#Cradle of Humankind

[insightfultake]

South Africa’s Cradle of Humankind Caves Reopen, Breathing New Life into Humanity’s Origins

Deep beneath the sunlit plains of Gauteng, where limestone walls have silently guarded secrets for millions of years, a grand reopening is underway. The Sterkfontein Caves — part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site known as the Cradle of Humankind — have swung their gates open again, welcoming visitors back into one of Earth's oldest chapters.

[solxamber]

Mage x Menace || Jade Leech

You, a struggling mage-in-training, tried to summon a majestic beast to escape your cursed fate in the botany stream.

Instead, you got Jade Leech—chaos incarnate, collector of mysterious jars, and disturbingly enthusiastic about plants.

He now lives in your dorm, calls you "Master" with a straight face and might be seducing you via herbal tea.

this is a present for @hyperfixating-rn <3 I'm very late but happy belated birthday!!

You were going to be a great mage. A legendary one. The kind they wrote poems about—long, rhyming ones with unnecessarily dramatic metaphors. You had dreams. Ambitions. A Pinterest board titled "Epic Wizard Core." You practiced basic spells in your room, blew up your mirror once, and were 96% sure your magical aura was purple (which is obviously the most powerful one, everyone knows that).

So imagine your surprise when your entrance exam results came back and you were… sorted into the Botany stream.

Botany.

As in, plants.

As in, dirt and roots and sunlight and “communing with nature.”

You had never communed with nature. You had once tried to grow a cactus—the most resilient plant known to humankind—and it had withered in protest within a week. You had named that cactus Spiky. Its death was a tragedy. A murder, some said. By you.

So naturally, you stood there on orientation day, holding your shiny new textbook titled “Green is the Heart’s Color: Love and Magic in Leaves”, with the same vibe as someone who had been given a live grenade and told to hug it.

Your fellow classmates looked excited. Eager. Too green, in more ways than one. You watched one of them gently cradle a sproutling like it was a newborn. Another was crying over the “beautiful potential” of transpiration. Meanwhile, you were googling "can you accidentally poison poison ivy."

And then, of course, came your professor. You don’t remember much from the orientation speech because you were too busy having a silent breakdown about the phrase "the gentle whisper of chlorophyll." But you do remember one very important thing:

You’re in so much trouble.

You raised your hand at one point to ask if you were allowed to… switch majors. The professor smiled.

A warm, benevolent, lethal smile.

“Oh, dear. The plants have chosen you.”

What does that even mean???

You don’t know. But the tiny seedling on your desk keeps wiggling like it’s happy to see you. You don’t trust it. You name it Vermin and pray it doesn’t unionize with the moss on your windowsill.

You are a mage in training. A powerful wizard in the making.

And now you are at war… with horticulture.

After a week of trying to bond with leaves like they were long-lost family and nearly getting strangled by a particularly enthusiastic vine, you decided you’d had enough.

You needed a way out.

Not in the dramatic “storm out of class, set fire to the greenhouse, and flee into the mountains” way. (Though it was on the table.)

You needed a loophole. An escape clause. A forbidden back door in the curriculum forged in ancient times by other students who had also accidentally murdered cacti.

So you did what any desperate, dignity-depleted mage-in-training would do.

You found a senior.

Now, seniors in mage school are like cryptids. Powerful. Elusive. Sleep-deprived. And terrifying in the way only people who’ve once accidentally turned themselves into a plant can be. Your chosen senior was sitting under a tree, drinking coffee from a mug that said “I survived Magical Ecology II and all I got was this mug and lifelong trauma.”

You approached, clinging to your textbook like it was a lifeline. “Hi. I’m—uh. I’m not vibing with the flora.”

They looked up, eyes dark with knowledge and probably caffeine. “Botany stream?”

“Against my will.”

A pause. A long, sympathetic sip. Then: “You have two options.”

Your heart fluttered. Hope! Salvation! Maybe—

“One: Fail everything, get held back a year, reapply next cycle. Pray the plants forget your face.”

“I can’t afford that. Option two?”

“Summon a familiar so powerful, the faculty has to bump you into a combat-heavy stream for your own safety. And theirs.”

You blinked. “Like. A dragon?”

The senior shrugged. “Sure. Or a demon. Or a vengeful raccoon. Anything above ‘mildly homicidal housecat’ works.”

“And then they’ll just… change my stream?”

“If your familiar is terrifying enough, yes. Preferably something with fire. Fire fixes everything. Except greenhouses.”

You nodded slowly, feeling the stirrings of a Plan™. A terrible, beautiful, questionable plan.

"How hard is it to summon a familiar?" you asked.

They smiled, and it was not comforting.

“Not hard. Doing it without summoning something that wants to eat you is the tricky part.”

You thanked them and walked off into the distance, muttering under your breath and already flipping through your grimoires.

You were going to get out of this stream or die trying.

Hopefully neither.

But if a hellbeast had to be involved, well…

You were prepared to negotiate.

You had one job.

Just one.

Summon a powerful familiar. Save your future career path. Escape the dreaded Botany Stream before you're eaten alive by carnivorous radishes with anger issues and questionable ethics.

You’d studied forbidden texts. You’d drawn your summoning circle to perfect mathematical proportions using a protractor, three compasses, and something called “Manifestation Oil” you bought off a sketchy alchemy influencer.

You even lit candles by hand like a peasant. That’s how serious this was.

You had one last step: focus your intent. Picture what you wanted. Channel all your magic and will into the ritual. A dragon, perhaps. A fearsome spirit. A beast of legend. Maybe even a war general.

Instead, the unagi you were saving for dinner—your actual, literal eel—slid off the table mid-chant and splat landed right in the center of the summoning circle.

The summoning circle hissed.

You had precisely one second to scream “NO, YOU STUPID SLIPPERY FISH—” before the circle detonated.

There was light. Screaming wind. Something smelled vaguely of seaweed and crime.

When your retinas finally stopped sizzling and your ears recovered from their astral slapping, you looked up.

And there he was.

A tall, elegant man standing in the still-smoking circle, dusting off his sleeves like he hadn’t just been yanked across the realms by an overcooked eel. His teal hair shimmered like deep water. Heterochromatic eyes. He looked like a minor sea god and a professional tax evader all rolled into one.

He tilted his head. Smiled. “That was… dramatic.”

You stared. Still holding the empty microwave-safe eel tray like a sacrificial relic.

“I was trying to summon a dragon,” you croaked.

“Ah,” he said, eyeing the smear of soy sauce in the center of the runes. “Then why the seafood?”

You didn’t have an answer. Mostly because you were too busy silently screaming.

“I suppose I’m what happens when your spell gets rerouted mid-delivery,” he continued, delight practically oozing off him. “Fascinating. I'm Jade. Jade Leech.”

You, a mage of great ambition and even greater regret, took a deep breath and said the only thing that made sense.

“…Are you allergic to plants?”

Jade Leech, freshly yanked from the dark, swirling depths of somewhere much cooler than here, watched with the amused detachment of a man who had just witnessed his summoner go through all five stages of grief in under forty seconds.

You cursed the gods.

You cursed the stars.

You cursed your entrance exam, your cactus, your birth, and at one point—yourself in third person.

He said nothing. Simply folded his hands behind his back and watched with the kind of serene interest normally reserved for people observing an exotic animal fling itself against glass.

Eventually, once your vocal cords began to shred from impassioned screaming (and possibly mild sobbing), you whirled toward him, red-eyed and wild-haired, and gestured at him in disbelief.

“Are you—” you wheezed, dragging a sleeve across your face, “perchance a dragon?”

He blinked slowly. His smile widened.

“Perchance?”

“I don’t know!” you shouted. “You’re tall! You appeared in a bunch of smoke! Your hair defies gravity! That could be dragon behavior!”

“Hm.” He tapped his chin thoughtfully. “And if I say yes?”

You squinted. “...Do you breathe fire?”

“I’m more of a ‘poison your tea and watch what happens’ sort of creature,” he replied, pleasantly.

You screamed again—this time in cosmic betrayal—and stomped your foot so hard the candles trembled.

He made a note of this. You had good stomping technique.

“Well then what are you?!” you demanded.

He shrugged, like this wasn’t a magical emergency and more of a casual day.

“A Moray Eel, technically.”

You stared at him. Then at the summoning circle. Then at the empty microwave eel tray still on the floor. Then back at him.

“Oh my gods,” you whispered in horror. “The unagi redirected the target circle. I was summoning a power dragon and the ritual downgraded to ‘long sea worm.’”

He chuckled. “How dare you.”

“I wanted to cheat the system,” you whispered, falling to your knees like a tragic protagonist. “And the gods sent me seafood.”

“I’m standing right here, you know.”

You threw yourself to the ground and started sobbing into the floor.

Jade���s smile grew wider. He might stay. This was already more entertaining than anything back home.

And honestly, watching you spiral was kind of charming.

Jade made tea.

You weren’t entirely sure how or when. One moment, you were crumpled on the floor, dramatically mourning your dreams of becoming a cool elemental mage with a dragon familiar. The next, he was handing you a dainty teacup on a saucer you definitely didn’t own.

There was a slice of lemon in it. The mug was warm. You were terrified.

“…Did you summon this tea set too?” you asked, eyeing the porcelain like it was going to explode.

“No,” he said pleasantly. “It was in your cupboard.”

“No, it wasn’t.”

He smiled wider. “Was it not?”

You stared at him. He stared back, sipping his tea with the calm of someone who knew exactly where every spoon in your home was and wouldn’t hesitate to replace them with slightly longer spoons just to gaslight you.

You took a sip of the tea to assert dominance. It was delicious. You hated that it was delicious.

He watched you, unblinking. “So. Why the desperate summoning?”

You groaned, slouching like the tea had robbed you of whatever spine you had left. “I got sorted into the botany stream.”

There was a silence. You sipped your tea again to drown in the shame.

Then his eyes sparkled.

You felt it. Like a shift in the atmosphere. Like the moment before a lightning strike. Like the second someone said, “Trust me,” and you woke up four hours later in a tree, covered in glitter and mild regret.

“Oh,” he said, delighted. “Botany.”

“No,” you said immediately. “Don’t do that. Don’t say it like that.”

“Fascinating field, truly.”

“Nope. You’re not going to help me switch out, are you?”

He leaned forward, chin in his hand, elbow balanced too gracefully for someone who had appeared out of eel magic and poor life choices. “Why would I do that? I think you’ll thrive.”

“You don’t understand,” you said, pleading now. “I killed a cactus.”

“Oh, I completely understand,” he said. “And I'm going to help you fulfill your potential.”

You froze. “…You mean, like, help me survive until I transfer?”

“No,” he said.

You dropped your cup. He caught it without looking. You wanted to scream.

The only thing worse than being a botany student… was being a botany student with a chaos eel who found fungi romantically intriguing as your familiar.

You were so doomed.

Unfortunately for everyone involved—and by everyone, specifically you—magic law was a clingy little thing. Once the summoning circle did its sparkly flashbang thing and delivered you one (1) butler-themed eel man, the universe basically clapped its hands, said “it is what it is,” and slapped a contract in your face.

Minimum term of servitude: one year.

“But I didn’t mean to summon him,” you argued to literally no one who cared. “There was fish involved! It was a mishap, not a magical invocation!”

Jade, very unhelpfully sipping tea that you definitely hadn’t bought, slid the scroll across the table toward you like a cheerful IRS agent. “Intent is only one part of the ritual,” he said with the infinite patience of someone who enjoyed watching trainwrecks in slow motion. “The contract is already half-formed. You really should sign it before your house explodes.”

You stared at the scroll.

Then at him.

Then at the scroll again.

“Do I at least get a trial period?” you tried.

“No,” he said, smiling.

“A free return policy?”

“No.”

“Is there, like, an eel clause I can exploit?”

He chuckled. You were going to die in this major.

With the kind of reluctant grace that only someone who’d just accidentally legally bound themselves to a smug sea-creature man could muster, you signed.

The moment the pen left the paper, the air shifted with a cozy little pop, as if magic itself was tucking you both in and whispering “congratulations on your joint custody of chaos.” A faint glow danced around Jade’s shoulders. Your window exploded.

(You’d ask questions about that later.)

“There we are,” Jade said, clasping his hands. “Familiar and mage, officially contracted. Shall I begin compiling a weekly schedule for our fieldwork?”

“Field—oh no.”

“Oh yes,” he beamed. “We’ll be revisiting the entire kingdom flora catalogue, starting with mosses.”

You suddenly understood the reason why some mages went mad.

And unfortunately, you’d just handed yours the clipboard.

The next morning, you dragged yourself to class like a condemned soul to the gallows, weighed down by a sense of impending doom and also by the deeply unsettling realization that your familiar had organized your bookshelf by spore reproduction categories sometime during the night.

Everyone else looked so normal. There was someone with a fire spirit coiled lazily around their shoulders, someone else with a giant spectral wolf that radiated unbothered energy, and even one smug jerk with a miniature dragon who was definitely using it to cheat on practical tests.

And then there was you.

With him.

Jade stood a respectful half-step behind you, dressed like a mildly menacing butler who might also commit tax fraud if given the opportunity. He carried your books. He bowed to your professor. He smiled at your classmates.

You didn’t trust that smile. That was the smile of a man who had definitely poisoned a royal court and got away with it by turning the queen into a toadstool.

Someone asked what type of spirit you’d summoned.

You opened your mouth to lie.

Jade answered for you. “They were aiming for a dragon,” he said, serene as ever. “But an eel will have to do.”

The entire class stared at you. You stared into the void.

“It was the unagi,” you muttered, already defeated.

No one knew what that meant, but it sounded stupid, so they all laughed.

Jade patted your back like a supportive guardian. You were ninety percent sure it was to check your spine for eventual harvesting.

Gods help you. It was only the first period.

The Academy was in shambles.

Centuries of magical history. Thousands of successfully summoned fire spirits, storm wolves, mildly angry raccoons. And you—a botany major with a dead cactus on your record—had gone and summoned a person.

Not a ghost.

Not an illusion.

Not even a creepy guy pretending to be summonable.

No. A fully functional person.

“Technically,” the Dean said, staring at the magical contract hovering over your heads, “you… own him now.”

You almost threw up on the ornate rug.

Jade Leech, the man in question, just smiled—sharp, calm, entirely too pleased.

“This is so cursed,” you whispered.

“Oh no,” he replied sweetly. “This is fate.”

And that was only the beginning of your descent into contractual hell.

Because Jade? Oh, he thrived under magical servitude. Took to it like a duck to water. Like an eel to crime.

He started calling you Master.

In public. Loudly. With emphasis.

“Good morning, Master,” he purred on the way to breakfast, gliding past stunned first-years who immediately assumed you were either very powerful or very into some stuff they weren’t ready to Google.

“Jade. Stop.”

“As you command, Master.”

You tried reasoning with him. You begged. You threatened to cry in front of the Headmistress.

Didn’t matter.

In fact, the more embarrassed you got, the worse it became.

“Master, shall I carry your books?”

“No.”

“Your lunch?”

“No.”

“Your emotional baggage?”

“Jade—”

“Ah, but you summoned me, Master. Now we’re bonded.”

You looked around, desperate for help, but every professor just kind of shrugged. Magical contracts were sacred. Breakable only through death, divine intervention, or, apparently, a system of interpretive dances before the moon goddess during a blood eclipse. None of which were happening before finals.

So now this was your life.

You were the “owner” of a smug eel man in a waistcoat who made you do your homework, made better tea than your own grandmother, and insisted on calling you Master while looking like a very polite threat.

You used to be a normal student with no future in botany.

You should've just failed your exams like a normal student.

Jade settled into your dorm room like he’d been planning it for years. Which was frankly insane, considering you’d only accidentally summoned him a day ago.

You woke up the morning after signing the magically binding familiar contract to find your room… different. Not horrifyingly so, just enough to make your eye twitch. Your desk had moved three inches to the left. Your bookshelf now had labels. Your cactus—previously deceased—was somehow thriving in a suspiciously fancy ceramic pot.

And then there were the jars. Oh gods, the jars. They lined the shelves now in neat, alphabetized rows. Some were normal—“Chamomile,” “Sea Salt,” “Lavender Sprigs.” Others were less so. “Tooth Collection (Domestic)” sat right next to “Rainwater (For Legal Use Only).” You wanted to ask, but Jade had a look in his eye that said whatever answer you get, you won’t like it.

He also brewed tea every morning. Not the relaxing kind. The existential crisis in a cup kind. You drank one (1) polite sip and suddenly understood what “the color eleven” looked like. Your body remained seated but your soul went on a brief vacation.

You had no idea how, but you were scoring higher in Botany. You still couldn’t identify a single plant, but Jade kept slipping you notes mid-lab with things like “This one bites. Do not sniff.” or “Lick at your own risk.”

So yes, your GPA was rising. Unfortunately, so was your blood pressure. And your heart rate. And your sense that you were, somehow, very much in danger.

Jade simply smiled every time you panicked. “You’re thriving, Master,” he’d say, and sip his tea like he wasn’t actively reorganizing your entire life.

You were not thriving. You were surviving. Barely.

The assignment was simple on paper: identify twenty local plants, label their genus, and list their magical and medicinal properties.

Which was all fine and dandy if you weren’t a person who had accidentally killed a cactus by underwatering it because you “didn’t want to overwhelm it.” 

You’d gotten through most of your academic career via a potent combination of vibes, frantic late-night study sessions, and an almost supernatural level of spite. But this—this was science. With labels. And botanical terminology. And leaves that all looked the same.

So, you did what any sane, desperate mage-in-training with poor decision-making skills and a total lack of botanical knowledge would do.

You brewed a bathtub-sized cauldron of universal poison antidote and decided you’d taste-test each plant to figure out which one was lethal and, by process of elimination, identify the rest.

Jade found you leaning over the cauldron, mumbling something about statistical mortality rates and chewing on a leaf like a feral squirrel trying to beat natural selection.

“I thought you were joking,” he said, in that same unsettlingly pleasant tone he always used when you were actively concerning him.

“I wasn’t!” you declared. “This is science, Jade. And survival. I’ve made enough antidote to survive an assassination attempt—”

“You made it in your bathtub.”

“—and I’m going to lick nature into submission.”

Jade sat you down at the table, folded his hands neatly, and asked you—politely but with the weight of an ancient curse behind it—to repeat your plan.

You did.

He stared at you.

You shifted in your seat.

He continued to stare, like a disappointed headmaster.

“...Okay fine,” you finally muttered. “It is a bad plan.”

“Thank you,” he said calmly. “Would you like to identify your plants using logic, reference books, and assistance from your familiar, or would you prefer a slow and humiliating descent into gastrointestinal regret?”

“I mean, when you say it like that—”

“Wonderful. I’ll prepare the tea.”

You hated how soothing (mostly) his tea was. 

You found out purely by accident.

Your friend sat down at lunch with a heavy sigh and a tear-streaked face, muttering something about how their fox familiar had gone limp and glassy-eyed after being ignored for two days straight in favor of midterms. Apparently, he needed “emotional engagement” and “frequent pets.”

You had not known this. You had not known any of this.

You returned to your dorm in a panic.

Jade, as always, was seated like an eerie portrait come to life, sipping tea and reading a book that looked suspiciously bound in scales. He raised one eyebrow as you burst through the door carrying three different types of fruits and a hand-sewn blanket you’d made in Home Ec two years ago.

“I heard that familiars need enrichment,” you blurted. “Do you—are you enriched? Are you feeling under-enriched? What’s your favorite snack enrichment type? Is it eels? Oh no wait, is that cannibalism? I don’t know your rules!”

Jade blinked slowly. “You believe I am in poor health?”

“I don’t know!” you wailed, thrusting the blanket at him. “I don’t know the maintenance routine for familiars! You could be dying from sadness and I wouldn’t know!”

He looked down at the blanket. It had uneven edges and a sewn-on mushroom that looked like it had witnessed terrible things. Slowly, he took it. Draped it over his lap. Sipped his tea again.

“You are a very considerate Master,” he said with a pleased little smile that absolutely shouldn’t have made you feel like you’d just earned an A+ in Familiar Wellness. “I feel much better already.”

You weren’t sure if he was messing with you or not. But then he let you tuck the blanket around his shoulders like a shawl, and even let you hand-feed him a strawberry.

You decided you didn’t care if he was messing with you. His ears were flushed. That was a win.

You needed Nightshade. Not the safe kind either—the real, reactive stuff that tended to hiss if the humidity wasn’t just right and once exploded in someone's bag for being stared at wrong.

Unfortunately, your professors had firmly, repeatedly, and increasingly frantically refused to let you anywhere near it. Something about “prior incidents,” “a trail of fire ants through the dorm hallway,” and “we are begging you to stop licking mystery leaves.”

But you had an experiment to finish, and a lack of official approval had never stopped a single mage in history. Which was how you found yourself sneaking into the restricted greenhouse under cover of darkness, with your overly smug eel-familiar following like he was on a stroll and not a felonious B&E.

“This is clearly illegal,” Jade said cheerfully, as he helped you pick the lock.

“You’re a summoned being. Laws don’t apply to you,” you muttered, shoving the door open.

“That’s speciesist,” he said mildly, and you ignored him on purpose.

The two of you tiptoed through rows of glowing plants, whisper-bickering the whole way.

“Don’t touch that. It screams.”

“You scream.”

“Yes, and I have a great voice.”

He huffed a laugh. You tried not to grin. You failed.

Honestly, it would’ve been a perfectly stupid and smooth heist—until the Shrike Vine noticed you. Apparently it was pollination season and it was feeling bitey. You froze as a thick green tendril snapped toward you like a whip.

Except it never hit.

Jade moved faster than you thought was possible. One hand caught the vine mid-strike, the other calmly flicked a tiny blade across it like he was trimming hedges instead of saving your life.

And then, because he was a menace, he leaned in close—just enough for you to catch the sharp gleam in his mismatched eyes—and murmured:

“I’m very good at protecting what’s mine.”

You were not about to combust in a greenhouse. You were not. Absolutely not.

Still. Your face was hot. You blamed the bioluminescent plants.

“Wh—That’s not—you can’t just say things like that,” you hissed.

He tilted his head, looking unbothered and devastatingly pleased. “Why not?”

You opened your mouth. Closed it. Pointed at the vine. “Is that one safe to lick?”

“Absolutely not.”

“…Cool, cool, just checking.”

The incident itself wasn’t even your fault this time, which was frankly insulting, considering you usually caused at least 70% of the department's arcane emergencies. 

No, this time it was Jeremy from Spell Calculus who accidentally overcharged a fire enhancement glyph and sent a wayward jet of magic careening through the lab like a feral gremlin. It ping-ponged off three protective wards, vaporized a desk plant, and promptly singed your familiar.

Specifically: Jade’s sleeve caught a little fire. For exactly three seconds.

The sleeve was barely charred. His skin wasn’t even red. He smirked.

You, however, reacted like you’d just watched him be stabbed in the heart by a divine lance.

“OH MY GOD YOU’RE BURNING—ARE YOU OKAY?! Is it fatal? It’s fatal, isn’t it?! What’s the protocol for familiar injury?! Do you need a resurrection spell?? Should I call the nurse or the exorcist—?!”

Jade, blinked once. Then calmly patted the faintest whiff of smoke from his robe and said, “I believe I’ll live.”

But the glint in his eyes said he smelled weakness. And he would absolutely exploit it.

The next morning, you showed up with a full care basket: enchanted cooling balm, a wonky scarf you’d panic-crocheted in the night, a potion for nerve regeneration (completely unnecessary), and a whole assortment of healing snacks from the infirmary vending machine.

You even hand-fed him a soothing honey drop.

That was your next mistake.

Because the very next day, Jade reclined across your bed like a drama major rehearsing for a role in “The Dying Swan: A Magical Tragedy.” He had a lukewarm towel across his forehead, your blanket wrapped dramatically around his shoulders like a cape, and a very deliberate look of fragile suffering.

“Alas,” he whispered, placing the back of his hand to his (completely fine) forehead, “I fear the lingering effects of the trauma are… worsening. There’s a tightness in my chest. I may never wield a kettle again. My tea senses are dulled.”

You squinted at him, deadpan. “You brewed two pots this morning.”

“For you, dearest Master,” he said, with an exaggerated wince. “But at what cost?”

You refused to indulge him. For about ten minutes.

Then he started coughing. Badly. Into a silk handkerchief. That you were pretty sure he’d dabbed with food coloring beforehand to resemble blood.

“Do you think you can bring… strawberry lollipops?” he asked, voice trembling. “Before I pass on to the next world.”

You shoved five into his mouth. “You’re not dying. But you are insufferable.”

He sucked dramatically on the sweets, sighing. “I find this treatment emotionally compromising.”

You fed him another one.

And started plotting your revenge with a very bitter herbal “recovery” tea. It smelled like wet moss and tasted like betrayal.

He drank it all. Smiled. Said it “added intrigue to the healing experience.”

You were no longer sure who was winning this war. But you were definitely losing your mind.

It started subtly. Jade would casually set a teacup in front of you in the mornings, unprompted. You’d ignore it. He’d raise an eyebrow. You’d argue that caffeine was a food group and you didn’t need anything else, thank you very much. 

He’d say something cryptic like “I’d rather not have to explain malnutrition-related hallucinations to the administration,” and then slide you a plate of suspiciously elegant finger sandwiches.

Somehow, you’d end up eating them.

A week later, you found yourself sitting down for actual breakfast—tea, toast, even fruit—without remembering how it happened. He’d simply adjusted your routine. Quietly. Steadily. Like a moss infestation with an agenda.

He began packing you lunch. Bento-style. With little hand-drawn labels.

You didn’t even know when he started doing it. You just opened your bag one day, reached for your emergency gummy stash, and pulled out a thermos of miso soup and a side of rice balls shaped like sea creatures.

He started accompanying you to the dining hall under the excuse of "needing seaweed access." He monitored your meals. Commented on vitamin intake. Replaced your sugar gummies with dried fruit. Told you that if he caught you drinking energy drinks for dinner again, he’d report you to botanical safety for trying to poison a living plant (Vermin had still not recovered from the one time you tried to share a Monster with it).

Eventually, your friend—sweet, concerned, possibly one skipped breakfast away from passing out—cornered you between lectures.

"Hey," she said, tugging your sleeve with wide eyes. “I need to ask you something and I don’t want you to freak out.”

You, holding a bento box labeled ‘Don’t Forget to Finish Your Spinach, Master’ with a small smiling mushroom drawn on it, tilted your head. “Okay?”

She glanced around, lowered her voice, and whispered, “Who’s the familiar here?”

You stared at her.

She stared back.

In the distance, Jade waved at you politely while handing a professor a jar of suspicious glowing jam.

You opened your mouth. Closed it. Thought about how he’d reorganized your pantry by nutritional pyramid. Thought about how your life had improved and yet somehow spiraled out of your control in the exact same breath.

“I… don’t know anymore,” you whispered back.

And that was the beginning of your existential crisis about power dynamics, dietary fiber, and eel-based emotional manipulation.

The more you thought about it, the more the terrible, horrifying truth settled in: Jade had been slowly taming you.

Not in a leash-and-collar kind of way (though you weren’t entirely convinced he wouldn’t enjoy that visual), but in the slow, methodical way one might tame a particularly wild housecat. One that hissed at vegetables and believed microwaved instant noodles were the pinnacle of culinary achievement.

When you’d first summoned him—on accident, via unagi-induced chaos and a summoning circle that was technically illegal in five countries—you’d been expecting a fae general. A terrifying beast of war. A dragon, maybe. 

What you got was a polite, well-dressed man with a smile that could curdle milk and the calm demeanor of someone who’d enjoy watching your academic career spontaneously combust. 

You were sure he would spend his time reclining in your dorm like some cryptid, sipping tea while you panicked over assignments and singlehandedly ruined your chances at survival in botany.

That had been your first impression.

But it wasn’t what happened.

Instead, Jade made it his mission to ruin you in the most terrifying way imaginable: through care.

He made sure you ate. He brewed tea tailored to your stress levels. He reorganized your notebooks by topic and color-coded them while claiming he was “bored.” He calmly extracted you from five different poison ivy incidents. He taught you how to pronounce “photosynthesis” correctly after you spent an entire presentation calling it “plant vibes.”

And you hated to admit it—but it worked.

You stopped waking up in a panic. You stopped considering glitter glue a legitimate potion ingredient. You even passed a midterm without attempting to bribe a forest fairy.

It was subtle. Devious. Soft.

And worst of all, it was making you feel warm. Cared for. Grounded.

You used to dream of summoning a dragon—a grand, legendary familiar that would impress the entire academy and maybe light your homework on fire for dramatic effect. But now?

Now you watched Jade hum to himself in your kitchen, cooking something that smelled like lemon and dreams, and you didn’t care about dragons. Or status. Or changing streams.

You just wanted to figure out if there was a spell that could describe the exact way your heart skipped when he smiled at you and called you “Master” with that infuriating glint in his eye.

And if not… well. Maybe you’d make one.

From Jade’s point of view, your summoning had all the signs of an impending disaster—and thus, a highly enjoyable evening.

The circle was sloppy, the candles were the wrong color, and the ambient magical pressure was off by several kilopascals. The unagi that had plummeted into the center as a last-minute offering had been particularly concerning. Jade had arrived in a flash of light and fish-scented smoke, bracing for either mortal peril or at least a good laugh.

And then he saw you.

Wide-eyed. Covered in ink. Mumbling about “hoping for a dragon or something.” The perfect storm of magical desperation and zero planning skills. He had thought you’d be amusing. A novelty. A fun little side project to pass the time while bound by contract for a year.

And at first, that was exactly what you were. You were so spectacularly bad at botany that Jade was convinced you were a social experiment.

You called mushrooms “leaf meat.” You once referred to an entire genus of plants as “the crunchy ones.” And your plan to identify herbs by tasting them like a medieval poison tester had nearly given him a stroke. (Emotionally. He’s far too composed for physical symptoms.)

But somewhere between force-feeding you actual meals and dragging you out of exploding greenhouses, Jade started feeling… something. Not just amusement. Not just secondhand horror.

Affection.

It was awful.

So naturally, he did what any emotionally stunted eel-man would do—he ramped up the teasing. Called you “Master” in public. Smiled just a little too sharply. Hovered with a quiet attentiveness he pretended wasn’t genuine.

But when he thought back to that summoning—your hopeful eyes, the half-charred fish, the complete magical disaster—Jade realized something horrifying.

He owed his current happiness to a piece of grilled eel.

The next time he saw unagi on a menu, he gave it a respectful nod. After all, not every familiar bond is forged through fate, fire, and ancient prophecy.

Some are forged through sheer dumb luck and seafood.

You had always believed, deep in your feral little heart, that if you ever fell in love, it would be with the intensity of a meteor crashing into the earth. There would be pyrotechnics. An orchestra. Maybe a cursed bouquet of sentient mushrooms arranged in the shape of your initials. Something properly dramatic.

You were prepared for a sweeping romance. A declaration shouted from a balcony. A confession under a blood moon. At the very least, a sword fight followed by heavy breathing and an emotionally repressed kiss.

What you were not prepared for was... a random morning.

More specifically: today morning at 6:42 a.m., in your tragically unventilated dorm kitchen, where you shuffled in half-awake, wearing a blanket like a disgruntled ghost. Your hair looked like it had seen war. Your socks didn’t match. You were only conscious due to residual academic panic and caffeine withdrawal.

And there Jade was. Crisp and awake and annoyingly gorgeous, as usual, humming some eerie little tune while cooking god-knows-what on your stove. The sunlight framed him like he was in a toothpaste commercial. There were suspicious jars open on the counter labeled things like “Fenugreek??? (Maybe)” and “Do Not Inhale.”

He glanced at you over his shoulder, amused. “Good morning, Master.”

You grunted. It was too early for sarcasm or formal titles.

So, with the sleep-deprived logic of a creature who had survived exclusively on coffee and academic desperation, you trudged over to him, latched onto his waist like a needy koala, and rested your cheek against his back.

You did not plan this. Your body moved on its own, possessed by the Spirit of Affection.

To his credit, he didn’t question it. Jade simply chuckled, adjusted his stance, and offered you a spoonful of something suspiciously green and steaming.

You tasted it. Your neurons barely fired. It was delicious and probably illegal.

And then, without thought, without warning, still pressed against him and one brain cell away from sleep, you mumbled, “I love you.”

There was a beat of silence.

You blinked.

Wait.

Wait—

What the hell did you just say—

YOU SAID THAT OUT LOUD—

Jade paused with the spoon still in his hand, his entire body going still like a predator that just heard something interesting. Then—slowly, like he was savoring it—he turned.

He looked at you. He really looked at you. And then, in true chaos spirit fashion, he grinned.

Not his usual polite smile. No. This was different. This one had teeth.

“Oh?” he said, softly. “Oh?”

And that was the moment you realized: you had said those three words to a man who considered emotional vulnerability an invitation to hunt.

You tried to backtrack. Tried to say you meant “I love you—r soup.”

Or “I love you as a friend. A colleague. A sentient eel.”

But before you could decide on your lie of choice, he leaned down and kissed you.

It started sweet. Gentle. Thoughtful, like maybe he was giving you time to flee.

You didn’t. That was your mistake.

Because then his hand slid around your waist, and the kiss deepened, and suddenly your kitchen felt too small, and too warm, and definitely not rated for public indecency. Your legs threatened to give out. Your brain flatlined.

When he pulled away, you were breathless and dazed. You looked at him, heart hammering, pupils blown wide.

He tilted his head, still grinning, and said, “You taste like honesty. How rare.”

You briefly considered combusting on the spot.

And as he turned back to the stove like nothing had happened, humming again, you realized something terrifying:

You were in love.

And you were the prey.

And you were kind of okay with that.

When familiar contract renewal season arrived—accompanied by the usual administrative chaos, enchanted paperwork that bit fingers, and panicked first-years realizing their mushroom toadlings had exploded again—you were… calm.

Weirdly, suspiciously calm.

You should have been stressed. You were, after all, still a mage in training with a botany grade being held together by duct tape, blind luck, and the sheer force of your familiar’s passive-aggressive hovering.

But no. You weren’t worried. Because somehow, over the past year of accidental poisonings, illegal greenhouse heists, and near-romantic tea-induced hallucinations, you and Jade had fallen into something far more dangerous than summoning magic: mutual affection. Possibly even love. Terrifying.

And yet, when the day came, you expected a conversation. A little back and forth. Maybe some dramatic flourish on his part—Jade had a flair for drama and mild emotional terrorism, after all. At the very least, you thought he’d present a contract with a smirk and some cryptic line about “servitude never being quite so delightful.”

But he didn’t.

You woke up one morning to find him already seated at your desk, as if he’d been waiting all night. The early sun filtered through your window, highlighting the soft teal of his hair and the amused glint in his eyes. You were still blinking the sleep out of yours, shuffling over in your raccoon-print pajamas with all the grace of a zombie when he slid the document toward you.

A thick, arcane-heavy contract. One that glowed softly at the edges. Titled:

“PERMANENT FAMILIAR CONTRACT — LIFELONG BOND”

Your eyes snagged on the signature line.

His name was already there.

Signed in an elegant, curling script with a wax seal that looked like an eel tail. No jokes. No teasing. No loopholes.

You stared at the paper. Then at him.

“…You want to be stuck with me forever?” you asked, because your brain short-circuited and apparently decided that was the most romantic response it could muster.

Jade raised a brow. “You make life—interesting,” he said, voice inflected with all the warmth and amusement of someone who once watched you attempt to eat a venomous berry “for science.”

You blinked again. “That’s not a no.”

“It’s a yes,” he said easily, his smile softening. “I’d like to be yours. If you’ll have me.”

You didn’t even hesitate.

You picked up the pen and signed your name beneath his. The moment the ink dried, the paper vanished in a swirl of moss-green smoke, the pact sealed with a pleasant little magical ding.

“So,” you said, heart thudding in your chest as you looked up at him, “we’re really doing this.”

“We are,” he said.

“Forever is a long time.”

“Not nearly long enough.”

And you had to kiss him after that, because what else do you do when your familiar—not-quite-boyfriend-but-very-possibly-soulmate says something like that?

He kissed you back like he’d been waiting years. And you let him, sinking into his arms like it was the only place you’d ever belonged.

You, a chaotic disaster of a botany student. Him, a merman familiar who brewed tea that could bend time.

A perfect, absurd, slightly terrifying match.

Later that evening, when you sat together on the windowsill, legs tangled and laughter echoing, you realized something else: you'd meant to find a way out of the botany stream. A bigger future. A stronger school of magic.

But with Jade by your side, maybe botany wasn’t a prison—it was just where you bloomed.

It started, as most disasters in your life did, with you tripping over your own feet. Specifically, you’d tripped face-first into a rare carnivorous plant while trying to impress your professor with your “innovative approach to hands-on learning.” (Your professor had screamed. The plant had screamed louder. You still didn’t know plants could do that.)

And while you were nursing your slightly-bitten pride and applying salve to your dignity, some golden-haired, obnoxiously perfect fourth-year had wandered over, all pristine robes and condescending smiles.

“You know,” he said to Jade, completely ignoring you like you were a decorative shrub, “it’s a shame. A familiar with your magical potential? Tied to someone who’s clearly... not invested in their future.”

You scoffed. Loudly. “Excuse you. I am very invested in my future. I just think the universe should meet me halfway and stop putting venomous moss in my study patch.”

The student didn’t even blink. “You deserve a master who challenges you. Who brings out your best.”

Jade tilted his head, politely smiling the way a shark might if it had impeccable manners and was about to swallow a surfer whole.

“I see,” he said, sipping his tea. “And that would be… you?”

“Why not?” the student said, and you hated how confident he sounded. “They're wasting you.”

You froze.

You knew it wasn’t true. Jade had chosen you. Signed a lifelong contract. Literally brewed you soup after you set your eyebrows on fire.

But the words stung in a way you hadn’t expected.

You tried to play it cool. Shrugged. “If he wants to leave, he can. No one’s stopping him.”

Jade’s eyes flicked toward you, a tiny crease between his brows. “Is that what you think?”

You shrugged again. Forced a smile. “Why wouldn’t it be? Go ahead. Take your tea. Find a master who challenges you.”

And with that, you walked away, head high, hands clenched so tight your knuckles cracked.

You spent the rest of the night trying not to cry into your pillow.

The next morning, your pillow was suspiciously warm. And breathing.

You cracked open one eye to find Jade wrapped around you like a clingy snake with boundary issues and an attitude problem.

“What—Jade—get off—!”

“I’m sleeping,” he said.

“You are not! You’re emotionally ambushing me!”

He didn’t move. Just curled tighter.

You squirmed, shoved, flailed. Nothing worked. The man had the tensile strength of a vine and the stubbornness of ten toddlers.

Eventually, you gave up and pouted at him. “You were mean yesterday.”

“I wasn’t trying to be,” he admitted cheerfully, his tone dangerously close to smug. “But in my defense, I expected my master to realize I have taste.”

You sulked harder. “You owe me.”

“Oh?”

“And I’m cashing it in later.”

“Of course, Master.”

“…Stop calling me that in the dorm.”

“No.”

You didn’t bring it up again. But the next day, as you passed that fourth-year in the hallway, he looked pale, shaken, and was clutching a charm pouch so tightly it might’ve become a fossil.

You glanced at Jade. He looked serene. Suspiciously serene.

“…What did you do?” you whispered.

“Me?” he smiled. “Nothing serious.”

You stared at him. He sipped his tea.

You decided you definitely weren’t asking.

But later, when he draped himself across your bed again and offered you a cup of calming lavender-citrus tea with a wink, you realized one thing:

You may be a borderline disaster of a mage, but Jade Leech was yours. And gods help anyone who forgot it.

You'd been holding back.

It wasn't that you were scared. Okay, no—you were absolutely terrified. Because the “what are we” question carried the weight of galaxies, of shifting dynamics and possible heartbreak, and you weren’t emotionally prepared to deal with that when you were already behind on your fungal studies and had just accidentally set your robe on fire trying to dry herbs.

Still, it was getting harder and harder to ignore the fact that Jade Leech, your familiar, your chaos partner, your maybe-something-more, had kissed you good morning again that day. Just a soft brush of lips while you were half-asleep, before you could even form coherent thought. And you’d just blinked at him, dazed and blushing and maybe a little dead inside.

And then that horrible, arrogant, no-chin-having senior from the advanced familiar studies track said—loudly—that if someone like Jade were his familiar, he’d “treat him properly” and “not waste potential on a person who still mistakes fertilizer for potion ingredients.”

You saw red. Possibly green. Maybe fuchsia, depending on how much of Jade’s tea was still in your system. But whatever the color, something snapped in your soul.

Because no one was taking Jade from you.

Not when he brewed you anti-headache tea with honey because he knew you hated bitter things. Not when he cleaned your desk with the gentleness of a man legally married to your organization system. Not when he smiled at you like you were a curious algae bloom he couldn't stop poking at. Not when he kissed your forehead, your temple, your nose, your cheek—like loving you was as natural as breathing.

So.

You marched.

You stormed into your dorm room where he was casually rearranging his jar collection (you didn’t ask, you'd learned not to the hard way.) and pointed an aggressively trembling finger at him.

“Be mine!” you shouted.

Jade blinked once. Then tilted his head, that infuriatingly pretty smile already forming. “I thought I already was, Master.”

Your brain combusted. You flailed. “Huh?!”

“I assumed the constant kissing and emotional intimacy might have been a clue.” His eyes sparkled. “Should I have drawn a diagram? I could make a chart—”

You launched yourself at him in mortified fury. “No charts!”

He caught you with practiced ease, laughed that horrible, lovely laugh of his, and kissed you again—this time slower, deeper, like he’d been waiting for this exact moment.

You melted. Fully collapsed like overwatered moss in his arms.

When you finally came up for air, dizzy and giddy and mildly offended at how good he was at this, he tucked a strand of your hair behind your ear and murmured, “Now that we’ve established that… shall we discuss what we’re calling the wedding mushrooms?”

You screamed into his shoulder.

He laughed again.

And that night, you dreamed of rings made of sea glass and mushrooms that glowed softly in the dark.

Masterlist

[tsuutarr]

Yandere!Hero (Chosen One) x Saint!Reader

In all of his life, Elias only remembers crying once. It was when he was a young boy, no older than six years old. He had been taken to the Church for a baptism, only for his holy power and status as the Chosen One to be revealed. He had then been stolen from his parents and beaten black and blue until he was molded into the Hero that would save everyone.

Resigned to his role, Elias never allowed himself to feel any semblance of emotion. He only needs to fulfill the prophecy, after all. No one cares about who he is as a person, about him. They’ve put him outside to protect the borders of humanity by sacrificing his life. They’ve put a distance between him, parading him as a Hero while masking their selfish desires of having him take on the entire burden of bringing salvation to humankind. He is nothing more than a glorified sacrifice without the privilege of feeling emotions. 

But if that’s the case, why does his heart ache when he’s with you? Why does his stomach flutter? Why does a smile he had thought he lost in his youth come back when you’re around? Why does rage burn his fingers when you get hurt? Why do tears wet his cheeks when he holds your cold, lifeless body?

Please, please tell him that you’re just sleeping. Tell him that you’ll greet him when morning comes. Please, use your warm hands to brush his tears away. Tell him that it’ll all be okay.

Despite Elias’ ardent desires, the dead cannot comfort the living. 

“My child,” a voice from the Heavens calls, a beam of light surrounding Elias. “I thank you for your service.”

“Please,” Elias murmurs, voice thick with emotion. “I cannot live without the Saint.”

The voice above is silent as it observes Elias, who cradles you in his arms like you’re his most important treasure. “I cannot change the hands of fate.”

“Then I will,” Elias responds. “Turn back time for me and I will find another way to seal the Demon Lord.”

“It does not exist. You will only put yourself through the same pain.”

“It doesn’t matter to me. As long as I can save the Saint.”

The voice from the Heavens is silent, before it says, “Very well. If that is your desire.”

And so, time is rewinded back to when Elias was a young boy. He once again goes to Church to receive baptism. He is once again shown to be the Hero. He is once again stripped from his parents and beaten black and blue, but this time, he does not cry. Instead, he looks forward so that he can find a way to save you.

But no matter Elias’ efforts, bad end after bad end follows his footsteps. No matter what he does, no matter what he changes, no matter what, bad ends are the only ends he meets with. A good ending where the world is saved and you are still alive just doesn’t exist. So, Elias has no choice, really. He’ll create his own bad end, except this time, the world will be sacrificed for you.

[harmonysanreads]

Hello! I recently saw your Vampire!Alhaitham headcanons floating around again, and since I just finished 3.2 not that long ago and have a certain feeble scholar on the mind, what are your thoughts on Vampire!Anaxa if you have any?

Would be similar or different from Alhaitham in your opinion?

If Vampire!Alhaitham is one who’d much rather pull the strings from the safety of the shadows, Vampire!Anaxa is someone who’d parade in the sun with his head held high, if only to spite the people praying for his demise.

He’s a paragon of truth, his desire to answer the question of what exactly he is, is far hungrier than the instincts he has to battle with all day. Outwardly, he looks quite like a stereotypical vampire — thin figure, pale complexion and a temperament that seems to hint that he has spent a millennia divorced from human society. The only thing, and a rather crucial thing at that, which he appears to be missing is that untamable thirst for fresh blood.

Contrary to the impression he gives, he’s actually lived among humans for quite some time as a scholar and he often thanks his ‘control over the bloodlust’ in assisting him to not blow his cover up. Not that he's fond of this charade, but the benefits of enduring humankind's nauseating presence kept him sane enough. Perhaps arrogance crawled to occupy the space of where his heart should’ve been beating, as when his belief of ultimate self control was put to the test, he refused to accept it.

“But you were a human once, weren't you?” the whisper of a road sporting the garments of mystery, intent on making him lose his way for eternity. A cool finger glides over the line of his jaw, its chill very different than his own.

Anaxa forces himself to swallow, that metallic tang insistent on his tongue — not willing to believe that he was a tad too late to conceal the ungraceful drool.

“You and I, we’re both rejected by this world, shackled in the shadows. Why not quit this pouting game and team up with me instead?” as if dissatisfied by the level of atrocity in your words, you amp it up by poking at the bloody fang peeking from his lips. He responds in kind by biting down, hard ; you seem just the tiny bit amused.

“Curse you…” it's a futile exclamation, laughable at that and that is exactly how you respond. Despite his talons clinging around your neck and a fresh wound marring the skin where your artery thrums, you appear not the tiniest bit fazed. It steals his breath away.

“Look at you,” you coo, extending your palm as if to cradle his face but brush past it instead, dizzying him. “Salivating just from one taste. You’re not as immune to this bloodthirst as you’d like to believe, you wouldn't survive an hour if any of those humans found you like this. I can offer you protection and you can be my little toy. Is there any deal better than this?”

Don't listen, don't listen, don't listen. That is the whisper that weaves poison, enchants desperate souls into pawning their remaining spark. A creature neither foolish nor wise. “I’d rather burn at the stake than entertain your schemes.” comes his sibilant retort.

“Ah ah ah.” you chastise, as if he's nothing but a child who knows little about how this world works. “But you still haven't found the answer to what you are, why you're like this.” you glance towards the trail of blood oozing from his bite, a flick of your fingers and within a blink, the scene disappears.

“What if I told you… that I know the answers you seek?”

A road that will lead him nowhere, a serpent disguising as a flower. And he, the Fool that will chase the mirage, despite knowing that nothing awaits him but doom.

[we-are-knight]

"Hey knight, what have you been doing since the last time you logged in?", asks nobody.

Well Odysseus, I've been obsessing over the lack of literally any meaningful notes on maces in historical fencing, and how the common advice for them (when not merely "you can't fence with maces") is to overly simplify them into being used much like dussacks and messers, and how despite maces being a staple weapon of humankind since the cradle of civilization and into the modern world, actual knowledge of the use of them has been so deeply entrenched in pop culture and media myths that it is impossible to get proper understanding of how to use the weapon at all, which itself is funny because we are in a post-truth global culture in which disinformation propogates every facet of human experience and this is highly ironic when throughout mythology the mace is associated with revelation and wisdom, meaning that in an age where information is more present than ever, misinformation is all that we have about a weapon that has been used to symbolise authority and intelligence since antiquity—

So anyway, I'm writing a primer on the mace, and how to use it from a very basic fencing perspective, which I hope will clarify a few things. I'm currently obsessing over the mythology and symbolic use of maces in history around the world. I hate it here.

[auren-zagarra]

Hello, I hope you're doing fine ! English isn't my first language either, so I'm amazed by your writing talent ^^ May I resquest a GN Reader x Jade (but mostly centered on Jade point of vue), where our usually calm and composed eel tastes the sparkles of sexual pleasure for the first time ? Maybe merfolk mating is more about emotionnal connection and procreation than physical pleasure, but in human form it can be the three of them? I honnestly just wish to see Jade breaking free from his usual composure, and finally expressing himself without shame nor restrains ^^' (I hope it's not too specific) Please, have a nice day :)

stulta siren

Content Warning: Jade x GN!Reader, sex, primal kink (?), overstimulation, biting. MDNI.

Characters Count: 7704

His composed and courteous visage began to soften beneath your touch, a porcelain mask yielding to warmth. He watched you with fascination as you drew him closer - like a sinner tempting fate, craving the taste of something forbidden cloaked in the illusion of a lover’s embrace. How have you managed this? To unmake Jade, to coax him into surrender, to reduce him - he, the ever-cynical observer - to yet another creature ensnared by longing, no different from the pitiable souls he once scorned for bartering away their very selves in pursuit of love? Perhaps this twin was not as untouchable as he fancied himself. For in truth, deep within the depths he rarely dared to explore, he would trade even his voice just to feel the certainty of your form in his arms. Such desire is no mere folly of humankind, but a curse borne by all living things.

But he had to remain composed and measured. How would any student react upon witnessing him unravel so shamelessly in your presence? His smile, that finely-honed mask of civility - his most potent weapon - faltered, just barely, as your whispered endearments brushed against his ear like a lover’s incantation. And his body, a traitorous little thing, moved toward you of its own accord. Yet this was no ordinary response, no instinctive answer to the call of mermen seeking union for the sake of lineage or closeness. No, this was something far more ruinous. It was as though his very flesh had been set alight, scorched by the slow-burning inferno that was your love. He felt himself consumed, not with duty, but with desperate want, lost in the searing, intimate abyss of desire. And you… you cradled his face with such unbearable gentleness, pressing soft kisses to his skin like blessings he was never meant to receive. Oh, how Jade yearned, to the very marrow of his being, to taste this new kind of madness with you.

His face rested against the hollow of your bare neck, breath hot and unsteady, while Jade’s hands slipped beneath the fabric of your blouse like a tide rising to claim the shore. Then came the bite, sharp and possessive, a primal gesture born from something that stirred within him the beast that slumbered beneath civility. It was not pain he wished to inflict, though pain it brought; it was hunger, a need to claim, not to harm. But you understood. You always had. The sting beneath his teeth was his way of showing devotion, a visceral display of the intimacy he could not name aloud. And so you squirmed beneath him, gasping softly as your fingers tangled in his hair, guiding him back to that secret place on your throat where his mouth had first branded you. The world beyond his room blurred into nothingness. Clothes vanished, flung into shadows like fallen petals - irrelevant, forgotten. What mattered now was not modesty, nor fear, nor consequence. What mattered was the nearness - the unbearable, blessed proximity of skin to skin, soul to soul. And as you stood bared before your lover, stripped of all pretenses, your only wish was to surrender to the inevitable gravity of the moment… to feel that sacred, trembling connection bloom between your bodies.

And so his fingers wandered, gliding along the length of your thighs like a composer caressing the keys of a long-forgotten piano, coaxing forth a symphony of lust and longing, of sin laced with a strange, aching mercy. Each touch drew you further from reason, until he reached that sacred place: the center of your trembling desire, where pleasure dissolved thought and your voice rose in a breathless cry, shaped only by the syllables of his name. You were no siren, and yet… at times, he doubted that truth. How could a creature of mere flesh and blood so effortlessly dismantle him? Strip him of every layer of decorum, every cold-blooded instinct, until all that remained was a man undone - desperate not for dominance, but for the chance to worship?

To please you. To feel you. To consume you.

Ah, forgive him, sweet love - for this Leech could bear it no longer. With trembling hands, he undid the buckle of his belt, the sound quiet but resounding, like the opening of some sacred gate. He lowered himself between your legs like a pilgrim at the altar, his breath shallow, his eyes dark and unblinking. And then, he entered the ocean of you, a depth so intoxicating, so infinite… he knew, with terrible certainty, that he would never surface again.

His hips met yours in a cadence, a solemn rhythm that would bring him to his ruin. And in that trembling union, Jade came to know the truth that once eluded his cold and curious mind: why mankind, frail and ever-fleeting, bowed so easily to the altar of desire. Your voice - drenched in ecstasy, fragmented into moans and broken syllables of his name - rose like incense into the night air, and with it, you unmade him. In the clasp of your limbs and the heat of your breath, he was no longer the careful, calculating creature of the sea, but something far more human… Ah, so this was the price of tasting the forbidden fruit. For once it touches the tongue, the soul forgets hunger and remembers only craving.

And you - you were that fruit. That cursed sweetness. The snake that enchanted him. His downfall. His divine affliction.

He held your thighs with the desperation of a drowning man clutching driftwood, his hands trembling not with fear, but with devotion. And as he moved within you, again and again, the world dissolved - time fractured, and nothing remained but the wet heat of your union and the cruel, holy rhythm of flesh against flesh. Each thrust was a prayer, each gasp, a psalm, each collision, a promise to never return from the abyss you’d led him into. And still, the bed cried out against the wall - a hollow percussion - echoing the madness rising in his chest. Your form beneath him, haloed by moonlight and marred by shadows, was a vision too exquisite for this world. He gazed down at you, lips parted, as though beholding a relic too sacred to touch. Then, slowly, he bowed his head to your chest - to mark once again who you belonged to.

That wicked smile - sharp as a blade, cruel as temptation - had felled many before you. Yet for you, it did not frighten; it thrilled. It summoned the darkness within your own decaying heart, made it beat harder, faster, as if answering a call of love. And so, entwined in that carnal rite - an offering upon the altar of Asmodeus - you reached your peak. The climax tore through you like a divine curse, your lips bitten red, hips stuttering against the flesh that had so thoroughly undone you. A wicked act, yes, but holy in its own blasphemous way. Yet Jade… ah, Jade was not finished.

Though his body had spilled the sacred essence of life deep within you - warm and heavy - there was no peace in him yet. For how could a creature as inquisitive as he, ever content himself with a single taste of sin? No… no, one round was the prologue to a far deeper descent. He needed more. He needed all of you. You had awakened something untamed in him - a wildness not born of blood or sea, but of want. And now, beneath the flickering candlelight, you were to be his guide. His tutor in pleasures long buried beneath silk smiles and cold calculation. And you, poor, beautiful thing, you did not yet know what price would be paid for such indulgence. For by the time the sun bled over the horizon, its pale light slipping through half-closed curtains, you would no longer be the composed soul who once whispered his name in pride. No, you would be a trembling relic of devotion - lips parted in dazed praise, limbs weak, voice hoarse with gasped confessions of adoration.

A mess.

And Jade… he would only smile again, ready to begin once more.

[thecrowroad]

An assortment of Crow and Spite headcanons:

Zevran’s working over of House Arainai triggered the succession crisis that claimed Lucanis and Illario’s families. The deaths of six 8th Talons in short order caused a lot of instability within Crow society. That instability opened up a lot of opportunity for advancement for both the smaller Crow Houses and the Talon houses. Which lead to a lot of murder.

As heir of House Dellamorte and the presumptive next First Talon, Lucanis did the full syllabus of Crow training, in exhaustive detail. Including the seduction training. While it’s not his forte, he can turn it on for contracts - but he absolutely shuts down when he uses those techniques on someone he actually cares for. It wasn’t (just) Spite that made him need to clear his head after the almost-kiss, it was nearly using moves he associates with targets on Rook.

The things Lucanis finds normal are a source of perpetual morbid fascination for everyone else who didn’t grow up at the sharp end of a crime syndicate. He was first recorded as assisting on a contract at 5 years old - no one looks twice at a tired parent dealing with a fractious kid, or expects the kid to be tasked with dripping the poison in the right glass. The Crows have never shied away from using children.

Post-game, the first thing Lucanis does, once he’s back in Treviso and the dust has settled is to sit down with Viago and Teia and work out how they’re going to manage one of them taking over as First Talon without Caterina having them all assassinated with extreme prejudice. Because while the Seat of First Talon has been Delamorte for generations and almost his entire family died to make sure it stayed in the family… It’s not important to Lucanis. He can do the job and do it well (Caterina is a lot of things, but a woman who didn’t bend to the death of all her children is not a misty-eyed sentimentalist). He just doesn’t want it, and after what he’s been through, he just wants to retire quietly to a cafe somewhere sunny and take the occasional contract his negotiator has convinced to pay his god-killer rates.

As part of the negotiations, Lucanis and Teia make Viago swear an oath to not freelance his way back into the succession. It’s just not worth it, and Teia has better things to do with her life than queening.

I’m not convinced Spite is actually a demon. He’s a bitchy spirit of Determination. Firstly - he doesn’t actually do anything spiteful. Fucking up Zara’s plans for Lucanis isn’t spiteful, nor is losing his rag at Illario for kill-stealing - that’s determination to survive, and determination thwarted. Secondly - just about everyone who addresses Spite personally calls him a spirit of determination. If a demon is a corrupted spirit, it seems that Spite is as most a little twisted.

On the positive effects of spirit possession, Anders says “I cannot tell you how good it feels for a spirit to fulfill its function. The waiting is over. I am finally seeking justice. And he is exultant. There is no ecstasy humankind can feel to match." And Wynne describes her possession by a spirit of faith as comforting "It is like being held close, cradled...". At the most minor level, possession by a contented Spite when he’s crossing stuff off his personal to-do list has to be a glorious cascade of dopamine rushes. Just imagine what achieving the big goals feels like.

[fear-less]

₊˚⊹˚ 𐙚 puff was so good please write more with this prompt I am begging bro 😭🙏

₊˚⊹˚ 𐙚 froggy meetings

paring: sirius black x f!reader

➥ In which,Sirius Black chases you across the Hogwarts grounds with a frog on your head, only to realize he's fallen for your brilliant chaos.

warnings: reader is a gryffindor (not mentioned but yeah), fluff ofc, whole lotta nonsense, reader is a #yapper, sirius realizing his feelings, reader seems more interested in frogs than sirius lmao

2.2K words 

Sirius Black didn’t think he’d ever be willing Sirius Black never imagined he’d find himself chasing someone through the Hogwarts grounds with a frog perched precariously on their head, but life had a way of surprising him. In fairness, he should have known better the moment you stood in the Gryffindor common room, arms spread wide like a conductor about to lead a symphony, and declared at full volume that the Guardian of Puddles had made an urgent pilgrimage to the Great Lake.

Most of the common room had ignored you, accustomed to your antics, but Sirius—Sirius never ignored you. So, naturally, here he was, trudging after you under the moonlit sky, with James’s laughter fading in the background and a lingering promise to “write this one down for posterity” following his retreat.

“Do you even know where you’re going?” Sirius called out as you darted ahead, your pace set somewhere between a dramatic march and a full-on sprint. He quickened his steps, not quite running but definitely jogging to keep up.

“Do you think the Guardian of Puddles questions where the puddles are?” you shot back over your shoulder, your tone dripping with mock indignation. To emphasize your point, you spun around mid-stride, arms flung out like you were addressing an invisible crowd. The frog atop your head wobbled precariously but stayed put, giving an almost affronted croak at Sirius’s doubt.

Sirius rolled his eyes, but the smirk tugging at his lips betrayed him. “Right. Silly me for doubting the omniscient powers of puddles.”

“Exactly,” you said with a grin, spinning back around to face the path ahead. “Glad to see you’re catching on.”

The two of you continued your peculiar journey across the grounds, the castle shrinking behind you as the sprawling Great Lake came into view. Its surface glimmered like liquid silver under the starlight, the soft rustling of the trees and distant hoots of owls blending into the faint lapping of water against the shore.

You came to an abrupt halt at the lake’s edge, and Sirius had to swerve to avoid barreling straight into you. For a moment, neither of you spoke, your gaze fixed on the vast expanse of water before you. Sirius followed your line of sight, his breath misting faintly in the cool night air.

“Now,” you began, breaking the silence, “this is where the real magic happens. The Guardian of Puddles will commune with the underwater realms, and together, we shall uncover truths that have been hidden from humankind for millennia.”

Sirius raised an eyebrow, crossing his arms as he tilted his head to look at you. “Bold claims,” he said, his tone dry but amused. “What kind of truths are we talking about here? Winning lottery numbers? The secret to James finally getting Lily to say yes?”

You ignored him with the flair of someone entirely above such petty questions, crouching low to the ground with a reverence that made Sirius pause. Gently, you lifted the frog from your head, cradling it in your hands like it was a sacred artifact. Your expression softened in a way that caught Sirius off guard, your usual mischief tempered by something quieter, almost tender.

He knelt beside you, his earlier teasing forgotten as he watched you place the frog on a flat rock near the water’s edge. The creature croaked once, then settled, its bulbous eyes fixed on the shimmering lake ahead as if it truly was about to deliver profound wisdom.

Sirius Black never imagined he’d find himself chasing someone through the Hogwarts grounds with a frog perched precariously on their head, but life had a way of surprising him. In fairness, he should have known better the moment you stood in the Gryffindor common room, arms spread wide like a conductor about to lead a symphony, and declared at full volume that the Guardian of Puddles had an urgent pilgrimage to the Great Lake.

Most of the common room had ignored you, accustomed to your antics, but Sirius—Sirius never ignored you. So, naturally, here he was, trudging after you under the moonlit sky, with James’s laughter fading in the background and a lingering promise to “write this one down for posterity” following his retreat.

“Do you even know where you’re going?” Sirius called out as you darted ahead, your pace set somewhere between a dramatic march and a full-on sprint. He quickened his steps, not quite running but definitely jogging to keep up.

“Do you think the Guardian of Puddles questions where the puddles are?” you shot back over your shoulder, your tone dripping with mock indignation. To emphasize your point, you spun around mid-stride, arms flung out like you were addressing an invisible crowd. The frog atop your head wobbled precariously but stayed put, giving an almost affronted croak at Sirius’s doubt.

Sirius rolled his eyes, but the smirk tugging at his lips betrayed him. “Right. Silly me for doubting the omniscient powers of puddles.”

“Exactly,” you said with a grin, spinning back around to face the path ahead. “Glad to see you’re catching on.”

The two of you continued your peculiar journey across the grounds, the castle shrinking behind you as the sprawling Great Lake came into view. Its surface glimmered like liquid silver under the starlight, the soft rustling of the trees and distant hoots of owls blending into the faint lapping of water against the shore.

You came to an abrupt halt at the lake’s edge, and Sirius had to swerve to avoid barreling straight into you. For a moment, neither of you spoke, your gaze fixed on the vast expanse of water before you. Sirius followed your line of sight, his breath misting faintly in the cool night air.

“Now,” you began, breaking the silence, “this is where the real magic happens. The Guardian of Puddles will commune with the underwater realms, and together, we shall uncover truths that have been hidden from humankind for millennia.”

Sirius raised an eyebrow, crossing his arms as he tilted his head to look at you. “Bold claims,” he said, his tone dry but amused. “What kind of truths are we talking about here? Winning lottery numbers? The secret to James finally getting Lily to say yes?”

You ignored him with the flair of someone entirely above such petty questions, crouching low to the ground with a reverence that made Sirius pause. Gently, you lifted the frog from your head, cradling it in your hands like it was a sacred artifact. Your expression softened in a way that caught Sirius off guard, your usual mischief tempered by something quieter, almost tender.

He knelt beside you, his earlier teasing forgotten as he watched you place the frog on a flat rock near the water’s edge. The creature croaked once, then settled, its bulbous eyes fixed on the shimmering lake ahead as if it truly was about to deliver profound wisdom.

“What’s it saying?” Sirius asked, his voice dipping into a whisper as though afraid to disturb the moment.

You tilted your head, feigning deep concentration. “Shhh,” you hissed, holding up a hand. “It’s complicated. Frogs speak in riddles.”

“Do they now?” Sirius’s lips quivered into a grin, but he stayed quiet, indulging you.

“Absolutely,” you replied with utmost seriousness. Then, after a dramatic pause, you turned to him, your expression grave. “It says you’re far too cocky for your own good.”

“Does it?” Sirius shot back, his grin widening. “Anything else, or is that the extent of its divine insight?”

You nodded solemnly, gesturing toward the frog as though it had just delivered a revelation of world-altering importance. “It also says you should stop underestimating the power of puddles. They hold entire worlds, Sirius. Entire. Worlds.”

This time, Sirius couldn’t contain his laugh, the sound bright and warm in the stillness of the night. “You’re ridiculous,” he said, shaking his head. “Absolutely ridiculous.”

“Ridiculously brilliant,” you corrected, your eyes gleaming with mischief.

“Sure,” he conceded, still chuckling. “Let’s go with that.”

The frog croaked again, louder this time, and the two of you turned to look at it. For a moment, the banter fell away, replaced by a quiet stillness. The lake’s rippling surface seemed to stretch endlessly before you, its edges fading into the shadows of the distant shore. Sirius found himself glancing back at you—not for the first time tonight, but this time, he really looked.

There was something about the way the moonlight caught your face, highlighting the curve of your smile and the way your eyes sparkled with that strange, otherworldly curiosity. It was the kind of expression that made Sirius’s chest tighten, though he wouldn’t admit it out loud.

“Hey,” he said softly, breaking the silence. “Do you ever stop to think that maybe you’re the one with all the magic? Not the frog.”

You blinked, caught off guard by the sudden sincerity in his tone. For a second, your usual bravado faltered, replaced by something quieter, almost shy. Then you smiled—soft, bright, and undeniably you.

“Maybe,” you said lightly, though your voice held a warmth that made Sirius’s heart stutter. “But if I am, I’m still keeping the frog. He’s an excellent sidekick.”

Sirius grinned, leaning back on his heels. “Fair enough. But if you ever need a co-pilot for your puddle adventures, let me know.”

You pretended to consider it, tapping your chin thoughtfully. “Hmm. Only if you promise to keep up.”

“Oh, I’ll keep up,” Sirius said, standing and offering you a hand. “You just make sure to lead the way.”

You took his hand, letting him pull you to your feet. The frog croaked its approval, hopping closer to the water’s edge as though ready to resume its role as the enigmatic guide to your peculiar mission.

Together, you stood side by side, gazing out at the vast expanse of the lake. The world felt a little quieter, a little more magical, as though the absurdity of the moment had cracked open something deeper—a promise of adventures yet to come, and perhaps something more.

You tilted your head, feigning deep concentration. “Shhh,” you hissed, holding up a hand. “It’s complicated. Frogs speak in riddles.”

“Do they now?” Sirius’s lips quivered into a grin, but he stayed quiet, indulging you.

“Absolutely,” you replied with utmost seriousness. Then, after a dramatic pause, you turned to him, your expression grave. “It says you’re far too cocky for your own good.”

“Does it?” Sirius shot back, his grin widening. “Anything else, or is that the extent of its divine insight?”

You nodded solemnly, gesturing toward the frog as though it had just delivered a revelation of world-altering importance. “It also says you should stop underestimating the power of puddles. They hold entire worlds, Sirius. Entire. Worlds.”

This time, Sirius couldn’t contain his laugh, the sound bright and warm in the stillness of the night. “You’re ridiculous,” he said, shaking his head. “Absolutely ridiculous.”

“Ridiculously brilliant,” you corrected, your eyes gleaming with mischief.

“Sure,” he conceded, still chuckling. “Let’s go with that.”

The frog croaked again, louder this time, and the two of you turned to look at it. For a moment, the banter fell away, replaced by a quiet stillness. The lake’s rippling surface seemed to stretch endlessly before you, its edges fading into the shadows of the distant shore. Sirius found himself glancing back at you—not for the first time tonight, but this time, he really looked.

There was something about the way the moonlight caught your face, highlighting the curve of your smile and the way your eyes sparkled with that strange, otherworldly curiosity. It was the kind of expression that made Sirius’s chest tighten, though he wouldn’t admit it out loud.

“Hey,” he said softly, breaking the silence. “Do you ever stop to think that maybe you’re the one with all the magic? Not the frog.”

You blinked, caught off guard by the sudden sincerity in his tone. For a second, your usual bravado faltered, replaced by something quieter, almost shy. Then you smiled—soft, bright, and undeniably you.

“Maybe,” you said lightly, though your voice held a warmth that made Sirius’s heart stutter. “But if I am, I’m still keeping the frog. He’s an excellent sidekick.”

Sirius grinned, leaning back on his heels. “Fair enough. But if you ever need a co-pilot for your puddle adventures, let me know.”

You pretended to consider it, tapping your chin thoughtfully. “Hmm. Only if you promise to keep up.”

“Oh, I’ll keep up,” Sirius said, standing and offering you a hand. “You just make sure to lead the way.”

You took his hand, letting him pull you to your feet. The frog croaked its approval, hopping closer to the water’s edge as though ready to resume its role as the enigmatic guide to your peculiar mission.

Together, you stood side by side, gazing out at the vast expanse of the lake. The world felt a little quieter, a little more magical, as though the absurdity of the moment had cracked open something deeper—a promise of adventures yet to come, and perhaps something more.

[luca-just-luca]

Fuck it I’m done pretending.

I want to hold his hands. No no, I want to HOLD his hands. No see you-you’re still not understanding. I want to hold him like he’s made of the most refined metals in the galaxy, I want to rub my thumb over his knuckles like they are smooth rocks that have been etched away at by the waves of life. I need to cradle his hand in mine, despite the size and difference in fingers. I need to cradle his hand with both of mine as if it’s a fallen star I’m gazing upon. I need to press my lips to his skin like you would to a warm mug for heat, I need to look at him and only at him. Not look past him like others-no-I need him to know sitting across from me, hand in my own that there’s an ache he helps me soothe in my body by simply being. By granting me the gift of holding him. I need him to look at me and see me-not through me. And see his hand, cradled in mine like the most precious artifact known to humankind and soften. I need the tension to fall away from his shoulders, his eyes to soften, his hand to relax. Before grasping mine with his other hand, no words needed nothing to be said just the gesture to connect us. A moment of peace and understanding in the frenzy of the uninformed futures. Just quiet and gentle understanding, you aren’t in it alone and you never will be.

[peggyao3]

Relic - Pt. 5 "Prometheus"

PAIRING: Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen x Unnamed Ambiguous FMC

SUMMARY: ✧༺༻ Dreams are messages from the deep ༺༻✧ A woman from the unknown comes to Feyd in his dreams and his nights become his days as he flees to the dreamscape to escape the nightmares that haunt his waking hours.

TAGS: 18+, smut, she/her AFAB FMC, vaginal sex, vaginal fingering, oral sex, Porn with Plot, Feyd-Rautha's black cum, Feyd-Rautha's big cock, Praise Kink, Body Worship, angst/hurt and comfort, drama, fluff, Frank Herbert would frown, some politics, implied/referenced (child) abuse ❗, Trauma, mentions of suicidal thoughts ❗, Healing, Strangers to Lovers, falling in love, Vulnerable!Feyd, Emotional!Feyd, Possessive!Feyd, Feyd is a sweet baby who did nothing wrong and I WILL pamper him, nurture not nature, Stockholm Syndrome but in a consensual way, lucid dreaming, implied/referenced cannibalism ❗, implied/referenced murder

WORD COUNT: 3.4k

Reposted from my Ao3 💕| Masterlist | Relic Masterlist

Dividers by @saradika-graphics

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Giedi Prime, 2 years later - 10,190 BG

He feels so-

hopeless,

broken.

One should think he has long accepted that there is no one up there in the universe to come and save him.

No one to soothe him at night, in his dreams, after he threw up upon being summoned to quench the Baron's appetite for power, even though Feyd-Rautha's physical appearance no longer meets his tastes.

But Feyd still goes to sleep every night with childish, foolish, laughable hope, only for regular nightmares to taunt him with their sticky embrace.

When he first stopped dreaming, he threw a tantrum, not telling anyone what riddled him. He was given slave warriors to kill and new blades to blunt on human bones. Under the pretense of a training injury, Feyd had ordered the Suk Doctor to examine him, pointing him towards his brain, secretly expecting a hole there, thinking his brain might have devoured itself because he doesn't deserve goodness.

But the Suk declared, there was nothing wrong with him. Nothing aside from the usual, all the invisible things that made him rot from inside.

After a week of lonely nights, he started taking spice before sleeping, knowing that the drug opens the mind, if to prescience then maybe to shared dreams as well. And it worked! Or so he thought the first night when he found a soft hand in his and the kindest voice among all of the stars whispering: "Look, doesn't this remind you of something?"

Every time he tries to speak then, he wakes up screaming, tangled in sweat-soaked sheets that smelled like cinnamon, before he can ask any of the burning questions or say what's been tearing his heart apart. His greatest regret is that he never said I love you back.

Eventually, he comes to a numbing conclusion. That is not his beloved. That is just a memory of her.

He had to stop ingesting when his sclerae became sullied with a tint of blue that bleeds into the irises. That was one year ago.

After the spice came a phase of intense studies in the bowels of Giedi Prime's archives, ignoring the admittedly quite interesting fact that centuries of his own House's history are obliterated and nowhere to be found.

Feyd learned that 23,500 years ago, in the year 13,402 BG, a strike by an asteroid devastated Old Earth, the birthplace of humankind, making it uninhabitable until it was re-seeded with plant and animal life 42 years later and became a natural park, for humans too. 

In 200 BG, 10,400 years ago, Earth was once again rendered uninhabitable for centuries by atomics during the Butlerian Jihad which obliterated all thinking machines.

The first Zensunni wanderers, nowadays known as Fremen, are said to have originated from Old Earth and at some point fled in a grand exodus from planet to planet.

How does this information still exist, but not the location of the cradle of mankind among the stars? There are no more recent records. Humankind has spread itself so thin across the universe, the world of their origin has become naught but a fairytale.

Tonight, Feyd smiles at himself in the mirror in his room, trying to curl up the corners of his mouth like he used to, when a bed of white marble with blue pillows occupied by his woman was waiting for him and a fern was rustling in a terracotta pot. But his cheeks won't grow as round as they used to and Feyd despises how he looks and how his eyes stare back at him like frosty marbles, how his face looks like a gaunt skull with no life in it.

The lonely, demonic creature who stares back at him in the bleak mirror is denied access to the dream land and left to rot in his body, in his flesh prison.

Why does he still look at himself in the mirror every night and go to sleep with a tummy ache, only to wake up hollow and like his soul has been carved out of his chest and wonder:

Is she dead?

If she's dead, then what's the point?

Unconsciously he knows what he keeps searching for in the mirror. For any signs that he was ever lovable, or if his worst fears are true, that she abandoned him by choice.

There is no proof that Old Earth is not still out there, still inhabited by humans who may be unaware of how mankind has branched out across the galaxies.

On the other hand, there is also no proof that Feyd's woman has ever been real.

Among the stars

Tell me where you are. Tell me where you are. Tell me where you are.

"I am… here!"

Wallach IX, 10,190 BG

Around a heavy, wooden roundtable are gathered the Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam, flanked by the Bene Gesserit sisters Miriam and Sylvia, the Princess Irulan in place of the Padishah Emperor Shaddam Corrino IV, a face dancer named Thomin to represent the Bene Tleilax and Gwyn from Ix.

"If you can't stop behaving like animals, this discussion will never find an end!" The Princess Irulan's voice bristles in a way that makes Miriam and Sylvia scoff internally at their fellow Bene Gesserit. Thomin and Gwyn are by Bene Gesserit definition, in fact, animals.

The sun on Wallach IX stands already low above the hills and cascades hazy slants of light into the private conference chamber.

"I simply don't trust gifts from the sisterhood," Thomin smiles coldly, spindly fingers folded on the table.

"She is surprisingly useless," the Reverend Mother replies with equal coldness, gazing through the dark mesh of veil. "Why would we keep her?"

"I must insist on the historical value!" Irulan chides.

"Useless for us, Irulan."

Irulan knows her former teacher doesn't actually intend to hand the woman over to the Bene Tleilax for genetic horrors, so it is really only between her and Gwyn from Ix.

"Well, as a historian, I have undoubtedly the biggest use for her among the honorable attendees."

"I strongly object," says Gwyn. "Her technological knowledge could prove invaluable to us!"

Thomin chimes in. "Her genetic information might give crucial clues as to-"

"You just said you don't trust gifts from the sisterhood, so why don't you let those who wear their real face talk," Gwyn jibes at the Tleilaxu face dancer.

Thomin deflects: "What I would like to know is why the Guild deemed it appropriate to hand over such an exceptional flotsam to the Bene Gesserit."

"Of course, they entrusted us with it," Gaius Helen Mohiam snaps. "Who else would have been capable of dealing with whatever could have been inside the sarcophagus?"

That makes the attendees grow quiet for a moment.

"What did you say her first words were?" Gwyn asks.

"I am here," Sylvia says. "Naturally, we only found what she said later."

"I'm sure she would like a friend," Irulan ponders. They're still talking about a human being after all.

"Or would you like a friend?" Miriam barbs.

"Enough of this shit," Thomin's chosen face twists into an unpleasant grimace. "I didn't come here to argue with children. Who gets the relic?!"

The woman sits in the school's relic chamber by herself, knees folded against her chest, staring up at Vincent van Gogh's Starry Night, or what's left of it, rich blues and swirly stars reduced to faded colors. She wonders if this is what will become of her too in this strange new world. Still, the painting is enough to stir her imagination.

She often thinks of her good friend and beloved Feyd and the many nights they've shared before she entered the long sleep and left him behind. She left him to die in the fires of earth from which only the cowardly could escape as pioneers aboard spaceships, venturing out to colonize the solar system when Earth suffocated beneath the smog of climate change and the rubble of bombs as starving nations tore each other apart. 

Expensive suicide is what the people on Earth had mocked the cryogenic pods which would take the pioneers to Mars and Titan as sleepers to reawaken and colonize the solar system. A new home, but only for scientists and engineers.

Some cynics even called their cryo pods sarcophagi.

Often she wonders if Feyd was able to complete his life and escape from his vile uncle, if he found the happiness he so deserved. She can't bear the thought that her poor, hairless Feyd might have eventually died of the cancer she was sure he had. She had never asked him because he had never mentioned it. It had never felt right.

She had abandoned him to live with her family in a new world. Now she is here, 24,000 years late after drifting through space in her lonely sarcophagus, sending a distress signal every few days. And she has no one. Such fundamental loneliness can only be met with apathy and busying the mind.

After the war from which she had fled in the year 2100 as of her own calendar, eventually came what is now called the Butlerian Jihad, many many centuries later. Men had revolted against artificial intelligence and now there are no more computers, only human computers. Her first reaction to that had been: In this new age, no data is anonymous unless you are the mentat. No calculation can be conducted unless you own a mentat.

She pensively traces a spot above her right ear and finds herself mourning after the necklace that was taken from her after she had thawed.

She hasn't come much further with the history books yet. There is so much to catch up on and the language first had to be learned, which had consumed most of her first one and a half years on Wallach IX. Now, two years after her arrival, she feels somewhat solid in Galach, wistfully surprised to find relics from so many Earthen languages in it.

A subtle knock on the door pulls her out of her melancholic trance and her gown rustles around her legs that are used to wearing trousers as she stands. An acolyte has come to pick her up and parade her to the assembly of people who are anonymous strangers to her. In her head, a mean voice calls it an auction.

She has already cried her quiet fury and understood that autonomy is as real as daydreams in this new world. On a chess board full of intricate pieces, she is only a block being pushed here or there, but in truth she doesn't even belong on the board.

Outside, looking to the left, she finds a fern swaying softly in a bronze pot and the memories of loving nights cut through her with such unexpected vehemence, she can hardly breathe. Guilt suffocates her.

However their dreams had passed through space and time, they are no more, and she is all alone and that thought overwhelms her as she pads through the garden with its trimmed hedges and softly gurgling water. The size of the universe overwhelms her. The number of inhabited worlds overwhelms her. The amount of history to catch up on makes her feel like a mote in God's eye and the hostile kind of hospitality from the 'sisterhood' since her jarring awakening fills her chest with a numbing rage.

In a moment like this, this order of manipulative women would pledge to recite the litany against fear, but she refuses to condition her body in such a way. And with that mindset, she hasn't even made it to the rank of acolyte.

"To be completely honest, I don't like the fact that most of the great Houses have been purposely excluded from this," Thomin notes and that makes Irulan wonder too.

"And which Houses are you missing at this roundtable?" The Reverend mother coldly inquires, her patience running thin.

"If the Harkonnens find out that we-"

"Harkonnens?" 

Five heads whip around to the new presence in the room, only the Reverend mother moves a bit more slowly and drones: "Good. You are here."

"She looks just like us," Gwyn is baffled.

"Of course, she looks just like us!" Gaius Helen Mohiam snaps. "What did you expect?"

"Something more primitive perhaps, I don't know."

"You're disgracing your own intelligence in front of our guest."

"Did you just say Harkonnens?" The guest in question inquires, her expression so blatantly haunted that it would make even the most untalented acolyte grow hot with shame, because anyone taught by the sisterhood should be able to mask that.

"Yes, child, what do you know about the Harkonnens?" Mohiam probes.

The sisterhood has let her pick her own studies after teaching her the basics of Galach. She had gone for science first, then art. The reverend mother had disapprovingly clicked her tongue, as contemporary politics and religion would have been the right choice. It proves unequivocally that the woman is of lesser intellect.

"Do you know someone named Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen?" Her voice trembles like the strings of an off-tune baliset.

"He is the na-Baron of Giedi Prime?" Gwyn replies as if the inquiry was a test for the attendees. 

What no one expects is for the relic to break down crying so hard, she sounds like a wounded animal, primitive like Gwyn had suggested, producing gut-wrenching noise. The Bene Gesserit sisters turn away with disdain, except for Irulan whose face is painted by confused compassion.

The woman's legs give out and she unceremoniously squats down on the floor, covering her grimacing face with her arms. For the longest time, the attendees think she's merely sobbing, but after a while the sound warps into tearful but distinct laughter as she sways herself back and forth.

"He lives now?" She peeks at the blurry roundtable through the haze of tears. How could this be? Across not only space but time they've communicated simultaneously in their sleep. According to Einstein's theory of relativity, time is supposed to stretch and compress depending on relative motion, but never run backwards. Feyd should have never been able to talk to her.

Unless he really is her macroscopic, quantum-entangled twin, a phenomenon which Einstein himself had described as 'spooky action at a distance', though that was referring to microscopic particles. 

"Speak plainly! Who is Feyd-Rautha to you?" Mohiam demands.

Too bad, Irulan catches herself thinking. The woman already has a friend.

"I saw him," she yells. "I've talked to him so many times, I dreamed about him every night back home, for months! He's my friend. I love him." It is ridiculously easy to admit that, even in front of a council of semi-hostile strangers.

"Hm. Tell me something about him, child."

She draws a quick and trembling breath. "Feyd is a-about this tall, blue eyes, pale skin, no hair, v-very sweet and kind, oh God, I miss him so much, please just bring me to him~"

"That could be a lot of people, but definitely not Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen." The reverend mother purses her lips under her veil. "Tell us something more distinct."

"He's being abused by his uncle," she snaps with such venom that even the old Bene Gesserit's fingers briefly clench in her lap. The roundtable grows still and only the woman's shoulders heave with hard breaths.

"Then he is Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen." 

Upon that, the woman nearly bursts out laughing. How ridiculous, how cruel that this is what defines him in public and makes him recognizable, not all the sweet traits of his. People of power know of his abuse and no one deems it appropriate to take action against it?

The reverend mother continues. "Your dreams were visions of the future. This is what we call prescience. That you are prescient surprises me."

"They were dreams, not visions! We've talked about current events and each night we could remember the previous ones." She struggles to find the right words in Galach. "We had agency!"

But the reverend mother isn't listening to her anymore, coming to a staggering conclusion with her frighteningly sharp wit. If she speaks the truth, everything points towards their relic being a primordial Bene Gesserit, erratically skilled even without any training. Mohiam turns to her sisters and ponders: "If she was capable of prescience, perhaps her nervous system developed other abilities as well."

"You suggest she performed Prana Bindu while contained in the cryo pod?" Irulan concludes.

"It would explain how her cells survived it for 24,000 years," Sylvia muses. "Her cells should have degenerated irrevocably thousands of years ago."

The four Bene Gesserit in the room turn towards the woman and ogle her like a thing from a curiosity cabinet. If she weren't so emotionally frayed, she would feel flayed by the many scheming glances.

"This changes everything," Mohiam decides. "The guests may return to their guest rooms. I wish you a swift and safe departure tomorrow." 

"I thought we had a deal," Thomin complains and kicks his chair back.

"We were far from having a deal," Mohiam says coldly.

Gwyn laments: "At least let me have a look at the cryo pod or the necklac-"

"A swift departure." The reverend mother repeats and tilts her head subtly towards Irulan, emphasizing that this includes her too. Irulan's lips quiver briefly before she straightens her back, casting a longing look at the disheveled woman before she leaves with the others.

As soon as it's only the three familiar faces from the sisterhood, the relic yells: "I refuse to stay here. I don't want your training or even your hospitality, I only want him! More than anything in the world."

To her surprise, the two younger ones flinch and glower, as if suspecting her voice might break out with new unforeseen powers.

"You love him?" Sylvia doubts but is swiftly silenced by the reverend mother with an acute sweep of the hand.

"Quiet," Mohiam addresses the relic "There's no need to throw a tantrum. You will be brought to him as soon as the circumstances allow."

"I- Oh." The woman stands helplessly like a lost child, hands clutched in front of her pelvis as fresh tears well and soon stream down her cheeks and quivering lips. She had expected more resistance, more cruelty.

"Go now. We will discuss more soon." Dumbstruck, she does as instructed and pads out of the conference room, mind caught in a limbo of disbelief and rejoicing.

The three Bene Gesserit remain.

"She must be controlled. I don't have to remind you that one of her first inquiries when she understood Galach was about computers and where to find one."

"She will be distracted, if she really loves Feyd-Rautha."

"Isn't that careless?" Miriam is baffled. Obviously, they shouldn't let the woman go to Giedi Prime and slip out of their immediate reach before conditioning her mind and body to a proper training.

"Her DNA is mysteriously rogue but powerful. That's all we need to know."

Miriam and Sylvia understand now. The reverend mother doesn't intend to train the wayward woman from Old Earth who is too obsessed with her old ways to indulge in the Bene Gesserit conditioning. She only means to breed her with Feyd-Rautha, so that the child may be trained. Since Lady Jessica disobeyed the sisterhood's order and denied them a daughter, there is currently no fitting prospect for the Harkonnen heir anyway.

"And if Feyd didn't share her visions?"

"We will soon find out. Even if he didn't, perhaps he can be warmed up to someone who is so... blatantly and bizarrely smitten with him." The reverend mother can't help the tiny twitch of her upper lip, betraying her disdain.

"So, we will contact House Harkonnen?"

"No," Mohiam declares. "The old Baron will deny their union if we are the ones who initiate. Let the rumors spread and let Feyd-Rautha do the work for us."

In Greek mythology, Prometheus (/prəˈmiːθiəs/; Ancient Greek: Προμηθεύς, [promɛːtʰéu̯s], possibly meaning "forethought") is one of the Titans and a god of fire. Prometheus is best known for defying the Olympian gods by taking fire from them and giving it to humanity in the form of technology, knowledge and, more generally, civilization. Prometheus is known for his intelligence and for being a champion of humankind and is also generally seen as the author of the human arts and sciences.

A/N: The time it took me to get my Dune lore sorted and throw around the dates from the confoozing BG/AG calendar was longer than it took me to write the actual chapter 😭 Also, Frank Herbert, please don't slap me, I tried to match the vibe of the secret meeting in the beginning of Dune Messiah, but I have nothing on thee, Frank Herbert 🧎

P.S. No breeding in this fic, but the Bene Gesserit sure do dream of it.

TAG LIST: @nostalgichoya, @forgedfromthestars, @sweetiee-o, @missbingu, @charmingballoon, @sebastianswallows

Do let me know if u want me to tag u 👉👈

[cupofatokirina]

Genesis

Chapter 1: The Escape

The sterile air of the RDA laboratory was cold, thick with the hum of machinery and the sharp scent of chemicals. Deep in the belly of the facility, behind countless locked doors and armed guards, lay one of their most dangerous and closely guarded secrets.

Dr. Callen Hayes paced the hallways of the RDA laboratory, his heart heavy with dread. He had once believed they were working toward a better future for humanity on Pandora, that their research would help bridge the gap between species and bring peace. But the truth had become horrifyingly clear over the past months: the RDA didn’t care about peace or cooperation. They wanted control and exploitation.

And that’s exactly what she had been made for.

Dr. Hayes had been assigned to Project “Genesis” from the beginning. He was there when they began splicing Na’vi DNA with human genetics, growing her in a large tank filled with nutrient-rich liquid.

But as he watched her tiny body in that sterile cage, something changed in Callen. He remembered the times in his youth back on Earth, reading about Dr. Grace Augustine’s research on Pandora’s flora and the Na’vi. She’s more than just a project, more than an experiment, he thought. She wasn’t a weapon—she was a living, breathing being, one that couldn’t be subjected to the horrifying ways of humankind.

There was only one choice left: he had to get her out.

On a rainy night, when the facility was quiet and the staff had gone to rest, he bypassed the security measures that kept her locked away in the tank. He cradled the tiny baby in his arms and placed a mask over her mouth so she could breathe, her small blue hand gripping his finger as if she already understood that this was the beginning of something new.

“I will protect you from now on, (y/n),” he whispered.

Callen left the RDA entirely, destroying any evidence of that night.

authors note: Hi everyone Its my first time writing fanfiction so please bear with me. Any suggestion or criticism are welcome. Thank you for reading.

[psycho-pills]

A Second Life for Strays! ฅ (•˕ •マ.ᐟ sylus x reader fanfic // next

౨ৎ⭑˚ RATING; 18+ (minors do not interact)

౨ৎ⭑˚ PAIRING; sylus x afab!reader (not the mc)

౨ৎ⭑˚ SYNOPSIS; you are a soldier reincarnated into the world of love and deepspace, except you’re not the mc. she still exists. despite looking exactly like her, you don’t sound or act the same. and to make things stranger, cats follow you everywhere.

౨ৎ⭑˚ GENRE/WARNING; angst, hurt/comfort, slow burn, (mutual?) pining, eventual fluff, eventual romance, eventual smut, cursing, graphic descriptions of violence, blood, mental breakdowns, ptsd, death, isekai, reincarnation, cats/cat puns, mc is named serenophe to avoid confusion/reader is not mc

౨ৎ⭑˚ AUTHOR'S NOTE; this is written in third-person limited with she/her pronouns. only the prologue is written in second-person. i use the terms [name] [surname] instead of (y/n) (y/ln) because it's easier for me to write. also, this chapter is basically the synopsis but fleshed out. you can skip the prologue and go to the first chapter, and you won't miss much. anyway, please take all of this into consideration before continuing. besides that, enjoy. uwu

౨ৎ⭑˚ LINKS; ao3 // masterpost // story inspo

prologue — eight lives later! ౨ৎ⭑˚ word count; >1k

You died.

You feel the impact before you hear the gunshot. A sharp, searing pain tears through your chest like fire spreading through your body. The chaos of modern warfare surrounds you—vibrating explosions, the rumbling of rifles, and the constant murmur of drones. You’re one of thousands. A faceless statistic in a war of shifting fronts and political ambitions. Merely a soldier sent to fight for a cause you barely understand. After your death, your country will replace you ten times over and then ten times more. Each body a cog in an unfeeling machine.

The moment feels weird, as if it has been pulled from the pages of a dream, except you know—you know—this is the end. You lie dying on a grassy field, far from the main warzone. It hasn’t been the ‘enemy’ that caused you to run across the open streets. It wasn’t the orders barking through your earpiece or the desperate cries of your comrades. 

No. It was a cat.

Your final act of rebellion was focused solely on rescuing the tiny bit of humanity left in the desecrated city. In a world that has taken so much from you, perhaps it was time to give this small creature the chance you never got. The kitten is small, dirty, and terrified. Its tiny frame trembles as it meows helplessly in the chaos. Artillery pounds the earth, drones buzz like mechanical insects, and gunfire split echoes in your ears. With rapid shots tearing through the streets and your radio spitting orders to regroup, your legs move on instinct. You dart past the ruins of cars, decaying walls, and flying shrapnel. Like a drug, adrenaline pumps through your veins as you scoop up the cat and cradle it in your arms.

As you dash through the ruined landscape, you feel hands grasping at your feet. Soldiers, either too wounded or mindfucked, cry out for salvation that you can’t offer. You run past them, their voices heavy on your soul. But you keep running—towards the outskirts, where the fighting isn’t as intense—where there’s a chance the kitten can escape the horrors of humankind. However, just as you think you’ve made it, you feel it—the bullet tearing through your body.

Your knees buckle as the force sends you crashing, the kitten still cradled in your arms. The world around you spins. Your heartbeat thunders in your ears, faster and faster, as the warmth of your blood soaks into your uniform and spreads across the grass beneath you. You gasp for air, but it won’t come. The pain in your chest is unbearable, burning with every shallow breath.

You try to move, try to keep going, but your body is failing you. Rolling onto your back, your eyes gaze upon the strikingly blue sky. It’s strangely devoid of clouds and fighter jets. By now, the gunfire and explosions are faint. A vague memory, even. It’s like the war itself is retreating from you. Yet, you can still hear it. Bated screams in the distance, clashing with the rustling of leaves and the soft meows of the kitten.

The last feeling—the last sensation of kindness you feel before drifting off to an eternal slumber is the soft brush of fur nudging your tear-strained cheek. Then, just before everything goes dark, you hear it—a voice, delicate and clear.

“Thank you,” the kitten says—or does it? Perhaps it’s a hallucination brought on by your fading consciousness. But no, you feel sure, if only for that single instant.

Then, there’s nothing. Your final breath leaves you with the warmth of the cat’s nuzzle lingering on your cheek. You died.

Or so you thought.

When your eyes open again, you aren’t greeted with the battlefield. Your body isn’t lying on the cold, blood-stained grass. You’re in a hospital bed. It's clean. Sterile. The sharp beeping of monitors replaces the din of war, and the scent of antiseptic fills your nostrils. You blink, disoriented, and that’s when you see him. A man—tall, composed, and black-haired. He holds a file in one hand and a pen in the other as he stands at your bedside. His name tag glistens in the fluorescent light. Zayne. When he notices you stirring alive, his face dances between surprise and something else. Something hard to decipher.

“You’re awake.” Zayne glances at your file. He squints to confirm your identity. “I’m Dr. Zayne, and you’ll be under my care for the foreseeable future,” he finishes.

The room around you is strange yet familiar. You try to make sense of it—the stark white walls, the quiet thrum of machines, the feathery sensation of your body. You were on the battlefield. You had died. And yet, you’re still here. Alive. In some new reality where the boundaries of love and deepspace collide.

ao3 // masterpost // next

[llondonfog]

Wailing about “you love me so you’ll love my child” but w melleanor and silver

"—and do not let Vanrouge within twenty meters of the kitchens, is that clear, Counselor? Inform the kitchen staff that they have my exact permission to maim him on sight with the nearest sharp object. Oh, do not duck your face like a quivering kitten as if I cannot see that grimace, Counselor— that man has survived much worse and scraped through with life and limb and still persists to terrorize us all with his presence, isn't that right, my dear one?"

From within her arms, Lilia's child coos and babbles something far more intelligent than her trailing, fretful advisors back at her, and she taps a dark painted talon delicately against its plush cheek in fond agreement.

Lilia's child.

Meleanor rolls the words silently within her mouth, holds them there to taste the strange, but pleasant, flavor of their meaning.

Of all the fae in all their lands, who would have ever dared to dream that Lilia Vanrouge would take to a child like a fish to water, or a fledgling to the skies?

She can still hear him now, grumbling and griping so about the burden of children, their helplessness and neediness as unnecessarily weak creatures. In a rare form of mercy, not once did she pry— for how could she, when she knew the answer even if it was not in specifics? When fae were perishing at the hands of humankind's avaricious cruelty, how could she dare chastise him when she was so certain that Lilia's bitterness only existed towards himself?

Her hypothesis had been proven correct when her most trusted General had been present for Malleus' hatching, a softness that she had only seen once before smoothing the harsh lines of his battle-weary gaze. Perhaps she had the right of bias; it was only correct that anyone melt at the sight of her darling son, chirping and mewling miniature fonts of emerald flame.

But that softness had reappeared tenfold when Lilia had knelt before her in the privacy of her chambers where no other fae save for two were ever allowed, revealing the swaddled contents of his cloak with a desperate, fervent need for approval.

He woke for me, she remembers her oldest friend confessing in a voice choked with awe and an emotion that had nearly frightened her (her!) with its intensity. Meleanor, do you understand what this means? He is the son of our enemy, lost and forgotten by time, and he woke for me.

Oh, she had understood as perfectly then as she does now. It was for that reason alone that she had stayed her hand from where it had been readied to smite the child from Lilia's arms, to strip it from existence out of fear that it had somehow bewitched the one fae with more reason to detest humanity than all the rest.

True love was so rare in this world; it had taken her centuries to find her heart's desire. How could she wrest that from Lilia, as he kneels before her and bares his soul, staring down at the sleeping infant cradled in his arms with a delicate strength she did not know him to possess and the dazed look of a parent struck with the dazzling knowledge that the child they hold is more perfect than any creature alive on the earth?

She could not— the proof of which rests in her arms and happily teethes on strands of her gleaming hair, warm and soft and heavy in the sweet way of babes.

"And that is why we cannot allow your pathetic wretch of a father to ruin the celebration of your first blessing, isn't that right— Silver?"

[talonabraxas]

“We all have spiritual DNA; wisdom and truth are part of our genetic structure even if we don’t always access it.” — Surya Das

Anunnaki 𒀭𒀀𒉣𒈾 Talon Abraxas

Mainstream historians and archaeologists regard the ‘fertile crescent’ between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in what is now Iraq as the “cradle of civilization.” Between 4000 and 1900 BC, this area was the home of the Sumerian people of Mesopotamia. Virtually nothing was known about Sumer until its archeological discovery 180 years ago.

The Sumerians were extraordinary people. They supposedly created an advanced civilization when most of the world still lived in the Stone Age. Yet, despite all their accomplishments, and according to conventional history, Sumer grew out of a collection of hunter-gatherer clans who banded together to form the first human civilization within the Tigris-Euphrates Valley around 4000 BC.

So, what and who enabled the sudden initial spurt of civilization in Sumer six thousand years ago?

The Sumerians invented the first known writing system using a cuneiform script on clay tablets. These tablets were kept in large libraries. About 500,000 of these clay tablets have now been found.

Through these clay tablets, as well as cylinder seals, and stele, the Sumerians provided a richly detailed version of humankind’s early history — including the creation story of both Earth and humans. There are startling and numerous similarities between the Sumerian creation stories, later Babylonian myths, and the subsequent Judeo-Christian Bible verses. Virtually every story in Genesis originates in ancient Sumer.

Deciphering the Cuneiform Texts

In 1976 — after studying Sumerian cuneiform tablets and carvings for 30 years — noted scholar, academic, researcher, and author Zecharia Sitchin published his translations of the ancient Sumerian texts in a series of books called “The Earth Chronicles.”

As deciphered by Sitchin — and confirmed by many other credible researchers — the Sumerian cuneiform texts describe an alien race known as the ‘Anunnaki’ who came to Earth thousands of years ago from their home planet, Nibiru (the legendary so-called 12th planet in our solar system).

The Sumerians texts describe the Anunnaki as coming to Earth on a special mission — to bring wisdom and to mine certain minerals. They had tremendous knowledge and power over the entire world.

And so, for your consideration — and according to the deciphered interpretations of the Sumerian clay tablets — what follows is a condensed version of the fascinating story of the Anunnaki.

The Anunnaki — Part 1

About 450,000 years ago, before the Great Flood and during Earth’s Pleistocene ice age, the Anunnaki arrived on Earth. These ancient astronauts established their initial base camp in Mesopotamia in the Fertile Crescent between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.

Here they set up a mission control center, a spaceport, and mining operations. The supreme Anunnaki ruler, Anu, supervised the effort from the home planet of Nibiru as the Anunnaki began a systematic colonization of Earth under the leadership of Anu’s two sons, Enlil and Enki.

The Anunnaki gold mining operations

Over thousands of years (Earth time), the Anunnaki established a thriving colony. During this time, their focus was on their primary objective — gold. The Anunnaki sought gold for highly technological procedures to repair the degraded condition of the atmosphere on their home planet.

The extraction process on Earth proved inefficient and time-consuming when the Anunnaki attempted to retrieve gold only from the Persian Gulf. So, to ease the increasing rivalry between the half-brothers Enlil and Enki, their father, Anu, placed Enlil in charge of the Mesopotamian colony E-din (perhaps the basis for the biblical Eden).

Meanwhile, Enki led a foray to Abzu, or Africa, the “land of the mines,” — and eventually to South America — where he set up gold-mining operations. The mined ore was then transported from the far-flung mines by cargo craft back to Mesopotamia for smelting and processing into hourglass-shaped ingots called zag, or “purified precious.” Some of the actual ingots have been found in archaeological excavations.

The Anunnaki mined gold on Earth for more than 100,000 years until the rank-and-file Anunnaki — who were doing the backbreaking work in the mines — mutinied about 300,000 years ago. On top of the unrelenting toil of the mining operations, climate change presented many difficulties for these extraterrestrial colonists.

Enlil wondered aloud if there was not another way to mine for gold. At this point, Enki suggested that a primitive worker, called an Adamu, could be created to take over the difficult mining work. Enki pointed out that a primitive humanoid — hominin — was prevalent in Abzu (Africa), where he maintained a laboratory.

Human Genetic manipulation

Realizing the toll on the Anunnaki to mine the gold, King Anu and the Council on Nibiru was desperate for a different solution. They debated the morality of tinkering with a species. Enki argued that producing a hybrid — half Anunnaki and half primitive humanoid — would not be an act of creation but merely improving the existing species.

And so, Anu decreed that their eminent geneticist, Enki, would employ advanced genetic engineering to fashion an upgraded version of the primitive hominin by manipulating its DNA to become the new worker slave (the Adamu).

The genetic process

The Anunnaki medical officer on Earth was a female named Ninhursag. The Sumerian tablets describe how Enki and Ninhursag produced the first so-called ‘test-tube’ infant by combining DNA and creating a hybrid humanoid in the laboratory.

It is written that Enki and Ninhursag took the reproductive cell or egg from a primitive African female hominin and fertilized it with the sperm of a young Anunnaki male. The fertilized ovum was placed inside an Anunnaki woman who carried the child to term. And so began the creation of a new race of human workers (the Adamu).

The first hybrid human could not procreate. The Anunnaki had to constantly create new batches of human workers (the Adamu), which was time-consuming considering the timespan between in vitro fertilization and birth.

So, Enki and Ninhursag set about to create an Adamu that could reproduce itself. The result of their efforts was finally a male Adama with the ability to reproduce through sex with an Adama female. This was the final solution to the first modern human beings — the perfect slave race. An intelligent and subservient prototype was ultimately created that we now call Homo sapiens.

The new and improved hominin — the Adamu — Human 1.0

When the Anunnaki infused their DNA and genetic material, they effectively bestowed upon the new hominin many physiological features, strengths, and abilities not previously occurring in then-existing hominins.

The early Adamu that bred among themselves lived for hundreds of earth years. The Nephilim (half human and half Anunnaki) lived for thousands of years. All this longevity was thanks to Anunnaki genes. And in the opinion of ancient humans, the extreme life spans of the pure-blooded Anunnaki made them appear immortal.

One of the concerns of the Anunnaki, including Enlil, was that the new humans would want to live for as long as their pure-blooded Anunnaki overlords. As a result of this concern, the Anunnaki set about manipulating the DNA of humans to reduce their life span drastically and limit the total capacity of their brains.

The final genetic version of Human 1.0 incorporated these modifications. The Anunnaki denied Homo sapiens the intelligence and extreme longevity that the Anunnaki possessed because it did not suit their purposes. Homo sapiens were invented to be slave workers, nothing more.

What is often misunderstood about Human 1.0

The process described in the Sumerian tablets was a breeding program like what has been done and is being done today with various animals and humans by humans to improve the stock.

The skeptics of the Sumerian story about the origin of Homo sapiens should not lose sight of today’s knowledge concerning cloning, in vitro fertilization, genome mapping, gene splicing, gene sequencing, and gene modifications.

Only 30 years ago, the concept of gene manipulation would have been incomprehensible — even to the most learned scholar trying to interpret the Sumerian tablets. But today, the Sumerian account of modern human creation becomes more plausible.

Stories of the Anunnaki — Myth, Religion, or History?

As expected, it is highly controversial that the Sumerian cuneiform texts (as deciphered and translated by credible scholars) say that the Anunnaki were ancient astronauts that came to Earth to mine gold, impart great knowledge, and created Homo sapiens to function as slaves.

Mainstream scholars assume that the ancient Sumerians were talking about mythical, imaginary beings in their reference to the Anunnaki. But we should question why ancient scribes would have taken the time and effort to write down fables painstakingly. Is it not more reasonable to assume that they wrote down their stories to recount history instead of fanciful myths?

Many non-mainstream researchers have opened our eyes to a much more detailed and credible understanding of the human creation story — first recorded by the Sumerians long before it was plagiarized and transcribed as the Bible.

It is essential to understand that early on, the Sumerians never referred to the Anunnaki as “gods.” The reference to sky beings as “gods” was shaped by western and near eastern civilizations and religions that followed Sumer — including the Babylonians, Egyptians, Romans, Greeks, Judaism, and Christianity.

A better explanation of what transpired in the ancient past is that the original writings from Sumer were recordings of actual events. This history was later rewritten to form a distorted base for new religious cults — including Judaism and Christianity. The corrupted religious dogma was so different from the original writings that the early accounts in Sumer became viewed by today’s mainstream scholars as “mythology.”

The writings inscribed into ancient Sumerian clay tablets have much greater merit than the fantasies presented in the Bible. Also, the non-mainstream and credible interpretations of the Sumerian texts help to counter the highly questionable explanations which mainstream science offers as fact regarding the evolution of Homo sapiens and

[new-dinosaurs]

Agapornis longipes Pavia et al., 2024 (new species)

(Limb bones [A–J] and a partial lower jaw bone [K] of Agapornis longipes [scale bar = 10 mm], from Pavia et al., 2024)

Meaning of name: longipes = long foot [in Latin]

Age: Pliocene–Pleistocene (Piacenzian–Gelasian)

Where found: Kromdraai, Cooper's Cave, and Swartkrans, Gauteng, South Africa

How much is known: Numerous limb bones and a partial lower jaw bone. It is unknown whether any of these bones belonged to the same individuals.

Notes: Agapornis is the genus of lovebirds, a group of small parrots from Africa. As its name suggests, A. longipes had a relatively longer foot than any other known species of lovebird, living or extinct. Extant lovebirds feed heavily on grass seeds, and species with relatively longer hindlimbs tend to collect this food resource from the ground, so it is plausible that A. longipes also foraged in this manner.

Reference: Pavia, M., J. Braga, M. Delfino, L. Kgasi, A. Manegold, C. Steininger, B. Zipfel, and A. Val. 2024. A new species of lovebird (Aves, Psittaculidae, Agapornis) from the Plio-Pleistocene of the Cradle of Humankind (Gauteng, South Africa). Geobios advance online publication. doi: 10.1016/j.geobios.2024.05.006

[arinzeture]

Did you know❓

If you move to Ethiopia 🇪🇹 today, you will be at least seven (7) years younger as they're currently in the year 2016.

11.09.2024 is Ethiopia's 🇪🇹 new year for 2017

Here's one of the most mind blowing facts about the world. When we welcomed the year 2024 Ethiopia 🇪🇹 were four months into 2016.

• The most interesting differences are the holidays. Ethiopia 🇪🇹 celebrates the new year on September 11th and Christmas on January 7th.

• The Ethiopian 🇪🇹 calendar is different from the Georgian calendar. There are thirteen months in the Ethiopian calendar, which means they are currently in 2016. This makes the Ethiopian calendar 7 years behind the rest of the world.

Not only is the country in a different year, they tell time differently as well.

• Ethiopians 🇪🇹 use a 12-hour clock, like many other countries. But with a variation that you can never come across anywhere else.

• “Orop time or Habbishat time❓” That is the expression you should memorize, because you will use it several times a day. “Orop” or “Europe time” is how the Ethiopians refer to the clock system the rest of the world uses. “Habbishat” is the casual term for Ethiopians. Here is how it works.

• When you are in 🇪🇹 , at 6:00 in the morning (by your watch), an Ethiopian clock will say 12:00.

• Your 8:00 will be Ethiopian 2:00, and so on. And at 6:00 suppertime , an Ethiopian clock will revert to 12:00 again.

• Ethiopia 🇪🇹 is the only African country never to have been brought under colonial rule. The Italians tried but failed woefully and were defeated by the solid Ethiopian forces.

• 🇪🇹 is Africa's oldest country. Originally founded in 980 BC

• 🇪🇹 has the world's oldest Bible and according to some archaeological findings,

•🇪🇹 is the cradle of humankind, meaning, life actually started in Ethiopia.