marry him, but she refused. Aware of Thaw’s obsession with female chastity, she couldn’t agree to a marriage with a clear conscience, so she revealed her secret for the first time. She told Thaw what White had done to her, and he became completely enraged. Then, horrifyingly, he took Evelyn to a castle in Austria where she became his prisoner. For two weeks, he beat her with a whip and sexually assaulted her. He apologized afterward, saying that he didn’t know what had gotten into him.

The Woman Who Gave (1918).

And yet, financial security meant enough for Evelyn to forgive him and to accept his marriage proposal, although it took four years of him persuading her to do so. Thaw’s mother agreed to the marriage only under the condition of Evelyn giving up her modeling and acting career. She did so and went to live in the family’s mansion with her new husband and his religious mother. Mama Thaw was the head of the house, setting all the norms of behavior. In the meantime, Mrs. Nesbit found a husband and had become completely estranged from her daughter.

Evelyn Nesbit by Otto Sarony.

On the 25th of June, Thaw and Nesbit were spending a night in New York before setting off to Europe for their holiday. Thaw purchased tickets for Mam’zelle Champagne, a new show written by Edgar Allan Woolf that had its premiere that evening on the rooftop of Madison Square Garden Theater. At night, as they were meeting some friends, they encountered White but calmly continued to the roof. Around 11 o’clock that evening, as the show was coming to an end, Thaw took a pistol from his coat and shot White three times in the head and in the back, killing him.

Front page, New York American, June 26th, 1906.

The next day, all the media covered the event, revealing Evelyn’s secret. According to some reports, Thaw was heard to scream “You ruined my wife” and to others “You ruined my life.” Evelyn was not spared the social and media judgment. Instead of defending her, people were attacking her. Thaw was imprisoned, but Mama Thaw spent millions of dollars on doctors and attorneys who would play the card of “subtle insanity.” She wanted not only for her son to avoid prison, but also to make a victim of him while not marking him with insanity. Money bought him a place in a hospital where he was accommodated in a luxury apartment.

Evelyn gave birth to a son, Russell William Thaw, in 1910, in Berlin. Even though she always maintained that the child was Thaw’s son, conceived during a conjugal visit to Thaw, he denied paternity. They divorced in 1915 and Evelyn married the dancer Jack Clifford in 1916, with whom she worked in a stage act. Their marriage sadly wasn’t a successful one. It seemed that the public didn’t permit her to start a new life, calling her “the lethal beauty,” always associating her with the “playboy killer.” Feeling that his own identity was being subsumed into that of Evelyn’s, Jack left his wife in 1918, and she finally divorced him in 1933.

Evelyn Nesbit and son, Russell William Thaw, 1913.

In 1926, Nesbit swallowed disinfectant in a suicide attempt, after losing her job as a dancer at the Moulin Rouge Cafe. Until that time, Thaw still had a detective following his ex-wife and kept paying her money (10 dollars a day), for, as he stated, it was “a token of pleasant memories of the past when we were happy.” He visited her in the hospital in Chicago, but contrary to rumors of reconciliation, the couple never got back together.

Redemption (1917)

In 1914, Evelyn published her first memoir, The Story of My Life and in 1934 she published a second, Prodigal Days

She worked as technical advisor for the 1955 movie The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing, which proved to be a highly fictionalized account of events in Nesbit’s life, then lived quietly in New Jersey for several years. She died in a nursing home in Santa Monica, California, in 1967, at the age of 82.

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killingkueen · 7 years

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Ruin

Written for the RumbelleShowdown 2017 under the name Chalk Dust

Round 2: Longing, Dragon hide, Hard came the rain

The winding walk to the castle was difficult as it was tedious, made no easier by the endless rain. No doubt it was meant to deter people like him from bothering the Dark One, or maybe it was to test his desperation.

Whatever the reason, by the time he made it to the doors, his ankle couldn’t support his weight and he was soaked through. He must look positively wretched, with his hair plastered to his skull despite the hood of his cloak, and the cloak itself heavy with rain and clinging to his starved frame.

The Dark One would take one look at him and turn him away, laughing.

He wondered, not for the first time, if it wouldn’t be better to just…give up. The world wouldn’t blink at his absence, and the people in his village certainly wouldn’t. He had no one and nothing in this world. Well, almost nothing.

He clung to his staff. He would at least try.

He squared his shoulders as much as he was able but when he went to knock, the doors swung open of their own accord. Luckily, he managed to stifle his yell; he shouldn’t have been so surprised, this being the home of a mighty sorceror. Of course there’d be magic about.

The spinner forced himself to take a deep breath, and took his first step into the castle.

The doors closed silently behind him as soon as he had limped far enough across the threshold, and he tried to quell his shaking as he waited for the Dark One to appear.

After long minutes when nothing happened, he thought maybe he was meant to go to the Dark One himself. That seemed too much for his wee heart to take, but with a firm grip on his staff, he walked down the hall.

He came across another large set of doors, the frame rising in a wide arch, the doors already swinging open, inviting him in.

He entered into a grand dining hall with a large hearth, high ceiling, and a long dining table, on which there was a woman in a light blue dress placing a tray of tea things. Though her clothes were simple, they were very finely made, and he was sure the stitching would put his best work to shame. She turned, the beginnings of a smile blooming on her face, and what a face it was – beautiful, dark curls framing a strong jaw, and her eyes were a piercing blue, like ice, but they held only warmth.

Almost immediately, the smile turned into an expression of surprise, but the warmth remained.

“Oh,” she said, “I didn’t know we were entertaining today.”

He felt himself blush as her eyes swept over his form, taking in his sodden appearance and shabby, worn clothing. He shook his head, trying to say, “No, I’m not a guest,” but he was quite unable to utter a sound.

“You must be freezing,” she exclaimed. “Come, sit down.”

Her hand pulled at his elbow, and he was powerless but to let her peel him out of his cloak, then show him to the warm fire burning in the hearth and the large, plushy chair that she pushed him into, the velvet of the cushions nearly swallowing him whole.

The spinner stared at the fire, the heat wrapping around him like he was sure an embrace would feel.

“Milk?” the woman asked sweetly. “Sugar?”

He looked up to see the tea tray had been moved to small side table, and the woman waiting patiently.

“I don’t…” he tried, but the words wouldn’t make it past his throat. He didn’t know – he was stranger to such luxury. He couldn’t afford sugar and the local herder had refused his patronage for years.

Hardly bothered by his inept silence, the maiden poured him a cup, adding a spoonful of sugar and a splash of milk. Carefully she handed the cup over, and the spinner was relieved that he had managed to keep his hands from shaking enough to not spill the tea all over her dress.

“Please, madame,” he finally croaked. “I need to speak with the master of the castle.”

“Master?” said a high-pitched voice. “Oh, I quite like that.”

There, leaning against the hearth and oblivious to the flame licking at his back, was the Dark One.

The spinner startled badly at the sudden appearance, the cup falling from his hands and spilling across the floor. He winced as the cup cracked against the stone. All he could do was stare in horror at the puddle, at the delicate porcelain where it lay in pieces.

“Oh, now look what you’ve done,” the woman scolded.

“I’m sorry,” the spinner whimpered, devastated in equal parts that he had disappointed her after she had shown such kindness while simultaneously ruining any chance he had at a deal.

“Not you,” she said warmly, bending down at his feet with a rag to soak up the mess he had made. “It’s not your fault at all that the mighty Dark One is rude.”

“That’s my chair,” The Dark One snarled in response.

The spinner squeaked, ready to bolt from his seat at the first sign that was what the sorcerer wanted.

“Then conjure another,” she said, putting the broken pieces of the cup back on the tray.

“Why must you insist on coddling all of my clients?” he growled, but he waved his hand, and a larger chair poofed into existence, the cushions wider, the gilded accents more golden. He took a seat, slouching and crossing his legs petulantly.

His boots were heeled and laced all the way to his knees while his coat was stiff and coarse. A corner of the spinner’s brain thought it might be dragonhide, and he firmly decided he didn’t want to know how it had been acquired. His skin glittered in the firelight, his claws sharp and black, and he wondered if maybe the Dark One wasn’t a dragon himself. What really caught the spinner’s attention were his eyes: the pupils were large and yellow and looked like a pair of twin stars.

The spinner’s gaze settled on the floor where the wet spot was still visible, but before he could even plead, the Dark One did nothing more than roll his eyes.

“Hardly worth throwing you in the dungeon.” He sat back, staring at the spinner pointedly. “Out with it. Why have you come to sit in my chair and break my tea cups?”

“My sheep are dying, master,” he stuttered, his mouth dry. He wished he hadn’t spilled his tea.

The sorcerer’s lip twitched. “You came all this way in a storm for sheep?”

“They’re good beasts, master, and my livelihood. They’re all I have in this world.”

The Dark One steepled his hands, though his face remained impassive. “How many have you lost?”

“I had a modest flock of fourteen. All but five now are gone.”

The spinner tried not to flinch under the unblinking, starry gaze. “I’ve heard whispers of you, Spinner,” he said softly. “Rumor has it you stole away the baker’s newborn from her crib and gutted her at the crossroads in a bid for dark magic.”

A whimper bubbled up from his chest. “No, master, please.”

“Calm yourself, lamb. You are no more a babe-killer than Belle, and I would know if you were in any possession of magic.”

The spinner jumped when something touched his shoulder, but it was only the woman, Belle, and she was looking at him with such sympathy. It almost hurt him like a physical thing; he had forgotten what other people could be like when they weren’t cruel.

The Dark One hummed, and turned his head, finally looking away from the spinner, his eyes unfocusing and going dull. “But you’re wrong. Your flock is down to two.”

Again a whimper rose from his throat. He knew he should have come sooner, but he had been so afraid.

“What is it you want, Spinner?”

He began to tremble again. “I long for somewhere I can live in peace.”

“That’s easy,” the Dark One giggled. “As for the price, you’re in luck: I happen to be in need of a lamb.”

“Master?”

“Your remaining ewe. She is set to conceive triplets during the next mating season, and I require the first born.”

The spinner nodded readily.

“In the meantime, you will stay here.”

The spinner stopped nodding. “What?”

“It’s safe and warm,” the Dark One cooed, “and you and your sheep won’t last if you return home. No, you will stay here, where you can care for them and where I can guarantee I receive my payment.”

Belle’s hand slid from his shoulder to clasp his hand, and she smiled.

The Dark One and his maid were both so beautiful in their own way, but if life had taught him anything, it was to look where flowers hid their poison. But what choice did he have?

“I will stay.”

#rumbelle fic #showdown fic #since I get anything else written #might as well post this

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rumbelleshowdown · 7 years

Text

Falling Into Ruin

by Chalk Dust

Prompts: Longing, Dragon hide, Hard came the rain

Author’s note: This is entirely self-indulgent, and I regret nothing.

Whatever the reason, by the time he made it to the doors, his ankle couldn't support his weight and he was soaked through. He must look positively wretched, with his hair plastered to his skull despite the hood of his cloak, and the cloak itself heavy with rain and clinging to his starved frame.

The Dark One would take one look at him and turn him away, laughing.

He wondered, not for the first time, if it wouldn’t be better to just...give up. The world wouldn’t blink at his absence, and the people in his village certainly wouldn’t. He had no one and nothing in this world. Well, almost nothing.

He clung to his staff. He would at least try.

The spinner forced himself to take a deep breath, and took his first step into the castle.

The doors closed silently behind him as soon as he had limped far enough across the threshold, and he tried to quell his shaking as he waited for the Dark One to appear.

He came across another large set of doors, the frame rising in a wide arch, the doors already swinging open, inviting him in.

He entered into a grand dining hall with a large hearth, high ceiling, and a long dining table, on which there was a woman in a light blue dress placing a tray of tea things. Though her clothes were simple, they were very finely made, and he was sure the stitching would put his best work to shame. She turned, the beginnings of a smile blooming on her face, and what a face it was -- beautiful, dark curls framing a strong jaw, and her eyes were a piercing blue, like ice, but they held only warmth.

Almost immediately, the smile turned into an expression of surprise, but the warmth remained.

“Oh,” she said, “I didn’t know we were entertaining today.”

“You must be freezing,” she exclaimed. “Come, sit down.”

The spinner stared at the fire, the heat wrapping around him like he was sure an embrace would feel.

“Milk?” the woman asked sweetly. “Sugar?”

He looked up to see the tea tray had been moved to small side table, and the woman waiting patiently.

“I don’t…” he tried, but the words wouldn’t make it past his throat. He didn’t know -- he was stranger to such luxury. He couldn’t afford sugar and the local herder had refused his patronage for years.