#I will brave the mosquitoes for space | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

virgorisingmusic · 1 year

Text

princess bed dome

A friend gave me their unwanted bed canopy a few weeks ago at a yard sale. I was excited because I hadn’t had one since I was young. The one I had was bright pink and was quickly torn apart by my new kitten at the time, Levi’s.

I’ve been loving sleeping with my new canopy closed. Being surrounded by its opulent waves of white mesh makes me feel like I’m in a princess safety dome; it reminds me of when I’d sleep in my parents’ bed as a child. I’d snuggle close beside them and imagine an invisible dome that stretched from the headboard to the footboard of the bedframe. I felt safe inside the impregnable dome - like my feet could hang out the end of the blanket and nothing hiding under the bed could grab them.

My bed reminds me of the almost-against-city-bylaws screen house my parents are building in the backyard. I came up with this comparison when I was in bed the other night and heard a bone-tingling BUZZ coming from somewhere in my room. I knew it couldn’t have been a cute bug, so I was hesitant to investigate. I eventually peeked through the tiny holes of the mesh and saw a long, black, beetle-like bug struggling to fly up the wall beside my bookshelf. I’m brave in some ways, but I’m just a scared baby in situations like this. Dealing with bugs is for Mama and Lauren. I honestly don’t think I’ve asked any other groups of people for bug help. Lauren wasn’t around, so I had to call in Peggy Sue. I phoned her (she was in bed) and begged for her help. In a quick, “Be right there,” she was at my door.

I’m so sorry to say this, but she did kill him. He was a good bug, I know this. Google told me it was a masked hunter bug and they only bite to protect themselves. He didn’t know he was interrupting my night - he was just looking for some dinner! He probably would’ve eaten a mosquito if I asked him too - if I spoke bug, or if he spoke English. I only would’ve asked him if we had a good vibe going. He was special in his own disgusting way, so in his honour, I’m going to share some interesting facts about him with you.

He ate bed bugs, carpet beetles, termites, lacewings, woodlice, millipedes and more.

When he was young, he was covered in itsy-bitsy hairs that caught dust and dirt. This would help him camouflage and make him tricky to spot.

He had a toxin in his freaky little needle mouth that paralyzed and liquefied his prey.

Most people don’t have a screen around their bed that protects them from assassin bugs, but I do. I was scared, but not as scared as I would’ve been if I wasn’t in the safety of my canopy. I could’ve slept in there all night - safe from his bite.

My room is my personal space, but inside my canopy is my personal-personal space. I pick away at books and nibble my nighttime snacks inside my canopy. I toss around at night until my blanket and canopy are intertwined on my leg like a pretzel or a braid. Inside my dome, I anonymously view the Instagram stories of my ex-work-place that blocked me on social media when I quit. I also think about a lot of things in there, like how stupid I looked at the photo lab when I didn’t know I was supposed to bring a USB to transfer my photos onto, that one person, that other person, how I think I misquoted someone from A Doll’s House in my yearbook quote (was it Nora or Dr. Rank?) but I’ll never know because I never bought any of my yearbooks.

Bus shelters also remind me of being in my canopy, except they are less regal and block more wind than a canopy ever could. I don’t usually do this, but I sat in one the other day while I waited for the 18 after work. I didn’t think about much while I waited there because I was saving my big juicy thoughts for the bus. The bus is where I let most of my suppressed thoughts from the day flow into my brain.

Here are some of my thoughts from my Tuesday bus ride:

I don’t think the man crossing the street knew his steps were at the same tempo as the bus’s turning signal.

A dead, squashed mosquito is on the window and bread crumbs are on the floor. I accidentally put my bag down on the bread crumbs and I feel a lot of regret.

The person I saw in a car moments ago

I don’t want anyone to sit beside me, but the bus is packed and I don’t want to be rude by putting my bag down on the next seat.

The air conditioning is blowing directly under me and I’m freezing, so I’m crossing my arms and trying to rub my goosebumps away like a temporary tattoo

My mom said there’s wonton soup waiting for me at home.

It’s Friday now and I woke up this morning with the ends of my canopy wrapped around my lower body, and every time I’d move, I’d hear the ceiling hook being challenged by the wrath of my tired legs. It’s starting to really annoy me now.

#bedtime #blog post

1 note · View note

wink-wonk · 2 years

Text

I hate this place I cried and sweat so bad today that the doctor at the medical clinic asked in English "what's wrong with you" and I was like. "I'm crying, I'm not having a great day but my body is healthy" and he was like "no but why is your mask wet. Are you sick? Do you have covid?" And all I could communicate to him was that YES I have problems, they are simply not of the nature that a doctor could solve nor are they really a risk to public health or wellbeing

#its so fucking windy and hot and sweaty and my legs are covered in mosquito bites #and a guy i fucking hate emailed me that my health form was late. which is so funny because we were never even given a due date but w/e #so i made my way through the labyrinth of campus to drop my stupid shit off at the office of international affairs #and for some reason they made me sign in and take a number even though there was no one else waiting?#and the lady came out and was like oh you actually have to take this to this other place on campus and have them stamp it #then bring it back #and i was like. im going to cry i am sweaty and my hairs a mess and the wind blew up my skirt on my walk there #but okay. fine. i will find this place. but i WILL cry while i do it.#so i went and i found the place and the guy checking me in was wearing a full on space suit #and the gov here has a recent history of fucking disappearing foreigners who have covid and throwing them in hotels w strangers #so i was a little scared but i was like. i just need someone to look at my form #and he firstly spoke to me in english when i approached him in chinese. which already pisses me off #and secondly seemed kind of insistent that i must be physically ill. which im not?#im just pissed and covered in bug bites and sweaty and very very frustrated by this horrible bureaucracy you have going #but i assure you my body is well enough to fucking bite you if you keep asking why i look so fucked up.#eventually someone came down and checked my form and gave me the stamp. so i went back to the fucking first place #and i took another stupid number #and she came out to me still sniffling but being very brave about it #and she asked me 你习惯台湾吗? like are u accustomed to taiwan yet #and i was like. no. lol #and she was like oh whys that? the weather?#and i didnt have the time or energy tl say that actually i got stared at by two different gross old men on my way here #and almost got hit by a cyclist in the sidewalk who was watching a video on his phone #and got stuck behind two women walking side by side with zero situational awareness of how much sidewalk they were taking up #and also actually i literally dealt with chinese bureacracy before and it does not come close to the bs yall are running here.#AND im covered in mosquito bites. AND im sweaty. AND my hair is a mess #AND i flashed a busy street earlier bc tbe wind here just does whatever it wants #AND the doctor was so fucking mean to me!!! a bitch is at her limit!!!#AND I GOT YELLED AT BY MICHAEL THE GUY I HATE #a bitch simply cannot win today gd

0 notes

its-kall-the-clown · 3 years

Note

22 with pigsy, tang, and MK. Cause they’re best dads.

I completely agree about them being the best dads! Which is why I prepared this fluffy little- *trips and falls into angst.* Uhhhh it was fluffy up until the end...oops? it gets fluffy again!

Prompt list

He's Got Us

Rating: G

“You’re burning up.” Tang pressed a hang against MK's flushed face, gently brushing his bangs away to feel the raging fever underneath.

"It's fine. I'm fine.." the boy insisted and gently shoved the hand away from his forehead.

"Mmmm I don't think so. I know a fever when I see one." Tang hums and looks over MK's whole appearance.

MK's face was flushed, an undertone of pink across his cheeks and forehead making him look like a newly budding flower. His eyes were glassed over and try as MK might there was an extra hitch to his breath that indicated he was suppressing a cough.

"I'm fine. Please just let me head out." The boy pleaded, swiftly turning his head and coughing into his shoulder. The poor boy just wanted to see the new movie with Mei. It was a holiday, a rare one that even Pigsy was closed for, so of course, the boy wanted to take advantage of it.

They cough again into their shoulder, this time more violently and without ceasing for a whole minute.

"I'm sorry MK...I would let you go out but your dad would kill me."

"Is MK coughing??!" Pigsy shouted from the kitchen already on MK like a mosquito in the summer. MK's shoulders sag with defeat. Knowing once Pigsy was involved there was no use trying to hide it.

Sure enough the pigman came around the corner, thermometer in hand. It's thrust into MKs unwilling mouth revealing what they already knew.

MK had a fever.

Pigsy tisks looking at the thermometer like it insulted him.

"Damn monkey, making you train in the rain. Now our boy has a fever." he fusses half at Tang and half at MK even though neither of them was the source of the problem.

"Dadsy... Dad. Please it's fine." He begged them both but when MK was sick Pigsy couldn't be reasoned with. He points back to MK's room with a stern look.

" Back to bed young man" he instructs and MK frowns. Making a big deal of stomping all the way back to his room. It has little effect on Pigsy even when he slams the door.

Normally Tang would sympathize more with MK...buuuut after the third hospital visit due to either a hidden injury that got worse with time or the boy slogging through a sickness only to make it worse, the sentiment got old.

The boy had a bad habit of hiding things from them. Leftover habit from MK's birth parents. He always felt the need to just, Push through even when he was hurting or sick.

More than once Tang had witnessed the boy's eyes rolling into the back of his head as he passed out from an overheating fever or infection.

"I'm on soup duty."

"I'm on medication."

The partners nod at each other, game plan set in motion.

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

"I'm not even-" MK has to pause his sentence to lean to the side and hack and cough. "-that's sick" he finishes with a sniff.

Tang just looks at him with a deadpan expression.

"Sure. And pigs can fly."

"Technically I can. If I took a plane." Pigsy comments with a wiry smile, entering the room with a tray. MK groans and runs a hand down his face.

"You're going to force me to stay in bed AND subjugate me to dad jokes?" He whines loudly and Tang takes the opportunity to finally shove the spoon of medicine into MK's mouth. MK's face scrunches up from the tatse but he swallows obediently.

A cup is offered to him by Pigsy and MK accepts it and drinks greedily.

The cup is replaced with a spoon, this time full of broth rather than medicine. MK huffs at first making a comment about not being a baby and Pigsy snaps back at him to shut it and eat.

And spoon by spoon the broth is drained. MK's eyes slowly dipping down till he can't even keep his head up. Pigsy takes this opportunity to tuck MK in, pulling the covers tightly around their body. Tang assists and he places a cool rag of water against MK's forehead.

The now unconscious teen hardly even noticed when his forehead was kissed by two loving parents.

--------

Pisgy took the first watch. Sitting on a stool next to MK's bed. if there was one thing about MK he was stubborn as he was and would try to sneak out.

This time however the boy stayed asleep, only mumbling gently occasionally and Pigsy would soothe him with hushed tones and a fresh cool rag.

He brushes MKs bangs gently and sighs, Tang enters the room softly and pads up to him. He feels his partner's chin sit atop his head and their arms draped over his shoulder. They sit like this for a while, just the sound of MKs labored breathing and the beat of Tang's heart against his back.

"You ever worry about him?" Pigsy asked and he can feel the vibrations of Tang humming atop his head.

"All the time. Why?" Tang asked, shifting slightly above him.

"It's just-" Pigsy sighs and pinches his snout. "I worry about him, even before all this monkey magic business. But now?"

He feels Tang shift from their perch coming around to kneel beside him.

"Sometimes I lay in bed at night, and I wonder...why him?" His fist tightens at his side as he looks at his sweet baby boy's flushed sick face.

"There are plenty of kids he could have picked. Why did he have to pick OUR kid? Couldn't he have picked someone else?" He huffed and gestured to MK. Tangs brows furrowed slightly

"Don't get me wrong, the kids perfect for the role. Smart, brave, and unwillingly to give up EVER." He smiles foundry and runs his hand against the boys hair gently.

"He's perfect….so why couldn't the damn monkey pick someone who would be OKAY at the job. Why did he have to pick OUR perfect boy?" He growls out feeling something well up in his throat. MK was out there every day, training, putting himself in harm's way. There were days Pigsy wondered if his son would make it home.

"I could never ask him to quit. He's too good at the job and helps too many people.. " Pigsy signs and pinches his snout. He feels Tang rub a hand on his back. A few moments pass of just them sitting together with Tang's talented fingers working over the muscles on his back.

"You know my recurring nightmare?" Tang asked, finally breaking the silence.

"The one where MK gets trapped under a mountain?" He asked and his partner's face nods, an apparent shiver crawling up the human spine.

"I still have it sometimes...it terrified me. But I'm having it less and less." He explains shifting into a better sitting position by Pigsy. He leans his head against his partner's thigh and Pigsy's hands go easily to his hair to run his hands through it.

"I realized. That no matter what he does or chooses to do with his life, he will always have us to fall back on." Tang turns his head slightly so he can see Pigsy better.

"He's gonna be okay. I promise." Tang pull away from his thigh and Pigsy instantly misses the contact. Instead the man leans up, sealing their lips in a short kiss.

"He's got the best two dad's ever after all~" the brag and Pigsy can only chuckle. He pressed his forehead to Tang's and closed his eyes. Just enjoying the space here they created together.

"He's got us."

#thank you!#writting #prompt ask #Pigsy #Tang #MK #lego monkie kid #Dadsy #these two are the best dads and you can't tell me otherwise #freenoodleshipping

241 notes · View notes

radical-revolution · 3 years

Text

~CHÖGYAM TRUNGPA RINPOCHE✨🌺

FIND YOUR HEART IN LONELINESS

The first meeting with oneself, with aloneness, is meeting one’s real ego without clothing—naked ego, assertive, distinct, clear, definite ego.

The experience of loneliness from ego’s perspective:

Ego has no one to comfort itself, no one to act as moral support. This kind of aloneness is simply the feeling of being nowhere, lost. There is tremendous sadness that there’s nothing around you that you can hang onto. But it is your own ego acting as the voice of sadness, loneliness, so you cannot blame anybody or even get angry. That starting point is very useful and valuable. It was the inspiration to go into retreat in Milarepa’s case, and in our case as well.

Taking part in a retreat is a way to express aloneness, loneliness, desolation. We might experience fear in retreat, but that fear is purely an expression of that loneliness. We are trying to entertain ourselves, so we manufacture fear. We might go back to our mental notes of the past, or our scrap books, but that becomes boring. We are back to square one constantly. Cooking, sleeping or walking might become a source of entertainment. There is so little to do, we are thankful there is something to do. But even that comes back to square one. We tend to get disillusioned with that, too.

Such experiences of being in retreat are not exactly wretched. There is a very faint, subtle sense that you are falling in love with something. You begin to appreciate the desolation. A subtle romanticism is happening completely. Because there is nothing to entertain you, everything comes back to you. The songs of Milarepa, at the early stage of his being in retreat, are love songs. They praise the terrain, the mountains, his cave, his desolateness, his solitude, and the memory of his guru. Those are his love songs.

In retreat you begin to find that the sadness and desolateness has a sense of the romantic. There is something to hang onto—somewhat. There is something to latch onto, but if you go too far it disappears. So it is a very subtle love affair.

But obviously, it is definitely a romantic one.

At that point you see the value of guru. The guru becomes precious to you. You not only fall in love with the environment and with your aloneness, as such, but you also feel that your guru has a lot to do with it. You begin to appreciate his fatherhood and his genius as a matchmaker, that he married you and this desolate place. So we could say that sadness also provokes spiritual romanticism. Although it is materialistic in style, fundamentally it is spiritual, or even—if we could be brave enough to say such a thing—mystical. There is a tone of mystical experience.

Sadness brings up tremendous artistic talent in oneself, as it did in Milarepa. Milarepa composed songs and began to see the colors and sights and happenings around him become very real, extremely real. The way the sun shines, the way the moon sets, the way the clouds move. The wind breaking, the sounds of owls hooting at night. Mosquitoes landing on you. Everything you see becomes completely, totally, a gigantic world of romanticism—colorful and fantastic. At the beginning you are irritated by the insects around you, but at some point you begin to find that you wish you could invite them for a party or for dinner.

We could say that this whole thing is unreal, an expression of your being spaced out or even tripping out. But it has a valid reason; you can’t regard it as unpleasant or a side-track on the path. It is very valuable, because we have not seen our ego alone for a long time—never. For the first time we begin to see that our ego is naked. We are not exactly without ego—there is ego—but that ego is a naked one. And it begins to explore the world around it.

So going into retreat, we could say, is an introduction to ego’s nakedness and the subtle appreciation of aloneness, loneliness. Being in retreat, free from any kind of security, even from your guru, you have to pull up your own resources constantly.

Retreat does not only mean going into retreat in the physical sense, in a cabin—retreat means that you are left with nobody. Your guru has told you just to work on yourself, that it is not necessary to extend further information to you. You have to find your way.

In our case, you would like to find out something, you are hoping for new experience, so you decide to go on retreat. You consult your guru, and both he and you agree that this is a project you should get into. Then the process of retreat begins, and the experience becomes identical with Milarepa’s. Obviously, you could step out of it. You could run into the city and eat ice cream and go to the movies, you could do all kinds of things.

Nevertheless, even if you do those things, they become part of the whole experience—you cannot actually escape. You are never out of retreat, once you decide to do it. You could be in Grand Central Station, but nevertheless, there is a sense of desolateness.

So, in fact, you are not going into retreat, but retreat is coming to you. That loneliness is always there. I wouldn’t say that loneliness is only Milarepa’s experience—we all have that sense of loneliness, particularly on the spiritual journey and in relating with a guru, but also in relating with a family and our case history of the past. The sense of loneliness is always there, even if you are entertaining yourself and you have lots of company and lots of friends to keep you occupied. Still, behind that, the sense of loneliness becomes prominent. Always you are back to square one. It is inevitable.

Quote via Lizeta Lozuraityte , thanks🙏🌺

https://www.chronicleproject.com/message-of-milarepa/

Thanks to Jeff Krouk , who video-, audio-taped those Talks of CTR in 1973 at KCL 🙏🙏🙏✨🌺

24 notes · View notes

vajranam · 3 years

Text

Loneliness

~CHÖGYAM TRUNGPA RINPOCHE

FIND YOUR HEART IN LONELINESS

The first meeting with oneself, with aloneness, is meeting one’s real ego without clothing—naked ego, assertive, distinct, clear, definite ego.

The experience of loneliness from ego’s perspective:

But obviously, it is definitely a romantic one.

Thanks to Jeff Krouk , who video-, audio-taped those Talks of CTR in 1973 at KCL

4 notes · View notes

cockasinthebird · 4 years

Text

Spending time beneath the stars - Best Friends AU Part 1

06:08am

The sun sits grinning in the early morning sky, shining brightly down at the drowsy and utterly listless flock of students, as they stagger about with their suitcases in tow, standing in long lines to whichever bus they've been assigned to for this mandatory little adventure.

A "fun start of the year" senior trip to Hoffman Lake, to sleep in tents for 3 nights and really "rough it out" as a last hurrah before embarking on their last year in Hawkins High. Or so the guidance counselors and teachers and the principal said last Monday at the first school assembly of the year.

Yet somehow one Billy Hargrove manages to stand with a straight back, head held high, and a wide grin with perfect teeth, as he helps some poor, exhausted girls with their luggage.

They giggle at how his exposed biceps flex as he lifts up the baggage and throws it into the storage compartment, then lowers their sunglasses a bit to bash their long lashes at him and chime out a blithe,

"Thank you, Billy."

"No problem, ladies," his response near chivalrous as he gives them that panty-dropping smile he's so famous for.

And as they reluctantly step aside to keep the line moving, Tommy H shoves his way past some other poor student to get all up in Billy's face with two suitcases - his own and Carol's.

"Hey if you need any condoms on this trip, or maybe the tent alone for a bit, just say the word and I'll drag Steve off to somewhere," Tommy says with barely any discreet insinuation, nodding in the direction of the two girls who nearly trip over themselves as they stare back.

Billy chuckles and gives them a light wave, "If Harrington even shows up."

The bus leaves at 6:30, and at 6:11 there's still no sign of the aforementioned trust fund kid.

"Maybe his daddy bought him a ticket out of this trip," Tommy groans, and if Billy didn't know any better, he'd have guessed there was a hint of jealousy to those words. "Who the fuck even decides to go camping for a senior trip? In goddamn tents!"

"If you're gonna bitch and whine like this the entire trip, I'm gonna kick you out of the tent to go sleep with the mosquitoes and bears," Billy grunts out with irritation and exertion as he helps with more bags.

He's usually not known for being charitable, but getting to show off like this in front of all his lethargic peers is a bit of a rush.

Billy gets up at 5 every morning to go for a jog, preferably also a swim during summer, lift a bit of weights, take a scalding hot shower, then spend far too long on his hair, picking out the right shirt and deciding on rings. So really this is no issue at all, and by God if he doesn't flaunt that with a blindingly fresh show of teeth.

"You… You don't think there's actual bears out there, do you?" Tommy seems more awake now than ever, rubbing the back of his neck and brown eyes wide open.

"Tommy," Billy says with a stern and oh so serious tone, "Either you become useful and help me here, or you can go fuck off to your girlfriend."

"Alright geez!" Tommy takes a tone of great offense, but keeps a smile to hopefully stay friendly with Billy, then vanishes into the crowd to probably find Carol and save them all some seats on the bus, Billy doesn't care.

It takes 9 more bags stuffed underneath the bus when Billy grows too impatient and finally checks his watch - the one Steve gave him a few months ago for his birthday - and it reads 6:23.

When it ticks into 6:24, the all too familiar brown BMW drives through the parking lot, and Billy has to restrain himself from appearing too eager as he pushes through the crowd of yawning classmates, and stops up perfectly in front of the passenger seat to Steve’s ride.

In one spirited move, he opens up the car door and leans down with the most irritating, shit-eating grin, as he looks at the barely alive Steve Harrington. “Good morning, princess.”

Steve’s stare is cutting, the bags under his eyes heavy and dark, and he can’t even respond with more than a drowsy grunt; his head lolls against the seat as he sinks lower down, oh so defeated.

Out the driver’s seat jumps Ms Henderson, fresh and beaming with joy as always, no matter the hour of the day. “Oh good morning, Billy!” she chimes and walks briskly to the trunk.

“Morning Ms Claudia,” Billy responds with his undeniable charm. “Stevie here staying up too late again?”

“It’s terrible, really! Him and Dusty stayed up all night playing some new game on that Nintendo box thing!” she sighs with feigned irritation and rolls her eyes, but with a smile that definitely means boys will be boys.

“Why are you so… awake,” Steve asks rhetorically and his feet land with loud thuds onto the pavement.

With what little energy he possesses, Steve hauls his ass out of the car and stands slumped forward in front of Billy’s energetic pose, hands on his hips and a teasing smile that only adds to the irritation of the far more fatigued boy, whom frowns beneath his unkempt mane.

“You know I’m up by 5 every morning; gotta keep fit for all my admirers,” Billy laughs all too loud, and enjoys the way Steve winces at it.

Who then promptly crashes his forehead against Billy’s broad shoulder, groaning out a long, “Ssssssshut up, fuck.”

Which shocks Billy more than it probably should - they’ve been best friends for what feels like all their lives, and in those years they’ve definitely touched each other a fair share, but still, whenever Steve is the one to initiate it, there’s a pang of heartache deep in Billy’s very core, igniting something all too hopeful.

Yet he braves on, slings an arm around Steve and brings him to the back of the beemer.

Where Billy helps Claudia lift up the heavy weekend bag from the trunk, undoubtedly filled with all those thousands of products that Steve uses daily; he even carries an extra bag to PE and practice because of it all.

She thanks him breathlessly, then steers toward Steve, cups his depleted expression in her hands, and softly says, “Be safe, ok? Wear sunscreen, drink plenty of water, don’t go out too deep in the lake, and if you see a bear, pee your pants! The smell will deter it from mauling you!”

Steve nods and smiles, mumbling out a row of yes’s.

“Good, I’ll be right here to pick you up on Monday, 2pm, alright?” And with the most gracious show of maternal love, she guides him lower till she can reach his forehead, and plants a kiss there.

And Billy has to look away at that - pretends to scan the crowd for someone or something, and pushes his sunglasses further up in hopes it’ll disguise his painful jealousy of having someone love you like that, of having such a kind hearted mother figure in your life.

“Take good care of him!” she says, directed at Billy, who flashes a convincing smile, and responds cheerfully with a,

“Will do, Ms Henderson!” And he reaches out to pull Steve along. “Come on, pretty boy, or they’ll leave without us!”

“Would that really be so bad?” Steve whines and relies too heavily on Billy’s ability to keep them both upright.

“What, King Steve too good to sleep in the woods?” Billy chuckles as he drags along the suitcase, really doing all the work between them, but for Steve he doesn’t mind.

They’re the last two to board the bus, every single seat filled except for somewhere near the back, where Tommy Hagan waves one hand to ensure that the popular kids stick together, his other arm around Carol whose make-up makes her seem more awake than the way she smiles.

Billy pushes past Steve to walk in front, ready to fight even him for the window seat, and he throws himself onto the bench - scoots all the way up to make sure there’s plenty of room for Steve.

“Hey, Harrington, nice bags,” Tommy mocks like a ‘friend’ would, and points to his eyes.

“Yeah, what are those, Gucci?” Carol quips and laughs at how completely drained Steve is, as he tips his head to the side to look at them both across the way.

“Har har,” he says dryly and is quick to turn away from their jesting ridicule, only to be faced by Billy who laughs all the same. “Don’t even.”

“What?” Billy’s voice incredulous, grinning all mean, “I wasn’t gonna say anything.”

“Uh-huh,” Steve hums out in disbelief.

From the backpack he carried on for the long trip to Hoffman Lake, an hour and a half drive from Hawkins, Steve pulls out a walkman and headset. And he keeps staring straight into Billy’s wonderfully blue eyes, as he lifts up the headset and places it firmly on his ears.

“You really gonna do this to me?” Billy feigns offense as he watches how Steve’s pink lips spread in a smirk. “Just leaving me alone for the ride there?”

And without looking away, Steve turns on the walkman, the mixtape inside whirring into action, and Karma Chameleon starts playing just loud enough for Billy to hear at this short distance from where he leans against the window.

He moves his lips without words, pretending to talk.

“I can’t hear you,” Steve says, not realizing that there’s nothing being said, but notices how Billy’s chest shakes with a chuckle.

He then tilts his head backwards, eyes slipping closed, unaware - or perhaps just oblivious to the fact - that Billy keeps looking at him, admiring the view, whose heavenly gaze smooths down his seatmates weary form, to where there’s barely any space between them, thighs only inches apart from touching.

Perhaps Billy moves his leg; guiding his knee till it’s met with Steve’s own, and when the other doesn’t jerk away at the contact, they stay like that. And maybe Billy is a bit disappointed, or some semblance of it, that Steve is too tired to sit and talk with him on the ride to the camping grounds, but there’s no doubting that the two of them will be sharing a tent together for the next three nights, so they’ll find time to hang out.

Although it’s not as if they haven’t just spent nearly every hour available together during summer break, when neither of them had work or family matters to attend to, that is. Steve had spent three weeks visiting family in Italy, and Billy spent two in California, where all he thought of was Steve Steve Steve. Wonders if Steve thought about him, too.

Billy remains far off in his own thoughts as the bus starts moving, the trees outside passing by quickly, minutes ticking into eternity, songs blasting out Steve’s headset, when he feels an unexpected heat to his right.

He looks to find Steve’s head resting on his shoulder, asleep, drool threatening to drip from his slack mouth onto Billy’s naked arm. And there's an uncomfortable fluttering in his chest, all too familiar, paired horribly with an aching in his hand to hold the other's, the fresh scent of expensive shampoo intoxicating; inviting him to lean in and get a good whiff. And Billy would have, were it not for the fact that they're surrounded by loud mouthed peers, and the way Steve leans against him is already a dangerous affair.

And Steve’s cheek burns against Billy’s bare shoulder, sweaty skin on skin, making him hyper aware of every breath he feels tickle down his arm hairs. 8 years and he’s still just as sensitive to it all. It’s pathetic and embarrassing, but no one seems to notice, so maybe it’s also ok.

In the row next to them, Carol and Tommy sit just as close as Billy and Steve, albeit a bit more intimately so with their fingers laced together and Tommy occasionally pressing kisses into the ginger hair. And Billy feels jealous at that, at being able to be affectionate with the person you love so openly without fear or shame, but that’s just not meant for him.

Which he’ll hopefully someday come to terms with. Until then though, he’ll allow himself to enjoy what little he can. Like the way Steve leans against him now. With a lovelorn sigh, Billy tears his eyes from that mess of a hair and moled skin, to instead stare out into the blur of green and brown that flies by, and hopefully time will do just the same.

#Harringrove #My Writing #fluffy fluff fluff #Pining #Billy POV #Best Friends au #Childhood Friends AU #Camping #Steve Harrington #Billy Hargrove #Tommy Hagan #Carol Perkins

83 notes · View notes

ft-dads-au · 4 years

Text

Wildflowers

A collaboration by @mdelpin and @oryu404

Fairy Friendship Week 2020 Prompt: Bonds Pairing(s): Natsu & Igneel, Natsu & Erza, Eileen x Igneel

AO3 | FF.Net

Summary: The Dragneels take advantage of a warm sunny day to enjoy a family picnic in the East Forest.

July 14, 2001

Erza 10, Natsu 7

“Momma, momma, look at me!”

Eileen and Erza looked up from the flowers they’d been admiring, drawn by the sound of Natsu’s excited cries as he ran towards them, or rather tried to. For no sooner had he uttered the words than his sandals got caught on the overly large pants he was wearing, causing him to fall face-first on the soft grass that grew all along the East Forest.

Not one to be easily discouraged, he got right back up, grabbing onto his belt with his left hand and holding the pants up as he continued to hurry towards them. His right arm was swallowed up by the too-long sleeve of the dark jacket he was wearing, while around his neck hung a scarf that Erza immediately recognized, as their father rarely took it off. None of these things diminished Natsu's proud grin in the slightest, and Erza’s heart fluttered at how adorable her little brother looked dressed in their father’s clothes.

“Daddy’s clothes fit me perfectly!” he crowed once he reached them, but rather than standing still so they could admire him, he shifted his weight from foot to foot in an almost gleeful dance.

Erza giggled, “No, they don’t, they’re too big, Natsu.”

Natsu pouted at his sister, but before he had a chance to reply, Eileen had picked him up, hugging him to her chest and kissing his head even as he squirmed in her arms. “You have gotten much bigger, darling,” she agreed and was immediately rewarded by a beaming smile.

“Still shorter than me, though,” Erza teased, standing up straight to demonstrate her height.

Eileen set Natsu down, watching with amusement as he took off after Erza, who continued to taunt him, the chase even more comical as Natsu continued to fall every few feet.

“I am, however, curious as to why you felt the need to take off your clothes,” she mused, her words full of fond exasperation.

The blanket had been spread out under the shade of a large fir tree, the food basket she had so carefully prepared already sitting atop it, along with the clothes Natsu had been wearing. Her husband, Igneel, also sat on it wearing nothing but a pair of black boxers and an impish grin that was identical to their son’s.

“Maybe I just wanted your attention,” Igneel flashed her a roguish grin, patting the space next to him invitingly. Eileen snorted but indulged him, feeling his arms wrap around her middle and pulling her against his chest as they watched their two children play.

Natsu had finally caught up to Erza, but rather than get into a fight with her, he’d wrapped Igneel’s scarf around her neck, and they now walked hand in hand, Erza leading him back to the flowers she’d been looking at and telling him all about them.

“She is so good with him,” Eileen commented as she observed Natsu’s rapt attention at his sister’s words.

“Are you really that surprised?” Igneel placed his head on her shoulder, “She takes after you, after all.”

“While Natsu is just as troublesome as you,” she responded playfully.

“He’s got a lot of spirit, as does Erza. I can’t wait to see what they’ll be like when they’re older.” Eileen could hear the wistfulness in his voice and placed her hands over his.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“No, I know how lucky I am. I thought I’d never get to have this again. It’s just I can’t help but wish…” Igneel trailed off.

“I know they’ll get to meet him someday.” Eileen assured him, “But for now, we need to respect Zelda’s wishes.”

“As my Queen commands.” Igneel turned his head, placing a gentle kiss on Eileen’s lips.

“You are ridiculous,” Eileen chuckled, “Think you can manage to get your clothes back from our son before the mosquitoes eat you alive?”

“You’re no fun,” Igneel pretended to pout, but he released her from his embrace and got up, sneaking another kiss before walking over to where Erza and Natsu were playing and calling out, “Natsu, I need my clothes back.”

“You gotta catch me first!” Natsu exclaimed, running off and squealing happily when Igneel gave chase.

Erza sat on the blanket next to her mother, “Are you sure Daddy’s an adult?” she shook her head as she observed her father attempt to tackle Natsu, who somehow managed to evade him and keep running.

Eileen only laughed, “I think you’ll find that the best adults manage to retain a bit of their child selves. Would you like some fruit?”

Erza nodded eagerly, and they opened up the basket, searching through its contents for some grapes.

“Daddy, no!” Natsu’s laughs were loud, and Eileen and Erza couldn’t help but smile at the sound.

“I guess he finally caught him,” Eileen remarked, splitting the contents of the basket onto four plates.

“I give! I give!” Natsu’s laughter became more breathless as Igneel tickled his sides. He got up and stripped off his clothes, handing them back to his father until he was the one standing around in his underwear.

When everything was arranged to her satisfaction, Eileen called out for them to come eat, but they had disappeared. She put her hand up to her forehead, squinting to try to find them within the shadows created by the surrounding trees. It didn’t take her long to sight them. Igneel, now fully dressed and looking as handsome as always, walked back towards the blanket, carrying a wiggling Natsu on his shoulders, and an incredibly pleased smile on his face.

“They’re up to something,” Erza commented.

“Indeed,” Eileen agreed, sounding unconcerned even as she watched them approach, “those two usually are.”

In one swift movement, Natsu dangled upside down in front of her, his legs clamped around Igneel's neck to keep himself in place, while Igneel placed a hand on his chest to make sure he wouldn't fall.

“Here, Momma, I picked these for you!” Natsu looked very pleased with himself as he handed Eileen a messy bouquet of wildflowers.

“Thank you, darling, they’re lovely.” Eileen kissed him on the cheek, which for some reason, amused the dangling Natsu.

“And for my princess,” Igneel announced, presenting Erza with a much more orderly bouquet he’d managed to hide behind his back.

“They’re beautiful. Thank you, Daddy!” Erza leaped to her feet to give her father a hug, examining the flowers as she waited patiently for him to set Natsu down and bid him get dressed so they could eat.

"I'm gonna eat a lot!" Natsu said with his mouth already full, "And then I'll get big and strong just like you, Daddy! I'll fit your clothes for sure!"

Igneel laughed and moved one of the sandwiches from his plate onto Natsu's. "I don't doubt that for a second. Here, have a little extra then. You need it a lot more than I do."

“That’s for sure,” Eileen teased, laughing at Igneel’s outrage when she caught the grape he tossed at her and popped it in her mouth.

Soon they’d eaten all the food, and with the sun warm and pleasant on their backs they spent a lovely afternoon exploring the forest, looking for any animals brave enough to show themselves. It wasn’t long before Natsu started to lag behind, exhausted by all his previous running around.

Igneel picked him up, carrying him in his arms so that Erza and Eileen could spend a little more time in the nature they both loved. Natsu’s warm breaths puffed ever slower against his neck, and with a sleepy, “Love you, Daddy,” he succumbed to sleep.

“I love you too, buddy.”

#fairy tail #ftdadsau #ftguildevents #natsu dragneel #igneel #erza scarlet #eileen belserion #media #fics #Fairy Friendship Week 2020 #prompt: bonds

23 notes · View notes

jaimesam · 3 years

Text

Sawtooth

We woke up on the morning of our fourth day in the Sawtooth wilderness feeling spry. It can take a day, or two, or three before the rhythm of backpacking— wake up, wolf down some instant oatmeal, slurp up some instant coffee, shoulder a 35 pound pack and start the day’s climb—begins to feel right. This was our morning.

A miracle: the skies had truly cleared of wildfire smoke for the first time since setting off from Grandjean. Good timing, too: our day ahead would be perhaps the best of the trip — up and over Cramer Pass, beneath “The Temple,” down past the Cramer Lakes and up again to Alpine Lake, reputedly a gem. We hit the trail with bounce in our step.

Three, four, five miles into our hike we were still having fun, even as we began to wonder — was it possible that Hidden Lake was, in fact, so hidden that we wouldn’t see it from the trail? When would we hit the killer climb up to Cramer Pass? Slogging through overgrown brush and clambering over deadfall — all of which felt oddly familiar — we encountered a group of five friendly outdoorsmen from Seattle.

“Morning.”

“Afternoon.”

“Am I right that we’ve got a climb ahead?”

“Oh no, it’s all downhill from here.”

“Hmm.”

“Where are you trying to get to?”

“Well we were aiming for Cramer Lakes…”

“Oh you’re a long way from there. This trail goes down to Grandjean.”

“Oh my god.”

Jaime caught up.

“We took a wrong turn.”

“I thought so.”

“It’s a bad one.”

“How bad?”

“The good news is that we’ve been making great time. Covered a lot of miles.”

“And?”

“That lake was Elk Lake. This is the trail we hiked in on our first day.”

“How…”

“Five miles ago. Missed a turn.”

“God damn it.”

“Actually more like five and a half.”

Oh yes, there were signs. Including literal signs made of actual wood. Two of which we somehow blew blindly past, and a third: seen but egregiously misinterpreted. Also the creek we had crossed thrice, which, had we been paying close attention, we might have noticed was flowing in the wrong direction. Or beautiful Smith Falls, which we had passed two days before. Or the 2.4 miles of the South Fork of the Payette Trail we had hiked on day one — the most grueling and unattractive stretch of trail we had yet encountered — you would think we might have realized something was amiss. And yet.

“We could just hike out.”

“It would be eleven more miles.”

“So we backtrack.”

“Five and a half. Uphill.”

“We’re spending an extra night out here, aren’t we?”

“I think so.”

“Do we have extra food?”

“We have enough food.”

“I hate this.”

So we backtracked. An eleven mile detour, all told, with 1500 feet of elevation lost and then gained agin, for no reason, on unremarkable, overgrown, valley trails with views of nothing but dense forest, overgrown with scrubby mountain brush. The last few miles, a steady and grueling climb, brought us back to where we had missed our first sign, six hours before. We collapsed at the intersection, refilled our bottles, and snacked on salami — the promise of which was all that had gotten us up the hill. Mosquitoes and black flies swarmed, and the sky, which had begun the day clear, turned a pinkish gray as wildfire smoke began to dim the sun again.

“Why do we do this?”

“Good question.”

Onward to Hidden Lake, not so hidden after all. After dragging ourselves over 14 miles — 3 miles of forward progress from our last camp — we collapsed on a grassy shoreline, and rinsed our scratched and bruised bodies in the glassy frigid water. The lake sat beneath two pointed cliffs, side by side — one of red stone, the other gray— and the sun set early in the narrow valley. Trout jumped, snatching flies from the water’s surface, and pair of mergansers jetted around the lake, snatching the fish in turn. Exhausted, we fell asleep listening to hermit thrushes whistling their fluting ethereal song over the quiet rush of cascades tumbling down the cliffs, filling the lake.

We woke up, wolfed down some instant oatmeal, slurped up some instant coffee, and began the day’s climb. Up and over Cramer Pass, beneath “The Temple,” a tower of red sandstone capped with a knobby monolith that might well have been the icon of some desert religion. We descended again to the three Cramer Lakes, each one cascading to the next, down further to cross a rushing stream of snowmelt and spring water. We dipped our hats and bandannas in the almost-freezing water to drip down our necks and backs in the hot afternoon. Then we’re climbing again, this time twice as high, twice as far, to Alpine Lake, a pristine tarn carved into the side of the slope, a fine place for a salami break. Then higher, sweating our way up to the day’s second pass. We looked down on the Baron Lakes, where we would camp for the night, and across the lakes to Warbonnet Peak and Monte Verita, grey and purple in the late afternoon shadows.

“This is why we do this.”

“Yeah.”

One reason, anyway. The most obvious reason. If you did a survey of the people who somehow ended up at the top of the pass above Baron Lakes, this would be the number one reason cited for braving the insects and the varmints, dealing with the aches and the rashes, and slogging up a mountain with a heavy pack: the views, the vistas, the landscapes, the panoramas. The drama of the mountains. It’s like cooking your own meal — it tastes better when you’ve worked for it, earned it, done it yourself. The view from the pass is more beautiful for the sweat and exertion dragging your body and your pack up the climb.

We got more the following day as we descended from the Baron Lakes, our final day on the trail. An oceanic valley opened up beneath us, ringed by steep cliffs and rockslides of red and grey and purple, Baron Creek turning into a 30 foot waterfall. You can’t find this outside the mountains, this sense of three-dimensional space. Of looking down a valley two miles wide as it falls away from your feet, three thousand feet down. Like standing in the greatest of civilization’s cathedrals, but one with enough open space to park a carrier group, with more room for a fleet of attack submarines below.

After five nights and six days, we have become the land. Smeared with the dust of an arid country, we blend in with the rock and dirt. And despite our daily dips in the alpine lakes of the Sawtooth, we smell like it too. That first shower will feel great. The first meal — Jaime’s been fantasizing about a tuna melt and French fries, Sam has been inexplicably craving pancakes — even better. This is also why we backpack. It feels awfully good to have done it.

More than just the relief and indulgence of returning to civilization, a week in the mountains offers a welcome reset on city life. I am a city person. I like living in a density of people, living within a stroll of most everything I need, nearby neighbors and friends. But I crave the balance offered by nature, by a week in the woods, a month in the mountains. We’ll return feeling refreshed, glad to be back, awed by the commonplace luxuries of modern urban living: a world’s worth of cuisines, at my doorstep in 20 minutes; humanity’s complete works of recorded music, in my pocket. We’ll be very glad to have done it, for all its ups and downs. And, more immediately, we’re glad to be done.

“I’m sore.”

“Me too.”

“My blister just popped.”

“Ew.”

“I feel great.”

“Me too.”

Leaning on the car, we ease off our boots. The horseflies are back at this lower elevation, and their buzzing takes us back to last week when we tightened our laces and adjusted the straps on our pack in preparation for starting our trip. We had arrived at Grandjean just a few hours behind the first wave of wildfire smoke. Hiking in July, we thought we’d beat the wildfires to the punch; no such luck. So we started our hike in a haze - literal and figurative - wondering if we’d be walking up mountains for 54 miles with the reward of smoggy vistas waiting at the passes and peaks.

The first day’s hike didn’t lift that haze. The trail was overgrown, not often used, with deadfall lying across our path requiring us to clamber over dead trunks or bushwhack through brush to get around. Horseflies dogged us, buzzing and biting. As we climbed, sweating, copses of trembling aspen yielded to a forest of ponderosa pine, white spruce, douglas fir, and horseflies yielded to mosquitoes. Six miles up the trail, we encountered two fellow hikers, who informed us that the first good campsite was another eight miles ahead, and that they were churning out 20 miles in a day to get out of this godforsaken wilderness pronto. Terrific.

Fortunately, they were wrong, and we soon found a very fine place to pitch a tent next to a small waterfall. The Payette River’s headwaters split and cascaded down on either side of a great red rock, and every few seconds, the waters surged and a shower of snowmelt would surge over the rock itself, spraying into the air.

A western tanager — electric yellow body, reddish head, and jet black wings — flitted through the campsite. So did chipmunks, rushing around frantically to spread the good news that a pair of slovenly campers had finally arrived, and the summer’s harvest was here at last.

“Look at the cheeks on that little guy.”

“He’s just dying to fill them up with our trail mix.”

Joke’s on us. His cheeks were already full. We turn around, and our bag of trail mix has been chewed open, our week’s supply of almonds, cashews, chocolate, and cranberries pawed through and looted.

“Oh no!”

“Tou thieving little bastard! You bandit! Son of a bitch!”

He was long gone, and presumably the life of the party in whatever chipmunk den he had retreated to. Not wanting to contract whatever rodent virus the chipmunks might have left on our nuts — and not wanting to reward their banditry — I fed our entire supply of trail mix to the fish, swearing profusely as each morsel washed downstream. We have enough food without it, I think.

Our second morning, we awoke to what appeared as a fine morning mist; the pines in the middle distance enveloped in a grey cloud; the ridgeline hazy. But central Idaho is a dry country, this time of year. There is no mist. The wildfire smoke has thickened, and an image of peace transforms to a vague and grim picture of threat and foreboding. We shoulder our packs and resume the climb; eleven more miles on the trail, plus half a mile vertically.

As we walk we get our first glimpses of sawtooth silhouette. Steep rocky cliffs capped with jagged ridgelines, hazy and dark in the smoke against the grey sky. We cross a cold stream, boots off, sandals on, almost knee deep in the rushing icy water. We stop to rest — our first salami break of the trip! — beside Smith Falls, a roaring cascade.

“Do you have the hand sanitizer?”

“I thought you had it.”

“Nope.”

“Where’s the soap?”

“Packed with the hand sanitizer.”

“We’re disgusting.”

The day has gotten hot, and our final mile is a savage climb, switchbacking up the rough talus slope of Mt. Everly. Closing in on 9000’ feet of elevation, we stop to catch our breath every few steps and soak in the panorama behind us: smoky and grey, but astounding nonetheless, with miles of views into wilderness valleys ringed by sawtooth ridges.

Finally, we climb high enough that a lake reveals itself as a sliver of blue, and then it’s at our feet. Everly Lake is a sapphire droplet, water clear to the bottom, the gently rippling surface sparkling azure in the late afternoon sun. It sits beneath the east face of Mt. Everly, a scree cliff dropping a thousand feet to the water’s edge, across from where we set up camp. We haven’t seen another soul all day, and we have this lake very much to ourselves.

Why do we do this? An interesting question because, in case it’s not obvious, backpacking trips involve a considerable quantity of suffering. We do it for the satisfaction and rejuvenation of completing a trip, certainly. And obviously the views — even when they’re gray and hazy. But this — this is really why we hump heavy packs up rocky cliffs, put up with clouds of insects and wildfire smoke, endure blisters and aches and altitude sickness. There is freedom in solitude (dual solitude, in our case), and real solitude is a hard thing to come by. Hot and sweaty and ragged from the climb, I splash into the glass-clear snowmelt of Everly Lake, naked as a wild animal.

When telling people about our big trip west, our route through Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, the most frequent first response was “ah, you’re doing the parks.” Meaning the National Parks, those natural American wonders with scenic byways leading drivers to the parks’ iconic sights, visitors’ centers full of gifts and amenities and fun facts, and influencers dangling their immaculate bodies over sheer cliffs to rack up the likes. Not so. We are, in fact, avoiding the Parks at all costs, instead seeking solitude in forests and wilderness — the likes of the Sawtooth.

In March, we took a trip to Great Smoky Mountain National Park, hoping to hike and revel in some of the finest scenery you’ll find east of the Mississippi. The joke was very much on us. Day one, we spent two hours in the car, inching toward a trailhead, in a miles-long snake of cars and trucks and RVs. In July and August, Yellowstone National Park transmutes from the largest national park in the lower 48 into the biggest parking lot on the North American continent. People sleep in their cars on the road to Zion, in the hopes of snagging a shot at a sunrise selfie.

It’s been fifty years since Edward Abbey wrote Desert Solitaire, which I’ve been reading on the trail. The book is an account of his summers as a ranger in the park that would eventually become Arches. He lamented road-building in National Parks, and proposed banning cars altogether, a fine idea. Many of our Parks did alright for decades, even with their roads and scenic byways; today’s plauge, clogging those roads and viewpoints and even some of the trails, is known as Instagram. The secret is out about the natural beauty of the American west, and the hoards have flocked.

Of course, not everyone out here in nature is seeking solitude. That’s fine. Certainly, every person has a right to see and experience earth’s great wonders. But even for the casual nature tourist, I would posit that the Grand Canyon would be better enjoyed with enough room to swing one’s arms. What to do about it? Who knows. The French are de-marketing their national parks, advertising the flaws and shortcomings of the country’s great natural sites; another fine idea, maybe there are others. At any rate, Abbey is lucky to be dead; the sight of hoards of selfie-snappers crowding for the perfect pic at Mesa Arch would kill him over again.

For those who do seek something approaching solitude, it’s harder and harder to find. We’ve avoided the National Parks, but even many of the forest campgrounds are full beyond the brim. We’ve spent evenings driving around the backwoods, trying in vain to find a good place to camp that isn’t already clogged with RVs. And I’m not here to tell anyone how to enjoy nature, but I am here to tell you that the RV is a blight upon American wilderness. Pulling into a campground in a forgotten corner of the Black Hills, and listening to a fleet of generators run for hours is, shall we say, irritating. If your idea of exploring America’s natural beauty involves parking a bus that costs as much as Lamborghini in the woods and running a generator 16 hours a day to keep your A/C running and your TV on, why not save yourself the trouble — and do the rest of us a favor — and stay home?

As one friend likes to say, gazing up at a spectacular mountain view and taking a contented sigh: “We mean nothing.” In the city, it’s hard to see yourself outside the contemporary, the immediate, the urgent. Put yourself in nature, in the shadow of a great peak or at the bottom of a colossal canyon, and it becomes possible to see your ego and your consciousness in a more accurate perspective: transient, insignificant. There’s freedom in that. And peace.

The chipmunks of Everly Lake share the thieving attitude of their cousins down the mountain. As we sat absorbing the last of the orange sun’s rays, we heard a rustling behind us, and caught one in the act trying to seize our sesame crisps. Rather than chewing through the bag and filling his fat cheeks with whatever they could carry, this greedy fellow had his tiny arms wrapped around the entire ziploc bag, attempting to make off with the whole kit and kaboodle. Not today, chipmunk. We learned our lesson. Our food bag didn’t leave our sight the rest of the trip.

We awoke the next morning to the smell of a campfire burning outside our tent. Poking my head out into the grey predawn light — no campfire, just a thick cloud of wildfire smoke. The far shore was shrouded in haze, and our sparkling blue lake had turned dull; a grim sense of foreboding gripped us as we wolfed down our instant oatmeal, slurped up our instant coffee, and shouldered our packs to descend from Everly.

We hop from lake to lake through the southern Sawtooth, and, mercifully, the cloud of smoke thins as we go. Not a soul on the trail, as we dip our toes in lakes with wonderful names — Ingeborg, Spangle, Ardeth— and some quotidian names — Rock Slide, Vernon, Benedict. I regret leaving my binoculars in the car, we try to ID our avian companions anyway. Most will end up in our books as LBBs (little brown birds), curious peepers and cheepers. We do grow fond of the white-capped sparrow, which looks like it’s wearing a bike helmet and sings a song that sounds like the opening refrain of Baby Shark. Funny little fellow.

We arrive at Lake Edna, our camp for the night, and the skies have cleared. We are treated to sunset over a glassy indigo surface. We watch the sun fall behind the same mountain that it has set behind for hundreds, thousands of summer evenings previous. It’s harder and harder to find pristine nature like this, unaltered by humanity. If some other person had felt compelled to make the same hike, climb the same hill 500 or 5000 Julys ago, they would have seen the same thing, heard the same birds, enjoyed the shade of the same trees. There is magic in that.

We woke up on the morning of our fourth day in the Sawtooth wilderness feeling spry.

This essay borrows liberally and consciously in structure and style from Messrs. Edward Abbey & John McPhee.

3 notes · View notes

doshmanziari · 5 years

Text

Demon’s Souls || 2020 Notes [2]

Still playing! And so here’s a follow-up to the last post as I think of more things.

• Demon’s Souls’ constricted level design also abundantly manifests as precariousness, as in all of the portions where you are on thin walkways or cliffside paths and where rolling to one side or both may mean a fatal drop. Think of the second part of the Valley of Defilement where you are traversing planks of wood, higher and higher, confronted along the way by enormous mosquitoes and spear-wielding depraved ones; or the Shrine of Storms’ post-Adjudicator descent where you must bypass silver and gold skeletons occupying narrow ledges along a crag; or really the entirety of the tower of Latria which doesn’t involve the lower swamp (think, especially, of how once you’re allowed access to the Maneaters you must brave perhaps the most precarious stretch of them all, a towering staircase with no guardrails patrolled by a black phantom mindflayer). It is interesting that while Dark Souls retains this precarious aspect for select parts of various locations, many of these parts lack enemies (such as the majority of the Great Hollow), or the enemies are ones which do not impose the same sort of uncompromising pressure as those in Demon’s Souls. The exceptions are an infamous few which include the Anor Londo archers and the painting guardians patrolling a church’s rafters.

• I really appreciate how some of Demon’s Souls’ enemies, like the fat officials of scale miners holding pickaxes, will wind up for attacks despite your own attacks upon them, since this makes these encounters less predictable. You can’t control the entire flow of such an encounter by consecutively striking with a strong weapon. Silver skeletons present a variation on this by attempting to roll away to a side extremely quickly after you’ve struck them once or twice.

• Because of the aforementioned spatial motifs and how reliably Demon’s Souls handles hit detection with your weapons against level geometry, the nature of how your equipped weapon strikes -- whether it’s swiping from one side, swinging from overhead or below, or thrusting -- can matter quite a lot. This is was an unusual mechanical detail for the time, and its prominence remains unique among FromSoftware’s catalogue. It is also why, in my opinion, a pole arm is the best weapon type. Carry one with me all of the time. Halberd for life.

• Particle effects are everywhere! Seriously. The effects artist(s) loved ‘em.

• When played offline, each Dark Souls entry and Bloodborne apply fog door/gates solely to designate the the entry/exit point to/from a boss’ arena. Sometimes the fog is there initially, and sometimes it’s only there upon reattempts. But, once you have confronted any boss, all possible exits are walled off. Demon’s Souls, differently, treats the concept with a mischievous hand, situating multiple fog doors around a site to create unease. Is the next threshold a boss or not? Of course, this only works the first time; but that first time matters as much as any other might.*

• The developers (not without some awkwardness) attempted to give several of the characters you meet a bit of autonomy by having them walk about after you’ve freed them from containment or dispatched an enemy threat. If, for example, you unlock the cage enclosing Yurt, much like the cages enclosing Dark Souls’ Lautrec or Logan, Yurt steps and patrols the area. Mind, he doesn’t leave the immediate platform you both are on, leading to that awkwardness if you remain and watch him, but this is an approach separate from Dark Souls’ characters staying put after you’ve happened upon them, reappearing elsewhere only once you’ve done something to reload the game state.

• I really do like every hub/home base these games have had and am not invested in setting one up as better than another. For me, the specialness of Demon’s Souls’ Nexus, as an enclosure, is its vertical expansiveness relative to its smattering of its inhabitants who have set up their own corners, complete with their minimal personal belongings. There is something about how the “arbitrariness” of their situating in corners or on ledges, goldenly lit by candles or lanterns, activates the architecture as appropriational space and speaks to its existence as a structure uninterested in catering to domestic needs. I think, through this -- its atmosphere as a perpendicular otherworldly complex hosting newly arrived, yet out-of-synch, persons --, it echoes one narrative theme, that of a humanity quietly, solitarily mourning its apparent abandonment by God.

*Edit: Turns out that this wrong -- the first and second Dark Souls do have non-boss fog gates (still can’t think of any from Dark Souls 3 and I know for certain that Bloodborne has none). I may have forgotten because the larger scopes of those two games make some of the sporadically applied details harder to recall.

#Demon's Souls

103 notes · View notes

nozomijoestar · 4 years

Text

Pt. 1 of my LL! x TMA crossover is finally here. Crossposted on my FF.net!

TWs: Gore, warfare, being buried alive, body horror

---------

With the world plunged into the apocalypse of never-ending fear thanks to The Eye and The Archivist, two stories intertwine. Statements of Nozomi Tojo later the entity called The One Alone- pre and post mortem of humanity. Recorded direct from subject.

------

“The Lonely is the most insidious of the powers. It doesn’t need to tell you lies. It waits for the lies you tell yourself.”

There is a wind that rides amidst the expanse bare of clouds that dares to call itself a sky still. It rolls ever onwards like a wave beneath the ever shifting Eyes; the Eyes with presence to match the same that crowns a panopticon. The tower it calls home stands higher than anything conceivable by Man. Though she has tried escape she knows there is nowhere on this barren land it cannot be seen. The gaze of the Beholder sees those who suffer in sacrifice below; it too sees the servants, the avatars, of its fellow Entities revel in a Hell once thought promised to one devotee or another now open for all. She is reminded of the amusement parks she yearned to step foot in as a child until it made her sick.

She is reminded it sees always through her disembodied form. It knows where none other should know; ever thirsty for the forbidden and beyond boundaries The Eye (The Beholder, The Ceaseless Watcher, It Knows You, names are irrelevant in its pursuits. They are attempts to describe an aspect of what people called impossible.) sips her essence with precision a mosquito could envy. The fog that is and is not her whenever she molds it to a human shape whips about in fury. It is tainting her loneliness. It wants to dip its finger in her blissful isolation just as it has every other monstrosity made manifest.

Her Entity is a kind being, an understanding one that divides the Who from They into an intimacy; one so singular and gentle to allow those within it to banish all others. She can still remember the first time grasping it brought her to tears. Both it and she cannot escape what it is to be known. Not now in the presence of that damned thing which exists to play voyeur. She looks down.

The trench that scars the earth and stretches beyond the horizon marks the domain The Slaughter calls a feeding ground. Even as high as she is the stench of cordite, gunpowder, gore, and all that tears apart wafts into her. Within the trench figures once store clerks, families, businessmen, teachers, students, children, fire enough bullets and shells to massacre what was once Tokyo. Each cracks sharper than thunder while the rat-a-tat-tat from infinite machine guns never stops. In between the gun nests slump people lost within war that is not satisfied with surface destruction and swallows the mind. They are worse than those casualties who scream, in their silence.

On the fetid breeze bagpipes in a mockery of ‘Scotland the Brave’ wail enough to vibrate No Man’s Land. She can spy the tanks advancing ever forwards peppered by shrapnel; flayed bodies can vaguely be made out strapped to their armor. The edges of her fog wiggle in place of a shudder. Neither now nor in her meaningless days as feed, as human, had butchery in any form brought anything from her but nausea. From that barren hell a bulky creature towered over its victims; it made way for her as their eyes locked.

She knows this monster well no matter how tiny the ribs spiked out its chest appear at this distance. It stamped its clawed bloody foot and snarled. Its teeth glistened red in a multitude of fangs arranged row after row like a shark mouth. The pointed shoulder blades protruding out its back drip viscera; she knows it has fed. Feeding is all it can do now; she knows it laments the conveniences a human form had after all. That like her it loathes having the terror it creates tainted under The Eye’s ruling gaze. Its face comprised of exposed wounds for flesh and two smaller faces twisted in pain on its neck, glares at her unflinching. Its black and orange pupiled eyes are beady as if carved from revulsion, from hate. Around them no soldiers aim and the tools of war bend paths to avoid harm. The monster shouts in a growl that booms over the din of murder.

“Forsaken! Have you come to strut and brag again you little shit? Making fun of me showing up like that are you?-“

The Slaughter avatar’s insults fell on empty air; she glided onward without a destination. Suddenly several stones passed through her leaving holes that reformed instantly. Not a glance did she spare back; U’ral-whatever-her-name-was could shout her distain till her throat bled. The One Alone would not stoop as weak as her to hold reservations about their paradise.

On this ride no one would get off.

She stopped above a circle of candy colored lights that formed the outline of a carousel. A few meters around its dim shine run shadowed shapes. Shape is the best word she has to describe those frantic wretches who pile atop each other; their fingers peel faces reused again and again among their number. They long to no more ask themselves Who Am I? but know beneath the ache they will never be whole.

They could have counted her among them, once. Almost.

Though reason reminded her it’d been months those days, the idea there’d been a time before, was impossible. Had she always been what she’d embraced or had her human shell been her true home? Some days before the opening of the Door she was ashamed to still ponder it. Not in this world however; here she at last knew her peace. The edges of her form swirled outward. She continued to watch. The Stranger’s victims continued their frenzy as another face was for the taking. Cries of triumph clashed with envious screams not unlike the battle-shouts of one brought under Slaughter.

If she squinted she made out the current victor. The teenage girl bolts across the fairgrounds in a random direction; her red-orange hair waved in its ragged bob cut like a dancing flame. Where once she had pale skin and…had they been yellow eyes? The One Alone saw her now a shambling thing that slapped its prize atop a carmine skull. Something in her puzzled to think she remembered the girl’s face, and yet nothing of her name. Nothing of what their connection had been in another life.

Not a fiber of her cared to linger longer; yet as she made to leave one final sight stopped her. This time the name and everything with it returned. Kotori busied herself on a cross-stitch of skin and sinew when she saw The One Alone above. Did she too remember? Did she know who they both once were? Even if she did The One Alone couldn’t bring herself to care. It would be unnecessary and in a way always had been. She had never existed. Kotori’s eyes gave her a look filled with the briefest solidarity, before the indifference reclaimed her. The blessings of The Stranger have created fissures along her skin; it ceased to be skin so much as it resembled a potato weak enough to tug, in its fragility.

Not for the last time she feels the deep, deep truth twist her at the chance that in another world, she joined in the stitching. Disgust shook her fog at the idea of companionship looming before her. A semblance of sympathy even if in the imagination; avatars do not trust. Not each other. The smartest ones, her, saw trust for the waiting betrayal it was. For the lie it had been since the moment she was born.

She flies beyond the circus of the damned toward a thundering in the distance. At the passing over a spot of darkness that stretches miles, she swallows the urge to stare. It is a black void so absolute it cannot cast shadows; nor can any bottom to its depth be found as though you’ve entered the essence of nothingness. Eli was there. She felt the knowledge wash over her like rain. Eli was there, transformed into something that drowned her victims into obscurity. This was a comforting thought; their domains weren’t too unalike.

It’s enough to almost make her wish Eli had joined The Lonely. She smothers it before it can bloom further. The Dark chooses its chosen and there is nothing she can do. She is alone, as she was meant to be. Ahead the thundering slams into her ears snapping her from ruminating. Niko appeared no bigger than a dot from this high. The shovel she pointed above her head reflected the Eyes that’d replaced the sun on its blade. Above her a pink man with shriveled skin stuffed into his suit smiled. It was knowing and unbothered; he stared down as calm as if he were choosing a sandwich. Simon Fairchild.

Of course The Vast would entertain a challenge from The Buried. The space around him appeared more than air; his very presence distorts that not bound to earth. His true distance away is impossible to gauge, he is both forever distant yet under only sky, a neighbor. She watches his wisplike white hair flap in the breeze. His calm slides into amusement. Niko’s curses and yells have grown louder now. She stops at what serves best for not too close; she observes.

None of it is productive. Niko, poor desperate, witless Niko still clung to a blanket stitched from emotions. If she was an annoyance in the old world, now she was insufferable. She remained a prisoner as she’d always been. She’d been a prisoner of her desires, slave to her circumstance, yet another decimal point on a statistic. Yes The One Alone remembers those days before they’d embraced their natures; however faint the memories Niko had been a worm inching for the sky, for escape. Anything was better than bills and so many mouths to feed with so few helping hands. She notices the pockmark of holes littering the ground around Niko’s feet.

There are at least a hundred here. A hundred other worms that’d cherished denial at the crushing that finally bound them physically. They would never know the suffocation of an illusion of control as Niko does. They will smell rancid air and gargle on sod in those depths; they will wonder why them. There will be no answer; no release for their attempts at freedom. It is not the freeing isolation she has accepted. You weren’t even allowed to enjoy it; you couldn’t if you didn’t embrace it. She hears the curses grow louder followed by an earth splitting crack.

Indeed the ground dents under Niko’s tap against it. A chorus of screams ring as one at another tear in the soil. The worms that’d never lived neither as humans nor now were rattled within their prisons. Simon answered the challenge and so their game at which Fear dominated the other began another wasteful chapter. Though it wasn’t her domain she felt a faint pulse spinning in the bottomless emptiness of the Falling Titan. If Simon knew she saw into his world he didn’t show it.

Honoka was there among his captives, falling, and falling. Falling with a soundless scream against the whipping winds; she was begging like the rest for a splat, for some grounded, definite end. Silly fool, nothing in this world had an end anymore. Once Honoka had been marked by The Vast; had she accepted it Simon might’ve welcomed another for his kind. The One Alone laughed in a sound near breathless and let her fog curl. Avatars serving the same master; they’d have torn each other apart.

One remained the superior number; alone the greatest of words.

Niko’s voice calls after her as she fades from view.

“…Nozomi! Always watching like a creep huh?”

The name reaches her faster than an arrow and pierces the impenetrable within her. It nests in what remains to be called her soul. It was a poison, a gate however small to expose the person long dead within her. To call out to what had been defined by failure, naivety, and longing.

The One Alone shudders as fog might. She makes her own way until silence embraces her tight.

#the magnus archives #love live!#my writing #after 10k years lol #lonely!nozomi

2 notes · View notes

brooklynislandgirl · 4 years

Text

This One || -

1. Who slowly eases into the pool while complaining about the temperature of the water and who takes a full-force no regrets flying cannonball into the water:

Sometimes Marion runs the dogs out along the creeks, down in the hollows of the bayous, cypress trees overhung with moss. The sounds of crickets and frogs and mosquitoes, a long list of local denizens. Sometimes, she follows along in human skin, keeping Marion company, with a running conversation, questions about the area, what it is like to live here alone, so far away from people, though she knows more about that than she cares to admit. Sometimes Beth follows along in feathers, completely indistinguishable from other birds except that she knows how and where to fly that she isn’t easy prey. Sometimes as a deer, sometimes as a gator. These are silent sojourns are company in her own way. They don’t last nearly as long; while her magick lets her wear whatever skin she wants so long as it is a living thing, too much time spent in an altered form starts to steal away her humanity, and causes her pattern to leak.

This time, she spends too much time as a hummingbird and can only dart out and over the water without warning. Knees tucked to her chest, arms wrapped around her shins, she hits the water’s surface like a boulder. The splash covers the dogs, the long reeds, and eventually Marion. When she comes up sputtering, she grins, covering her bareness with skin and the swamp water. She grins at the other woman sheepishly. “So. Can I...ah...borrow ya plaid, til I get somewhere wi’ clothes?”

2. Who can easily comfort the other when they’re sick and who sprays everything down with Lysol and wears an antimicrobial mask and pats the former with a broom to comfort them when they get sick?

Beth thinks she is going to die. Every smell, every whisper of sound, every touch only makes the nausea worse. Without the covers, she’s too cold. With them, she’s too hot. It’s so bad that even her hair follicles hurt. Not only that but her nose is red and chapped, her sinus passages and her eyes swollen, red, itchy. Her head is pounding, her body aches, she can’t even find a few moments of peace. She doesn’t even understand how people live like this.

And while Zarek is in town picking up supplies because she can’t, Marion is keeping an eye on her. And there’s kind of a curl of her lip and an eye roll that Beth is familiar with, she’s seen it on her brother’s face a half a million times. But for really real this time, she’s dying.

"S'jus' a lil' cold, sha" Reproachfully, Beth glances in the other woman’s direction. And spends the next thirty seconds sneezing. “Need. T’make. Living will.” She’s absolutely sure that next time instead of just a spritz of Lysol in her direction, Marion will feed her the entire can.

3. Who’s the amazing cook and who almost burns the house down trying to microwave a pop tart?

Marion glances over to Beth, a sneer of disdain on her face. Reflected in the dainty Hawai’ian’s demeanour too. They can certainly blame one another for playing a bit of grab-ass with each other. The pan is no longer on fire though the lingering smell of burnt ...whatever... was still thick and heavy, almost more powerful than the smoke drifting out toward the windows. There is only one thing they can do. In unison, their voices rise. “RILEY!” “PANDA!”

He peels himself from the lean against the side of the place, and field strips his cigarette butt into the ashtray. It was like he could see this coming. Heading to his truck, he’s already got the grill loaded up with charcoal, and the cooler he just knew to bring along. 4. Who immediately goes for the can of Raid when they see a bug and who picks it up like “no wait don’t kill it I wanna keep it”?

It’s instinct, Beth can see it in the start of the muscle twitch as Marion’s hand goes to to smack it right off her arm, like she would a mosquito or some other kind of ‘critter’. Thankfully, she is just quick enough to lean in and cup her hands around it. Plucks it free of Marion’s sleeve and pulls her hands apart just enough to peak into the dark space and murmur something unintelligible to it. “...’s jus’ one...da kine. Ya know... make big-big web? Like...Charlotte. Or...” She doesn’t know any other book characters based on Orb-weavers. This one is a particular beauty, green and white and about the size of a dime.

She offers Marion a brilliant smile, all sharp pointed teeth and soft, full lips. “No everybody evah see da beauty in nature, but is always dere, even undah da surface.” She excuses herself and makes her way toward the treeline to set her tiny captive free.

5. Who likes to lean over railings to get a better view and who freaks out and tries to pull the former back away from the rail screaming about how they might fall?

“Jus’ jump, sha.”

Beth squeezes her eyes shut and shakes her head vehemently.

“..s’only twelve feet.” But it doesn’t feel that way. It feels like the space between the branch and the ground is a million miles. Worse, she doesn’t know how she even got up here. She doesn’t know how she’s going to get down. “Gotta trust me. I’ll catch ya.” Not if her heart gives out before she makes it. And she stays there, arms wrapped around the tree bark for the better part of the hour, no matter how Marion threatens or cajoles. But she can’t hold on forever. At some point she’s either going to slip or she’s going to have to jump and neither option seems so great. Marion is...six feet. She’s five. That’s almost twelve, right? Carefully she sits down, still holding the trunk for dear life. “K-den. But...don’t drop me....au’rite?” 6. Who acts like they’re brave and fearless but actually gets terrified 15 minutes into a horror movie and who is usually the huge scaredy cat but isn’t fazed at all by most horror movies?

Beth tries to become one with the couch and when that fails, she builds a small wall of pillows and blankets around her. Lifts her forearms up defensively to block sight of the screen. But that doesn’t stave off her other senses. Beth can still hear the screaming. The slick, gushy sounds that are so very realistic she can all but taste the blood on the back of her tongue. The way that one guy is slicing skin off that kid’s face...

She knows it all too well from the ER. And even though she knows it’s movie-magic it still she can’t get over the feel of it all. She buries her face into Marion’s side and wishes it all away.

7. Who constantly criticizes the latter’s wardrobe and who dresses even more outrageously to further annoy the former?

She doesn’t have a thing that would fit Marion, who is a foot taller than she is, and though whip-cord lean, is still a few dress sizes larger too. And for all that she has money and influence, she can’t take Marion to the gala in jeans and a tee shirt, maybe some flannel if she’s dressing up.

She translates what Marion says as “I ain’t wearing this.” though, technically it could have actually been ‘Fight sweater debris,’ just like it sounded. Beth doesn’t know why she hates the sheer black top and the leather skirt. Okay, so maybe she wouldn’t be let out of the house like that, but with Marion’s pale skin and long limbs...it would look stunning. “Okay. How about... black sequin kine dat look like it shot t’rough wi’ lava?”

8.Who likes total darkness when they sleep and who needs a night light?

Despite the rain, despite the fact that Beth was exhausted from the hunt and trying to keep just out of the Rougarou’s reach, despite the fact that she was too slowly for comfort healing up from the jagged chunks of her body having been ripped muscle from bone, she tosses and turns in the moonless dark of Marion’s bed.

She whimpers. Writhes. None of it is alluring when it is paired with the thick scent of frothing-at-the-mouth terror. That she attempts to keep moving, feet kicking under the cool sheets. Sweat soaking into her hair. Goes on for hours until Marion, in her wisdom, sets a candle out. The light falls on Beth, and she starts to calm, her breathing returning to normal.

In the morning, Beth doesn’t talk about it. But over her coffee, she hoarsely whispers, “mahalo f’ dat.”

9. Who loves kids and who scowls at the mere sight of them?

She disappears from everything for more than nine months; it’s more like a year and some. Three months after the birth of the child she finally emerges from her cabin, from out behind her husband, from everything she’s used to put space and silence between them. Has the gall to act like nothing is wrong, that nothing happened. And to make matters worse, she brings the baby with her. He has her skin tone and her eyelashes. Almost takes up all of her available arm space because she’s not that big. A little tuft of black hair, black eyes when he flutters them open. She says his name is Styxx. Like the river of the dead and damned. And though she doesn’t look any different than she did before, except maybe going up a cup-size, there’s something stiff in the way she walks. The ginger way she sits, and tries to cover the wince with a coo at the drowsing baby. She doesn’t see the scowl on Marion’s lips, or the shadow that passes behind her blue, blue eyes. If she had, she’d seen a flicker of pain and annoyance and how much Marion missed her. Misses her still, because the woman sitting on her porch isn’t exactly Beth any more, is she? 10. Who plays games competitively and sucks at them and who plays games casually and is actually really heckin good?

Marion doesn’t care how many rounds of rummy she wins. Or when she insists on the checkers or chess or half a dozen other stupid board games that come out of her bag, all of which seem to have the same goal; time wasting and aggravation. What she likes is how innocent Beth is even when the fires of competition seem to burn bright in her eyes. The little stories she tells about the game pieces, how she’d learned to play, which ones are her favourite. It’s Trivial Pursuit, and the only person who can beat her, she says, is her brother.

There’s the way she dances in place and tosses popcorn at Marion when she actually loses a turn, followed by the trill of her laugh. The games don’t matter, but getting a spark of starlight to keep you company? That’s the miracle, isn’t it? 11. Who can handle spicy foods perfectly and who chugs an entire gallon of milk after accidentally eating one jalapeño?

It starts with a little ground black pepper. Then red pepper flake. There’s pepper sauce, a variety of chillies that would eat through most cooking pots if left long enough. Brewed for three days, if that’s what you want to call it, others would say it was fermented in the Devil’s nut-sack. Either way, it gets strained and heated, then cooled to room temperature before its put into the fridge. Beth swears by her brother’s hot-sauce. She tends to put it on most things, but then, how tasteful can vegetables and even some fruits be? Marion once told her that vegans, like her, tasted better. The meat sweeter, less stringy, less fatty, a whole laundry list of things, will inside the Rougarou made plans on what it would devour first when it finally got teeth into the little witch. It’s experimentation really, what combination of foods brings out the best in her. Marion doesn’t say maybe it’s honey, maybe its just her.

But she doesn’t want to crush Beth’s enthusiasm for the project.

#mahalo!marion <333 #In Murky Moonlight|Marion LaCroix #Songs Should Die Away|Marion and Beth #Reborn on the Bayou|Louisiana #ALSOH #Gris-Gris of a Good Heart|The Rougarou and Beth #tw: cannibalism #tw: blood #tw: phobias

2 notes · View notes

sickandtideeeee · 5 years

Text

By Bast - Chapter 14 (Erik x Reader)

A/N: This chapter was a tiny bit shorter than usual but I hope that it at least has a similar impact in terms of story progression :o. As usual, comments and reblogs are appreciated!! <3

How long exactly can this man run for? You were starting to feel the dull throb of ribs getting sore from the repeated impact of every step he took. This had gone on for about five minutes and you had had about enough.

“Is this really necessary?!” You shrieked, thumping him pointlessly on the back a couple of times.

“Nah, but it’s convenient as hell though.” He replied. Eventually, he plopped you down, but before you could straighten yourself up on your two feet, N’Jadaka pulled you back around a corner and softly clapped his large hand over your mouth. Your eyes grew wide in panic, but he put a finger to his lips, and brought you into a crouch with him.

Two guards passed by, their chattering louder as they approached. You wondered why you had not heard them initially while N’Jadaka clearly had. He peered around the wall and motioned for you to follow him.

You continued to sneak past station after station of surveillance in the castle. It was as though he knew the grounds like the back of his hand. Every footstep was quiet yet sure, and every turn was calculated. However, the most unnerving part of following him was that you seemed to traveling deeper and deeper to the center of the palace, rather than outside.

“Are you sure you know where you’re going?” You finally whispered, once you had reached the familiar ornate statues that adorned the entrance to the main wing. Instead of answering, he commanded you to stay hidden.

“Stay back.”

You nodded, and he went ahead, vanishing into the darkness. Out of view, you heard a muffled cry and a loud thud. Then a second.

N’Jadaka came back around to get you. You gulped, as you followed him back to collapsed bodies. Thankfully, bodies and not corpses. N’Jadaka caught you giving him a look, and raised an eyebrow. You quickly averted your eyes, looking to your feet.

Finally, the two of you stopped in a small room that seemed to house nothing but a large expansive mural. Your companion watched, almost transfixed at the image. On further inspection, you realized it was a painting depicting the royal family lineage from the time of the very first Black Panther to now. You noticed conspicuously that while his own father, T’Challa’s father and T’Challa and Shuri were accounted for in the image, N’Jadaka was not.

He made a sound between a half-hearted chuckle and a scoff, then reached into his shirt to pull out a plain necklace with a silver ring. He placed the ring on his finger and in seconds the mural appeared to dissolve. All that was left was a narrow, dark path and you both ventured inwards.

---

Nothing lay more than a foot before your eyes but pure darkness as you ventured through this secret passageway. However, staying close to N’Jadaka was a bit calming, if not dare you say, comforting. Never mind the fact that you were literally walking into the abyss with someone who could contend for the title of the real-life boogeyman. You made sure to keep a buffer of space between you as you followed closely behind him, so as to not accidentally touch him.

Too late. Losing your footing on what felt like uneven earth, you stumbled into his hard back. He stopped, and you felt a lead weight drop into your stomach.

“Walk in front of me.” He said, sternly. You obliged, nervously. He closed the distance between you however, such that you could almost feel his presence physically. A few moments passed as you walked in silence before you were brave enough to speak.

“How did you know exactly where to go?”

Again your words were met with silence. N’Jadaka really was not trying to answer any questions today. You guessed you would just stay curious.

Suddenly, your leading foot tapped metal, and you stopped. N’Jadaka pushed past you and felt the air in front of him with his hands, then you heard the heavy creak of a metal door sliding open. He climbed up a couple of metal steps and then reached out his hand for you to follow.

You climbed up and found yourself in what looked like the inside of an old train car, about ten feet long from back to front. N’Jadaka had flipped a switch that illuminated the small enclosed space, and now he sat at the other end of the vehicle before an antique-looking control panel with switches, buttons and levers. He worked busily for a couple moments until the car shook and roared with life and suddenly you were moving.

You took a seat finally, and leaned against the window beside you. Outside you could make out train tracks, revealed by the bright yellow headlights at the front of the train. You were pretty sure Wakanda hadn’t had trains this primitive in the last hundred years. These must have been one of the routes of the original vibranium mines in the city you read about as a kid. Clearly it must have been sapped dry of all of its resources, since it was so dark, missing the soft purple glow of vibranium ore. This would have been perfect for an escape route for the royal family, now that you thought about it. You took a passenger seat, deciding to allow your legs to rest for however long this break would allow you.

You watched N’Jadaka from behind, noting how his broad shoulders relaxed as though he escaped imprisonment in foreign territory on the daily. Pressing your own hand to your chest, you recognized your own steady heartbeat and irrational calm. You were running away from your homeland with the man who had tried to turn it on his head and who had also murdered your only family. Things had stopped making sense the moment this man had arrived.

N’Jadaka had ruined your life, but seemed to be giving you a new one. Contemplating this, sleep came to overtake you like a sly thief, your eyes closing shut on the image of N’Jadaka finally turning back to look at you.

---

Your eyes creaked open the moment you sensed the train screech to a halt. Disoriented for a brief moment, you jolted back to life as N’Jadaka gave you a look before dismounting the train. Following him in a hurry, you trailed him as he made his way out of the mine.

For the first time in your life, you were in what could only have been called uncharted territory. The chirp of crickets and buzz of small insects that flew by night were sounds foreign to you, as were the hum of mosquitoes that attempted to bite your face and hands, the only exposed skin they could get to. Even though it was the few hours that separated the late night and the early morning, the cool breeze generated by the foliage was offset by a sticky, oppressive heat surrounding the two of you. You continued to venture into the jungle following your partner’s lead, N’Jadaka not saying a word to you.

You walked for what felt like hours, feeling more and more idiotic the further you traveled. Pursuing this man who would not speak to you, throwing away your whole life for what you think you saw, what you think you heard, and what you think you felt? This was dumb, so very dumb, you mentally scolded yourself.

Finally, you stopped in your tracks. N’Jadaka kept walking for several steps longer, then stopped once he no longer felt the echoing of steps behind him. He turned to look at you, wordlessly.

“Where are we going?” You demanding to know, calling out to him.

In the brightness of the full moon, you could see his neutral, tough expression soften ever-so-slightly. Finally, that familiar smirk materialized once again. You realized that you had begun to miss it in the span of just a few hours.

“I was waiting for you to ask, babygirl. Looked like you’d follow me to the ends of the earth, no questions asked. It was cute, though, no lie.”

Your eyes narrowed.

“We’re gonna find shelter for the night.” He reassured you. “Then there’s a cabin out-”

Your blood-curdling scream cut him off, as a beast came out of seemingly nowhere in the deep jungle and charged directly towards you with all its might. Your fight or flight response did neither in this instance, and instead as you crouched in a protective stance, hands above you to protect your face, all of your muscles and joints seemed to freeze. Your eyes clamped shut, waiting for the worst.

Nothing happened.

Your eyes peered open, and you found yourself surrounded by a translucent protective barrier. The animal must have been rebuffed and stunned by the shield once it pounced onto you, because it steadied itself shakily on its paws, shaking its monstrous head aggressively side to side. Still frozen in place, your eyes darted around trying to make sense of what was going on. They fell on N’Jadaka who looked at you in concerned shock. The jungle cat now seemed to have renewed rage at missing an easy meal and now repositioned itself to charge once more.

Before it could spring a second time, N’Jadaka charged the beast shoulder-first like a linebacker, knocking the snarling jungle cat to the ground once more. He gave it a crushing blow on its snout and you held your breath as he delivered next blow after blow, blood splattering and staining his face and clothing.

As the creature let out its agonal breaths, N’Jadaka stayed kneeling on the ground, heaving with fatigue after having pummeled this now helpless creature into the soil. Your barrier dropped as you moved slowly towards him. It was so, so easy to forget how violent this man could be, and this was your reminder.

He stayed still, watching the animal die for a moment as you approached. You placed a hand gingerly on his shoulder, hoping to snap him out of his trance.

“Thank you, N’Jadaka. For protecting me.” You said, softly.

His breathing slowed and he rose to his feet. You took a few steps back to give him space. You wondered if you had made that barrier yourself or it was divine intervention, or somehow even N’Jadaka himself. It really would not have been so strange considering you’d just forced your hand through a wall like a ghost just hours ago. You’d figure out what was going on later.

“Let’s keep moving. We gotta find somewhere to sleep.” N’Jadaka replied, his voice no louder than a murmur.

You nodded, even though he couldn’t see you and trailed him closely. He stopped suddenly, turned to take a long look at you, and with his expression still neutral despite a new warmth behind his eyes, spoke again.

“Call me Erik from now on.”

Tagging: @syndrlla97 @iwantsomethingeternal@1killmonger @chasingsunlight @hoopshoney @destinio1 @wakanda-inspired @thadelightfulone @lalasparkles @pessimisfit @youreadthatright @stark-red19@ruruly20 @bossyboyd03 @autumn242 @heybriheyyy @thelovelyliterary@muse-of-mbaku @bidibidibombaclaat@supersizemeplz@romanceoftheeveryday @chaneajoyyy @lildashofmelanin @blackpinup22 @imayhavemisunderstood @raysunshine78

#erik x reader #erik killmonger x reader #killmonger x reader #black panther series #black panther #black panther imagine #erik killmonger x black!reader #by bast

45 notes · View notes

lizord-lord · 5 years

Text

The Seven Princes as quotes from my idiot friends on discord

Jaqueline: And I like to think that bird is your fursona Roman: feathersona Jaqueline: ,,,,hey Roman? Jaqueline: why do you know that? Jaqueline: Roman?? Sparrow: Remy told me Jaqueline: ,,,hey Roman? Why does Remy know that? Roman: he’s Remy Jaqueline: I- Roman: We don’t question him anymore

Eleanor: Enrique is loosing his ikea virginity ahsgvdbdbd

Remy: having extra holes is fun Anvity (in response to being told everyone knows about his Hoe Tendencies™): Okay, calling me out publically in front of the village like I’m a witch and this is the 18th century in Victorian England. I get it

Eleanor: like ...shriveled raisin duck penis, I don’t think that would be great for terrorizing homophobes Vincent: not with that attitude

Vincent: listen if I wasn’t ace I’d fuck venom and you can quote me on that

Jaqueline: no one owns space Eleanor: not yet they don’t

Anvity: I called a pumpkin sexy once because I was about to carve it and I wanted to see Roman sneeze soda

Enrique: we're too tired to feel anything except what the fuck

Anvity: I would just take my immortal husbands penis and laugh Anvity, about said penis: I would keep it in a sack on my belt, and wave it in front of my enemies

Eleanor the DM: Alright, what are your character's names? Vincent: McDonald the Brave. Jaqueline: Id'iot, but with an apostrophe between d and i. Eleanor: Wow, I hate all of these. Remy, your character's name? Remy: Waluigi. Eleanor: Remy: He's a bard.

Roman: Because they never close, they are slain. Only the mightiest can defeat Denny’s.

Infomercial: What do you really have to lose? Anvity: My Life.

Jaqueline: Ugggh how the fuck does procreate work Vincent: well when two people love each other very much- Enrique (to Anvity): i know this sounds really weird, but you stay really still when you sleep Anvity: wHa T Jaqueline: i killed 5 mosquitos in my room this evening im scared why are there so many not-hot mini vampires

Eleanor: I also want to ask [crush] out but 1) I'll be a sad bitch if they turn me down completely 2) what do I do if they say yes???? Yeehaw??????? Vincent: P L E A S E SAY YEEHAW

Enrique: can i have a strawberry frappuccino Remy: *something that involves the words “white chocolate mocha” and other coffee terms* Enrique: ....I don’t know what words you’re using

Vincent: she’s the only normal one out of the three of us. Eleanor: ah, okay. Jaque, here's the magnesium- Jaqueline: i'm gonna eat it. Eleanor: ...and you're the normal one?

Remy: CAN I HAVE THE BRAIN CELL?? Vincent: no you gotta fight Eleanor for half of it Eleanor: [knife] Vincent: Eleanor may I have your half tomorrow, gonna need it for things Remy, holding up a gun: give me the brain cell, and nobody gets hurt

Remy: *making a lot of noise and being a disturbance* Eleanor: any more of that and i'll throw this at you, no regrets Remy, without missing a beat: and make me bleed?

Roman: so what’s the head from? Enrique: oh that’s just a head I have

Some random demon: wait WHAT what the fuck is up with y’all and your ages Vincent: sorry I was born with it

(who said what under the cut)

Blue @romansleftshoulderpad Sparrow @poisonedapples (talking about me) Queenie @ultimate-queen-of-fandoms2 Tori (I can’t find your tumblr I am sorry) Avery @theincediblesulk Em @em-be-lievable Jynx @jynxlovesluck Sparrow Blue

Jynx Queenie

Jynx

Airam @towersandmyrtles and their DnD party

Jynx Fae @theshiproyalarrives A classmate of mine Me

Two friends of Jelly’s @emberofthefrost

Jack @patton-croc-agenda

Jynx Sparrow

Me a barista

teacher and classmates of Dallas (no tumblr) Skyla @skylagamingv2 Kai @kaioanxiety Jensen @purediscordhell Kai Skyla

Sassy’s (can’t find your tumblr sorry) younger sisters My grandpa My mom

Airam Jensen

#discord shenanigans #the seven princes #incorrect quotes #roman sanders #ts sleep #i love them all okay #i was going to post this yesterday but then i had to sleeb dfbhdgj #too lazy to tag #angel/demon au

30 notes · View notes