#Celestial Predestination

[wickedzeevyln]

Straying Off Spaces Unknown

◯ ☽ ◑ Silver Treader ◐ ❨ ◯ Watch her rise like solar flares from an ancient star. Igniting, stripping off atmospheres, scorching civilizations of good will. Watch her drift beyond his reach, beyond his gravity, out of orbit, until she’s gone rogue. Watch her laugh at the speed of light, slip between dimensions, stray off the path like a comet. She is all these. And one day… …she will look up…

[litchiteany]

Midnight’s Rite💫

What I whisper into midnight

wakes into certainty—

words carved into bone.

The ancient tale holds:

fate spirals through space

only to return where it began.

As if some silent watcher

plucks each misstep,

corrects my course—

unmerciful, precise,

etched in stark design.

I tread along parallel lines—

a path foretold.

To drift astray

and call it written?

Should I rage against design,

or bow to whispered truths

that sweetness dwells

just beyond my fingertips—

cool as dew on sealed buds?

A star in my orbit

teases the cords—

tugging with false promise.

I dull its light, forgo the fight

rehearse the fall before flight.

A heart armored in doubt

never bleeds surprise.

And heavens above

never challenge

one who kneels willingly.

JI

05-19-2025

🌌

[tritoch]

why doesn't venat tell the convocation?

one thing you'll see come up from time to time: why does venat, the largest ancient, not simply eat the other sorry wrong notes. Why does Venat, who has access to time-loop knowledge, not simply tell the Convocation what she knows and try to fight the Final Days in her time?

it's an understandable question: why wouldn't you want to change the future, if you know what comes to pass? Answering this question does a lot to flesh out our understanding of the Ancients, as well as Venat herself, in fun ways. It also highlights the heightened tonal register FFXIV operates in where the Ancients are involved. Most crucially, it confirms that your ultimate victory in Endwalker is not due to time loop predestination, but because of the collective efforts of everyone along the way.

all quotes, as ever, sourced from xiv.quest (except for some stuff from the very end of myths of the realm which i pulled from gamerescape). spoilers through endwalker follow.

(post-completion edit: this got insanely out of hand and way too long and it's honestly not even very insightful. you were warned.)

The way I see it, there are two broad versions of this question: First, why doesn't Venat warn the Ancients about the Final Days? And second, why doesn't she reach out to the Convocation and try to nip it in the bud?

To start with, let's get the answer straight from the source:

Venat cannot tell the Ancients generally because she cannot trust that they will not panic. No judgment should be taken as unquestionable, obviously, but Venat is a nigh-immortal scholar and researcher who also did a long stint as traveling counselor and savior and friendly neighborhood video game protagonist, who repeatedly and fervently declaims her love of the people of the world and her belief in their ability to surmount any obstacle if they simply find the strength within themselves. She has also, in-fiction, seen the wider world unsundered. Our exposure to the Ancients, on the other hand, is: her; the ruling council of their people, turned evil dimension-hopping wizards; a slice of particularly detached academics in a mad science lab (comedy version); a slice of particularly detached academics in a mad science lab (horror version). That's it! And of course, the revelation of the Final Days ultimately does result in panic and a series of increasingly drastic measures. While we only have her reasoning to go off of on this one, I don't know that there's any evidence that goes firmly against her reading of the situation.

As to the Convocation, she's right: the first time Hermes got the full picture of the Final Days, he immediately turned against you and tried to wipe your memories to prevent you from using your knowledge to stop them before they start. And that's really bad, because Hermes isn't just pretty important to stopping the Final Days: without the benefit of time-loop knowledge, he's the guy who draws the conclusion that connects the Final Days to the celestial currents of aether!

"Having shed light upon the phenomenon, he dedicated to himself to devising a countermeasure. Were it not for [Hermes's] knowledge of the celestial, we would never have made the connection—and thence forestalled the Final Days." Elidibus strongly implies here that Hermes is the guy who conceived of the Zodiark plan in the first place, or at least came up with the the mechanism by which Zodiark could actually use aether to protect Etheirys.

Hermes is a guy you absolutely have to have on your team if you're going to respond to the Final Days, because he is not just the guy who knows about dynamis. He is also, as far as we know, the only Ancient with a meaningful knowledge of outer space and celestial currents. Meteion herself is pretty explicitly parallel to a prototype space probe, a first-of-her-kind interstellar traveler. Given that the Ancients use magical concepts for seemingly nearly all their technology (there sure is a lot of stuff going on with crystals, I'll grant...but crystals are just aether, sometimes with concepts inscribed in them!), he is the closest thing they have to an aerospace engineer.

Space in FFXIV is obviously weird (no one's wearing a helmet on the moon, Midgardsormr flies through it, etc.), but nonetheless we know that space travel is difficult, and Hermes highlights in his explanation that Etheirys is unusually rich in aether while aether is much rarer in space generally. And we can surmise no one before him devised a way for the extremely aether-dense Ancients to travel and survive in space, or presumably that would have informed his own designs and he wouldn't have had to turn to under-researched dynamis. And we know no one worked with him on Meteion or understands anything about all the dynamis and, celestial currents stuff; Hythlodaeus and Emet-Selch tell us as much.

Hermes might not be the literal only Ancient with knowledge of these things, but he is certainly the most knowledgeable, seemingly by a long shot. There is plenty of reason to believe the Ancients, while they have godlike power on Etheirys, don't have a huge body of working physics information. For example, the discovery and use of magnetism in creations was the signature achievement of Hermes' immediate predecessor as Fandaniel, per a Ktisis readable.

So you need Hermes, and cannot afford the possibility of losing him. Even with the benefit of the Warrior of Light's future knowledge, not having Hermes would fatally undermine any efforts by the Ancients to combat the Final Days—not only in terms of identifying which areas were likely to be affected, but also in terms of creating and implementing Zodiark, and with respect to any hypothetical "Ancients go to the edge of the universe to fight Meteion" plan.

That kind of full-spectrum involvement makes him only more dangerous. Sure, maybe you can approach the Convocation and convince them (and I'm not so sure of that: one of their members is there when you explain all this, after all, and he vehemently rejects the possibility right up until the moment the time-loop starts!), but how can you ever be safe with Hermes on board? Worse, what if this time he doesn't announce his betrayal? What's to stop him from building a flaw into Zodiark, or any one of the other plans along the way?

Well, but set the problem of Hermes aside for a second: why not approach other Convocation members? Aside from the information security concerns with Hermes, there's the fact that she already has some advance intel on that options. First, Emet-Selch already heard and experienced all these revelations, and he vehemently denied and rejected them. The only reason he ended up cooperative through the events of Ktisis is because "get to Hermes and stop Meteion" fulfills both your goals. You're literally out the door on your way to start the time loop post-Kairos and he's like "I still don't believe your future visions by the way! But if it's true then don't fuck it up!"

Second, if what you told her is true, Venat already has reason to believe Azem might not be willing to side with her. After all, one of the only pieces of knowledge you were able to pull directly from the records of the past is that even with 75% of the Ancient population sacrificed and preparations for the third sacrifice underway, Azem would not reply to the Anamnesis Anyder faction.

So she has good reason to believe her successor might not be willing to side with her, and she knows that successor's bestie will definitely counsel against trusting these future visions.

But what if she just shows them her memories and past events via the Echo? After all, reconstructing past events is a key part of your adventures in Elpis in the first place!

Venat can probably share her memories via Echo vision, but there's no reason to think that would work: after all, Emet-Selch was already there for most of these events and was still skeptical the whole way through. Plus, at that point you're really still just relying on Venat's testimony. Additional memory evidence certainly has some corroborating effect, it's not unimpeachable, particularly given the problem of Kairos. Hermes, Emet-Selch, and Hythlodaeus will all have memories that contradict Venat's because Kairos doesn't just erase memories, it straight up alters them.

But why not do the CSI crime scene reconstruction thing? Well, as Venat notes, those memories are prone to fading, and are etched on the aether of the world the same way memories are on the soul. So assuming, you were perfectly lucky and none of the aether got too altered by other events, you could reconstruct what happened from the moment Meteion connects to the hive mind . . . right up until everyone enters Ktisis Hyperboreia. Kairos functions by overwriting the memories etched into aether with yet more aether, and given that it targeted not just the group in the final room but the entirety of Ktisis Hyperboreia, it has presumably substantially altered whatever aetherial ripples remained of the day's events. Consider that if it's blotting out multiple days worth of memory over a large area (Ktisis Hyperboreia is a full-on spatial anomaly, after all), our only comparable event in lore is the Seventh Umbral Calamity. That's a lot of aether! Kairos moots any attempt to employ memory reconstruction as evidence.

So you can't tell everyone because they'll panic; you can't tell the Convocation because Hermes is untrustworthy; you can't tell the Convocation without Hermes because there's no point in recruiting the Convocation without Hermes because his expertise is what you actually need; even if you did want the Convocation without Hermes, there's reasons to believe that would go poorly; and you can't use the Echo to help you win them over because the well on memory-as-evidence is already poisoned thanks to Hermes inventing Kairos.

A brief interlude on the possibility of the Ancients getting to and fighting Meteion. Links to sources only because this post is already stupid long. Okay, pretend we perfectly secure Hermes on-side and rally all the Ancients. After making Zodiark early thanks to Venat's warning, the remaining 50% of the population sets to work on the problem of space travel to Ultima Thule. It'll be a lengthy process, since devising the propulsion systems of the moon took the Loporrits six thousand years, but sure, it's not like lifespan is a big issue for the Ancients. Then there's the matter of having enough energy to get there; Hydaelyn accumulates the aether of the Mothercrystal for over twelve thousand years to make that happen. But maybe we shortcut that with human sacrifice again. Okay, we've flown a spaceship full of Ancients to Ultima Thule. They can't do anything here because the dynamis is too thick for aether to do anything. Your allies can only reshape the reality of Ultima Thule to allow aether-based life to exist via dynamis in the first place. The Ancients themselves seem largely unable to interact with dynamis. Any familiars or entelechies they could try to use against Meteion would probably be overwhelmed by the transformative power of her own critical mass of dynamis. Probably your best bet is to send in wave after wave of Ancients to die in a delaying action while Hermes in the way way back with a megaphone tries to persuade Meteion to chill out? Part of the whole Endwalker thing is that the Warrior of Light's victory is an incredible piece of luck enabled by a whole host of actions both intentional and accidental. The thing about miraculous victories is they're miraculous because they were otherwise exceedingly unlikely!

"Well," one might ask, "shouldn't there still be something she can do? Couldn't she reach out to trusted friends to share this information and work to stop the Final Days and persuade the Convocation without accidentally reconnecting Hermes to the knowledge that caused this problem in the first place?" And the answer is: Yes, that's what she does! It just doesn't go great and results in the creation of Hydaelyn!

As you are departing, Venat confirms to you that she will try to find a different way to resist the Final Days. She also tells you that she will not take for granted that the future you have told her will come to pass, and will simply do her best to try to fight the Final Days.

We have a good sense of the results of her efforts because her closest and most trusted allies are left behind as the Twelve and the Watcher. Rhalgr and Oschon were literally just fellow travelers she met during his journeys. Nald'thal was a merchant. Nophica was a landscape architect. Probably the most outwardly accomplished members of their number were Halone (candidate for the seat of Pashtarot), Thaliak (brilliant university president), and Menphina (brilliant university student). They were, sometimes literally, just some guys she found by the side of the road.

The truth is that Venat's message and efforts were simply not that popular in the unsundered world. We see her efforts to reach the people, conveyed allegorically, in the Thou Must Live, Die, and Know cutscene: her appeal to the better natures of her countrymen fails. They cannot be deterred from their path of sacrificing the lives of others for their own comfort.

The result of Venat's best work to rally the world against the Final Days, outside the auspices of the Convocation, is the Anyder faction. And the Anyder faction, though it makes its case to the Convocation and to others, ultimately cannot win enough people over to shake the Convocation from its intentions.

The Ancient world in FFXIV often operates in a heightened register. From the name references that invoke Greek mythology and Utopia to aesthetic elements like their theatrical masks and genre-breaking art deco architecture, the game takes pains to emphasize how otherworldly the Ancients are. This helps make their stories work emotionally. Emet-Selch and Elidibus and Lahabrea are personally responsible for six worldwide genocides, plus countless other associated sins. Even in the already heightened fantasy world of FFXIV, trying to take their stories semi-seriously would break them down. Instead, the game uses a number of cues (Emet-Selch's dramatic nature and taste for literary allusion help considerably here, as does the English localization consciously adopting slightly archaic language) to indicate to the player that the Ancients' story is being told in an epic register, that they are a fairy tale, that their story is a creation myth.

Being a fairy tale or myth means that things can be narratively true about the Ancients which would otherwise not work in FFXIV, a story which tends to shoot for some degree of psychological verisimilitude. A person can survive untold millennia as the only remaining sane member of their people, retain their sanity, and never waver in their mission or crack under the pressure. Three-quarters of the world rising up to spontaneously sacrifice themselves out of love and kindness and a belief in the value of the natural world. In Hermes' case, we are literally directly shown and told, by both magical empathic bird-girl and magical mood ring flower, that he is literally not just the Saddest Man in Elpis, but the Only Sad Man in Elpis. People often poke at this point reflexively ("Why doesn't Hermes go to therapy?"), but his despair is not just all-encompassing and overwhelming. It is literally inexplicable and unfamiliar to the Ancients around him.

Similarly, Venat, actual wandering superhero and benevolent demiurge possessed of an inexhaustible love for humanity and surpassing skill in every field, scours the earth and comes up with just thirteen people (or like, them plus a few) who are willing to stand against the Convocation. Venat does use her time-loop knowledge to spur on a parallel effort to fight off the Final Days. It doesn't work because the Convocation's plans not only have the weight of formal authority behind them, but because the Ancients overwhelmingly did not want to accept their losses, form a plan of action, and fight back. They wanted to undo their pain and suffering now, as fast as possible, and damn the consequences or whatever other lives it cost. If this feels unrealistically emotionally extreme, that's par for the course for the tone of the narrative around the Ancients.

The truth is Venat was just doing the best she could with the knowledge she had and the understanding she had of the arena she was in. She doesn't end up forming the Twelve and sundering the world because she heard about it from the Warrior of Light—the Warrior of Light comes from a world in which she formed the Twelve and sundered the world because that is what she always already would have done in this situation.

We can surmise as much from how the time loop works across the rest of the game: even though there is always at least one person in the timeline who knows about the time loop, events always play out in a way that requires other people to exercise their free will, and those choices end up aligning with the time loop even absent the knowledge of the future. Either the Warrior of Light or Venat (also Fandaniel, now that I think about it, but I don't know of any meaningful insights to glean from that) is aware of the possibility of the time loop at all times: she knows about it from Elpis onward, then shows up in the boat at the start of Endwalker to say "hey fyi you're entering the Time Loop Zone," then you end up in the past with future knowledge of stuff up until you hit the time loop reset point and the whole thing starts again. But in the game through Endwalker, that knowledge never controls events; you and Hydaelyn are only ever individuals on a board with many players, and much of making the time loop work ultimately relies on the Ascians, a group we can definitely say both lacks time loop knowledge (except, again, Fandaniel) and is actively working to frustrate Hydaelyn's ends. On a broader thematic note, consider Zenos: he's ultimately crucial to your victory, and he's a complete wild card whose most important actions you could not possibly have told Venat about because they only happen after your return from Elpis. You don't win because you are predestined to win. You win because many people collectively take small actions which happen to, luckily, line up with ultimate victory.

The Elpis time loop only functions because of countless and almost entirely unknowing large and small actions by more or less every character in the game, and results from and is defined by those actions, rather than structuring and defining those actions. It's not that Venat, armed with knowledge of the future, chooses the time loop instead of averting the Final Days. It's that the time loop results from and incorporates a future-influenced Venat doing everything she can to avert the Final Days.

[explorastro]

THE placements of astrologers :

The capacities of reading a birth chart are mercurial because you translate a language to another that is celestial, predictive techniques are for jupiterians because the future has no limits. Retrospective astrology, or study history with an astrological point of view is lunar, like we take to the collective memory for adding a new intuitive and synchronous perspective with the planets and stars. Saturn helps to develop your type of astrology with a structure of interpretation that matches your vision of things, vision of things linked to the Sun. Mars is the searcher of truths when Jupiter believes, Mars deepen to the abyss of everything, it’s the skills learner, the achievement after years of studying. Uranus, Neptune and Pluto are collective psychology, patterns and events, so astrology of the world’s events. Venus is what is cherished and loved, like places in the world, so astrocartography is venusian in its essence, finding the better place to enjoy your life..

The placements that predispose to be a good reader of birth charts :

Sun conjunct Mercury

Mercury in Virgo/Gemini/Aquarius/Libra

Mercury aspecting nodes

Mercury in the third decan

Mercury in 1st, 3rd, 7th, 10th and 11th houses

Mercury aspecting LoF or LoS

Those that predispose to be a good predictive astrologer :

Jupiter in Sagittarius/Pisces/Cancer

Sun conjunct Jupiter

Moon aspecting Jupiter

Jupiter aspecting nodes

Jupiter in 1st, 5th, 7th, 10th, 11th, 12th houses

Jupiter in the third decan

Jupiter aspecting outer planets

Jupiter aspecting LoF or LoS

Those that predispose to be a good historical astrologer :

Sun aspecting the Moon

Moon in Cancer and Taurus

Moon in 1st, 4th and 10th houses

Moon aspecting outer planets

Moon aspecting LoF or LoS

Moon in the third decan

Moon aspecting the nodes

Those that predispose to be a good mundane astrologer :

Sun conjunct outer planets

Moon aspecting outer planets

Nodes aspecting outer planets

Outer planets in angular houses

Outer planets in theirs domiciled signs

Outer planets aspecting the LoF or LoS

Outer planets in the third decan

And for the placements that predispose to be a good astrocartographer :

Sun conjunct Venus

Venus in Taurus/Libra and Pisces

Venus in 1st, 2nd, 4th, 7th, 9th, 10th and 12th houses

Venus in third decan

Venus aspecting Jupiter or Moon

Venus aspecting nodes, LoF or LoS

Conclusion : if you have Mercury/Jupiter and Moon in triple aspects you have the potential to success in every fields of astrology, past, present and future. Outer planets talk to the collective, so if you have one of them dominant in your chart, that help you to be a good mundane astrologer. For astrocartography, Venus teach us to go where things are aligned to have a good, pleasurable and happy life. Lot of Fortune, Lot of Spirit, the Nodes, Sun, houses, signs and decans can deepening the predestination of your relationship to astrology and to know what type of astrology is more predisposed to talk to you. Enjoy the cosmic course !

[lenaellsi]

we really need to be able to separate "demon as species" and "demon as political affiliation" in good omens, because that is at the core of why so many people (including the characters in the show, especially aziraphale) are reluctant to acknowledge crowley as a true demon.

demon means BOTH "an angel who has fallen from heaven, has an animal aspect, and is weak to holy water and resistant to hellfire" and "an employee of hell who is loyal to satan." there is one word for both of these concepts. crowley fits one, but not the other. it's why he's simultaneously a "former demon" by his own words and also incredibly resistant to the idea that he is anything else.

not working for hell doesn't mean he's not really a demon. it doesn't mean he's in any better standing with god. it doesn't mean his fall wasn't something that changed him deeply, both on a physical level and as a person. it means he is struggling to find the vocabulary to define himself, because the system is not built for someone like him. it is impossible, in the minds of every character in the show except for crowley, to be a demon without being one of "the bad guys." it's impossible to have fallen without joining team hell.

the same is also true of angels. michael refers to aziraphale as a "former angel" in the same episode that crowley refers to himself as a "former demon." I don't think aziraphale would ever use that language for himself--he's very attached to his identity as an angel, and the closest he ever gets to calling himself anything else is when he's so upset at the end of the job minisode--but just as there's no word for a demon who is not associated with hell, there's no word for an angel who has been alienated from heaven.

but these identities still mean something for both crowley and aziraphale. a huge part of crowley’s personality and his moral code is his resistance to authority and his disdain for rules and predestination. likewise, a huge part of aziraphale’s personal code is still his allegiance to some sort of “greater good,” whether that be god or just a nebulous concept of a heaven that doesn’t exist.

and in addition to the philosophical divide, there are real tangible differences between the angel crowley used to be and the demon he is now. the distinction between “angel” and “demon” is not important in that it dictates whether a celestial being can be Good or Bad, but it is important in how it functions as a descriptor of the person’s prior life experiences, their relationship with god, and their physical characteristics.

[inthedayswhenlandswerefew]

1968 [Chapter 1: Ares, God Of War]

Series Summary: Aemond is embroiled in a fierce battle to secure the Democratic Party nomination and defeat his archnemesis, Richard Nixon, in the presidential election. You are his wife of two years and wholeheartedly indoctrinated into the Targaryen political dynasty. But you have an archnemesis of your own: Aemond’s chronically delinquent brother Aegon.

Series Warnings: Language, sexual content (18+ readers only), violence, bodily injury, character deaths, New Jersey, age-gap relationships, drinking, smoking, drugs, pregnancy and childbirth, kids with weird Greek names, historical topics including war and discrimination, math.

Word Count: 5.7k

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Let’s begin with a definition.

Disaster is a noun derived from Ancient Greek: dus, a prefix meaning “bad,” and aster, or “star.” In the time when humans worshipped Zeus and Hera, Hephaestus and Aphrodite, it was believed that tragedies resulted from the inauspicious positioning of celestial bodies: a volcano erupts because of Jupiter, a returning comet brings with it a flood. There is a certain helplessness inherent in this mythology. There is predestined suffering that lies in wait until all the jewels of the sky have malignantly aligned.

Have you ever met someone who made you ache to change the stars?

~~~~~~~~~~

Gunshots explode through the lobby of the Breakers Hotel in Palm Beach, Florida; you feel the wind of the bullets as they clip by, fragmented metallic rage. Aemond is on the marble floor, blood pouring down his face, blood all over the white shirt beneath his navy blue suit jacket when you rip it open, tearing a button loose. He’s reaching for you through the jostling and the screams, leaving crimson handprints on your mint green dress. And you think: He just won the Florida primary. He’s not supposed to die. He’s supposed to be the president.

“What happened?” Aemond murmurs, his right eye dazed and only half-open; the left has vanished beneath a cloudburst of gore. Perhaps ten yards away, people have caught the assailant and pinned him against one of the vast Venetian windows until the police arrive. They’re roaring at him in red-faced fury, their closed fists strike his ribs and his cheekbones, their knuckles paint him scarlet and indigo.

“You’re alright, you’re alright.” You brace both palms over the maroon stain spreading rapidly across Aemond’s chest and press down as hard as you can. Your fingers are drenched in seconds, warm fading life. He’s bleeding to death. You shriek through the turmoil: “Criston?!”

“Is he okay?” Aemond asks faintly. He means the baby; you’re six months pregnant with his first child, his greatest treasure, his Atlantis, his Holy Grail. Aemond has already decided that it’s a boy. Sometimes you fear what will happen if he’s wrong.

“Yes, honey, the baby’s fine, don’t worry. Criston!”

Aegon is here instead, sweating out rum and ruin like he always is, hair too long, veins full of pills, colliding with you and pawing at his dying brother with untrustworthy hands. “Aemond?!”

You shove Aegon away, splattering him with blood. “Get back, he needs air!”

“Where’s he shot?! Let me see—”

“I told you to get back!”

“Goddammit, you don’t own him! He’s mine too!”

Criston has battled his way to you and is yanking Aegon back by the collar of his frayed olive green army jacket, stolen from Daeron when he visited home after basic training, a uniform of embittered revolution worn by a man who’s never fought for anything. “Aegon, make sure someone’s called for an ambulance, then meet the paramedics at the door and help them find us.”

“But—”

“Go!” Criston yells, and Aegon scrambles to his feet and is lost within the crowd. You can hear Otto bellowing at journalists and hotel employees to make space for the fallen senator; there are flashes of cameras and prayers shouted aloud. Above your head are crystal chandeliers and a vaulted ceiling hand-painted by 75 Italian artists in the 1920s; swimming in your skull are visions of Jackie Kennedy in the pink suit filthy with her husband’s brains. It’s just before midnight on Tuesday, May 28th. Upstairs in their oceanfront Imperial Suites, nannies will be shaking awake the absent adults of the Targaryen dynasty, who retired with the children before Aemond made his victory speech in the hotel ballroom: Alicent, Helaena, Fosco, Mimi.

Criston’s hands—larger, stronger—replace yours over the gushing wound in Aemond’s chest. What did the bullet hit? His lung, his heart? He’s not speaking anymore, his right eye is closed. His bloodied hands rest open and empty on the floor. “Criston, he’s dying,” you sob.

“No he’s not. We’re not going to let him.”

“What’s the closest hospital?”

“Good Samaritan is just across the bridge on the mainland.” It’s Criston’s job to know these things, though he had been thinking of you when he plotted his meticulous notes in his day planner: in case you eat a bad cheeseburger, or trip on the stairs, or catch the flu and start burning up with fever. Aemond worries about the baby. Aegon has five children, Helaena has three, and Aemond will feel that he has been robbed of something if he does not swiftly procure a family of his own. He needs you on the campaign trail, but still, he worries.

Across the lobby, the police have arrived to arrest the aspiring assassin. He puts up a fight when they try to handcuff him and earns a nightstick to the gut, an elbow to the nose. He is choking on his own blood. Perhaps he is drowning in it. Good, you think.

“Don’t kill him!” Otto booms at the officers. “I want him alive for trial! I want him to ride the lighting up in Raiford, you keep that son of a bitch alive!”

“Aemond?” You thread your fingers through his blood-soaked hair. What happened to his left eye? Is it somewhere underneath all that carnage, or is it gone? “Please wake up. Please stay with me. We need you. The baby and I need you.”

“He’s going to live,” Criston promises, both hands still clamped over the bullet wound to slow the hemorrhaging.

“Aemond, please…” How can he be the president with only one eye?

An old woman in a yellow striped skirt suit is lumbering close with a homemade prayer rope clenched in her fist. “A komboskini for the senator!” For his last rites. For his soul.

“He doesn’t need it!” Criston says. “He’s not dying! No one is dying tonight!”

Still, you take the komboskini from the lady, each of the 100 knots a prayer unspoken. She is a devotee of Aemond, and you must show her gratitude. “Efcharistó, aderfí. O Theós na se evlogeí.” They are some of the few Greek words you’ve mastered; you’ve used them often since Aemond announced that he was running for president. Thank you, sister. God bless you.

The paramedics arrive, splitting the crowd like a laceration, white uniforms and a stretcher to ferry Aemond away. People are wailing, cursing, swearing vengeance. Aegon has returned and is peering down at Aemond with those large, glassy, muddled eyes, afraid to ask. “Is he…is he still…?”

“He has a pulse,” Criston replies. He helps the paramedics drag Aemond onto the stretcher and strap him to it. Your husband’s shirt is now drenched in red like garnet, like cinnabar, like the poppies that commemorate the boys butchered in World War I, like the wasted blood being spilled in Vietnam, men reduced to memory. “Good Samaritan?” Criston confirms with the paramedics.

“Yes sir,” the most senior one agrees. And then to you, with great deference, with compassion that transcends what somebody can harbor for strangers: “Ma’am, there’s a place for you if you want it.”

“I do,” you say, tear-streaked face, hands bathed in blood. “Thank you. Thank you so much.”

The ambulance is idling outside the main entranceway of the hotel. Criston grasps your hand to steady you as you step up into the back, and you take a seat on the red leather bench beside the stretcher. The paramedics are placing IVs, holding an oxygen mask to Aemond’s face, muttering urgently into their radio, abbreviations and code words you can’t understand, a secret language of organic calamities. High above the stars are crystalline and radiant in a clear sky. In your own chest—unshredded by metal, unpierced by rage—your intact heart is pounding.

The lead paramedic turns to you again and says: “We can fit one more person.”

It’s your decision. You are the senator’s wife; you were supposed to be the next first lady of the United States. You look through the ambulance’s open doors. Aegon stares back expectantly, his hair falling in his face, his arms thrown wide, petulant, combative, useless, drunk. “Criston.”

“Bitch!” Aegon hisses at you as Criston climbs into the vehicle. The doors slam shut, the engine rumbles, the siren squeals as the ambulance races westbound on Breakers Row towards County Road, which connects with Flagler Memorial Bridge and the mainland.

Through the rear window you watch Aegon as he stands in the white-gold hotel luminescence, becoming smaller and smaller until he vanishes, and all you can see are streetlights, and all you can smell is blood.

~~~~~~~~~~

Every story needs its cast of characters. Here are the major players in the summer of 1968.

President Lyndon Baines Johnson is in the White House watching the clocks tick towards November 5th, when his successor will be ordained. He has chosen not to seek reelection. Since his ascension upon Kennedy’s assassination in 1963, Johnson’s domestic focus has been unprecedented civil rights legislation and his War On Poverty, yet what has infected the media like blood poisoning is the war in Vietnam. On the television are napalm bombs incinerating Vietnamese peasants, caskets draped with American flags, riots being beaten down by police, college students torching draft cards and chanting “Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?” Now the president is sick in body, in spirit, in heart, and this is not a metaphor: he suffered a near-fatal cardiac arrest in 1955 and another shortly after John F. Kennedy was murdered in Dallas, Texas. He will die almost exactly four years after leaving office. Had he sought another term, he would have been unlikely to survive it. The public eye is something like a snake bite; it sinks its fangs in and you hope the venom burns clean before it can curse you with clots or hemorrhages or paralysis, before it can drown you in the dark waters of infamy.

In the void left by President Johnson’s surrender, four factions have emerged within the Democratic Party. The old guard—the same labor unions, congressmen, and local political machines who have steered the platform since the days of Franklin D. Roosvelt’s New Deal—has flocked to current Vice President Hubert Humphrey. Humphrey is competent yet uninspiring, a mid-fifties Midwesterner who flinches at the unpolished fury of antiwar protests and sedately lectures Black Power activists on the dangers of “reverse racism.” He is not a threat. He is a sheep in sheep’s clothing, and this is the time for wolves.

Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota is unapologetically opposed to the Vietnam War, a moral crusader, a reluctant warrior, a man who wears his lack of taste for the presidency like a badge of honor. He feels compelled to run, but he does not crave it. He thinks this makes him a saint; but Joan of Arc was burned at the stake and Saint Lawrence was roasted alive. Like Halloween candy plunked into a child’s neon orange plastic pumpkin, McCarthy has collected his own coalition, college students and posh urbanites who believe themselves to be the future of the Democratic Party. In 2016, people will conjure McCarthy’s ghost when drawing comparisons to a controversial left-wing senator from Vermont named Bernie Sanders.

If McCarthy is the future and Humphrey is the past, then former governor of Alabama George Wallace is downright archaic. He is the candidate of choice for Southern white supremacists, averse to Republicans since Lincoln and still reverent of Depression-era New Deal programs that kept them from starving to death. Wallace is best known for his promise of “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever,” and pledges to end the chaos that has besieged America through strict law and order. Provided he loses the Democratic primary, Wallace plans to run in the general election as an Independent, hoping to peel away enough support from the major party candidates to force the House of Representatives to declare the winner and then leverage his votes to negotiate an end to federal desegregation efforts in the South. His devoted wife Lurleen just died of uterine cancer, a diagnosis which Wallace kept hidden from her for years; doctors are in the habit of informing husbands of their wives’ ailments and giving them carte blanche control over the treatment plan, which unfortunately in Lurleen’s case was nothing. She was 41 years old.

In his short-lived castle of red corridors like the marrow rivers of bones, President Johnson hides from the hippies who jeer and spit; Humphrey frowns at them, McCarthy tries to appease them, Wallace says the only four-letter words they don’t know are “w-o-r-k” and “s-o-a-p.” But Aemond climbs down from podiums to meet them like old friends. He is young, only 36. He has a brother serving in the swamps of Vietnam. He is focused, determined, insatiable; he devours every scrap of news that is printed about him and writes his speeches by hand. As the self-admitted runt of the Targaryen family, Aemond knows what it is like to be underestimated. He wants a better America, and he wants to be the president, and he wants these things in equal, relentless measure, each fueling the other until these ambitions become inseparable. He has grown up hearing slurs against Greeks and consequently has no tolerance for discrimination, which he contends is antithetical to the American Dream. He attends civil rights marches in labyrinthian cities, antiwar protests on college campuses, union meetings in coal mining towns of West Virginia and Kentucky and Wyoming, music festivals crowded with long unwashed hair and braless women, fundraisers flush with the deep pockets of the Northeastern elite. Aemond’s coalition grows each day, bleeding away strength from his rivals like a Medieval surgeon. Their flesh turns cold and anemic, while Aemond’s heart pumps scalding torrents of blood.

If Aemond wins the Democratic primary at the convention in August, his opponent will almost certainly be the Republican frontrunner Richard Nixon of California. Nixon wants the White House just as badly, and he’s much smarter than he looks. He was Eisenhower’s vice president for eight years in the 1950s and lost to the ill-fated John F. Kennedy in 1960 by a whisker; some say he did not lose at all, but instead was cheated out of 100,000 votes by Kennedy’s mafia connections in Chicago. But with the Democrats divided and their incumbent president floundering, Nixon’s timing has never been better. He was once a poor boy with two dead brothers who earned a scholarship to Duke Law. Now he will become whoever he needs to be to win the presidency of the United States.

1968 is the year of wolves. The fangs are sharp, and the bellies ache with hunger.

~~~~~~~~~~

A local deli has opened early and sent sandwiches to Good Samaritan Medical Center for the family and friends of the senator from New Jersey: ham and Swiss, cucumber and cream cheese, tuna salad, egg salad, pimento cheese, BLTs, Cubans. The lobby is filling up with bouquets of flowers and handwritten notes. You pace and count the knots of the komboskini over and over again as you wait; Aemond has been in surgery for hours. The nurses periodically bring you Styrofoam cups of hot chocolate, scalding watered-down sweetness to distract you from the fact that some surgeon is currently rooting around inside your husband’s ribcage.

Alicent—a convert to the Greek Orthodox faith just as you are, though far more zealous, far more sincere if you dared to admit it—is pleading for God to save her son as she clasps her own prayer rope. Helaena is seated beside her, eerily calm. Helaena’s husband Fosco is wandering around boredly and inflicting small talk upon the nurses, ogling out the third-story windows, playing with his red Duncan yo-yo. Otto is making a series of calls using one of the phones at the nurses’ station. Criston is there too, leaning over the countertop and speaking with Otto in low conspiratorial whispers.

Aegon is sitting alone and glaring at you. He takes a rattling bottle of pills—prescriptions that doctors are too afraid not to write for him when he asks—out of a pocket on the front of his green army jacket, spotted like a leopard with your bloody handprints. He opens the amber-colored, cylindrical container and pours two, no, three tiny white tablets into his palm. He tosses them into his mouth and washes them down with a swallow of his own mediocre hot chocolate, still glaring. You ignore him.

“How could this have happened?” Mimi says again from where she’s slumped in her chair. Aegon’s wife has a Snow White sort of beauty, but with a perpetual ruddiness in her nose and cheeks from the gin she sips constantly. You suppose it would make anyone a drunk, being married to a man like that. Her maiden name was Marina Marceline Leroux, but everyone has always called her Mimi, even the press on the rare occasions when she makes an appearance. Her children—Orion, Spiro, Violeta, Thaddeus, and little Cosmo, only five years old—are all back at the Breakers Hotel with the nannies, the same as Helaena’s. Mimi blubbers to nobody in particular: “How…? Who…? Who would want to hurt Aemond…?”

Someone needs to sober her up. You fetch a BLT off the platter of sandwiches and offer it to her. “Here. Eat.”

“I’m not hungry. Who on earth could be hungry at a time like this? I’m absolutely nauseated, I’ll never want food again—”

“Mimi, eat the sandwich.”

“Fine, fine,” she slurs morosely, then takes an unenthusiastic bite. She listens to you, all the women do. They listen to you, and you listen to Aemond, and the circle is closed and complete.

Criston is walking over now. You turn to him, needing good news, bad news, any news. “It was a Wallace supporter,” Criston says. From his seat, Aegon is watching Criston with his slow drugged gaze, listening intently. “Some bell pepper farmer from up by Jacksonville.”

“He’s been taken to the local jail for holding?” you ask, and then add: “Alive?”

“Yeah, and he already has a record. Assault and battery. His brother-in-law is apparently a Grand Dragon in the Klan.”

“What the hell is a Grand Dragon?”

“Well, it’s higher than a Goblin, but not as illustrious as an Imperial Wizard, does that answer your question?”

“Perfectly.” You smile at Criston, a pained, wry smile. He returns it and places a palm over your belly. You are still wearing the mint green dress Aemond picked out for you this morning, before he won the Florida primary, before he was shot twice by the disciple of a political adversary and laid at death’s doorstep. You are still covered in your husband’s blood.

“You’re feeling alright?” Then Criston smirks, knowing how ridiculous he must sound. “You know. All things considered.”

“We’re both fine. The baby’s moving around, I can feel it.”

“You can feel him, you mean,” Criston teases, knowing Aemond’s preoccupation with his unborn son; but you can’t bring yourself to appreciate the joke.

Aegon says to you suddenly: “How the fuck did you let this happen?”

“What?” you answer, stunned.

Aegon stands and approaches, lurching, raging. “You always have to be right beside him, in the photographs, in the headlines, in the soundbites, but you let some psychopath run up and shoot him? Twice?!”

“I thought he just wanted to shake Aemond’s hand, or maybe get a quote for an article—”

“You didn’t notice the gun?!”

“Aegon, sit down,” Criston orders.

“It happened in seconds,” you say. “You think you would have done better? You and your Valium, and your Librium, and your Percodan? You think your reaction time would have been so superior to mine?”

“Please,” Alicent moans, mopping tears from her pink cheeks with a handkerchief. “Please, don’t fight, not now…”

“We are all friends here,” Fosco adds in his thick Italian accent, yo-yoing by a window.

“You want to be the first lady so bad but you can’t handle it!” Aegon shouts, his voice echoing through the lobby. “You’re not some prodigy, you don’t have all the answers, you’re just a girl who stitched yourself to Aemond and then you let him get shot, he’s being operated on right now, maybe he’s even dying, and you still act like you’re so fucking perfect—”

“You’re mad because you know that everybody here is thinking the same thing,” you tell Aegon, cold and cruel. “That if someone had to get killed tonight it should have been you.”

Aegon’s mouth drops open; he stares at you with that slippery, opaque, stoned woundedness, pathetic, infuriating, illogically childish. Everyone else pretends they haven’t heard you. Alicent sniffles into her handkerchief. Fosco begins humming I Want To Hold Your Hand. Mimi chews sluggishly on her BLT. From the nurses’ station, Otto says, holding the phone to his chest: “It’s George Wallace. He’s calling for Aemond’s wife.” Then he waits to see if you’ll agree to take it.

Of course you will. You have to. You are acting in your husband’s stead. You go to the nurses’ station and grab the handset when Otto passes it to you. “This is Mrs. Targaryen.”

“Ma’am, I just wanted to offer you my sincerest condolences.” He has a pronounced drawl, born and raised in what he has praised as the Great Anglo-Saxon Southland. You animal, you think. You braindead bigot. “I do hope the senator makes a hasty recovery. I sure would like to beat him at the ballot box, but I have no stomach for anarchy. An act like this is repugnant to me, as it should be to any red-blooded American.”

“It was one of yours, do you know that?” you say, dripping venom. “One of your hateful ghouls.”

“I have no such knowledge. But if the shooter does turn out to be a supporter of my campaign, I disavow him utterly. He deserves a nice long sit in Old Sparky and then to meet his maker.”

“You inspire men to commit violence, and then you renounce them when they spill blood. I’m still wearing my husband’s. It’s on my hands, it’s on my dress, and I will not absolve you of blame. You are a gardener of discord. You grow it like roses or wheat. You tend to it until it blooms.” Otto is studying you, bushy eyebrows raised. “If you’d truly like to repent, perhaps dropping out of the Democratic primary would be a good start. And then you could find something useful to do, like drowning yourself.”

From whatever office he’s currently lounging comfortably in, his shoes kicked up on the desk, Wallace chuckles. “Aemond is very fortunate to have as ardent a defender as you, my dear.”

“Yes, a devoted wife is such a treasure. It’s a shame you killed yours.”

“Ma’am, once again, I just wanted to express how terribly sorry I am for your family’s hardship. I would never wish for an incident like this—”

“Maybe you shouldn’t be emboldening white supremacists then!” You slam the phone as you hang up.

Otto looks at you. He says: “Did it go well?”

The heavy double doors leading to the operating theater swing open, and a surgeon steps through them, still drying his hands with a dark blue towel. He has changed his scrubs and washed his skin, but you notice a spot he missed: a fleck of half-dried blood up by his temple. That’s Aemond, you think. That’s a piece of him.

Everyone rushes to gather around the doctor, even Mimi; she lists like a ship taking on water as she walks, gnawing at all that remains of her BLT, just a sliver of white toast crust.

“The senator is alive,” the doctor says, and Alicent cries out in relief. Criston rests a palm on her shoulder. “But we could not save the eye.”

“He’s half-blind?” you ask. There’s never been a half-blind president. There’s never been a Greek one either. And the only reason this is stuck in your mind is because you know it will consume Aemond’s.

The doctor nods. “We had to remove it. The bullet that struck Senator Targaryen in the head, fortunately, was more of a graze. It ricocheted off his skull and didn’t cause any trauma to the brain, but his eye was…” He hesitates, trying to find a more polite word than shredded, macerated, pulverized. “Destroyed.”

“You stopped the bleeding?” Aegon says, astonished. “He’s okay? He’s really okay?”

“The second bullet pierced the thoracic cavity and was lodged less than an inch from his heart. He was very lucky. We repaired the damage to the best of our ability, and I am optimistic that the senator will make a full recovery. He’s resting comfortably now, but he should be awake soon.”

“Oh, thank God,” Alicent says, glistening dark eyes raised to heaven. The salient points gathered, Fosco wanders off again, his yo-yo dangling from its string.

Otto asks: “When can he resume campaigning?”

The doctor is caught off-guard; it takes him a moment to answer. “That will depend on the senator’s stamina as he regains his strength. If he chooses to stay in the race at all.”

Otto scoffs. “Of course he’ll stay in. This is what he lives for. You really can’t give me a ballpark figure?”

The doctor is determinately impassive. “I would estimate a month or two before he can withstand the rigors of the campaign trail again.”

“California is June 4th,” Otto recalls, counting off dates on his fingers. “Illinois is the 11th, New York is the 18th…”

“Look, there are people outside!” Fosco announces excitedly as he peers through one of the windows. “Hello! Hello everybody!”

“Fosco, you idiot, stop waving,” Otto snaps. “Go sit down.”

“But they are cheering.”

“Not for you.”

Fosco, somewhat deflated, grabs an egg salad sandwich off the platter and plops into a chair to eat it. He’s dressed in a green plaid sport coat and tight white trousers, very chic, very European. You’ve never been able to imagine Fosco and Helaena being passionately romantic with each other. They’re both a bit too doll-like for that, closer to Barbie and Ken than flesh and blood, blank stares and vague ambitions.

“Someone should talk to them,” Alicent says softly. She means the crowd that is forming in front of the hospital: journalists, cops, local politicians, mutilated veterans, college kids, farmers, fishermen, women and children, the future and the past. Everyone turns to look at you.

“I’ll do it,” you volunteer. You will, you must. Aemond could have chosen a hundred similarly suited women to be his wife, but he chose you, and when he did your vows became a blood oath.

Criston accompanies you downstairs to where the crowd has gathered just outside the front entrance of Good Samaritan Medical Center. The night air is warm and humid, the stars bright. You had thought of so many things to tell these people as you’d stood in the elevator as it descended, but now your mind is empty, fearful. There are photographers with blinding camera flashes and apostles waiting with famished eyes. From the depths of injustice and poverty and war, they have come to pay their respects to the man they believe is destined to save not just themselves but their world. What should I say? What would Aemond want me to say?

“I am very pleased to share with you all that Senator Targaryen is out of surgery and regaining his strength.”

There are cheers and applause and prayers; you are still clutching the komboskini that the old woman gave you in the lobby of the Breakers Hotel. You see more prayer ropes in this flock, and rosaries too, Bibles and dog tags, copies of The Autobiography of Malcolm X and Joanne Didion’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem.

“We would like to thank you for your heartfelt support. Aemond and I are so very grateful, and he is looking forward to being back on the campaign trail soon.”

More clapping and whistling, and then the crowd waits. You aren’t sure what they want to hear as you stand in the glow of the hospital luminance; your hands are trembling wildly, so you clasp them together as you hold the komboskini. Criston glances over at you, concerned. You settle on the truth.

“The man who tried to kill my husband tonight is a supporter of former Alabama governor George Wallace and an avowed white supremacist. Any ideology that advocates for violence and prejudice is a threat to our bodies, our nation, and our souls. We will not surrender to it, not even when our lives are in jeopardy. We will not concede that hope for a better world is lost. We will press ever onward with the knowledge that God is on our side, and that the future of this country is worth fighting for.”

You are bathed in flashbulb lightning; your ears ring with the thunder of the applause. You are shaking hands now, nodding, beaming, Criston following you like a shadow as you move through the congregation. You stop to listen to a middle-aged woman in a floral dress who wants to give you marriage advice: never get bossy, don’t become selfish, remember that you are his safe harbor in the storms of life. It is your job to gift her your momentary veneration. You have beauty, but she has wisdom; or at least, that is the bargain that has been struck, that is the presumption everyone agrees upon. She must have some advantage over you, otherwise the decades she has spent in service of her parents and husband and children have been wasted, she has carved away pieces of herself to feed hungry mouths until she vanished like the doomed nymph Echo. In return, she tries not to envy you too much, not to dismiss you as foolish or frivolous or lustful. Sometimes you think that women are filled with such vicious, relentless self-loathing that it feels good to direct it at someone else for a while, to pick apart another body, to tally up the deficits of her spirit.

“Aemond is so lucky to have you,” the woman says. You can barely hear her over the roar of the crowd.

And you smile as you dutifully reply: “I think it’s the other way around.”

~~~~~~~~~~

There is a television mounted on the wall in Aemond’s room. The news coverage, the volume turned way down low, oscillates between his own near-assassination and the stalled peace talks in Paris. Representatives of the United States and North Vietnam cannot agree, and so each day more body bags are flown home to return the bones of the nation’s sons and fathers to Missouri, Alabama, Idaho, Maine, Wisconsin, Maryland, Arizona, California, New Jersey, everywhere else. Someone has to end it. Aemond will end it.

“I dreamed I won Florida,” your husband mumbles, and that’s how you know he’s awake, here in a hospital bed and wearing IVs like strings of Christmas lights around a pine tree.

“You did,” you tell him, gently smoothing back his hair from his forehead. His left eye—where his left eye used to be—is bandaged; his words are soft and labored. “Humphrey was second. Wallace got third. But you won. And you’re going to be okay.”

“McCarthy?”

“It seems you’re devouring his coalition.”

Aemond’s lips slowly curl into a grin, triumphant. “It is God’s will.” And this is what he always says. It is God’s will that he survives, it is God’s will that he wins the presidency, it is God’s will that you give him sons.

“Yes,” you agree, lifting his right hand to kiss his knuckles. Then you press the komboskini you’re still carrying into his weak grasp. It means more to Aemond than it does to you. “Yes it is.”

Aemond sinks into unconsciousness again, morphine and dreams that blur with reality. There will be pain soon, and plenty of it, but he is free from that impending truth for now. You rise from your chair to tell the rest of the family that Aemond is beginning to wake up. Alicent and Criston will want to speak with him.

When you open the door, Aegon is standing there: an eavesdropper, a trespasser. He glares at you with his large wet ocean-blue eyes, hazy with pills, glinting with resentment. Reluctantly, you step aside to let him in. Aegon wobbles as he passes you and has to grab onto the doorframe to steady himself, scrabbling like a trapped animal.

“You’re a disaster,” you say, caustic like acid, biting, repulsed.

Aegon whirls and jabs his index finger against your chest, bloodstained mint green wool bouclé by Chanel. “You’re a vessel. You’re a cow. And one day he’ll be done with you.”

You feel something hitting you like a bullet, cracking ribs, piercing lungs, tearing muscles and ligaments. Your lips have parted, but you can’t fathom words. Aegon has said many things to you—bitter things, belittling things, things in mixed company, things when you’re alone—but never this. For the first time since you met him two years ago, he has won one of your sparring matches. He has the upper hand. He has wounded you.

Aegon can see this, certainly. But he doesn’t seem pleased with himself. He looks a little shellshocked, like he can’t quite believe he said the words, like maybe if given the chance again he wouldn’t take it. But the moment is over now, and you can’t get time back, it is a thread that unspools until every inch is gone, spent, tangled in a thousand webs.

Aegon staggers into the hospital room. You flee from it. Out in the lobby the phone at the nurses’ station is ringing again. They’ll all be calling now to give their requisite sympathies. Humphrey counsels prudence, McCarthy prays for peace, LBJ offers the empathy of someone who has felt the cold gaze of Death in his own doorway, Nixon praises Aemond’s resilience and quotes the ancient philosopher Seneca: “There is no easy way from the earth to the stars.”

[redvexillum]

Sixth Kiss: Burning

A/N: This is part of a mini series guys. I will release the related stories in a neat and tidy masterlist after! Enjoy!

SUMMARY: Caught between the past and the future, Charlie clings to a love that no longer belongs to her. Haunted by guilt and unresolved feelings, she tries to move on with you—a hellborn offering her comfort and kindness.

Charlie entrusted Vaggie with not just her heart, but her very essence. Their meeting had felt predestined, etched into the fabric of Hell's chaotic tapestry. She remembered it vividly: Vaggie, crumpled and bleeding in a shadowed alleyway, the air thick with the acrid scent of recent extermination. Without hesitation, Charlie had knelt beside her, gently lifting her battered form, her touch tender and resolute. 

From that moment, Charlie's world transformed. The darkness of Hell seemed a little less oppressive. Her laughter rang truer, her steps carried more purpose, and her smile felt genuine in a way it hadn’t for years. Vaggie became her anchor, her confidante, and her unwavering ally in the task of challenging Heaven's dominion. Together, they faced the insurmountable. 

Together, they were unstoppable. 

Until the day they weren’t. 

The first cracks in their perfect veneer came when they had first entered Heaven together to vouch for sinners. Adam revealed the dark truth of Vaggie's past. 

Vaggie had been an angel. 

Not just any angel—an exterminator, one of Heaven’s elite enforcers, charged with purging Hell's denizens. The woman who had held Charlie with such tenderness had once wielded celestial weapons with merciless precision, extinguishing countless souls without remorse. 

Charlie’s heart fractured. Her mind raced, grasping for any explanation that would make it a lie. But Vaggie’s eyes, brimming with regret, held no deception. The weight of that truth crushed Charlie, leaving her adrift in a sea of betrayal. 

What stung more? The revelation that Vaggie had been one of Heaven’s hunters? Or the knowledge that she had kept this from Charlie for years, hiding a past soaked in blood? 

The hotel became a prison of unspoken words and stifled emotions. Their interactions, once effortless, now felt heavy with unvoiced confessions and lingering guilt. Charlie carried her grief quietly, trying to maintain the facade of a hopeful princess while her heart ached for a love she no longer knew how to trust. 

Lost in thought, she didn’t notice you calling out to her. Your voice, light and teasing, broke through her reverie. 

“Hey,” you called, tilting your head with playful curiosity. “What’s got you so serious, cupcake?” 

Your gentle nudge pulled a soft, startled laugh from Charlie. She rubbed her neck sheepishly. “Sorry,” she murmured. “Just… a lot on my mind.” 

Your expression shifted to one of concern, tempered by understanding. “Heavy stuff, huh?” 

Charlie nodded. The ache of her unresolved feelings for Vaggie never quite left her. The hotel bustled with life and laughter, but none of it could fill the hollow space Vaggie had left behind. 

It was Angel Dust, ever the meddlesome yet well-meaning friend, who first suggested a dating app. Charlie had refused outright. “I’m not ready,” she insisted. But loneliness is insidious, and one quiet night, it led her to download the app in secret. 

Cinder. 

Her profile was cautious, her bio short and to the point. And then there was you—a match she hadn’t expected. From the start, Charlie was transparent. “I’m not looking for anything serious,” she had typed, her fingers hesitant. To her relief, you accepted it without question, never pushing for more than she could offer. 

Your conversations became a balm. You made her laugh, your humour lightening the weight she carried. Yet, guilt lingered, gnawing at the edges of her heart. No matter how much she enjoyed your company, part of her felt like she was betraying Vaggie—even though they were no longer together. 

“So, you’re still planning that New Year’s party at the hotel, right?” you asked, pulling out your phone. “Maybe we can hang out a bit before or after? No pressure.” 

Charlie blinked, her heart twisting with emotion. Your kindness was disarming—never demanding, always respectful of her boundaries. 

“That sounds nice,” she whispered, a soft smile curving her lips. “I know!” Charlie gasped, her entire face lighting up with an almost childlike enthusiasm. Her crimson eyes sparkled as a beaming smile spread across her lips. “What if you come to the party too?” The words tumbled out in a rush, her excitement momentarily eclipsing the anxiety that gnawed at the edges of her thoughts. 

She puffed out her chest in a show of confidence, though a tremor of uncertainty whispered beneath her bravado. Her fingers fidgeted with the hem of her jacket, and she took a steadying breath. “I should…” Charlie paused, her voice faltering as her gaze dropped to the floor. Her heart thudded painfully against her ribs, each beat a reminder of the fragile hope she clung to. “I want to introduce you to everyone as my… p-partner.” 

The word hung in the air between you, laden with unspoken fears and lingering guilt. Charlie’s cheeks flushed a deep crimson, a stark contrast to her usual sunny demeanour. Shame prickled at the edges of her mind, mingling with the ache of unresolved emotions. Vaggie’s face flashed in her thoughts—those sorrowful eyes, the silent hurt—and it twisted something deep inside her. 

The pain of letting go. 

The guilt of moving on. 

“Oh?” you smirked, an amused glint in your eyes as you raised a brow. “A partner, huh?” There was a teasing lilt to your voice as you crossed your arms and leaned in slightly. “Shall I dress up for the occasion? It’s a hotel full of sinners, right?” 

Your playful tone brought a momentary reprieve from the weight in Charlie’s chest. She giggled, the sound light but tinged with nervous energy. “No—I mean, unless you want to.” Her laughter faltered slightly, and she pressed her palms together, wringing them in an anxious gesture. “It’s really up to you. You look amazing as always!” She threw her arms out in a grand gesture, as if presenting you to an invisible audience. Her nervous chuckle trailed off, leaving a fragile silence in its wake. 

You snorted softly, a smile tugging at the corner of your lips before you reached out, your hand gentle as it cupped the side of Charlie’s face. The sudden warmth of your touch made her breath hitch, and her eyes flickered up to meet yours. 

“Are you really alright?” you asked quietly, your gaze searching hers with genuine concern. There was no judgment in your tone, only a soft, steady patience that made her chest tighten with emotion. 

Charlie’s heart stuttered painfully, her guilt clawing at her insides. She wanted to be honest with you. She wanted to offer you the same openness and vulnerability that you gave her. But she couldn’t—not fully. The weight of her unresolved feelings for Vaggie hung heavy in the air between you. 

Her smile wavered, a fragile thing barely holding itself together. “Y-yeah, I am,” she whispered, her voice trembling with the weight of unspoken truths. Her eyes darted away, unable to hold your gaze for too long. 

Silence stretched between you, heavy and loaded with emotions neither of you dared to voice. Finally, you pulled your hand away, the absence of your touch leaving a cold, aching void despite the ever-present heat of Hell. Charlie’s cheek tingled where your palm had rested, the ghost of your warmth lingering. 

“I-I should go,” she stammered, her hands fluttering nervously. “Lots to prepare and all that.” 

You nodded, your expression softening with understanding. “Yeah, I’ve got to get back to work too.” There was a hint of something wistful in your voice as you added, “I’ll see you tonight, then?” 

Charlie forced a smile, her lips stretching in an attempt to hide the turmoil roiling inside her. “See you tonight,” she echoed, her voice barely above a whisper. 

As she turned and walked away, each step felt heavier than the last. The guilt clung to her like a shroud, wrapping tighter with every breath she took. The hotel loomed ahead, a familiar beacon in the fiery landscape of the Pride Ring. But today, it felt more like a mausoleum—a place where memories of love and loss intertwined, suffocating her with their weight. 

When she entered the grand lobby, her heart sank further at the sight before her. 

Vaggie stood near the front desk, her sharp eyes softened with an expression Charlie hadn’t seen in a long time. She wasn’t alone. The hotel’s newest resident—a sinner with a striking appearance and a charming smile—was leaning in close, their body language intimate, their laughter soft and easy. 

Charlie’s heart twisted painfully, jealousy burning hot and bitter in her chest. She had noticed them growing closer with each passing day, their interactions more frequent, their conversations filled with quiet familiarity. It shouldn’t have mattered. Vaggie deserved happiness, just as Charlie did. 

But the sight of them together—it hurt. 

Their laughter faded as Vaggie’s gaze lifted, locking onto Charlie’s from across the room. For a moment, time seemed to slow. Vaggie’s eyes held a flicker of something—regret, perhaps? Sadness? Whatever it was, it made Charlie’s chest ache even more. 

But then, slowly, Vaggie looked away. 

Charlie swallowed hard, her throat tightening as she forced herself to keep walking. Each step felt like a battle against the emotions threatening to overwhelm her. Her nails bit into her palms as she clenched her fists, her mind a whirlwind of thoughts. 

Everything felt so complicated. 

Why did she have to fall in love with an exterminator? 

If Vaggie had been a sinner from the start, would things have been different? Would their love have been simpler, easier? 

Where had Charlie’s love truly begun? She couldn't say. Maybe it sprouted the first time she saw Vaggie lying broken in an alleyway, fierce and proud despite her wounds. Or perhaps it bloomed later, in stolen glances and soft conversations shared in the quiet corners of the hotel. 

But now? That love twisted inside her like a vine covered in thorns. It wasn't gentle anymore. It was a maelstrom—a swirling storm of confusion, bitterness, pettiness, rage, and frustration. Every emotion clashed against the other, and she couldn’t see the right path through the haze. 

Every road stretched out before her like a fire-lit bridge, burning at both ends. No matter which way she turned, the flames consumed her. 

And Charlie… Charlie felt trapped. 

On New Year’s Eve, the hotel gleamed with a festive glow. Strings of lights sparkled in gold and crimson, casting warm hues across the lobby. Music floated through the air, blending with the low hum of chatter from the gathered sinners. Despite the celebratory atmosphere, Charlie’s heart was heavy with anticipation and dread. 

When you entered through the grand doors, her face lit up instantly. “You made it!” she greeted, her voice bright with practised cheer. Her hand reached for yours, squeezing lightly, as though drawing strength from the simple touch. 

You glanced around the hotel, taking in the decorations. “Nice setup,” you commented, your gaze lingering on the lavish display of firework-themed banners and the elegantly arranged tables. 

Charlie giggled, a soft, nervous sound that betrayed the turmoil underneath. “Come on, I’ll give you a tour.” Her fingers laced with yours as she led you through the hotel, pointing out each decorated room, each carefully crafted centrepiece. Her voice bubbled with excitement, but her grip tightened just a little too much. 

As you reached the lounge, Angel Dust appeared from behind a curtain of streamers, his ever-present smirk widening as he spotted you. “Well, hello there,” he drawled, one brow arching playfully. “Charlie, darling—who’s the hottie?” 

Charlie froze mid-step, her cheeks flushing a rosy pink. Her eyes darted nervously between Angel, your intertwined hands, and your calm expression. The word she wanted to say—partner—caught in her throat, sticking like a jagged stone. 

The pause stretched too long, and you noticed it. 

With a casual shrug, you released her hand, slipping easily into the role she was too afraid to define. “We’re just friends,” you said smoothly, flashing a devil-may-care grin that masked any disappointment you might have felt. “Cool place you’ve got here. Any drinks?” 

Angel’s eyes glinted with amusement as he crossed his arms. “Now you’re speaking my language, sugar. Come on, let’s hit the bar.” He tossed a wink at Charlie before steering you toward Husk, who sat grumpily behind the counter nursing a glass of whisky. 

Charlie stood rooted in place, her hand lingering in the air where yours had been moments ago. The warmth of your touch had already faded, leaving her feeling colder than before. 

She could feel the unspoken judgment hanging in the air. The voices in her head whispered cruel truths. 

I'm being unfair to them. I'm stringing them along. I should let them go if I can’t give them everything. 

Her heart clenched painfully. She wanted to scream at herself. Wanted to take it all back. Wanted to run after you and tell you the truth. 

But before she could move, a familiar voice cut through the festive air. 

“Hey.” 

Charlie’s heart lurched as she whirled around to see Vaggie standing just a few feet away. Her expression was guarded, her arms crossed tightly over her chest. There was a tension in the way she stood, a stiffness that spoke of discomfort and unease. But there was something else, too—a flicker of vulnerability in her eyes, as if she was bracing herself for rejection. 

Charlie’s breath caught in her throat. “O-oh! Hi!” Her shoulders lifted in an awkward hitch as she forced a bright smile. “Long time no… see?” 

The moment the words left her lips, she winced inwardly. Long time no see? Seriously? You saw her ten minutes ago putting up decorations, you idiot. 

Vaggie’s lips twitched, forming a crooked smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Yeah.” Her voice was quiet, hesitant. The air between them felt heavy with everything unsaid. 

Silence descended like a weight, pressing down on both of them. The sounds of laughter and music from the party faded into the background, leaving only the awkward tension hanging between them. 

Charlie opened her mouth to speak— 

“Uhm—” 

Only for Vaggie to do the same— 

“So—” 

They both stopped, eyes widening as they realized they had spoken at the same time. A nervous laugh bubbled from Charlie, and she gestured for Vaggie to go first. “You—you go ahead.” 

Vaggie took a deep breath, her gaze dropping to the floor for a moment before she looked up, her expression softening. “I just… wanted to wish you a happy New Year.” 

The words were simple, but the emotion behind them wasn’t. There was a rawness to her tone, a quiet longing that Charlie recognized all too well. It mirrored her own feelings—the ache of something broken, something lost, that neither of them had figured out how to mend. 

Charlie’s heart twisted painfully. She wanted to reach out, to close the distance between them, to take Vaggie’s hand like she used to. But fear held her back—fear of rejection, fear of causing more hurt, fear of the truths that still lingered unspoken between them. 

“Happy New Year,” Charlie whispered, her voice trembling ever so slightly. 

The conversation with Vaggie had been stilted and awkward—nothing like what it used to be. The warmth, the ease they once shared, was a distant memory now. Every word between them felt scrambled, like pieces of a puzzle that no longer fit together. The silence that followed stretched painfully, and Charlie knew neither of them had the courage to fill it. 

Politely, Vaggie thanked Charlie, her voice strained and tight, before walking away.

You returned then, two drinks in hand, a smile that managed to steady the chaos in her mind for just a moment. 

“You alright?” you asked, your gaze soft but searching. 

Charlie wasn’t alright. She wasn’t even close to alright. But the last thing she wanted was to drag you deeper into her emotional mess—a storm you didn’t deserve to weather. 

So, she lied. 

“I’m perfectly fine!” Her voice pitched higher than she intended, and she winced at the sound. The forced cheer made her cringe inside, but she quickly covered it with a nervous laugh, hoping to drown out the tension. 

You raised a brow, clearly unconvinced, but you didn’t press her. Instead, you handed her a drink, your fingers brushing against hers briefly. “Right,” you said with a smirk. “Well, let’s get this party started?” 

That easy grin of yours—the way you could shake off discomfort so effortlessly—made something tighten in Charlie’s chest. She could only muster a smile in return, grateful you weren’t pushing her for more. 

The party unfolded around her, a whirlwind of music, laughter, and revelry. The hotel came alive with sinners dancing, drinks flowing, and voices raised in celebration. The atmosphere was light, carefree… and yet, Charlie couldn’t shake the weight pressing down on her shoulders. 

She watched you mingle, saw how easily you slipped into conversation with the other guests. Your laughter was genuine, your charm disarming. People gravitated toward you, drawn by your easygoing nature and devil-may-care attitude. 

And that’s when it struck her. 

She was being unfair to you. 

You liked her. She knew that. It was in every lingering glance, every soft touch, every time you went out of your way to make her smile. You’d been patient—so patient—with her, waiting for her to take that final step. To admit she wanted more than friendship. But she couldn’t. Not when her heart was still tangled in memories of Vaggie. 

Charlie barely sipped her drink, the same glass you’d handed her hours ago still cradled in her hands. She traced the rim absentmindedly before finally taking a deep breath and downing the whole thing in one go. The burn of alcohol did little to ease the ache inside her. 

Her eyes scanned the room instinctively, searching… for her. 

But Vaggie was nowhere to be found. 

Disappointment settled heavily in Charlie’s chest, and she scolded herself for it. Let it go. You need to let her go. 

The countdown began. 

Charlie stood at your side, joining in the chant along with the rest of the crowd, but her heart pounded louder than the music. Each number ticked by like a timer counting down to something inevitable. 

Ten… nine… eight… 

Her palms were sweaty, and she rubbed them against her pants, her fingers curling into tight fists. The nervous energy buzzing through her body made her dizzy. 

Seven… six… five… 

Was this it? At the stroke of midnight, would you kiss her? Would that change everything? Would it finally silence the lingering thoughts of Vaggie in her mind? Would she move on? Could she?

Four… three… 

Her breath hitched, her chest rising and falling rapidly as her heartbeat thundered in her ears. 

Two… one… 

A cheer erupted as the clock struck midnight. All around her, people embraced, sharing small kisses and well-wishes for the new year. Charlie’s gaze flickered to yours. You were already looking at her. 

Her heart stuttered. 

Slowly, she closed her eyes, bracing herself. She waited—for the brush of your lips against hers, for the moment that might change everything. 

But what she felt instead was a soft, fleeting kiss… against her cheek. 

Her eyes fluttered open in surprise. You were still close, but the kiss hadn’t been what she expected. Instead of leaning in for more, you took a step back, giving her a smile that was gentle but distant. 

“Happy New Year, cupcake.” 

Charlie’s lips parted, but no words came out. Her mind raced, scrambling to piece together what had just happened. She searched your face for answers, and what she saw there made her heart ache. 

Your expression said everything she hadn’t wanted to admit. 

“I—” she started, her voice catching in her throat. 

But you lifted a hand, pressing a gentle finger to her lips to stop her. 

“Listen,” you began softly. “It’s been fun. It really has.” There was no bitterness in your voice, only a quiet resignation that made the edges of Charlie’s vision blur with unshed tears. “But you and I both know… that’s all this is. Right?” 

Charlie’s chest constricted painfully. Her eyes stung as the cusp of a goodbye hung between you. 

She wanted to apologize—to tell you how sorry she was for stringing you along for months, for being too scared to confront her feelings. But the words wouldn’t come. They caught in her throat, heavy with guilt. 

Her lips trembled. “I didn’t mean to—” 

“I know,” you said softly, your thumb brushing away a tear that escaped down her cheek. “You’ve been carrying a lot, Charlie. More than you should have to.” Your smile was sad, wistful. “But I think we both deserve something more than… this.” 

Charlie’s heart shattered at the kindness in your words. She expected anger, frustration—something to make her feel the consequences of her mistakes. But you weren’t angry. You were understanding, even now. 

It made her guilt all the worse. 

Her breath hitched as more tears slipped down her cheeks. She bit her lip, struggling to keep from sobbing. 

“I wanted to be the one that could mend your broken heart,” you admitted. “But I can’t wait forever. And you shouldn’t have to force yourself to move on just because I’m here.” 

The words pierced through her, shattering the walls she’d been desperately holding up. Her shoulders shook as she fought to keep herself together. 

“I’m sorry,” she whispered brokenly. “I never meant to hurt you.” 

“I get it,” you murmured softly, brushing away a tear that slipped down Charlie’s cheek. Your touch was gentle, lingering just long enough to steady her trembling frame. As your fingers traced her skin, you leaned in, pressing your forehead against hers. The closeness—so intimate, so tender—felt like a final goodbye wrapped in kindness. 

“Loving a sinner is hard, after all,” you hummed thoughtfully, your voice quiet but carrying the weight of something unspoken. 

Charlie choked back a sob, her body shaking as she clasped her hands together in a prayer for forgiveness. “I’m sorry,” she mumbled, voice cracking under the weight of her guilt. The apology felt woefully inadequate—too small, too late. 

You pulled her closer, shielding her from onlookers, though the surrounding crowd was too drunk or distracted to notice the way her world was falling apart. 

“I think sinners have a New Year’s resolution,” you said with a soft chuckle, the sound bittersweet in her ears. “Strange, isn’t it?” 

Charlie blinked through her tears, confused but captivated by the warmth in your voice. 

“Maybe this year, our resolution should be to face our fears head-on,” you added, parting from her gently, as if afraid to let go entirely. 

It was at that moment that realization hit Charlie with the force of a dump truck. 

She never asked you about your fears. Your troubles. Your burdens. 

You had been her rock for months, a steady hand pulling her through her turmoil. But she hadn’t returned the favour. She’d been selfish, wrapped up in her own pain, too blinded by her unresolved feelings for Vaggie to see how much you had quietly endured. 

Her chest ached with shame, fresh tears spilling down her cheeks as she covered her mouth with trembling hands. “I’ve been a terrible partner...a terrible friend,” she whispered, voice thick with regret. “I… I never meant to hurt you.” 

A soft laugh escaped you—a sad, knowing sound that cut deeper than any harsh words could have. 

“I won’t lie,” you said gently, reaching out to ruffle her hair, the familiar gesture making her heart clench painfully. Strands of blonde fell messily over her face, but she didn’t move to fix them. “It’s not great, feeling like a rebound.” 

Charlie flinched at the word. Rebound. It hit harder than she expected. 

“But hey,” you shrugged, as if trying to make light of your own pain, “it is what it is.” 

She wanted to argue, to deny that you’d ever been a rebound. But the truth was undeniable, sitting heavy between you both. 

“It’s been fun, though,” you continued, your smile bright but tinged with melancholy. “Take care of yourself, Charlie.” 

With that, you took a step back. And then another. Until you turned away. 

Charlie’s gaze locked on your retreating figure, her vision blurring with tears. Her lips parted to call out—to stop you—but no sound came. Her voice failed her, just as it always did when it mattered most. 

And so, she watched. 

It was only then that Charlie realized what you had done. You had given her mercy—something she never would have had the strength to give herself. You ended things gently, gracefully. You had set her free, knowing she was too tangled in her past to ever do it on her own. 

She watched as you disappeared into the crowd, weaving through the mass of sinners with the same ease you always had. The path you walked seemed to burn in her mind, the flames licking at her heart until there was nothing left but ashes. 

And for that… she was both sorry and eternally grateful. 

Clutching her hands to her chest, Charlie let out a shuddering breath, her fingers curling tightly against her shirt. Her heart ached with the weight of everything left unsaid, of the love you’d given freely and the love she couldn’t return. 

Charlie stood still, rooted in place as the world moved on without her. 

Where do I go from here? 

Her mind echoed the question, but no answer came. Not yet. The road ahead was uncertain, hazy with smoke and ash. But one thing was clear. 

The road to you… 

Was gone. 

And Charlie? 

She was still standing in the burning ruins.  

❀˖° Like my story? Toss a coffee to the gremlin—probably safe, but no promises! ❀˖° Join Voxtek Server and Follow Me for live updates!

[owlygem]

Does Arth have a Celestial Somebody... sona? Projection? I'm not sure what you'd call it. Except perhaps Earth but with adorable antennae(I picture moth antennae myself).

Yes, actually! Since Suns soul is in Samson in the Arth timeline/Universe, the Sun there would have a unique soul! As well as all the planets. And as the bug folk are the predestined dominant species, the celestials would resemble bug folk too 🧡

[mercurytrinemoon]

Astrology: fate vs free will

Does astrology leave room for free will? Oh the heated debate that I always love to get into. To answer that question we need to first go back to the ancient times…

ANCIENT TIMES AND THE GENESIS OF ASTROLOGY

About four thousand yars ago, the people of Mesopotamia started connecting celestial phenomena with earthly events. Their observations weren’t too complex as they could only study what was seen with a naked eye: eclipses, halo around the Moon or comets. This is how they started making predictions related to folk and those who rule. For example, it was common to believe that an eclipse heralds the king dying (that’s why they used to get a decoy substitute king for the eclipse seasons! So that the wrong “king” dies instead). These symbols written in the sky were treated like omens send from gods: a heavenly script, which you can read and interpret. That is how astrology was born.

Around 5th century BCE, the study of astrology was developed enough to use it in a context of an individual. It is from this period that we find the oldest natal horoscopes. They were quite simple and limited: a reading like this would state that someone’s life will be long, prosperous and great. Or that said person will always have an advantage over their enemies. These horoscopes were purely divinatory.

If we jump forward in history, to the Hellenistic times, we’ll find out that astrology has blossomed tremendously. It’s mainly thanks to scholars from that time that we owe how astrology looks like nowadays.

Paralelly to astrology the stoic philosophy was developed and both were strongly connected. It made sense because, assuming the astrological prophecies talked about things innevitable, that stoic approach to life (which is accepting the life that is destined to us and not displaying any resistance towards it) was pretty complimentary and they were both supporting each other. According to stoics, worrying about negative fortune was just a waste of time because no one could help the bad stuff. That eliminated useless emotions and happiness was reached through acceptance and inner peace.

Let’s look at a quote from one of the hellenistic fathers of astrology, Vettius Walens:

“Those, who engage in the prediction of the future and the truth, having acquired a soul that is free and not enslaved, do not think highly of fortune, and do not devote themselves to hope, nor are they afraid of death, but instead they live their lives undaunted by disturbane by training their souls to be confident, and neither rejoice excessively in the case of good, nor become depressed in the case of bad, but instead are content with whatever is present”.

Ancient astrologers believed that studying the stars is a system, which allows studying fate. Some referred to it as “learning the law of fate”. Walens called astrologers “soldiers of fate” as well as guides and prophets.

It was clear as a day then that every person was born with some sort of fate assigned to them. Birth charts are even reffered to as stamps that are imprinted on us at the time of birth.

But even in the ancient times, astrologers didn’t fully agree on some things. This is where we introduce the concept of determinism – the complete lack of free will and the presence of destiny. Hellenistic scholars were arguing on whether some things are able to be controlled and if yes, then to what extend. Debates were heated. Roman astrologer Manillius believed that absolutely every. single. step of one’s life was predestined and the moment of birth already determined the moment of death. That’s on the extreme side of the spectrum but that was definitely an opinion that was out there. On the other hand, partial determinism was backed up by Claudius Ptolemy, who thought that a human’s doings can improve or worsen that, which was already fated and that not everything is written in stone. That’s a pretty balanced approach I’d say.

WAYS TO “HACK” DESTINY?

Astrological messages were taken for granted so much that is was popular and pretty common to use techniques that predicted the length of life. Not much of the records that talked about these techniques survived though and what we have now are just vague guidelines. What’s also interesting – and pretty fun – is that astrology implemented some magic as well! So you might know what an electional (or inceptional) astrology is about as I talk about it often (and you can get an electional reading from me as well *wink wink*). So just like a person has a birth chart, everything else does too: the moment you register a company, the moment you sign papers, the moment you marry, the moment you create something or release it, the moment you meet someone for the first time or the moment you send something into the world – all of that has its own chart. And why is it considered magic? Because that is a way to kind of steer your life in the direction you want – that gives you some control over your destiny. Of course, you can’t force something that isn’t meant for you, just like you probably can’t fully avoid what is meant for you. Funnily enough, astrology seems to always be two steps ahead of us, which means that even if you are not aware of astrology, if something is supposed to work out, you do it during an auspicious time. And if something’s fated to fail, you will probably unknowingly do it during unfavorable astro weather. So, astrology is somewhat deterministic but if you’re aware of it, you can help yourself out a bit. You know, there’s a saying that goes: “stars govern the fool ones, while the wise ones govern the stars”.

DEATH OF DETERMINISM

Okay but going back, what happened with stoicism and determinism in the context of astrology? Modern astrologers rarely talk about it. Well, during the period of christianity spreading across the world, religious priests “bribed” people by telling them that if they get baptised, they will be freed from their destiny and will be granted the gift of the free will. This is how predicting the future slowly transformed into a “set of tendencies”. Catholic prejudice againts deterministic thoughts was still strongly present even in the 20th century. In 1917 astrologer Alan Leo was convicted for divinatory practices (he was fined so nothing too bad ahah). At this time psychological astrology was slowly gaining in popularity and nowadays it’s more common to read about people’s personalities rather than predicting a specific events in their lives.

There are plenty of modern astrologers who do practice prognostic astrology and who still prove that you can predict the fate of a human by looking at his birth chart. Predictive methods like progressions or just simple planetary transits and solar returns are still fairly popular but we also have a revival of ancient techniques like profections or zodiacal releasing, which can be extremely powerful and extremely on the nose.

There was this Polish astrologer, Leszek Szuman, who predicted people’s deaths. He didn’t just outright tell them though, he would put possible dates into envelopes and seal them so that they would be checked again after these people passed away. And he was correct. I’m not sure if he was correct every single time. He also famously predicted his own death. I have no idea what techiques he used but somehow he managed to do it.

KNOWLEDGE AS AN ADVANTAGE

So, if you ask about my opinion, I think it’s hard to believe in free will while believing in astrology (that’s why I’m also not into manifestation techniques). It can be daunting, especially if you do study astrology and see a bad period incoming. I’m faaaar from being stoic but there is one thing I appreciate about that deterministic approach: you may know negative things are about to happen… but that also brings knowledge of when those things will end. And of course, you’re able to pin point the positive period and use it to your advantage. It also helps get rid of some level of regret or guilt: I’m sure everyone went through an experience (or more) where they thought to themselves “damn, WHY didn’t I do this earlier? Or differently?” or “WHY did I have to go through this, I could’ve avoid it”. Well… and what if I told you it was supposed to be like this? Would that ease out your worry? There’s time for everything, if you tried to do something earlier, even though you might now think you could do it just like that, it probably wouldn’t work out. Timing is everything in astrology.

On the other hand, if we look at the good side of destiny, as an astrologer, it’s extremely joyful to watch people give up on something that was important to them only for that something to magically work out either way. Cause you look at these charts and say “that is meant for you”, even if that person doesn’t believe it. But again with timing, just because something is meant for you, doesn’t mean you will get it right way.

And bad experiences that seem useless? When you made a decision and then you had to pull away from it? What if that was your destiny? It’s okay. Most of the decisions are reversible, even though that might be a pain in the ass. That was just a part of your journey.

There’s a myth that talks about souls drawing lots before incarnating. These lots contain a scriped destiny and each of the souls is assigned to a daemon that makes sure that destiny is fulfilled. So, some of that script surely does seem random and seems like it does not carry a lesson. It is literally like a lot: you get this and you get this and also, let’s throw in this just for variety and… fun?

I’m not sure if all mistakes and missteps have purpose, are they meant to teach us something? Maybe they do, after all modern astrology does talk about lessons quite often. But then again, if as a kiddo I had transiting Saturn opposite my Mercury and I slipped in my living room and broke my hand… what lesson was that supossed to be? (wear non slip slippers lol idk?) It was just a random event but certainly timed when you look at astrology. Situations like this definitely make you think that stuff are just written in the stars and you can’t help it. And lastly, things may seem unpredictable but only for those who do not know astrology.

[gatitties]

Hi, I saw your request is back!

I'm not sure, if I have an idea.. but this will be a long request, I'm sorry. 😅

I wonder if the female teen reader used to be a result of an accidental experiment as a child, she gained telepathic abilities, allowing her to read the minds of people. The organization gave her the code name Test Subject (Your number), because of her abilities. The scientists didn’t treat her as an ordinary child as she wasn’t allowed to play or have fun because they wanted her to learn how to use her powers for world peace.

She escaped the research facility of the unknown organization. She found herself moving from one orphanage to another, all while seeking someone to take care of her permanently.

She keeps her telepathic ability hidden because she doesn't want them to think she's weird and freak. If they find out her ability, she feels frozen or quickly runs away to escape from them

Abilities:She utilizes her telepathy to gain significant advantage over others, such as reading the enemy's mind during a fight to predict their next moves. She's . She was already helping her friends without them knowing who helped her. She is a master of martial arts, ini and immune to poison.

Weakness: Due to many people's mind nearby. She's telepathy causes her exhaustion and nosebleed due to her ability to read too many people's thoughts at the same time. She loses her telepathic ability when it's a full moon. When she's trying to read someone with a complicated and genius mind. She is unable to understand what he is thinking due to the massive amount of information. This also branches to her poor grammar skills, when leaving messages to others only leading them to unable to understand what she is writing. As well as not knowing how to write a warning message on a paper to them, but she instead drew things, which still confuses them.

She craved adventure because of her favorite book about pirates or spies, also it would constantly remind her of the hero that saved her.

Her personality is a bubbly and cheerful young girl with a kind-hearted. She appears to be much smarter than she actually is, and while this is true to an extent, this is likely artificially inflated because she can read other people's minds, a fact that nobody aside from her is aware of.

She became violent towards anyone, who was teasing her just like likely remembering that Luffy did the same thing to the Celestial Dragon for shooting Hatchin. She displays a fearsome presence when taking care of her targets where they even tremble in fear upon spotting her.

Unlike most people and children, who are scared of pirates, she thought they were the coolest thing ever and desperately wanted to be a pirate or family. But she's only scared of Nami's angry issue with scolding Luffy and being careful with her but she loves her like a mother figure.

However, she respects the desires of her family figure a lot, and when her mother figure asked her not to punch people who displease her, and instead smile at them, she did as she was told, although with visible discomfort, noting that she feels her mother figure lied when she told her that it would make her feel better and defuse the situation.

She woke up so late in the morning.

Her favourite food is peanuts. She loves animals and making friends.

With Straw hats and other pirates too! (Platonic Pls!!)

─Strawhats x fem!teen!reader (platonic)

─Summary: You never thought you could be part of a crew, much less have friends after you escaped those labs, but you made room in your heart for those who showed you kindness.

─Warnings: none

woah you got a whole story there! some of you have so much amacing ideas, you could really write your own fanfic easily and it would be amazing <3 and I'm sorry this took so long, I needed a break from everything

You thought that your life was condemned and predestined to follow orders, like a device to be used in favor of other people, created to please and serve, perhaps you were too naive or it was just because you were a simple child lost and confused by the experiments that they made you, but it didn't take long for you to break because of that.

Every step you took became careful, every action had great repercussions, you began to be overly aware of your surroundings, you began to mature when you should be playing with toys or enjoying time outdoors, yet you were kept locked up to develop powers that had been conceived for you by those same people who supposedly raised you.

It was always 'you don't need that' or 'do this to be a good girl', there was always 'you will get a reward if you behave well' or 'there will be a punishment if you don't do what we ask', all those words started to do dented your brain to the point where you couldn't take it anymore, thanks to the development of your power to read minds, you made a perfect escape plan.

And so it was that at a young age you took to the sea to escape those who posed as your caretakers, while most people would avoid conflicts with pirates or thieves, you found yourself turning to them most of the time, as whether they realized it or not, at least you stowed away many times.

Your heart sank as you saw how other children and teenagers were enjoying home life, longingly observing all types of families, you wished more than ever to be able to experience something like that, but you quickly ruled it out, that would make you an easy target for those evil people would find you again, besides, you liked being so free to do what you wanted, not having anyone on top of you telling you to do things was a weight that you took off your shoulders, your personality changed slightly since you felt much better now, taking a much brighter perspective on life.

You allowed yourself the luxury of using your powers without restrictions or efforts, helping some people in trouble in a selfless way, which was what made you meet at least a few pirates ─who usually got into more trouble─ so, you would use this to your advantage so they would let you travel with them to the next island more easily.

Heart Pirates, Kid Pirates, Whitebeard Pirates and even two people with names as famous as Mihawk and Shanks, you had the opportunity to see them in person, even help them or travel with them for a short period of time, they remembered yourself and the freedom you gained after disobeying 'the order' imposed.

But what you never thought about was that you would end up being part of a crew, something you could call family, Luffy was too insistent that you travel with them and the others were too kind to be able to deny their offer, you didn't promise anything because you claimed to be a stray cat traveling with them for the moment, but your heart had already made too much room for them to abandon them and continue on your own.

A point of no return after seeing how concerned Nami is with you, how you can enjoy playing with Chopper, Usopp and Luffy without worries, a place where your diet is well balanced by Sanji, where you can rest as much as you want as Zoro, where you can go whenever you feel exhausted from not being able to control your power so well, Robin is there to guide you, Brook and Ginbe will calm you down with their music or words and Franky will tell you the worst jokes in his collection to make you laugh.

You cursed your miserable life at the beginning of your adventure when you escaped from those laboratories, looking for so many places to fit in that you never thought you would make it, but against all odds, here you were, traveling alongside a crew that you happily call family without regret it, your old worries have been blown away by the sea wind, now it's your turn to enjoy your youth and freedom, you would defend the crew tooth and nail for protecting you and giving you the warmth that you were looking for from day one.

[basedkikuenjoyer]

Shamrock Shake-Up

Y'know, for all the deep plot and speculation on how it may tie together sometimes you just gotta love a cool locale. And this castle is a great example. Huge! Reminds me a lot of Sen's Fortress from the original Dark Souls which may have been frustrating...but was a pretty solid dungeon overall.

I don't want to ignore what we have here in the first half, but first we need to acknowledge that it is all serving a purpose setting the stage for the second. Fitting given our chapter title echoes that very Wano ____ Takes the Stage framework. And it starts with our guy Road, who's getting a fair amount of redemption as this part of the plot unfolds. Which I'm not opposed to, he's a creep but not irredeemably evil.

We honestly cover a lot of ground in this castle. Clarifying what the ancient giants were, King Harald, why Loki is chained up down there, internal divisions among the giants...all great stuff. But I really, really love this about Road and Hajrudin. Gives him a clear goal that makes sense to align with Luffy. Glad to see we are continuing to develop the Grand Fleet after what we saw punctuating Egghead.

That's not the only way I feel at least some vindication for the aspects I've been focusing on in the story since Wano. I mean, sure I'd like it to be more Kiku-centric but all in all we've still seen some of those highlighted aspects through speculating on her manifest. Especially as we get into what the gulf between brothers Loki and Hajrudin has to say setting up a certain figure we've always had an interest in...

I also wouldn't miss this getting there. The way Gunko's arrow power starts to take on this aspect reminiscent of learning future sight and themes of fate, predestination. All leading to...

[Insert Irish Cliche] We get the proper reveal of Shonks/Stabs/etc. Along with him being a proper Figarland and son of our wonderful Mac Tonight. I feel like we need a sister named Wendy to really make this go over the top. Now obviously the implication here is that Shanks is some long-lost brother of this celestial dragon family. Which would actually tie a lot together around a figure in this series big enough to justify that. You have Cora/Doffy as the ones who had some time in that world and different reactions to losing it. Core concepts among the Charlotte Siblings. And of course now Hajrudin & Loki. I also wouldn't overlook the significance of the name "Shamrock" in an arc we've gotten back around to the legacy of Professor Clover.

Kiku & Izo actually could fit this pretty well. Just for the idea of triggering some feelings about this in Shanks's journey given his chance to know them but also don't forget the potential raised through that Art NUE universe. The whole Kikuhime doppelganger could be a flag for nobility long dashed by Wano's rising water level. There's definitely a lot of short-term intrigue around this, but the (almost) confirmation here of what we were suspecting about Shanks's origins does feel like we're starting to bring this all together.

[whumpster-fire]

Okay so I was just on a road trip and I decided to start listening to the Wings Of Fire series on audiobooks and after finishing the first sub-series I gotta say I'm loving it so far.

What I Expected: Warrior Cats but with dragons.

What I Got: Warrior Cats but with dragons meets Underland Chronicles (levels of Going This Hard with the dark themes and gore and fucked up stuff) meets A Series Of Unfortunate Events (general competence and trustworthiness of most of the adults in these poor kids' lives for most of the series). Like, not that Warrior Cats doesn't go hard with messed up stuff, but this series kind of gives me Underland Chronicles vibes in the way that it does it.

The setting and premise: In A World Ruled By Dragons... that apparently used to have a human civilization that was destroyed by dragons in an apocalyptic event long go but that's not important right now, (humans are still around but almost completely irrelevant to the plot with one notable exception), the seven tribes (species) of dragons have been dragged into an utter clusterfuck of a war because one of the tribes had a civil war due to a succession crisis and have managed to drag nearly everyone else into it. An ancient quite recent prophecy made by some guy who is still very much around states that this completely pointless waste of life will be ended by five children born under a specific celestial alignment, who will have the power to decide the victor of the civil war. A cross-species secret society known as the Talons Of Peace with the noble goal of getting everyone else to stop doing WWI With Dragons decides that the best way to make the prophecy go smoothly is to raise the destined hatchlings themselves in secret and keep them safe from any of the parties with a vested interest in the war's outcome, until they are ready...

In other words a pretty bog standard "Chosen Ones" children's fantasy plot, but what I love is that from the very beginning of the first book, Wings Of Fire pulls absolutely no punches with the fact that the main characters are child soldiers, and the supposed "good guys" organization is not only pretty sketchy for acquiring five eggs under circumstances of varying legitimacy (read: definitely kidnapped at least two, one more supposedly abandoned, one sold by deadbeat parents, one supposedly donated for the cause but it's unclear) but also is just as guilty of trying to use them as pawns for their own political goals as everyone else, and are not even actually neutral in the war.

What I also love is that the DoD (Dragonets of Destiny) are the worst fucking child soldiers ever and this is largely because the Talons Of Peace are completely fucking incompetent and massively fucked up every step of the "grooming kidnapped hatchlings into child soldiers" process.

Failed at kidnapping eggs. Literally in the very first chapter one of the eggs supposedly predestined to save the world is killed. One of the main characters is the last-minute replacement and literally not even the right species that's supposedly specified by the prophecy (and has psychological issues because no one has let her forget it)

Assigned the very important task of raising the Chosen Ones and teaching them the skills they will need to save the world to three dragons who were utterly horrible with kids and didn't want the job. Left them to it with no oversight for years and years.

Decided to raise them isolated from the organization they're supposed to be loyal to, in a fucking cave, giving them literally zero real world experience with so many essential skills like, say, navigation, or flying in actual weather. The main characters literally had a "Puppy Mill Animals Seeing Grass For the First Time" experience.

Did not research / pay attention to the basic biology and culture of the species the kids belong to. One of them, Clay, spent his whole life being told he tried to murder his adoptive siblings when he hatched because the surrogate parents had no idea that for his species the first in a clutch to hatch instinctively helps break their siblings' eggshells for them. Another is from the aquatic dragon species which has their own sign / bioluminescence language they use to communicate underwater. She was not taught any of this despite one of the surrogate parents being the SAME FUCKING SPECIES AS HER. And also, y'know, the negative amount of effort put into every single parenting decision related to Glory.

Literally the only thing the Talons Of Peace actually succeeded at was making the kids bond to each other, but managed to instill less than zero loyalty to the organization they were supposed to obey due to being left to be raised in isolation by emotionally and physically abusive parental figures. Later, the guy who made the prophecy, after checking back in and discovering that one of the children was the wrong species, thought fixing this mistake by having her murdered and replacing her with another kidnapped child would in any way work. As a result the Talons Of Peace now have five Chosen Ones who have ditched them and wanted absolutely nothing to do with them and their plans. As of three books into the series they are still doubling down on the "kill and replace the more annoying members of the group" plan and still seem to think that the surviving members would somehow accept this.

I also think it's noteworthy that, like, most of the remotely competent and trustworthy allies the DoD have are other child soldiers that they have run into along the way. Like, at this point we have Peril (Skywing Queen's attempt at making her very own Azula), Anemone (magical prodigy small child on a leash), Deathbringer (Nightwing secret agent who Glory accidentally flirted with while in disguise within the first five minutes of attempting her own unrelated spy mission), Fatespeaker (one of the Talons of Peace's backup plan dragonets who they somehow put even less effort into than the main five). And, like, Clay's siblings who are also a bunch of kids fighting a war.

Also I don't know if this was Tui T. Sutherland's intent all along or if it was audiobook reader Shannon McManus's artistic license, but. Whoever decided to give the Nightwings - a tribe from an inhospitable island who act like they're smarter and more cultured than everyone else but are mostly a bunch of pompous idiots, who have a decrepit and useless royal family, notoriously inedible "cuisine," and a plot to colonize and genocide one of the other tribes for land and natural resources - British accidents is a goddamn genius.

[beargyufairy]

Invisible String Theory - NaLu

“All along there was some invisible string tying you to me” - Invisible String (Taylor Swift)

“One single thread of gold tied me to you” - Invisible String (Taylor Swift)

Part 3: Zeref Dragneel and the Heartfilia Clan

Zeref Dragneel - the infamous Black Wizard, creator of demons, and Natsu’s older brother - worked with the Heartfilia Clan to achieve his goals.

After reviving Natsu, Zeref allowed Igneel and Anna Heartfilia to teach him. Furthermore, he teamed with Anna to not only create the Eclipse Gate but to open it with Celestial Magic to send Natsu and the dragon slayers to the future.

Generations of the Heartfilia family passed on secret which eventually led to Layla Heartfilia - Lucy’s mother. She opened the Gate to ensure Lucy wouldn’t have to take on the burden and have a normal life. By opening it, Anna and the dragon slayers entered the future.

The invisible string connected Natsu to Lucy due to the Eclipse gate being opened during her era. Several events took place before Natsu and Lucy met however they were predestined to one another from their respective families.

[theslothycat]

My beloved

For whom my heart beats with a wild and sacred fervor, and to whom my soul clings as a castaway to the mercy of the tide.

For whom my blood is spilt, my bones set into motion, the fire within me kindled as oil to the unyielding flame.

Where the altar of my love is built and the abyss of my ruin beckons, I shall commit the most hallowed of heresies to sanctify the refuge of your embrace.

To bear witness to your love, I shall tread only the path that leads to you, though it may demand the forsaking of all I have ever known.

You are the feebleness of my might, yet the iron of my fortress, and the sanctuary within which I seek refuge.

The divine may weave my fate into their gossamer threads, ensnaring me within the web of their predestined decree, yet they shall never claim what is no longer mine to give.

My soul has long since been surrendered—bestowed upon one far worthier than their celestial dominion.

They shackle me within the recesses of my own mind, whispering of salvation at the cost of my own undoing.

They bid me kneel, to let their sacred hands shape me from clay and mold me into piety’s wretched effigy.

But he has asked of me the one thing I can never relinquish.

And so I defile my own flesh, severing the sinews of my past, tearing every tether that binds me to the hallowed.

For I could never forsake you.

I unmake my faith, reduce it to dust and ruin, and wander the uncharted abyss of a world tainted beyond absolution.

And I let it stain me—for you are my sole sanctity.

Let me prostrate beneath your feet, trace the echoes of your steps, and be your willing devotee.

I have hollowed myself of the divine, for you have filled me to the brim with your existence.

And yet, I dare not deny that which once called itself my god—should He come forth, there is no science nor reason to dismantle the miracle of your being.

The only perfection ever wrought in creation.

Let the great tribulation descend upon me—I shall not waver, nor shall my resolve splinter beneath its weight.

As the unrelenting hand of He who is known by a thousand names smites me down, I will not plead, nor tremble.

Instead, I shall scorn His hollow paradise, for I have borne witness to one who bloomed upon this forsaken earth, a beauty beyond His lifeless heavens.

I will tread the scorched and blackened lands, watching as the ruin unfolds before my very eyes—the slaughter of our kind, the descent into horrors without end. The air will be thick with the wails of the damned, the earth slick with the remnants of those who once walked it.

Yet even as the world drowns in fire and sorrow, I will stand with you upon the cliffs, your hand entwined with mine.

And should all creation be reduced to dust and echoes, I will not despair.

For I have known a life more joyous, a peace more true, than any heaven could ever bestow—because I have lived it with you.

[inquisitiveidiot]

smile as starlight,

getsscattered!

blinding potential celestial patrons

alreadybedded hair, 

he turns to me

sedation would be a cheaper mercy

flower lined fingertips

fragrant as they cascade

smiling as i wonder,

how many gardens have you decorated?

my shakey soil:unmoving

he tills my lilies

until the late morning

fresh tulips,

artificial peonies

forgotten spring time,

ive known no one (yet)

twitterwitch says jupiter brings new beginnings

starlight laces the flowering stem

he forgets,

          lost in the waltz

laughs at the missed steps,

how many more gardens, i beg

as though it were predestined

ivy wraps my waist

catholic woes subsided

the gardener leaves

the very next day

[msetra]

the master has myriad backstories across all available dr. who media & while divine predestination by way of gallifrey's figures of worship, time & death, playing a game of cosmic chess with the doctor & the master as central pieces fits with the irony of the seventh doctor's EU tenure as a trickster figure playing with the lives & timelines of his travelling companions as his god-given right to the detriment of everybody. outside the bounds of that specific incarnation, i'm really not compelled by the master having an origin story or a sudden turn from a neutral force to a mustache-twirler. the only sources i will be referencing for this portrayal are the flashback comic, which is a backstory dealing with the beginnings of animosity between former friends & this paragraph from the novel time & relative, which to me perfectly explains why the master in terror of the autons is the way that he is

succeeding in gallifreyan society necessitates the exact kind of characteristics which would later push the master from becoming a powerful figure on gallifrey to thinking they deserve dominion over the universe. it's not a jump nor a leap but a leisurely stroll from playing by the rules of a decaying, post-colonial fascist society to making your own, not rebelling against but exemplifying the failures of your homeworld so superbly they will always offer you a way back in no matter your crimes, & why this incarnation has embroiled herself within the celestial intervention agency despite having someone to answer to now. it is a time lord's right to play god