#Crested Shore Drake

[wheretwofacesmeet]

[megamewtwos]

The Lost City of Wonder; Arrival Part 1/? 801 Words Deimos and Bloodbane arrive in the City of Squall and by extension Ice itself.

Stepping foot off of the ship Deimos had thought himself well prepared for the lands of the Icewarden, the idea of a place always shrouded in cold hadn’t bothered him. What he had not expected was to not quite understand what the word cold meant here. The burning sting of the slight breeze blowing over the harbour biting right into his exposed skin, shoving his hands into his pockets to save them. Holding this second age form was work yes, and completely unnecessary in every way. Every way but the show of magical skill required. His retainer would call it a waste of breath. Regardless he would indulge his son in his folly.

The dock's salt-soaked boards creaked under Bloodbane’s weight as he stepped from the ship, the heft of the drake himself and his battle-worn armor more than they could have ever been expected to hold. He lays his paw over Deimos’ mane, turning the man’s head to the port city of Squall.

“Is this not what you expected my lord? To me it seems the very picture of Ice.” Deimos huffed, grabbing the tundra’s wrist and pulling his hand from his head,

“Of course I expected this! Did you think I was unprepared? I know what I’m doing Bloodbane, I haven’t been a hatchling for more cycles than not at this rate!”

“No insult was meant, simply. You look cold. How about we stop and get you a warm drink and look for accommodation? We will need to find a heading before moving forward and a single letter is not much.” Their bags were hefted to the Tundra’s back, following Deimos as he trots toward shore, hands still shoved deep in his pockets.

“I wasn’t Insulted. Don’t insinuate as much about me. I will however find that drink. Tea helps me think.” Not looking back to hide the pout on his face, he quietly snaked his way through the crowds. Fighting the urge to allow his wings to manifest to shield him from the wind, the impressed look on passerby’s faces at his figure more than enough to fuel him on.

Squall was no stranger to travelers with it’s import docks being one of few leading to the interior of the Snowfields. The last gate of entry before the sea became so ice ridden that no ship dared sail farther south. In it’s readiness, the dock was scattered with maps and signs with direction to the many shops that had taken advantage of the location. Supply shops for travelers, Pubs and Inn’s scattered down the shoreline. Finally driven to just pick one of the options Deimos chooses the closest, thankful for the roaring fire tended by a little mith. Pushing logs into the hearth before jogging back to the Coatl managing the counter in the back. She trilled to him as he approached, feathered crests rising and flicking at him.

“Welcome! What would you like today dear? We have fermented Cider right from the shade of the behemoth all the way to the Warped teas from the starwood strand!” Her voice carried the distinct pop and hiss of her kind, the flame-like waver so distinct. “My name is Hazel by the way.”

“Pleasure. I am Lord Deimos, and this is my retainer Bloodbane. I will take some tea please.” The counters were smooth, polished by the many hands that used it over the years. Water stains dappling its surface in an echo of its patrons. Humble for such high offerings. “Bloodbane usually enjoys plague wine, if you’ve any here.” The happy rumble from his father was at least worth the bother of asking. Sitting to his right Bloodbane carefully puts his weight to the bench and deposits his helmet in his lap.

“Sure thing Honey, I’ll be right back.” Hazel leaves, the Mith climbing to the countertop to keep an eye while she’s busy. Its large eyes scanning the room in practiced waves.

“So my Lord, where would you like to begin?” Deimos chews his lip for a moment, rolling Squalls map in his head. His best recollection of it is imperfect but good enough he supposed. By the time he had an answer Hazel had placed their drinks down, gold pressed into her warm outstretched paw.

“Safely I think, The library. Perhaps the merchant’s guild if we can.” The tea smelled wonderful, easing his worries of the claims of origin being flashy marketing.  The swirling pearlescent lavender reminding him of the academy.

The bloodwine was to Bloodbane’s taste at least, Even if Deimos could never understand the appeal of such a ghastly drink. It always smelled of corpses and death to him.

“A Wise choice. Tomorrow morning then.” He paused, looking down to the wildclaw and raising a brow.

“Yes. Tomorrow Morning is fine; I want to rest.”

[megaerakles]

Are you going to eventually go back to the DCEU au with Tim interacting with the other Leaguers? Bc lemme tell you, I hyena laughed when Tim opened his door and asks “What in the goddamn fucking hell are you doing here?” to Bruce, then makes sure to tack on an “asshole” at the end. I LOVE how bother Bruce is by Tim and his situation (it’s hilarious how Bruce starts by making him sound down right villainous and then you find out it’s really that his dad senses are screaming).

I am simply dying to see how this would play out!! Who would be the next one to interact with him? Superman bc he was curious about what has Bruce’s panties in a twist about the kid next door? Arthur going for a swim in the lake and spotting the kid on the shore? I can’t even think how Diana would run into Tim but I sure do hope to find out!

Also what’s the importance of the Drake coat of arms? I think that’s such an interesting anecdote to include in the story , and such a funny thing for Bruce to also clock when he confronts Tim.

Please please please tell me this will eventually be picked back up😩

😅 glad you enjoy that au! It’s a really fun one for sure. I’ll definitely be back to it as some point. Maybe soon maybe in six months, I literally can never predict my writing whims, sorry 🫣 for this first fic, I have the general plot/how and why each hero introduces themselves to Tim figured out and am excited to share them, as soon as I can make myself write them lol. Chapter Two will actually be Victor, who will quickly earn himself the spot as Tim’s New Very Favoritest Superhero Ever, Suck On That, Batman for the purposes of this au. And even after this fic finishes, I have a really fun idea about how to incorporate the Shazam movie, so I’ll probably get another fic out of it as well. Plus I have a few hundred words hanging out in a doc that’s basically a post-Resurrection Jason being like “Talia says Bruce replaced me but those appear to be grown ass adults with superpowers not scrawny preteens in tights so this does not compute???”. I’d eventually like to publish that as part of a longer fic but if I never figure out how I’d be open to posting it as a ficlet. So. Fun things to come! In time.

The original purpose of the Drake dragon coat of arms (soon to be officially christened Pebbles in the story!) is that I got a little carried away trying to come up with the most obnoxious things his parents could have done with their remodel and paying someone to create your family a coat of arms but then deciding you didn’t like it and getting it redone seemed to be just that sort of thing. The reason I spent a significant portion of time on it narratively is that I decided it was the perfect Emotional Support Inanimate Object for Tim to grow attached to and have conversations with. That way, when he has scenes where he’s hanging out in his house, I can still reasonably work in dialogue, which is absolutely my strongest area of writing and is the thing I have the most fun with. Picture Tim and the Dragon crest as the meme from The Good Place with Jason and his Ariana Grande poster; “Oh, Pebbles, we’re really in it now.”

[petnews2day]

Nature Calls: Elmley marshes has exotic looking birds and owls

New Post has been published on https://petnews2day.com/pet-news/bird-news/nature-calls-elmley-marshes-has-exotic-looking-birds-and-owls/

Nature Calls: Elmley marshes has exotic looking birds and owls

This week we visit Elmley Nature Reserve (Picture: Getty)

Each week Metro flees the city in search of birds. And sometimes other things. This week, we’re at… Elmley Nature Reserve

This time next week it will be dark. At the time of writing, it is the last Saturday of British Summer Time and the sun – still warm – sends long shadows across the green grass.

Nothing is richer in colour than at this time of day. The golden hour.

We are on the Isle of Sheppey in Kent, at Elmley National Nature Reserve – privately run and a mix of farmland and marshes with the Swale estuary as its southern border.

There used to be a village here and a cement works. The ruins of a small Victorian schoolhouse remain. Little owls use it as a roost now.

The sociable goldfinch (Picture: Getty)

The view across the marshlands with a group of oystercatchers (Picture: Shutterstock)

And they are not the only owls here. Long-eared owls roost deep in the small copse behind the pond by the car park, barn owls hunt here at dusk and, from autumn onwards, short-eared owls quarter the fields for voles.

We pass the schoolhouse on the track down to The Swale but we don’t see the little owls. From the tideway we can hear the whistling of wigeon – ducks that overwinter here having bred as far north as Iceland and Siberia.

The majestic short-eared owl (Picture: Shutterstock)

Taking flight and on the hunt (Picture: Shutterstock)

The drake has a chestnut head with a gold crest running from the top of its bill to its crown. They are chunky, like tugboats, and they will flock here in their many hundreds, their mellow call a feature of winter marshes and mudflats. 

The tide is fully high as we approach, the Sheppey Crossing away to our right, carrying the A249 high above the water to the mainland. On the opposite shore are factories – tall chimneys and taller cranes.

A wigeon – ducks that overwinter here having bred as far north as Iceland and Siberia (Picture: David Tipling)

Tufts of grass break the surface where the Swale is at its most shallow and around these gather shorebirds seeking refuge from the rising water.

There are six species – in order of size, largest to smallest, they are curlew, black-tailed godwit, avocet, grey plover, turnstone and dunlin. Each feed according to their bill – or have a bill according to their feeding.

The curlew’s is hugely long and downcurved, the godwit’s not quite as long and pretty-much dead straight. Both are used to poke about in the mud for invertebrates. The avocet, meanwhile, uses its markedly upturned bill to sweep across and through the water or loose sediment, again for prey such as crustaceans and worms. 

The nature reserve’s marshlands (Picture: Shutterstock)

The little owl (Athene noctua) is quite a looker (Picture: Getty)

Grey plover and turnstone both have short, stubby bills they use to pick their prey – the former from the sand and mud, the latter by upending pebbles and the like. Dunlins have a medium-sized bill, which they use to pick organisms from the surface or just below it.

Turning back from the shore, the wind whistles through the phragmites reeds whose heads swish and glisten in the lowing sun.

A snipe zooms up and away from within the reedbed – its long bill unmistakeable. Another shoots up to follow it. Then two more. Then another six. It is as if someone is firing snipe like missiles. Another four follow, whirring on busy wings.

Alongside the reeds is a patch of teasel and on to the spiky heads a charm of 30 or so goldfinches lands, tinkling and twittering as they do.

Almost too exotic looking for this land, the goldfinch (Picture: Getty)

These sociable birds have a red face followed by a white band then a black one and have a bright yellow flash on their wing with a white-spotted black tail. They are almost too exotic looking for this land.

They stab their fine, triangular bills into the husky teasel spikes to prise free the seeds.

They sun is right at our back now and the colours are even brighter and sharper – as if seen with new glasses – as bold as they ever will be. 

MORE : Nature Calls: Huge seals the size of walruses give us the eye on a beautiful Norfolk beach

MORE : Nature Calls: A former firing range becomes a haven for wildlife

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[pointreyesjournal]

11 Herbs And Spices : ep162

Exactly one week after boarding my little sailboat for our overnight trip, Cheyenne and I are kicking off our shoes and boarding Henrik’s 48 foot Swan superyacht for our second overnight sailing trip in as many weeks. The six of us (Henrik & Beri, Floody & Autumn, Cheyenne & Me) are making the 130 mile round trip from Sausalito in San Francisco Bay, out into the frigid northern Pacific Ocean, around both Point Reyes and Pierce Point to Tomales Bay, where we will anchor for two nights before returning home on Sunday.

It’s been two weeks since Floody’s big crash and he’s well enough to join us, but won’t be very useful as a crew member. “Official Drink Pourer” is his title for this trip. He’s a useless bugger, but we’re happy to have him.

Sailing north in the Pacific is sailing both upwind and against the swell, so this is going to be a test of both the boat and the crew. Unlike our normal day sailing attire of shorts and a t-shirt, Henrik has provided all six members of the crew with foul weather gear.

Sailing 65 miles is going to take us all day, so we don’t dilly dally in the marina for very long. Once we’re all aboard, Henrik casts off the dock lines and hoists the sails and we get underway. Henrik is skipper for this trip. If you remember, Henrik and I trade skipper duties irrespective of whose vessel we’re on. I skippered last time, so he’s skipper this time.

Henrik was quite impressed with Cheyenne’s sailing last time out, so he’s assigned steering duties to her while he and I scurry around the deck hoisting sails, tidying up lines and preparing the boat for the journey upwind.

The sea state goes from good to not-so-good as soon as we pass under the Golden Gate Bridge. We switch to a port tack and hug the coastline along Stinson Beach. The closer we stay to the shore, the more that Point Reyes shields us from big open ocean swells emanating from the north. 

We’ve got a ton of food onboard. Enough to feed six people for three days. So Beri and Autumn have been below deck organizing the kitchen. But by the time we pass Agate Beach near Bolinas, it’s lunchtime and everyone is topside. I don’t care how rich and/or famous you are, nothing is better for lunch on the first day of a sailing trip than a big bucket of cold Kentucky Fried Chicken. We feast on cold, crispy fried chicken, then throw the bones overboard into the ocean. 

I pass Floody sitting on the windward rail as I’m making my way to the bow of the ship to straighten out the jib sail that’s caught on a stanchion.

Me: How are you feeling mate?

Floody holds up a chicken leg and an aluminum can full of champagne like he’s offering a toast. It’s been a tough couple of weeks for Floody, so it’s nice to see him enjoying himself.

Me: I thought you weren’t supposed to drink alcohol with your painkillers.

Flood: You’re not, but they work so much better that way!

Can’t argue with that logic. Also, who drinks champagne out of an aluminum can? I didn’t know they even made champagne in aluminum cans. 

In an effort to shield ourselves from the big, northern open ocean swells, we continue hugging the coastline into Drake’s Bay, sailing nearly to Limantour Beach before turning west toward Chimney Rock.

We’re about to round Point Reyes, and even though it’s sunny out, Henrik advises everyone to put on their slickers.

The sea state goes from not-so-great to downright awful from the moment we round Point Reyes. For the remainder of the afternoon we pound our way upwind in rolling six to eight foot waves. My cheeks sting from the spray coming off of the bow like a firehose. The boat shutters and shunts as it falls from the crest of one swell to the trough of the next. We spend four hours getting just clobbered by the north Pacific until we round Pierce Point and find shelter in Tomales Bay.

By the time we tie off to our mooring ball, it’s nearly sunset. We’ve been sailing, and getting our asses kicked, all damn day.

I need a drink.

[encyclopika]

Animal Crossing Fish - Explained #207

Brought to you by a mar- quack! Quack! Quack quack quack!

CLICK HERE FOR THE AC FISH EXPLAINED MASTERPOST!

I’m going to talk about the Duck villagers today, because I should have covered them during my original fish explained series since I was covering everything associated with the water anyway. Forgive me.

Pic from https://www.sporcle.com/games/Exodiafinder687/animal-crossing-new-horizons-duck-villagers-picture-click

I have covered birds in here before, all of which were seabirds - the penguins and Gulliver who is a gull. But, we all know there are many many birds that take advantage of watery habitats. To list some: seabirds - birds that live out at sea, some of which never see land except when it’s time to nest (ie. albatross and shearwaters); there are shorebirds - birds that rely on beaches and shores to make a living, typically of the saltwater variety (ie. sandpipers, plovers, etc.); wading birds - birds with really long legs and beaks that “wade” through marshland looking for little fish and other small animals to eat (herons, storks, egrets, etc.); and there are waterfowl, the freshwater birds that are famous for floating at the water’s surface (ducks, geese, and swans). 

Birds are super unique, and ducks especially - they are some of the few animals that do it all - swim, walk, and fly. They belong in the Order Anseriformes, a group of birds with “pseudo teeth” in their bills (seen most famously in geese), that include 180 known species, though the vast majority (about 170 species) belong to a single family, Anatidae, which are the ducks, geese, and swans. Despite this diversity, many of the AC villagers don’t look like real ducks, which can sport incredible feather colors, patterns, crests, and bill shapes for a myriad of specialized aquatic endeavors. It looks like Molly and Drake are two that are definitively the female and male Mallard duck, (Anas platyrhynchos) (also funny his name is “drake” which is what a male duck is called in the same way a male chicken is a “rooster”)

By This picture was realized by Richard Bartz by using a Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM Lens - Own work, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6449086

The mallard is perhaps the most famous duck, being naturally widespread throughout the Northern Hemisphere and introduced to Australia and New Zealand. They, especially the female, make the archetypal duck “quack” we all learn as children. These are the ducks you see and feed bread at the park (please stop doing that - bread is so bad for them!!); they’re your average “wild duck”. But ducks are so much more diverse than you’ll initially realize if you only focus on the Mallard.

The mallard is part of the “dabbling ducks” in the subfamily Anatinae. They are the species you would most recognize as ducks and most likely the group all the duck villagers come from. Females are typically very drab to help them camouflage their nests which they often lay on the ground. Dabbling ducks are mostly omnivorous, eating mostly anything they find when they “bottom-up” and use those flat bills to rummage around in aquatic vegetation and sediment. The males are often brilliantly-colored to attract females and some sport patterns and crests that rival birds of paradise. Like, look at this bastard:

By Adrian Pingstone - Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=592287

This is a mandarin duck, Aix galericulata, and damn he look like he was painted.

Still - there are also diving ducks, like this Greater Scaup (Aythya marila),

Calibas, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

...and wouldn’t you know it, there are also sea ducks that live in saltwater. These are your scoters, eiders, and other friends in Tribe Mergini, like this King Eider (Somateria spectabilis).

By Ron Knight from Seaford, East Sussex, United Kingdom - King Eider (Somateria spectabilis), CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=32940131

Okay, we’ll be here all day if I show you every duck I think is cool. But like, my point is that AC missed a great opportunity to go wild with their ducks. At least they picked some great ducks for the wooden Decoy Duck item you can customize: https://nookipedia.com/wiki/Item:Decoy_Duck_(New_Horizons). Of course I made 7 and spread them all over my island. 

And there you have it. Fascinating stuff, no?

[laurelsofhighever]

The Falcon and the Rose Ch. 66 - The Promise of Spring

Chapter Rating: Mature Chapter Warnings: Gore, Dismemberment Relationships: Alistair/Female Cousland Additional Tags: Alternate Universe, Fereldan Civil War AU - No Blight, Romance, Angst, Action/Adventure, Eventual Smut, Friends to Lovers, Slow Burn, Mutual Pining, Fereldan Culture and Customs, Cousland Feels, Canonical Character Death, Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort

Read it on AO3

--

First day of Wintermarch, 9:32 Dragon, First Day

Dim, early morning light seeped through the curtains in Rosslyn’s room. Her windows faced east and north, over the sea, and for years her mornings had been spent hiding from the sun to catch a few more hours of sleep before the inevitable start to the castle’s day, but on this morning, the first peek of dawn did not bother her. She was already awake, if barely, warm under the covers and content. Alistair lay beside her, sharing her pillow, his legs tangled with hers, running gentle caresses along her arms and back with the tips of his fingers.

“I should go,” he told her, breaking into a yawn.

She nudged forwards, brushing a slow touch over his collarbone. “Just a little longer.”

“I’ll be missed,” he warned. “And then I won’t be ready in time. And neither will you.”

“You’ll be cold if you leave,” she pointed out, with a pout.

“I’ll just have to keep myself warm thinking of you.”

Still not quite awake enough to laugh properly, Rosslyn sighed, and leaned into the soft touch along the side of her face before wriggling closer to rest her forehead against his.

“You know, this wouldn’t be such a problem if you married me.”

Her smile widened. “Hush with your logic.”

The subject had become something of a joke between them, moments of levity strung out like beads on a necklace that started when she had airily asked if she could expect him to steal the last pastry at breakfast every morning of their lives. Since then, they had discussed so many things, from the inane to the serious, what colour they should use to monogram the egg-cups and whether it would be better to live in Denerim with the king, or in Highever where they could help Fergus rebuild.

She leaned into him now with a slow press of her lips against his, the gentle hitch of her leg over his waist, a quiet hum when his palm graced her thigh.

“Are you sure you’re not a little bit tempted to stay?” she asked, with her fingers carded in his hair.

“I know what this is,” he replied. His expression remained soft, but worry pulled at the corners of his eyes and she found herself wanting to hide away in the safety of his shoulder. “I won’t ask if you’re sure –”

“I am.”

“And I’ll be beside you for every step of today,” he promised. “And after that, it’ll be over.”

“But they’ll still be gone,” she mumbled. “Is it strange, that after all this time it still feels like a little part of me was hoping that… that they’d just spring back into being?”

Pressing a kiss to her forehead, Alistair shook his head. “When my mother died, they wouldn’t let me see her.”

She held herself closer; he talked so rarely about his childhood.

“For months I wouldn’t believe she was dead, I kept insisting that she was travelling no matter what anyone told me. I grew out of it eventually, I guess, but it’s hard, not getting closure like that.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” he answered. Their hands found each other and laced together. “I wish I could do more to stop you hurting – but I’m not staying!” he amended quickly, as one fine eyebrow arched.

“Worth a try,” she teased.

“You’re incorrigible.” He scooted across to kiss her. “And I have to go before your maid comes in and scolds me.”

She huffed good-naturedly against his mouth. “Fine. If you must.”

“My lady is so gracious.”

He brushed one last kiss over her lips and rolled over to wriggle out from under the covers, careful to avoid opening their space to any chill inrush of air. As he winced along the cold boards retrieving his clothes so haphazardly discarded the night before, she stretched under the blankets and watched him, and when he reached the door still shrugging his jerkin onto his shoulders, he glanced over at her and his smile might have melted the winter around them.

“I’ll see you soon,” he said.

“I love you.”

--

Three hours later, she stood on the headland outside the city on a flat spur of rock that lifted itself above the tide line, protected from the buffet of the wind by layers of leather and quilted samite, and a hood of thick fur that tickled her cheek with every gust. The sky over the sea had darkened with the burgeoning threat of a storm, an occasional flash of lightning behind the charcoal smudge of heavy rain, and it stirred a bitter tang of damp wood and rotting seaweed in the back of her throat.

The journey down from the castle had begun with the usual chaos of the season, the celebration for the turning point of the year that came with shouts and coloured streamers and a turfing out of old things, and with Alistair and Fergus at her side she had led Highever’s population to a cove rimmed with greyish sand and flat, smooth boulders poking out of the shingle in the low tide, topped with limpets and serpent-green seaweed. A single column of rock rose out of the surf among its smaller brethren, its uneven face stained with rust from the ancient iron rings riveted to it at half the height of a human, a landmark that had once been nothing more than one of many eroded sea stacks along the teyrnir’s coast, but which had been pressed into service generations ago for moments just such as these.

As a crowd gathered on the dunes around her to watch, guards in Laurel blue marched to the cage drawn behind their carriage and hauled Howe from the floor before dragging him to where she waited with the others. He was filthy. The people they had passed in the streets had thrown ash over him from the dead fires of the previous year, but the grey streaks over his skin did little to hide the way it sagged, the stains on the cloth and the lank hair, the sores at his wrists and ankles where the cuffs had cut too deep. The guards gripped him by the elbows as Rosslyn stepped forward to address the crowd, and it was only in part to make sure he didn’t try to escape.

“The year past has been hard on us all,” she called to the people, in a voice lacking the wobble it had carried that faint, faraway day on Harrowhill when she ordered the retreat. “We have lost, and we have mourned, but we have also survived to stand in defiance of those who would have trodden us into the mud.” Rapt silence met her words. “We have much to rebuild, but today is a day of celebration, a day of hope, and a day of justice for those who have done us wrong.”

Without waiting for a response, she turned and drew the Rose’s Thorn form its sheath.

“Maker spit on you,” Howe snarled as she approached. “I deserved more.”

“I agree.”

One of the guards fisted his hand in Howe’s hair to keep his head still. He struggled nonetheless, but she paid him no mind as she drew the tip of her blade along the crest of each sallow cheek, deep enough for a line of blood to well and mix with the coating of ash, but not deep enough for true disfigurement.

“After today, you will be forgotten, your name never spoken, and your bones left to rot in the depths of the sea,” she told him in an undertone. “You had best hope the cold takes you before the sea drakes catch your scent.”

At that, what little defiance was left in his eyes drained away. He had been present to witness her father dispose of the Orlesian duke who had stolen the Cousland seat and treated the people like amusements, had seen first-hand the old punishment brought into new use, the ritual that was both catharsis and warning for those left standing on the shore. Perhaps Howe had thought she would lack the spleen to use it.

She let her gaze slide past him and turned back to the crowd. Her voice, raised from the stomach as Aldous had taught her, reverberated from the circling dunes so that it had an almost magical power. “Now, as for generations, we send the ashes of our past griefs into the sea, to be cleansed so that the world may be renewed.”

A small wave of her hand, and the guards shoved Howe along the causeway, beyond the stretch of the sand and the maze of boulders to the spire already being licked with the first waves of the incoming tide. One held him in place while the other passed chains through the central ring, then fastened the ends around each of his wrists. He would have enough slack to move, to pace if he wanted, but not so much that he would be able to keep his head above the water – if he kept his head at all. The people watched in silence as the guards returned to stand with the rest of the Cousland escort, and even the storm itself seemed to pause, as if waiting to see what happened next.

“What now?” Alistair asked in her ear. Officially, he had come as the king’s representative, to see justice done, but his presence at her back steadied her even if the method of execution wasn’t to his liking.

“We wait.”

The water rose slowly. It undulated in and away, creeping to cover the rocks until only little bobbing patches of seaweed marked their place and then they too disappeared, while crests of white foam lapped at first the shingle then the sand, then at Howe’s ankles where he stood chained to the spire. This was the point, the dread of the inexorable ending. Even from so far away, she could see the nervous darts of his head as his eyes scanned the water, his start as the first spines broke the surface. On his other side, a narrow draconic head smooth with grey-blue scales lifted from the waves with a plume of spray from its nostrils, its head turning this way and that to regard him with large, yellow eyes, before it slipped back under the next crest and disappeared. More shadows stirred under the water, each movement becoming another half-glimpsed fin or a lightning flash of scales, attracted by the smell of blood and Howe’s splashing as he backed against the stone.

The water reached halfway up his thigh when the first sea drake hauled itself onto the causeway. Even half-submerged, it was still huge, with a thick neck and powerful shoulders, a sloped back armoured with interlocking scales that narrowed and paled down its flanks. Webbed black spines ran in a ridge down its back to a broad, paddle-shaped tail, and up to a pair of vestigial horns that crested its head like a crown. Rosslyn had only been small when she had first seen one through her mother’s glass, sunning itself on the pebbled shore of a rocky islet, but even so many years later her awe of such a creature had not diminished. Howe kicked water at it and shouted as it stalked towards him on short, stately legs, and with the air of an affronted cat the spines flared along its back, its hiss a thing of primeval menace as it dived into the swell of an incoming wave. Before Howe could celebrate his triumph, however, another drake surfaced on his other side and made a feinting snap at his knees. He drove off that one, too, but others were already closing in.

“And we just watch?” Alistair asked, trying to keep his voice steady. “How long do we stay here?”

“Until it is finished,” Fergus answered.

“This is how things are done,” Rosslyn told him, her eyes fixed on the far, struggling point. “You were right that we can’t match the suffering he caused, but it isn’t about killing him.” Her expression softened into doubt, and she turned to him. “You don’t have to stay.”

The crash of a wave drowned out Howe’s yelled curse, but not the chorus of inhuman cries that followed it. Alistair’s jaw clenched at the sound, but he reached for her hand anyway.

“I promised I would,” he said.

She had told him what was planned, waited with held breath for him to make her choose between his righteousness and justice for her people, but he had merely nodded, and followed her lead, and now the last of her worry washed away in a sigh of relief. A scream behind her brought her gaze back to Howe. The water reached almost to his chest. For a moment she saw only a patch of darkness spreading like oil over the water, and then stillness, and streams of sinuous forms moving against the current. And then the water frothed pink. Howe shrieked. His arms jerked to try and get away, the chains sparking against the rock, until with one final shudder his body fell limp, and the only movement then came from the squabble of the sea drakes over their feast.

Through it all, Rosslyn watched stony-faced, forced herself not to look away. A single tear leaked from the corner of her eye and rolled down her cheek, but she ignored it. For a moment, the emotion stirring beneath her ribs went unrecognised, like a call in the darkness, until her breathing eased and she realised the slow spread of peace through her limbs. The encroaching storm and the rising water swallowed up the scene before her. It would take days for the bones to be picked clean, and somehow that was enough, final enough, that a weight she had not realised she had been carrying lifted from her shoulders, and when she turned her head to face Fergus, he met her gaze with the same tired look in his eyes. When they had stood together on the steps of Castle Cousland nearly a year before, her head had been full of the stories of battle, valiant triumphs and victories over fearful opponents, but few had mentioned what came after, the emptiness when there was nobody left to fight, and nobody waiting at home to welcome the hero’s return.

She had forgotten Alistair’s hand in hers until he squeezed it lightly to get her attention. People were already starting to leave. Watching them, the slow, steady amble back to hearth and home and family to light the fires for the coming year, she sagged and let her head fall on his shoulder, accepting the quiet flow of his strength with nothing more than a sigh. Her mind drifted back over the past few weeks, to their argument and the question he had asked her. They had spent so much time together since then, sharing meals and sneaking out of each other’s beds in the mornings, small moments that would have been unthinkable to the girl who had thundered out of the barbican gates in the middle of the night at the head of an army.

“It’s getting late,” Alistair murmured as the first drops of rain pattered the rock around them.

“It’s done,” she agreed. “We should go.”

The journey back to the castle passed in silence, and more silence met them beyond the barbican. Aside from the complement of volunteers filling the duty roster, most of the guard and the servants had taken the day to visit friends or relatives after the services in the chantry. As Rosslyn descended from the carriage, her thoughts drifted to Morrence, who had found her home a wreckage of the one she knew, and who had gone with Leliana to spend time with Gideon and his brothers.

“You’re back!” Amell cried from the top of the stairs, her voice nearly blown away by the wind. “Lord Fergus needs his treatment.”

“Can it wait?” Fergus asked. “I want to walk in the gardens.”

“Your Lordship, the weather –”

“Dearest little sister, how about we take a turn together?” he interrupted.

Something in his tone reminded Rosslyn of their mother when she was determined to get her way, but she had inherited the Seawolf’s steel, too. “Are you warm enough?”

“What, under the four blankets you’ve already piled on top of my five layers?”

“I feared you wouldn’t be able to walk if I added any more,” she told him with a wry quirk of her brow.

“I’m fine,” he huffed. “You fuss worse than Nan ever did.”

Alistair delicately cleared his throat. “I’ll be in the library.”

She squeezed his fingers, mourning that she had to let them go. “I’ll see you soon.”

For an instant, his gaze lingered on her mouth, but with their company he let her go unkissed, and they parted, he up the keep steps into the warmth of the castle, and she after her brother, who was already halfway to the door in the curtain wall that led down to the uppermost terrace of the gardens. The stairs in the pass were free of ice, but the narrow corridor channelled the wind into a freezing knife that cut at any flesh not safely hidden under winter layers. The gravel paths beyond wandered as they always had between beds now devoid of their summer verdancy, as if no horrors had befallen the castle at all, with only the ragged line of the clipped rosemary hedges betraying the months of neglect.

Fergus’ cane tapped a steady rhythm along the path, keeping time with the pace of Rosslyn’s thoughts as she fidgeted with the silence. She let him lead her, distracting herself with the work that would need to be done, and hoping the sky would leave off opening long enough for her brother to say whatever was clearly on his mind.

“That was a good speech you gave today,” he said eventually, poking at a weed that had sprung up between the stones. “Are you going to take your own advice?”

“What do you mean?”

“Moving forward,” he answered. “Building a life.”

He turned off the formal walk to a path that clung to the base of the keep wall, and her step faltered. She knew where they were going.

“The war isn’t over yet.” She picked a stray bit of leaf from her glove. “There are still things to do.”

He stopped, turned. “You have a man who loves you – a good man, who’s worthy of you, as far as I can tell. Putting that off helps no one.”

“Putting what off, exactly?”

For the space of a breath, he held the challenge in her gaze, battling her will to be obstinate in the face of his prying, until he grumbled something unintelligible and lifted his eyes skyward. Whether he was cursing her or the weather was difficult to tell.

“You’ve become quite grouchy in your old age,” she remarked as they continued along the path.

An elegant glasshouse waited at the end of it, set against the northern wall of the keep and best placed for the sun and the views as the terraced levels of the garden gave way to sheer basalt cliffs. Many of the glass panes between the wrought-iron frames had broken, and dead leaves piled inside the door, but with nothing to burn or to break, the interior had been left mostly untouched. The servants must have kept the plants watered for there to still be so much greenery, but Rosslyn doubted many of Howe’s soldiers had ventured far enough into the gardens to even discover Oriana’s solar, the gift she had found waiting for her when she stepped off that final ship from Antiva.

Of course Fergus would want to spend time in this place, on this day. He was already wandering through the space, his hands brushing the leaves of the orange trees his wife had planted as the rain finally unleashed itself upon them. It clattered on the glass like a volley of ballista bolts, globs of gritty sleet that turned into a water race towards the gutter and spilled over the broken bits in the roof. He ignored the roar as the front passed over them and settled into a steadier drone against their shelter, busy instead with an overturned chair that he dusted off with the tail end of one of his blankets.

“He asked you, didn’t he?”

She crossed her arms over her chest. “I’m not talking about this with you. I had enough of you all prying into my personal life years before I ever met Alistair, and it’s not going to change now. It’s between me and him. And I can’t believe you would be so hypocritical! You nearly ran away to Antiva when Mother mentioned –” Her mouth snapped shut, but too late to avoid the grief pinching at the corners of her brother’s eyes.

“Don’t deny yourself happiness out of pity for me,” he cautioned. “I lost everything except you, don’t – don’t add to that. You deserve the same joy I had. There’s –” He blinked and looked up at the rain. “There’s nothing like it, and we Couslands don’t do well when denied our passions. We mope, and you’re awful when you mope.”

Unsure of how to reply, she turned away from him and out to the raging sea. It was all well for her brother to sit and hand out advice like one of Canavan’s battle lectures but he had had nothing to lose in pursuit of Oriana; he would still have been himself. She wanted the future she saw with Alistair, that image of them curled up together in the library with the sunlight streaming through the window, but in the darkness when the nightmares woke her and only the sound of his breathing kept her panic at bay, the fear of losing him – of the husk she might become without him – became a visceral, living thing that threatened to engulf her whole. She couldn’t take the step, couldn’t make it real.

She deflected for something simpler. “What about you?”

“I’ll do my duty, as Father would have wanted,” he answered, stabbing his cane through a leaf. “And if that prince of yours ever forgets how good he has it, I’ll have to step in and remind him. Forcefully. With a sword.”

At that, she smiled. “You’re so annoying.”

“It makes up for all the years you tagged along after me, trying to keep up,” he shot back, and even stuck out his tongue.

“We used to drive Nan mad.”

“It’s a shame she worked out our scheme for stealing biscuits from the kitchen.” He sighed. “Go on in and see His Highness, before he comes out looking and thinking you’ve fallen down a rabbit hole or something. I – I want to stay here for a while.”

Alone, he didn’t say.

“And your healing session?” she asked.

“I’ll manage without it.”

The dutiful part of her worried, wanted to argue, but she remembered Deerswall, and the solitude she had looked for in the grove away from the eyes of all looking to her to lead. So she nodded, and drew her weather layers more tightly around her shoulders for the walk back to the keep.

“Don’t stay out too long,” she said, and stepped out into the rain.

[ansu-gurleht]

Ku-vastei woke at dawn to begin meandering vaguely towards the place the Imperials had ordered her, Balmora. While intentionally taking the wrong path north of Pelagiad, she stumbled upon an old Dunmer woman on the road. She was looking at the hills alongside the path, occasionally referring to a book, and shaking her head.

Ku-vastei gripped her spear tightly as she approached. The woman looked up from the book with a start. “Oh! Hello!” Her voice was wrinkled with age. “Are you a pilgrim too?”

“Excuse me?” Ku looked at herself for the answer. It’s true she could have been mistaken for a wandering peasant, with brown robes concealing the maille beneath. “No, I’m...” How much could she say truthfully? Her reason for being released into Vvardenfell seemed to be rather sensitive - even Ku wasn’t sure why yet.

“Oh, just a traveler?” The woman pointed at Ku’s spear. “Perhaps an adventurer?”

Ku sighed in relief and nodded. “Yes. Adventurer.”

“Well, you seem rather capable! Could you help an old woman out? My name is Nevrasa Dralor. I’m trying to find the Fields of Kummu, but I think I’ve gotten myself lost. Surely you know this area better than I do.” She beckoned Ku over with a wave of her hand, which Ku cautiously accepted. 

She pointed at a crudely drawn map stuck between the pages of a copy of The Pilgrim’s Path. “The book says it’s near the water, and that there is a farm nearby for weary pilgrims to rest. Will you take me?”

Ku shook her head. “I’m not a tour guide. I don’t know where this place is. And I have better things to do.”

“Please?” Nevrasa took one of Ku’s hands in both of hers. “I can promise you reward if I’m delivered safely. How does one hundred and fifty septims sound?”

Ku tore her hand back, and leaned on her spear, looking at the ground. She was starting fresh here, and did need the money...

“Fine. I’ll take you.”

“Thank you so much, dear!” Ku stiffened as Nevrasa wrapped her in a tight hug. “If we’re to be travelling together, what should I call you?”

This was another question Ku was unsure of. To the census officer she had given the name she was known by when she led a massive slave revolt in the Arnesian War: Ku-vastei, bringer of change. She had gone by many names in the past, each reflecting different times in her life. Ku-vastei had suited her well during the war. She figured perhaps it could suit her well again.

But she was still unsure the nature of her business in Vvardenfell. So as she began to head south into the Ascadian Isles, she told the old mer to just call her “Ku.”

“I suppose that’s one of those Argonian names, hm?” The two began walking south into the Ascadian Isles. Ku only responded with an annoyed grunt, but Nevrasa didn’t seem to notice. This was going to be a long day. - - - - -

Indeed it was. Neither of them quite knew where they were going or how to get there. The map was useless, as was the vague direction of “by the water somewhere.” 

Everything in the Isles was by the water. Rivers and lakes criss-crossed and dotted the landscape of innocent hills still just too tall to see over. There were never enough bridges to cross the water. Ku wouldn’t have minded a quick swim, but Nevrasa probably preferred to keep dry.

The direction about the nearby farm wasn’t of much help, either. This region could be mistaken for Dres territory with its plentiful plantations. Ku tried her best to avoid them. She wasn’t sure she could contain her rage if she saw her people under the yoke of those Dunmer slavers, and after her time in prison, armed only with a pitiful iron-tipped spear, she was certainly in no shape to enact that rage.

The constant backtracking, giving plantations wide berths, and circling shores due to lack of crossings all contributed to the excessive length of the day. But the old mer kept stopping every five steps to admire a scrib or pick comberries. 

The latter didn’t bother Ku as much, as it gave her time to contemplate the local flora as well. She puzzled over golden and blue flowers, tasted the bitter comberries, and gathered marshmerrow stalks, the one thing she knew what to do with. 

During one of what seemed like hundreds of stops, Nevrasa caught Ku mashing marshmerrow into a poultice with the rudimentary mortar and pestle she’d bought in Seyda Neen. “Oh, a healer, are you?” Suddenly she was breathing over Ku’s shoulder, causing her to jump and slap Nevrasa in the face with her tail. Nevrasa didn’t seem to mind.

“I, no,” Ku stuttered, bending over to pick up her dropped pestle. “I’m interested in alchemy, I mean. This is just something I learned as a child.”

“Oh, that won’t do,” Nevrasa said, handing Ku the pestle she’d already retrieved. “One moment.” She crossed the road towards a corkbulb tree and peeled off a piece of its bark. She returned, took the alchemical apparatus from Ku’s claws, and began to mash the ingredients together. The way her old hands worked the pestle reminded Ku of her naheesh, when she taught her about the healing properties of marshmerrow and saltrice.

Nevrasa stuck a finger in the paste and licked it. “Ah, yes. Makes my feet feel better already! Do you have some paper?” Ku tore a piece from her blank new journal and Nevrasa wrapped the poultice in it. “The corkbulb amplifies the marshmerrow, you see? If you eat the paste instead of slathering it on the wounds, it heals better.”

Ku accepted the small packet of restorative paste and put it and her mortar and pestle back in her pack. She stood there, looking at Nevrasa, unsure what to say.

“Thank you will do,” Nevrasa said, seemingly reading Ku’s mind. She shook her head and sighed. “Kids these days.”

“I’m 48,” Ku sputtered. 

“I am much, much older than you.” Nevrasa did not elaborate. The two continued on. 

- - - - -

As the sun continued its arc across the sky, the two still seemed nowhere near their destination. Aside from the occasional scrib Nevrasa insisted on stopping to woo over, as well as kwama foragers, rats, and mudcrabs which Ku easily dispatched, they had not seen any other living thing on the roads.

But when they were (what Ku guessed to be) in the south-western part of the Ascadian Isles, they saw a Dunmer man, armed and armored in bonemold, waiting for them ahead. Ku kept Nevrasa behind her and cautiously approached, gripping her spear tightly.

“Why, hello friends! It is I, Nels Llendo, here to offer you an opportunity you won’t believe!” He stepped closer towards Ku, his hands on his hips, one on the handle of his sheathed sword.

Ku tightened her grip on her spear with one hand, the other arm making sure Nevrasa stayed behind her. “Nels Llendo?”

“Ah, so you’ve heard of me! It’s good to see my fame precedes me. Well, here is an offer you simply cannot refuse: how about I let you and your beautiful friend here pass safely down this road, for the low low cost of 50 drakes?”

Ku put both hands back on her spear and pointed the tip at Nels, making him back up. “No.”

“No? Surely you misunderstand, friend.” Nels drew his sword, crossing it against the end of Ku’s spear. “You must give me 50 drakes if you wish to stay alive on this road.” 

“I said, no.” She batted away his sword and stood her ground.

“So be it, n’wah!” Nels suddenly lunged towards Ku-vastei, who barely had time to retreat. In the process she bumped into Nevrasa, who she heard fall on her ass with a “Hey!” behind her.

Ku tried to hold her ground against him, staying light on her feet and keeping him at a distance until an opportunity arose to strike. But Nels was fast and voracious, leaping into close quarters almost faster than she could react. Nevrasa kept her distance behind Ku-vastei, occasionally shouting encouragement.

Neither party had made a successful blow upon the other after several minutes. Then Nels made another sudden advance, but this time past Ku, towards Nevrasa. Nevrasa shrieked, but Ku reacted as quickly as she could. She quickly jumped sideways, tackling Nels, who made a quick slash towards her as he fell.

The blow connected, and the fire Ku felt wasn’t just the pain of sliced flesh. The sword was enchanted. She felt the heat, but also the dampness of blood - somehow the fire burned but didn’t cauterize wounds. Nice trick.

Nels let go of the sword as his back hit the loosely-paved road. Nevrasa quickly stepped in and grabbed it before Nels could rearm himself. Just before collapsing on top of him, Ku plunged the tip of her spear into Nels’ throat.

Her eyes were swimming in the pain as she felt all the warmth in her body concentrate into the conflagration in her thigh. She hissed as she felt her body rolled over. Her mouth opened reflexively as a hand tickled under her chin, and then was filled with the sickly sweet flavor of marshmerrow. She was losing consciousness, but was somehow aware enough to know to swallow.

Just before her mind faded to black, she felt warmth return to her body, and the fire in her thigh evaporate. She opened her eyes and saw Nevrasa kneeling over her, looking at Ku’s leg. Slowly Ku sat up and looked through the cut fabric of her robe herself. The flesh and red scales had closed up, leaving only a slightly charred scar. 

Nevrasa helped Ku stand. “Dear,” she said, “you need some greaves.”

“Yes,” Ku agreed. She looked down at Nels’ corpse. His bonemold cuirass looked sturdier than her chainmail, and he had matching greaves, as well. She took both from him, as well as the sword to sell later.

They walked only a minute further when Nevrasa gasped. She tapped Ku on the shoulder and pointed at the vista revealed between two hills: The towering foreign quarter canton of Vivec, the descending sun illuminating it like a halo.

- - - - -

The day was fading into a mosaic of reds and oranges. They were finally on the right track, they thought. They stood at the crest of a hill overlooking a vast lake. Nevrasa studied alternately the topography of the opposite shore and the crude map in her book. 

Finally, she exclaimed, “There! You see the little farmhouse?” She grabbed Ku’s shoulder and pointed with her other hand, dropping her book. “That must be Alof’s! That means that the shrine should be...” Her outstretched finger slowly glided to the left. “...There!”

“Finally,” Ku sighed. She surveyed the coastline of the lake for a bridge, but found nothing. She grunted and shook her head. “No, I refuse to walk all the way around this. I’ll swim.” She opened her pack and dug through it for a moment, and produced a small vial. “Drink this.”

“What is it?” Nevrasa peered into the green-blue liquid inside. 

“Old Black Marsh recipe for drywalkers. Let’s you walk on water like it was ground. Keeps your feet dry, too.”

“Wonderful!” Nevrasa opened the vial and downed it in one go, dropping the vial afterwards. 

Ku reached to grab it but heard it shatter on the ground. “Those aren’t cheap, you know,” she hissed, but Nevrasa was already making her way down the hill to the water. Ku sighed and followed her.

Ku walked into the water and found it delightfully cool after a long day under the sun. She swam just under the surface next to where Nevrasa strode the waves. They almost reached the shore before the potion ran out. Nevrasa suddenly sank to the bank, the ends of her skirt getting soaked.

“You need a calcinator,” she grumbled as she wrung out the water from her skirt and emptied her shoes of it. “Makes them last longer.”

“Sorry,” Ku said, quickly shaking herself dry. 

They climbed the slope up to the road and found the shrine. “Excellent!” Nevrasa exclaimed. “You-”

She was cut off by a fearsome roar. Another quickly followed, closer this time. They turned around and saw two kagouti bounding towards them from the other side of the road.

Ku’s face wrinkled in fear. She grabbed Nevrasa and pushed her behind, then gripping her spear in tepid determination. She had seen the ferocity of kagouti firsthand when she was younger. Then, she could have handled them. But after the decades languishing in prison, and the exhaustion of the day seeping into her bones, she knew there was no chance she could take a kagouti, especially not two.

“I’ll handle this.” Nevrasa pushed Ku-vastei aside and stepped forward to face the charging kagouti. Ku tried to pull Nevrasa back by her clothes, but her claws couldn’t find purchase on the fabric at all, like it was made of air.

Nevrasa held out a hand towards the kagouti, who were so close now Ku could smell their last meal on their breath. Suddenly the beasts were enveloped in blue flame, scorching the skin from their bones until they collapsed, screaming in pain and steaming from the heat. They kicked and squealed for a moment before falling still and silent.

Then, Nevrasa turned towards a bewildered Ku, holding in one hand two pale blue stones. Her face was different, her eyes black and swimming with stars. The palette of dusk hung on her skin as the sun set.

“I cannot give you my Star, but I can give you these.” She handed the stones to Ku-vastei. She inspected them, seeing the faint light swimming within them. 

“...Soul gems?” She had only seen them as illustrations in books before, but these were undeniably vessels for trapped spirits. The kagoutis’, she imagined.

“Petty imitations, but yes.” Nevrasa placed a hand on Ku’s shoulder and stared intently with her celestial eyes into Ku’s, searching.

“Yes. Yes, I think you’ll do. Welcome home, my champion.”

Before Ku could even think what to ask, Nevrasa evaporated into hundreds of blue sparks, and disappeared entirely.

- - - - -

When Ku arrived at Caius Cosades’ house in Balmora later that night, she spoke sparsely. Her Imperial contact and new boss let her sleep in his bed, but she barely slept. Her dreams were filled with prophecy.

[seadeepywrites]

Things He’s Seen

Character: Fathom Tidechaser Words: 367 tw: death, blood, drowning

This is a list of things that Fathom has seen since his party drowned:

Plants blurring past him, green brighter than anything he’s ever seen. The dark stains of his own blood on slate-gray rocks, too much for any mortal body to survive the loss of. A man with dark and glittering goat eyes, taller even than Fathom and with a smile as deadly as a two-hundred-foot fall.

A drake that came from the sky, shimmering icy white. Its breath left crystals in the air so sharp they froze the ocean that flows in Fathom’s veins. He healed a shivering halfling with no name, and averted his eyes from the nimbus of starry clouds wreathing the drake’s sinuous form.

A dark place where Fathom’s every footstep shattered the landscape, and he saw his past in the fragments. Pain and joy and love and loss like stained glass, tiling his life into individual moments. Fathom regretted none of it, and walked forward against the wind. His fingers tied the knots that held this new party together in this place. They followed a compass whose glowing needle pointed toward the world’s last chance at salvation.

The crashing froth of a whirlpool, its gaping mouth swallowing the fabric of reality. Fathom breathed in the seawater as easily as the salt-stained air, but he swam against the current nevertheless, reaching out for the thrashing heads and limbs around him. He cannot die in the ocean’s embrace, but his struggling party members are only the latest of many he tried to save. He gasped a prayer to Melora as all of them tumbled between planes of existence.

On the dark shores of an unfamiliar beach, a golem large enough to bear a city on its back stamped one colossal foot. Amber vanished like smoke into the dark interior, so Fathom followed. The insides of the golem shone like glass and danced in speckled rainbows. Outside, a vampire murmured a ritual to kill time itself.

This is a thing Fathom has not seen except in his dreams:

An ocean wave motionless, its foam-crested arch never breaking. Never crashing or withdrawing from the shore to try again. This will be the cost of failure.

[andy-loves-corgis]

All of The Lights - Ch 1 (TRR AU)

Book: The Royal Romance

Pairings: Basically everybody will, at some point, hook up with each other. but you know my endgame.

Rating: M (language)

Word count: ~2,700 Warning: Read the Prologue! Every chapter has TWO timelines, Before (about a year before the Prologue) and After (two years after the prologue), if you don’t pay attention to that you might get confused!

Chapter 1 - When It Rains

When it rains, you always find an escape, jus running away from all of the ones who love you

BEFORE

The pale sunlight hit the feet of his bed, but he was already awake, Drake Walker liked to wake up early, when just the humming of the workers in the palace were audible through the walls. His way to the kitchen was in quick steps, not paying attention to anything in his way, those walls had long become uninteresting to him.

The smell of baked goods hit him in a warm wave as he opened the door and was greeted by Eleanor, the palace chef, and the radiant face of his sister, Savannah.

 “Good morning, brother!” she exclaimed making his eyebrows knit, Savannah hated waking up early.

“What’s making you so happy at this time in the morning?” he asked sitting with a thump beside her and reaching for a croissant.

“Well, Lady Madeleine invited me for the afternoon tea, and I wanted to finish my new dress to use it there.” She gave him a full-teeth smile.

Drake had lived 2/3 of his 21 years in the palace, and one of the first and toughest things he had learned was about having a seat on the table, he didn’t have one, neither did his 16-year-old sister, they didn’t have one when his father was the head of the Royal Guard, they didn’t have now that his father died protecting King Constantine.

“Why do you care? It’s Madeleine…” he rolled his eyes at her.

“Madeleine is the front runner in this social season and I’m sure she’ll be the next queen along with Prince Leo, so, networking baby!” she stood up still smiling, finishing her orange juice. “She’s the Queen Bee.”

Drake snorted.

“I really don’t care about this pettiness, but Riley is the Queen Bee here, and she invites you to do way more fun stuff.” It was time for Savannah to roll her eyes and pick an apple, turning on her heels. “And yes, I do say this because she’s my friend.”

The girl was halfway through the door when she turned to her brother.

“You say it, because you’re in love with her!”

A piece of croissant hit the closed door, missing her by a second, if there was something his sister enjoyed more than freshly made eclairs, it was messing up with his and Riley’s friendship.

“Walker stop messing up my kitchen.” Eleanor scolded the boy who looked sheepishly at her before grabbing another croissant and leaving the kitchen.

The sky was cloudy, the blanched sun couldn’t be seen anymore, only the imposing grey clouds were above him. Drake started his work on the stables, checking on the horses, it was his last year studying vet in the Royal University of Cordonia, during his teenage years his dream was to become a Royal Guard like his father, there was until all he could have of his father was his tombstone and his signet ring with the royal guard’s crest.

He sighed, resuming checking on Athenna, the morning flowing through the strokes of his brush and scribbling on the horses’ files, by lunchtime his stomach growled so hard he almost missed his phone vibrating in his pocket.

It was Liam asking him about Riley.

“We argued obviously,” he heard the prince’s grunting on the other side of the line. “You know how she is, she just stormed out…”

“And you’re leaving to Lythikos?” Drake tried hard not to roll his eyes.

“My father has business there.” Liam said as if it excused anything.

“Will Olivia be there too?” it sounded way more accusatory than Drake meant.

“Maybe… Anyway, I just need to make sure Riley’s okay”

“Okay, I’ll try and find her before my afternoon class… Yeah, bye” Drake looked at his watch and ran to the kitchens, so he could at least be able to grab a sandwich, maybe two.

Even though it was the end of February, it wasn’t as cold as he thought it would be, after working all morning with the horses he welcomed the chilly breeze while stepping on the battered stone steps of the hill behind the palace.

As he hoped, she was there, sitting on the moist sand, her eyes far, far way, where the clouds kissed the dark blue water.

“Hey, you!” He greeted her, letting his body fall with a thump beside her.

A flush of chocolate locks flooded her face as she was startled by his presence, the long strands cascaded down her back and fell in front of her reddened eyes, she had been crying.

“You’ll give me a heart attack any day now, Drake.” She held her chest catching her breath.

He laughed and threw a paper bag to her.

“Brought you something to eat, so you won’t be crying to death because of Liam.” 

“Fuck Liam” she muttered, opening the bag.

“Not my type” he smirked, opening his plain ham and cheese sandwich.

“My problems go further than Liam making excuses to go and fuck Olivia.” 

Drake’s eyes widened for a second with her remark, but he decided not to fuel her fire, he finished his sandwich in three bites, watching her take tiny bites of hers. She gave up eating and threw him an envelope, he recognized the purple letters after Riley made him run through their whole website a few months back.

New York University

He knew that since she was a kid and saw the purple flags hanging from the buildings of Manhattan, she wanted to go there.

“It’s too heavy to be a rejection letter” he said.

“They want me” she said moving her eyes to her lap, a small smile playing on her lips, that made his chest swell with pride.

“I always knew they would. So, what’s the problem?” He asked, even though he already knew.

“Shall we start with Liam? Who said that if I didn’t want to be with him in the fall, then we should just end things. Or maybe my mother who called me a blood traitor for not wanting to study here?” Her eyes got filled with tears and she sniffed turning her face from him.

“Your dad?” 

She gave a small chuckle, still looking away.

“That old bastard is the only one supporting anything I do”

“Do I need to remind you the hours you spent cockblocking me so I could be filling those forms with you?” He threw his napkin at her and her chuckle grew.

“I deserved your time more than that girl...” she turned to him and stick out her tongue.

He reached to her shoulder and pulled her closer to him, kissing the top of her head.

“Everything will be okay, York.”

They spent the next of his spare minutes looking at the ocean, its fierce waves washing the shore and crashing on the rocks, until Drake got up offering her his hand.

“Hey, I got to go now, don’t do anything stupid today okay?” 

“What are considering stupid in this scenario?” She blinked those blue eyes at him.

“York...” his warning tone made her chuckle.

“Hey, don’t worry, there will be Maddie’s afternoon tea, then I’ll go out shopping with Kiara and we’ll probably get a few drinks at Mounir’s.” She patted his shoulder and got on her tiptoes to kiss his cheek. “I’ll be fine.”

Yep. He knew she would get in trouble. So why was he surprised to be woken up by her call at 3 am?

“What, York?” He grunted, there was a loud noise in the background, she was definitely at a club.

“DO YOU REMEMBER THIS SONG??” She shouted to the phone, she was definitely drunk.

“Riley, where are you?” He rubbed his eyes sitting on the bed.

“I DON’T KNOW BUT THE MUSIC IS GREAT.”

“Is Lars waiting for you?”

“NO. I’M WITH THE BENTLEY”

Shit.

“Send me your location. Now!” He was already up looking for his pants, thanking god that he was alone in his room that night.

She hung up without saying anything else, but a few seconds after he got a message with her location, in five minutes he was already getting an Uber to her location, knowing that she would get in trouble if he asked to any of the drivers or guards about what happened, the air was heavy and he knew it would pour at any moment, he just hoped his driver was fast enough.

Despite the hour, there were still people in line to enter.

“Hey, respect the line!” Someone yelled at him.

But Drake didn’t pay attention, just showing his father’s ID from the Guard’s to the security guy who let him enter without a second glance, Bastien would kill him if he knew about this stunt.

Clubs weren’t his scene at all, the loud music blasting from everywhere, making the floor tremble, but there she was near the bar, like the spotlight followed her in her simple black dress, arms thrown in the air, completely ignoring the guy next to her.

Drake got closer and saw as the guy got closer to her.

“Time’s up, Cinderella!” He got between her and the guy.

“Drake!” She gave him a full drunk smile. “Come on dance with me!”

“Nuh uh” he shook his head. “We’re leaving, give me the keys”

She pouted.

“Don’t look at me like that, it’s almost 4 am and you owe me £15 for the Uber. Say bye to your friend.”

She scowled and waved to the perplexed guy sitting on the stool.

“Party pooper” she grunted.

 He just rolled his eyes and led her out, where the rain was pouring mercilessly on the ground, the line now dissipated, he got shivers thinking about her driving that drunk in the rain. He saw her Bentley parked on the VIP spots a few feet from them an turned back to her.

 “How can you not find your keys in that tiny purse of yours?”

 She glared at him pulling her pink key chain from inside her clutch, when he reached for it, she pulled it back laughing, again he reached for it and she hid her hand on her back, in one step her has so close he could see those hazy blue eyes mocking him up close.

 “If you don’t give me them, I’ll make you walk on the rain.” She blinked with those big fake lashes of her and grunted.

 “You’re no fun”

 He grabbed the fancy keys and ran on the rain to her car, bringing it to the stair where she wobbly walked down to the car.

 They sat in silence for a few minutes, Drake concentrated on the road and Riley fidgeting with her charms bracelet.

 “Thank you for picking me up, Kiara just disappeared with some guy and Madeleine didn’t even wanted to come because of this stupid social season” she rambled, propping one foot on the dash.

 “Don’t come to clubs with your car.” He scolded her. “You have a driver.”

 “You’re funnier than Lars.” She bit her lip to suppress a smile.

 “You just said I’m no fun” a smiled playing on his lips as she cracked a laugh.

 “So, you can imagine how Lars is”

 He chuckled at her remark, he knew he couldn’t stay mad at her, so he enjoyed that moment of laughter.

 Until a bright light blinded him.

 He remembered calling out her name and turning the wheel.

 He remembered the sound of the metal shrieking.

 Then, all was black.

 ***

AFTER

 Drake woke up in a jolt covered in sweat, feeling betrayed by his subconsciousness for making him dream about her.

 Maybe being in Valtoria caused it, as if she was a ghost haunting the place.

 It has been two years since he walked on her hospital room to find her gone, he went for a coffee outside and in 30 minutes her mother got her dispatched to a facility in Switzerland.

 Two year without a single word of her, of course he knew some things, she activated a new account on Instagram, of course Penelope would find that out and share with everyone, it took one ‘like’ from Kiara for the account to be shut down, but he learned about a trip to Thailand to teach English to the locals and, surprisingly, a job as a waitress in New York.

 Then more silence.

 If she didn’t want to be found, he chose to not be the one to look out for her.

The sun was about to rise, and he tried not to think about the countless time they watched it on her state, weather it was as drinking buddies or tangled naked in each other’s arms.

 His loud exhale resounded through his room and he was happy to have slept on the staff wing, so he wouldn’t have to run to her mother, an ever so unpleasant encounter.

 He didn’t know why he felt so moody today, maybe it was that enveloping and dense heat that anticipated a storm. Coffee in hand, he sat on the steps that led to the east garden of the estate, where he could see the menacing grey clouds gather in the horizon.

 The feeling of fur rubbing on his arms startled Drake, if there was something that could make his melancholy go, was that damned corgi.

 “Hey Chance!” the dog wiggled his but to him.

 Chance was the only companion that could make Drake smile on the first few months after Riley’s departure, at least the dog was something her mother was happy to give to him, he has been Drake’s companion ever since.

 Finishing his coffee, he calmly walked to the stables, with chance at his feet, today he would be busy with the last preparations for the upcoming competition, revising the documents, their files and taking care of the pregnant mare.

 I was well past lunch when his phone rang, and he couldn’t help the smirk as he saw the caller.

 “Hey, Cas”

 “Hey! How are you?” her cheerful voice filled his ears. “Has Lady Bitch been a bitch already?”

 “I’m fine, haven’t seen her since I got here, she’s probably at Fydelia. How about you?”

 “Oh, nothing special… Will you be back soon?” he knew she was eager for an answer, but Cassidy had set her mind on taking things very slow with him, his fame certainly preceded him.

 “Two more days, are you missing me already?” he smiled to himself knowing she would be blushing on the other side of the line.

 “You think so highly of yourself, don’t you?” she chuckled. “Oh, I almost forgot, Larry said we could at the bar in a few weeks.”

 “Great, now we can show the things we’ve been working on.” Drake threw his body back on his chair and added in a lower voice. “Can’t wait to be back rehearsing.”

 “I’m hanging up now, Drake Walker” embarrassment present in her tone. “Drive safely back.”

 “I will, see you in two days.”

 Drake threw his phone on the desk and tapped his fingers on the table, the thunders roaring closer and closer now. Cassidy was good to him, the lightness and simplicity that his life never had, he wouldn’t let a ghost ruin it, Riley was now just a memory locked inside of him.

 When the thick droplets started to punch the wood outside the barn, he decided to bury himself in work, in two days he would be out of Valtoria and his head would be back to normal. The rain was so loud outside he could hear Chance whimpering on the first floor, but he didn’t answer when Drake called.

 His phone rang again, now it was Liam, but the rain was making it almost impossible for him to hear.

 “Liam the signal is shit, I can’t hear a thing… no, I didn’t have time to scroll twitter, brother, I’m not the heir to the throne… what? Liam, man, I can barely hear a thing, who’s back?”

 The he heard the squeak of the wood steps to the second floor.

 “Drake can you hear me? I’m talking about her” he heard Liam through the phone, but he couldn’t quite figure his works.

 Because he was facing a ghost.

 There on the second step of the staircase, wearing faded jeans, a pair of sneakers and a hooded denim jacket; there with shoulder length damped chocolate hair and electric blue eyes; there stood Riley York.

***

Tagging:  @drakewalkerrosenberg; @agent-bossypants; @sleepwalkingelite; @silviasutton1989; @pug-bitch; @rtinaz; @ooo-barff-ooo; @likethetailofacomet; @notoriouscs; @mind-reader1; @annekebbphotography; @walkerismychoice; @tmarie82; @blackwidow2721; @thequeenchoices; @missameliep; @jovialyouthmusic; @perksof-everything; @choicesmacmakes @carabeth, @drakenazario; @drakesensworld; @moneyfordiamonds; @lynne1993; @ilovedrakewalker23, @choicesmacmakes.

[wheretwofacesmeet]

[likethetailofacomet]

Dance Again

Claire makes her debut at court and has an interesting conversation with his royal highness. 

(hey guys, no heartbreak in this one!) 

tagging: @sleepwalkingelite @zaffrenotes @nekkidmolerat @ooo-barff-ooo 

“Claire! Over here!” Maxwell was near the front of the entry hall, jumping up and down to be seen over the tops of people’s heads, waving his arms wildly.

Claire navigated the crowded entry way, weaving around noble ladies and their sponsors and advisors. It was like being afloat in a sea of gowns, each one more intricately detailed than the last. Looking around, she momentarily forgot her disappointment in the way things had been going since she landed in Cordonia, and she found herself smiling. The rich colors, the jewels, the beading and embroidery- she felt as though she were strolling through a fairy tale or a museum or a piece of art. She’d never seen a spectacle quite like this.

“Maxwell, “ she said breathlessly when she reached him, “this is amazing! I mean, it’s ridiculously over the top and extravagant and how could anyone live like this every day, but…” she looked around again, wide eyed, “but for tonight it’s beautiful.” A smile skipped across her red tinted lips.

Maxwell returns her smile with an even bigger grin. “And so are you! Look at you in that dress! Talk about wow. Liam’s eyes are going to drop out of his royal head when he sees you!”

Claire still hadn’t told Maxwell that she had no interest in pursuing Liam. It wasn’t that he wasn’t kind or handsome, and he could obviously provide for her and any family that they would have. It was that she couldn’t imagine living in this world of gowns and gold for the rest of her life. It was beautiful and charming now, but she could see how it could become strangling and suffocating, always stuffing herself into proper ballroom attire, worrying about which fork to use and if it will offend someone if she’s wrong, feeling pressure to have children so that the throne has an heir…it all seemed too much to wrap her brain around. She needed short skirts and city nights, hot summers at the shore. She needed jogs through the park and mornings wasted at coffee shops reading books and listening to music. She needed passion and freedom- she was an eagle, not a parakeet, she needed to fly free.  Changing the subject, she asked, “Who are all these women? Are they all Cordonian?”

“Well, most of them, yes.” He points to a tall, elegant but fiercely intimidating woman to their left. Her gown is red with black lace. Diamond encrusted swords dangle from her ears. “That’s Duchess Olivia Nevrakis of Lythikos. She’s an old childhood friend of Prince Liam’s and she can be…”Maxwell thinks for a way to describe Olivia accurately but delicately. “Sharp,” He comes up with, shrugging. Claire is pretty sure that she knows what he means. She watches as Olivia snaps at her advisor with a scowl.

“Those two ladies standing together are Lady Penelope and Lady Kiara,” he nods his head towards a thin, pale woman with jet black hair tucked into an intricate bun, and a shorter, olive skinned woman with supermodel curves. The olive skinned woman turned towards them and Claire was taken aback by her exotic beauty. “Penelope, the taller one, is the daughter of the Duke and Duchess of Portavira and Kiara is the daughter of Cordonia’s most well respected diplomat and one of our most famed artists. She speaks seven languages.” Claire considered the two women as they chatted jovially to one another. They seemed friendly, at least, and hardly as intimidating as Olivia.

“Over there in the pink dress is Lady Hana Lee. She’s not Cordonian, like you. Her father is an important businessman in Beijing, China. I don’t know much about her, but I’ve heard she’s one of the most talented and well educated ladies to ever come to court.” Hana seemed to be the only other one there who looked as wide-eyed as Claire was. She had a warm smile on her face and her eyes looked genuinely kind. Claire hadn’t had any close female friends in years, but something instantly told her that Hana would be a friend to her. It was oddly comforting, even if they hadn’t met yet.

“And then there’s me, daughter of no one and purveyor of fine burgers and beers,” Claire joked.

“Hey, I meant it when I said I thought you could shake this place up, Claire, and not just in a party way.”

“Oh, really? And in what other way were you thinking?”

“You shouldn’t discount the importance of having a real, down to earth everyday kind of person here at court to balance things out. That’s part of why Liam treasures his friendship with Drake so much. He keeps him grounded and reminds him to think about the common civilians as well as the politically driven nobles. He’s always eager to get involved with disaster relief, community outreach, that sort of thing, he just hates all of the glitz. Don’t tell Drake I told you that, though. If he found out I was tainting his reputation as an uncaring brute, he’d not be too happy with me.” He winked.

Claire frowned. “Why is Drake so…” she trailed off trying to find the right word.

“Grumpy? Difficult? Surly? Cantankerous?” Maxwell rattled off synonyms.

“All of the above,” Claire said with an eye roll in a deflated voice.

Maxwell shrugged. “He keeps to himself a lot. Not a big sharer. I know he’s been through a lot because Liam has told me as much, but that is the extent of what I know. Grumpy kind of suits him, though. He’s got the eyebrows for it.”

Claire felt a flash of empathy for the dark, brooding man. She could understand better than most what it was like to have a past that wouldn’t let go of its hold on the present. It seemed as though he had more layers than she thought, and she wondered what more she might learn about him by peeling them back. Stop it, Claire. Don’t go looking for something that isn’t there, she told herself.

Somewhere inside the ballroom a herald had started to announce some of the suitors. Claire watched as Duchess Olivia stalked past her with a confident smile, her head held high making her seem even taller than she was. She greeted the Prince jovially; Claire could see them laughing and smiling but she couldn’t make out what they were saying. A few more ladies were announced and before Claire realized what was happening, she heard her own name called as though through a tunnel. Maxwell nudged her shoulder. “Hey, Lady Berkley, you’re on!”

Claire felt hundreds of eyes on her as she entered the room, all of them trying to determine who she was and how big a threat to their daughters and sisters and nieces she was. Focusing her attention on not tripping in the tight gown, she made her way to the other end of the room where a surprised Liam stood. He was wearing a black suit adorned with the sashes and crests of the Cordonian nobility, and a bemused smirk that twinkled in his soft blue eyes. “Claire? Is that you?” he asked, when she finally reached him.

“Your highness,” she smiled and dipped into what she hoped was a respectful curtsey, though her movement was limited by her gown.

“Lady Claire, while I am pleased to see you again, I do admit that I am rather confused. You’re here to partake in the social season?”

“Yes, House Beaumont is sponsoring me. I know realistically that I’m not really princess material,” she said, “but Maxwell seemed to think that I’d quote, shake things ups a bit, end quote.” She made air quotations and gave him a playful smile.

Liam laughed heartily. “If our night out in New York was any indicator of what your time here will be, I would agree with Maxwell. But Lady Claire, I do have to tell you something and I hope you won’t take it the wrong way…” Claire noticed Liam’s eyes scanning the crowd behind her as though looking for someone. Suddenly the sound of heels clicking on the marble floor behind her made Claire realize that another suitor was approaching, and their time was up. “I’ll find you later, M’lady. We have something to discuss.” With that he kissed her hand and she took her place among the other ladies.

Once all of the suitors had been announced and had greeted the prince in turn, King Constantine made his opening remarks, welcoming them all and sharing his hope that this will be a pleasant and fortuitous social season. Applause followed the King as he left the podium, and the floor officially opened with Prince Liam escorting Duchess Olivia out for a dance.

“Olivia is so lucky,” Lady Hana piped up beside Claire. “The Prince honors her with the first dance.”

“Oui, as Lady Olivia is the highest ranking suitor, it is only proper for her to open the floor.” Kiara explained. “The prince will dance with all of us, Cherie, do not fret.”

Penelope turned to face Claire. “It looked like you and the Prince knew one another, Lady Claire. May I ask how?”

“Penelope!” Kiara gasped, “It is not good form to ask such assumptive questions of another lady at court!” the shock on Kiara’s face almost made Claire burst out with laughter.

“It’s fine, really,” Claire assured an embarrassed Penelope. “I actually met Prince Liam when he came to my bar on the night of his bachelor party.” The puzzled looks on the other ladies faces made Claire go on. “Er... I was his server, and then we went to the beach. Maxwell tracked me down the next morning and now here I am.” She shrugged.

“So you truly aren’t nobility?” Penelope asked. Kiara shaking her head next to her friend, an exasperated look on her face as she gave up on trying to teach Penelope courtly expectations and manners.

“Not unless I missed the memo,” Claire responded.

“How exciting this all must be for you!” Lady Hana exclaimed.

“It’s certainly been…different.”

Just then the song that had been playing came to a close, and Liam made his way over to the group of ladies. “He’s coming this way!” Penelope squeaked. Kiara covertly elbowed her.

“Ladies,” he greeted their group with a bow, to which they all bent their heads and curtsied. “Lady Claire, would you be so kind?” the glint in his eye suggested that he would use their time on the dance floor twofold.

“I would be honored, your highness.” She smiled back and took his arm.

Out on the dancefloor it occurred to Claire that she had no idea how to ballroom dance. A panicked look crossed her eyes making Liam chuckle. “Just follow my lead,” he said. She relaxed and did as she was told and, unsurprisingly, Liam lead her gracefully through the dance.

“You said we needed to discuss something?” Claire said after finally feeling comfortable with the steps.

“Yes indeed. Lady Claire, while I am rather happy to have you here for the social season, and while I do firmly agree with Lord Maxwell that your good hearted presence could be good for Cordonia, I have to tell you that there can be nothing more than friendship between us.”

“Liam, you don’t have to explain. I already know that you need to consider your country when picking your queen, and for what it’s worth I think I would be a terrible queen.” She smiled to show him that she was not upset by his words.

Liam returned her smile with a soft one of his own. “I’m not so sure you’d be terrible, however there is another reason why I cannot choose you.”

Claire winced. She knew that being a commoner and one from another country to boot diminished her chance with the prince. This didn’t bother her, as she hadn’t wanted a chance with him, not romantically, anyway. But this didn’t mean that she wanted to hear a full blown list of reasons why Liam couldn’t lower himself to her level.

“It’s because my best friend in the world is falling for you, Lady Claire, and while I find you rather alluring and exciting, I would never betray Drake that way. He is like a brother to me.”

Claire’s mouth dropped open. “Drake?” she questioned. “All due respect, your highness-“

“Please, I feel that I will be counting you among my close friends soon. When it’s just us, please just call me Liam.”

“Okay, all due respect, Liam, I think you must be out of your mind. Drake has been nothing but sour and rude since I got here.” She frowned.

“You’ve seen him, then?”

Claire let out a breath. “Yes. And Liam, I have a confession to make too. I could never be your queen, not just because of who I am or where I’m from, but because that is not what I came to Cordonia for.” She bit her lip nervously. “I came here for Drake…though now he doesn’t seem to want anything to do with me. He won’t even let me explain that I am not here to chase your crown.”

Liam’s eyebrows flew up and he chuckled.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to make you feel reduced to your headwear,” she shrugged and he laughed again.

“No need to apologize. You’re hardly the only one to remind me of the motives of many. Now, as far as Drake is concerned, I am not out of my mind,” he paused to give her an amused look. “I happen to know that he was planning on returning to New York after the social season to see you.”

Claire felt a rush of warmth flood her cheeks, her throat tighten, her knees buckle. “What?” she whispered in disbelief.

“The morning we left New York I pulled it out of him. But Claire, Drake has been through quite a lot of heartache in his life, I’m afraid.” A sad look crossed his normally neutral features. “He’s a tough book to crack but I promise that you won’t find a better read on this Earth. Under his prickly exterior he has a good heart. He’s a loyal friend and a decent man in a world of intentions and motives. I will do everything I can to help you reach him. I think you could be exactly what he needs.” Liam spun her outwards, the ballroom flashing before her eyes. As if the world were moving in slow motion she caught a glimpse of him standing at the bar, and for the most fleeting of moments their eyes met. Claire felt a lock open inside her chest as everything she pushed down from the night before came rushing back. Drake’s eyes seemed to soften for a fraction of a second before Liam was spinning her back into his arms as the dance came to an end.

“Lady Claire,” he kissed her hand platonically. “It was a pleasure dancing with you. I hope to see you on the floor again soon, perhaps showing Drake how to dance again.”

[chibinightowl]

18 "you're my favorite muse" TimDami

I had fun with this one. 😊😊

~*~

It could be said that a renowned painter like Prince Damian never lacked for inspiration. He traveled far and wide, from the sands of Arabia, to the shores of the New World. Countless treasures sat on display in his palace, each one more incredible than the next.

But despite this common belief, the Prince did indeed suffer. And when he suffered, there was only person who could reignite his passion.

“We must find Lord Timothy,” the Prince’s most loyal servants whispered after they spied their prince alternately moping and cursing before his canvas. “He is always able to help.”

A quiet summons was sent out into the countryside with a desperate plea. Ten days later, Lord Timothy arrived.

He marched unannounced into the royal quarters and stared impassively at the Prince.

Damian lay sprawled over a chaise, a small book in hand and a scowl on his handsome face. He glanced over at his friend. “I don’t recall sending for you.”

“No, you didn’t,” Timothy replied, taking in the sight of his lord. He appeared put together, but it was clear he hadn’t shaved yet today and that he had not been sleeping well, not with the dark smudges beneath his eyes. “Colin sent for me. Said you were in one of your moods again.”

Damian sniffed disdainfully. “Colin thinks too much.” But there was an undercurrent of fondness in his voice. The red headed valet was the most loyal of servants and only did what he thought was in the Prince’s best interest. In this case, he was right, not that Damian would ever tell him.

He set down his book and rose gracefully to stand before Timothy. The lord stood almost a full handspan shorter than the Prince, but he never let the taller man (or any man, for that matter) intimidate him. Crystalline blue eyes gazed stonily up at him and Damian smirked, running the tip of his finger over Timothy’s firm mouth.

“I am glad you are here,” he whispered.

Timothy parted his lips and gently drew the digit within his warm depths. His eyes blazed with contained fire, just like the drake on his family’s crest. “I will always come for you.”

Damian closed the distance between them, and his mouth closed over those warmly soft lips. For the first time in months, he felt alive, invigorated, his passions excited. He tugged his lover down onto the chaise, unwrapping him from the confines of his road stained clothing, and prepared him for worship.

Afterwards, Damian strode across his room to collect his long abandoned sketch pad and his charcoal pencils. He returned to where Timothy lay, sleepy and sated, upon a brilliant field of blue.

His own fires reignited, Damian started to draw, broad lines at first, but each one becoming recognizable as the bare figure resting before him.

“Will you ever tire of me?” Timothy commented after a time.

“Never, my Beloved. You are my favorite muse. I only wish I could keep you by my side forever.”

[last-on-your-lips]

So about leaping into the sky and roaring... most dragons will do that as a challenge. I happened to be a particularly large dragon, and the drakes I was faced with were a flag three strong about the size of my mouth. According to what Mum had taught me that meant these were probably juveniles, most drakes, wyverns and serpents would have been roughly large enough to latch onto my face in my newly erupted body. My vastly empty new mental space filed all this away behind ‘don’t let them see Mum’ and ‘juveniles probably have protective parents’. Both utterly helpful while mum was below me hissing that I needed to land back down because this territory belonged to other dragons, it was prime nesting terrain and I could anger a nest. 

“Faern! Bloody... You can’t just go around roaring! Get back down here- oh I hear them now. Faern when we get you back to normal I’m going to make the worst mushroom stew and make you eat it. Get down here and pick me up we both need to go!” Her instructions seemed sound, don’t get me wrong, but the instincts you have as a human are as easy as ‘eat, sleep, mischief’. If I had wanted to do any of those I would probably have been able to make my body go where I told it to be. Instead I lashed my tail against one of the monolithic trees hard enough to split a branch off and spook mum quiet. I’d eat mushrooms for that later.

Thankfully it didn’t seem the small drakes had heard her by the time they came to perch on trees well out of my reach, massive yellow eyes studying my unusual expression and... admiring my ability to make myself hover. I recognized quickly that part of dragon to dragon communication must be magic, conversing by thoughts? No. Through horns. I could tell what they meant by the signals in their horns. I scrambled to figure out how to share my intentions and confusion through the new growths on my head, and panic mounted into the young drakes at the cacophonous effort of how complex and still yet incomplete my communication managed to be.

I stopped trying to transpond through my horns when they began scrambling backwards, instead opting to bellow and whine pitifully, latching myself onto one of the trees and tucking my wings with my feet planted to the ground and my head left peeking over the treeline. Mum wisely moved and tucked herself under me, the grip of one of her surprisingly strong hands pinching under a scale to tell me where she was.

_You are lost-new. Why are you in our forest?_ The first coherent communication came from further away, the mother of the juveniles. I could see by the glow in the young ones horns and eyes she was alarmed enough to overwhelm her children and speak through them. Even so, this gave me words I could imitate back and figure out my horns with. _Lost in forest. New. New. New. You?_ A struggling mimicry, and I indicated her three young as new before I flung my attention further, seeking her out through the skies. Much like a confused youth, she thought. This perplexed her enough I could sense her rising to leave their den. _No! No-new. Lost in forest._

The thing I should have known about mothers, having one of my own, was that this one was coming whether I liked it or not. My protest in fact made her move faster to evacuate her den, and I saw her many colored wings bloom out of a cavern few leagues away over the border into proper dragon country. Her nestlets quickly backtracked as I watched her rise up to get a view of me, and I saw them vanish into their den before she swooped to replace them, balancing on two-clawed feet upon the branches her little ones had occupied. I noted she was a particularly slender and graceful type of drake, narrow faced and tufted in white feathers at the crest, chest and tail. A Fisherman’s Friend, these were called by humans. Potentially not a threat to my mum, these were known to enjoy human company along the southern coast.

_You are not-new, but lost-new. And you are a Dragon, who were your Sire and Carrier?_ Her tone became more perplexed, and I could tell she didn’t intend for me to answer this question as I stared blankly from my shied pose. _Dragons rare from the human lands. Humans kill, steal magic from their bones. Only the oldest of Wyvern and Serpent go where the humans kill, Rhaekson and Urthylo were last drakes, your Sire and Carrier?_

I gave a hesitant chirp of affirmation, still tightly tucked under the tree and hiding my mum by wing and tail. There had apparently been some fame among dragons for my ill-fated parents.

_Human born Dragon. You are New!_ An eruptive cry and warble from the drake, her feathers fanning out in excitement as she bowed her front down and wavered her tail behind open wings. _First Human born Dragon for many sheds, born of Lost Prince Rhaekson and Killed Queen Urthylo. They died humans on Dragon shores! Fought about you!_

Somewhere within her broken human dialect I was coming to understand that my own relationship to gender-as-humans-defined-it was not going to be unusual among the scaly kind. I also was going to have to admit to my Mum she had been right, and my birth parents had died fighting over custody of me. What I wasn’t ready for, after such friendly introduction, was the next question from the excitable drake.

_Who is the dragon-friend below?_ And she showed me the image of my Mother’s heat and scent where it was huddled against my leg, not hidden at all from the array of senses any drake might possess.

_Not dragon-friend. Like you for the made-new._ Using what few words I had I gave a frustrated flap of my wings. _Carrier._ _Then she is Dragon-Friend of us!_ Cheerful, and down she swooped into the clearing, scurrying under my body as I staggered back and let loose a frustrated grunt. Back to all four feet as I could hear she had permitted her mate and her young to come out and join us under the canopy. Fisherman’s Friend, indeed. These small beasts were all too eager to show themselves to my baffled Mum.

“What are they doing?” A simple question posed to me when the whole little flock was present and she was buried under three purring young drakelings.

“They have decided you are their friend because you are my Mum. You are now Dragon-Friend Talin, congratulations.” From where I had settled down into a heap to rest just away from the commotion of the young, watching quietly as these fierce and capable wild drakes played with all the familiarity of lifelong companions to us. I was full of more questions than I had been, and it must have shown in my demeanor and my horns. 

“Proper Dragons are rare now, Liege Faern. They breed far in the wilds of Hocrayle, and most have lost the adaptations that let them become human.” Spoken in near perfect human from the Sire, and my attention was gathered and focused. “I served Queen Urthylo, and my family have the human gene as well. I chose to live as a drake when your Sire-Queen... your father, excuse me... perished in the fight with your Carrier, Rhaekson. Forgive me if I speak out of turn, it has been nearly three decades since I was among humans.”

“Is this the reception we can expect from all of dragon kind now?” Mum beat me to the query, still visibly enjoying the pile of weight and purring on top of her.

“No, I’m sorry. Although Liege Faern is long awaited among us, the opinions of the lower Drakes, Wyverns and Serpents differ about their purpose among us. Many of the smaller species will not outright challenge a dragon. What humans call ‘hybrids’ are what we consider to be the true Dragons among us, you are larger, your magics are more powerful, and you possess more skills than any purebred lesser.” He spoke with the careful diction of a scholar and I could see my Mum contemplating dozens of questions she shouldn’t ask a married man or a scholar. “You are also in more danger than any of us, because you are more valuable to the human mages and alchemists. Surely you know this, of course, your Dragon-Friend Talin is afflicted by a Dragon’s Draught.”

[heartslogos]

newfragile yellows [27]

Frederic can’t help but gape as he stares up at the high arching ceiling of the cavern of the Inquisition’s main military base. Pelts and long tapestries emblazoned with the Inquistion’s eye, Fereldan and Orlesian heraldy, symbols from the Free Marches to Antiva and Nevarra and Par Vollen and everyone in between hanging from the stone as dragons hang and twist and glide between them like leaves on trees.

“Amazing, is it not?” Leliana says, “Different from our research center and our main negotiation hall.”

“Yes,” Frederic admits, “I didn’t realize - I knew the Inquisition had gathered dragons of all sorts to fly their banners, but I didn’t - “

“It’s hard to grasp the scope, I know,” Leliana laughs, “Don’t worry. Most people look the same when they first come here. Most of those who bear our mark are here, after all - watching and maintaining our dragons. Have you met Lavellan, yet?”

“The Lavellan nests here?” Frederic asks, unable to keep the awe out of his voice. The stone - cut smooth and worn shiny through magic and means - trembles under their feet. Both he and Leliana turn in time to see the Iron Bull landing with his flight.

The huge wyvern shakes moisture off of himself, the sound of his body and wings moving seems to rumble through Frederick’s jaw as the Iron Bull makes his way into the main docking bay, silently dipping his shoulder to one side to allow his passengers to slide off.

The wyvern straightens up, the sharp points of his broad crest puncture the air as he raises his head, large jaws parting just enough to let out a low call.

His flight disperses, some lowering themselves onto the ground to allow for supplies to be unloaded from their backs, others pushing off the floor and back into the sky to seek out their fellows among the tapestries and caves.

The Iron Bull looks in their direction and begins to walk towards them.

Frederic is used to the Iron Bull and his flight, he’s seen them plenty of times in the Inquisition’s Hall of Scholars.

The Iron Bull is still fascinatingly intimidating - from his one eye and his half-missing left fore claw to the deep scars that run across his hide.

“Just in time,” Leliana says, “Bull, Frederic hasn’t met Lavellan yet. Could you call her?”

Bull makes a sound like a low laugh, a creaking and rumbling sort of vibration. He walks over them, neither of their heads even come so much as feet within touching his underbelly.

Leliana flashes a smile, “Come. She’s Evelyn’s favorite dragon, did you know that?”

“I was under the impression that she was everyone’s favorite,” Frederic admits.

The Iron Bull rumbles above them and Leliana’s smile grows, “Good answer. I already had a feeling that she’d like you, but this just seals it.”

They walk across the wide cavern and through a large hole into an open landscape. It’s only accessible from the sky and through the cavern to the main dock that Frederic can tell.

Several dragons are sunning themselves or sleeping on the rocky crevices that line the steep walls that encircle the large lagoon.

The edge closest to them looks shallow, but Frederick can’t tell where the bottom is as it gets further out towards the opposite side.

A dark red and brown drake with elegant horns and a very noble sort of look about him glances up at them as they pass and lets out a low sort of croon.

Bull flicks his tail in response.

“Dorian doesn’t like to share sometimes,” Leliana says.

“That’s the Dorian?” Dragons that can use magic aren’t as uncommon as you would think considering they can’t use staves or take lyrium, but dragons that do actively create spells and use them are. Dorian is one of the few dragons that Frederic knows of - in recent history - that not only uses spells but also has invented several and deigned to share them with the rest of the world.

Bull stops walking at the edge of the lake and lets out a low, deep, ear-shaking call.

The water ripples and Dorian’s wings spread just a little and flap in irritation at being disturbed. A few other dragons blink themselves out of their mid-morning naps to look at them before settling back down to sleep.

The water continues to ripple and within moments a pearly head breaks the surface, and starts to come towards them, rising out of the waters as she arrives.

Lavellan trills out, the lace and flower-petal like fins of her crest fanning out behind her head as her neck rises above the water. Bull lets out another low croon and his neck stretches out over the shore towards her.

Soon enough, Lavellan is in the shallows and she reaches out with her left claw comes out of the water, catching at the shallows - the large translucent and beautiful fan of her wing arching out and catching rainbows in the light - dragging her onto shore.

Frederick can’t help but stare at the obvious and painful looking imbalance of it.

He had heard - she was so beautiful before the battle that took both Evelyn’s and her right arm. When she glided through the sky she looked like silk, they said, and when she swam in clear and shallow water, she was a dream.

Frederic examines the right side of Lavellan’s body, the stump almost to the shoulder where they had to cut off the infection, and the black scar tissue that crawls its way onto her body like lightning. She seems to have compensated well if she’s still capable of swimming - then again, her body is made for the water, with or without the large fan-like wings.

But it doesn’t seem to cause her pain, which is good.

Lavellan slowly drags herself onto the rocky shore, left claw pulling as the rest of her body snakes out of the water, long neck arching upwards to touch her nose to the Iron Bull’s.

Both their eyes slit closed as they hum in pleasure. Lavellan’s scales glow an almost rosy pink.

A third dragon spirals down, landing next to Lavellan, immediately pushing himself underneath her right side to even her out.

Lavellan croons turning to nuzzle her head against the new dragon’s pale white and green head.

“Since the war, Cole’s taken to helping her whenever she’s on dry land,” Leliana says, “He’s normally quite shy around strangers but this seems to be helping him socialize more.”

Cole, the silent wind. During the war he was one of the Inquisition’s deadliest fliers.

“Lavellan, this is Frederic,” Leliana calls out, drawing Lavellan’s attention down to them. The Iron Bull moves away from them, going over to a large empty rock to presumably sun himself.

Lavellan and Cole edge a little closer to them, Lavellan’s long neck bending and curving down to bring her head down to a closer height.

“Hello,” Frederic says, “I am a draconologist, Inquisitor Trevelyan asked me to come here from the Hall of Scholars.”

Lavellan cocks her head, turning it so that she can look at him fully through one, inky black eye.

“She thought that perhaps with Dagna I could help,” Frederic says.

Lavellan makes a slow clicking sound.

“She misses flying with you,” Frederic adds on, remembering the way Evelyn’s voice softened and how her expression grew distant.

(Don’t get me wrong, our dragons are all great flyers down to the very last one of them. But flying with Lavellan - flying with Lavellan meant so much to me. Her judgement and her instincts helped me so many times.)

Lavellan’s fins flatten a little, drooping and the white tints to a gray metallic blue.

“Would you allow me to try and help you?” Frederic asks.

He does not say that for many, the sight of Evelyn astride Lavellan’s back in the sky - silk and dreams - has become something of a beacon of hope and the impossible.

He does not need to.

Lavellan hums lowly and then her scales begin to glitter gold.

Yes.

[rachelclewis]

The Birds and the Beasts

               I like running in Sugarhouse park for a number of reasons.  I know that two laps plus the interior driveway into the parking lot equals one 5k.  I also appreciate the difficulty.  There are two good hills in the circuit – four total.  It hurts but it is a good workout.  I love it.  Especially in spring when the baby ducks are out.  The cuteness is a good distraction from the burning calves.  Usually.

               Recently, however, as I approached the first hill I noticed a… what? A cluck of ducks? That’s probably not right.  But there were five mallards off to the right on the grassy hill, which is the wrong side of the road.  The pond is in the center of the park, off to my left as I run counter-clockwise around the loop.

               Something about their behavior seemed strange and I turned to watch them.  There were four males and one female.  If you are wondering how I know a male mallard from a female mallard, they are easy to differentiate.  They are similar in shape but the males have bright green heads and with white collars where the throat starts to widen into the body.  Females are slightly smaller and are mostly spotty brown but with bright blue patches on their wings.

               One of the males had a splotch of white on his mostly green neck and another white blob on his body, like someone had thrown bleach on him.  Or like a watercolor painting that is nearly complete but not quite. This means he is a mixed species duck – part mallard and part white duck.  There is a duck like this that lives in my boyfriend’s neighborhood.  We saw him one morning and I said, “We should call mutt ducks ‘mucks.’”  He didn’t laugh.  I reminded him that it was still early and I hadn’t had any coffee yet.  “I mean I’m not saying it’s an A plus joke,” I pressed him at the time.  “Clearly it’s B work.  But seriously… nothing?”

               I was rethinking my evaluation as I ran in the park and decide he was right.  I was downgrading the joke to a C plus – B minus at best – but before I could finish the thought, the one female in the cluck made a sudden turn and darted out into the road with the three males chasing closely behind.

               There was a car but it was able to stop just in time.  The female kept running and crossed the road in front of me with the males closing in on her.  The fastest one caught up with her as she stumbled over the curb on the pond side of the road. Before she could pull herself up onto the grass, he clamped his beak on her thin neck and twisted it awkwardly to the side as he scaled her back. The muck and the other two males gathered around, waiting their turn.

               I can’t claim to have had a clear impulse to do anything in the moment.  And yet I had many impulses – layers and layers of considerations that lodged in my gut like an onion swallowed whole.  I spent the rest of the run peeling it and contemplating the pungent concerns as I carved deeper into it.

               It certainly occurred to me – maybe a few paces down the path – that I should go back and rescue her.  I could chase the males off, couldn’t I?  Or would I just scatter them temporarily?  Then they would resume as soon as I got back on my way, with that female or the next one they saw.

               I remembered what I’ve read about duck copulation before.  Specifically, I recall reading about the roughness of the males. Witnessing it was certainly more brutal than I imagined while reading about it.  Still… this was “natural,” right?

               Then I remembered my friend Meg telling a story about a pair of ducks rogering around the grass on the day of her wedding.  I remember she was disturbed by it, but her sister had said, “no, ducks fucking are good luck!”

               “Duck fuck, good luck, duck fuck, good luck…” I repeated to the rhythm of my running pace as I fought my way up hill number one.  This helped for a moment, but I kept picturing the awkward angle of the ducks neck as the drake held her down, pushing her throat into the grass.  And then I remembered something else that I read about ducks as I crested the hill.  “What was it?”  I asked my brain.  “Something about the fact that the penis is corkscrew shaped?  For some gawdawful reason?”

               As my shoes slapped down the declining side of the hill the shock wore off and I suddenly realized that I had witnessed something intense and violent.  “What is wrong with me!?  Why didn’t I help her?” I yelled at myself. “What about SISTERHOOD?”

               With a pang I remembered that one of the reasons I run in this park was the baby ducks.  “Is there anything cuter than a baby mallard? Now I know where they come from. I guess it’s evolved that way for a reason?  Corkscrew cocks and all?  Otherwise, no more mallards.”

               The trail was leveling out and I realized that I was justifying my inaction using the old ‘means to an ends’ trope.  “Who am I? I sound like Rick Santorum, telling rape victims to ‘make the best of a bad situation.’”  

               I tried to banish the image of the other drakes – the slower ones – forming a jumbled and impatient line as I approached the steep raise of hill number two.  That article I read didn’t say anything about gang rape. I was not prepared for that.

               “I’m not heartless,” I told myself as I fought the gravity asserting its full force on my calves. “I am impartial.  Like a documentary film maker.  I am here to observe and learn, not to judge or intervene.” On the steepest part of the hill, my pace slowed to a run just slower than a walk and I started to lose track of where my legs ended and where the sidewalk began.  “I am Sigournie Weaver,” I declared.  “Narrating with my soft as suede voice as an arctic wolf gnaws on the leg of a still struggling baby caribou.”

               I crested the hill but continue walking, trying to catch my breath.  “Except Sigournie Weaver wasn’t actually there,” I remembered. “I am the dude who keeps filming when the shit goes down.  The one I always scream at.  ‘Put the camera down and throw the polar bear a damned fish!  Don’t you know what climate change is doing to them?!’”  I picked up speed and made my way toward the downward slope on the West side of the park.

               I told myself that if the ducks were still there when I made it back to the scene of the crime I would intervene.  I rounded the corner and searched the grass and the shore of the pond, but they were gone. “Maybe she got away?”  I thought about her waddling at full speed out in front of the car.  Was that intentional?  Escape through frantic suicide?

               Slogging up hill number three it occurred to me that she ran, but she didn’t fly.  “Why didn’t she fly?  Maybe it is all part of the mating ritual. Play hard to get but not too hard to get.”  I was starting to feel better and I repeated the mantra from the previous trudge up this hill.  “Duck fuck, good luck, duck fuck, good luck…”  I played through the scene in my head again.  “She certainly looked like she was desperate to get away, but it must not have been with a full heart, or she would have flown.  Right?”

               “Oh Christ,” I thought as I crested the hill.  “Did I just make the duck equivalent of the ‘look what she’s wearing’ argument?”  I was flying down the back of the hill, hating myself with every step.

               I remembered then that I had been driving passed this same park the week before when all the traffic came to a stop for no apparent reason.  Once I was close enough I saw that there was a pair of mallards in the center of the six lane street, herding a half dozen babies up the median with the female leading the parade and the male bringing up the rear.  This is one of the things I love about mallards. They always seem to make such cute couples.  

               Another time, years ago, I was driving through another part of Sugarhouse and I saw the carcass of a female mallard to the side of the road and a male standing watch over her lifeless body.  You will see this from time to time.  They seem to be very devoted.  I used to think monogamous, “or at least they stay partnered for the mating season?”  Suddenly I wasn’t sure.  “I’ll have to look that up, I guess.”

               It was the last hill and I could see where this was going.  I told myself to skip the scene which was obviously coming.  The one where I berate myself for letting the male off the hook” because they make such cute dads, after all.”  

               Utah was in the news that same week because a judge had praised a former LDS bishop as a “good man” as he sentenced him to life in prison while his victims sat in the courtroom.   “Great men do bad things,” he said.  I was outraged when I read it in the paper.  

               “Not going there,” I thought.  “Just, not even going to do it.”  But it was too late.  I felt no better – no more ‘woke’ – than that judge.  I used my self-loathing as fuel to get me up the last hill and onto the flat stretch along the north side of the park.  Just one more downhill and then the turn into the center of the park where my car was parked.

               I finished the last stretch and I asked myself if my real problem is that I’m too disconnected from the natural world.  The real one, not the artificial landscaped park meant to look something like nature that I conveniently touch base with on my lunch breaks.  It isn’t the same thing, despite the occasional wild encounter.  “Has urban living made me so soft that I cannot bear witness the brutality of the real world?  Or has it made me too hard in some way? Has my voracious consumption of liberal punditry turned me into a habitual moralizer, constantly monitoring of my thoughts for traces of ignorance, and leaving me unable to make sense of what is around me without anthropomorphizing?”

               I dug the key to my Toyota out of my sweaty sports bra and I flopped down into the driver’s seat. It was the most exhausting three miles I have ever run.

               “I am a bad person, a bad feminist, and I will never look at a baby duck the same way again. Fuzzy little fuckers.”

               I turned the key and steered my car onto the park road.  There was one thing I did feel I understood as I worked my way back around the loop toward the exit.  “The next time I am yelling at a nature show because the photographer is so cold hearted as to just stand there and film while the wild dogs surround the limpy gazelle, I will remember this outing in the park and I will tell myself to go to hell.”

#�\�Nwr