#It does feel a little ghoulish sometimes though I will admit it

[prolibytherium]

It's funny when people treat the level of planning and calculating out sympathetic responses that you have to do with low empathy as like 'scary' or manipulative or whatever because in practice it's so deeply un-malicious and if anything motivated by NOT wanting to unintentionally hurt someone

[tennessoui]

hello 👋 I was catching up on your tumblr like it's my weekly newspaper of choice and, um, if you ever fancied writing a snippet of obi wan getting the call after a concert about fire fighter anakin getting hurt it would be much appreciated 🥺

alright yes of course!!! i always try to give my asks whatever they want 🥺🥺🥺 here's a snippet of singer!obi-wan getting an 'anakin is hurt' call

(1.8k)

When Obi-Wan gets offstage, the first thing he does is check his phone. That’s what he’s been doing for months now, ever since he and Anakin started dating. It’s not like he can look at his phone onstage in front of all the people who paid to see Obi-Wan Kenobi, rock star. He has to wait, to not carry his phone with him at all up to the stage in order to triumph over the temptation of seeing what Anakin is doing right now, what silly thing he wants Obi-Wan to see.

It’s almost better like this. He gets offstage and he gets little presents from his boyfriend: horrifically cooked meals at the station, complaints about one of his coworkers’ new taste in music, awful jokes his sister has told him.

Tonight, there’s nothing.

He doesn’t think much about it though, not when he doesn’t have his boyfriend’s work schedule memorized. Sometimes the firefighters’ schedules shift on random days; someone calling out sick, someone available to cover a shift they weren’t assigned….It’s a big city, but a small firehouse. Obi-Wan isn’t worried.

Disappointed, maybe, that he doesn’t get to see Anakin’s twisted, disgusted face at Jesse’s attempt at dinner. Or his string of laughing text emojis to accompany a joke from Ahsoka. Disappointed, but not worried.

He chats with Kit and Quinlan the entire time back to his dressing room. The drummer thinks the opening song could use a little more rehearsal. The guitarist thinks it’s fine. Obi-Wan hadn’t heard anything definitively out of place, but he’s always alright with more rehearsal. He wants to give the best performance he can to the fans. It’s that simple.

He’s alone for a few minutes when he changes from his performance outfit into his normal clothes. It’s just after ten p.m.

He thinks about calling Anakin, as it’s only 8 in the evening in his city. Surely that’s too early to go to bed, even for a night off-shit. He thinks about it the entire time he’s changing into jeans and a t-shirt, the entire time he’s wiping off his stage make-up--nothing drastic of course, but just enough to be visible in the stage lights, just enough to look a little ghoulish in the warmer lights of the dressing room.

It doesn’t take much to break him, he’ll admit. He really, really likes Anakin. They’ve been dating for eight months now. He’s almost completely comfortable saying that he loves Anakin, but he doesn’t want to scare the other man off. Sometimes he thinks that everything he feels is too big and too dramatic for everyday life, that being in the spotlight from such a young age ruined him for anything private and selfish ever again.

But loving Anakin feels private, feels selfish. It feels right, amazing, like he’s a bandit robbing a small bank and just hopping on the train leaving town. It feels like he’s getting away with something he never should have even expected to have.

Anakin doesn’t pick up.

This too is excusable, as Obi-Wan hardly expects his boyfriend to wait by the phone, anticipating his call. Anakin’s messages during his concerts are gifts for a reason. They’re not mandatory, they’re unexpected.

Going into a serious relationship like this, they’d both understood the importance of their already established lives. Obi-Wan could no more give up a concert in favor of a call with Anakin as Anakin could go off shift and call Obi-Wan.

He packs the necessities he’d carried with him into the dressing room and looks around, if only to make sure he has everything and he’s not leaving too big of a mess.

Ahsoka calls him on his cell, when he’s halfway between his dressing room and the bus. He almost doesn’t pick up because he doesn’t have Ahsoka’s number saved into his contacts. But her city area code is the same as Anakin’s, and he picks up the call.

“Obi-Wan?” Ahsoka sounds like she’s half on the call and half not. “I couldn’t unlock Anakin’s phone, but I saw you were trying to call him.”

Obi-Wan pauses and leans against the wall. “Yes, I was,” he says slowly, his gut trembling with a bad feeling. “Why are you calling me, Ahsoka?” He hates sounding so abrupt, but he can’t help it. He needs to know. Perhaps Anakin is asleep, and Ahsoka is trying to ward off any further calls in order to let her brother sleep.

“Anakin’s in the hospital,” she says grimly and straightforwardly. Faintly, Obi-Wan thinks he can appreciate her no-nonsense attitude. She gets directly to the point, even though the point iis dangerously sharp.

“No,” Obi-Wan shakes his head, even as he slowly slides down the wall he’s against until he’s sitting on the floor. “No, he can’t be. I talked to him a few hours ago.”

“There was a call,” Ahsoka sounds so close to crying. No, Obi-Wan thinks. Impossible.

“But I just talked to him,” he says, clearing his throat. “I just….”

“There was a fire out on Temple Street,” she says thickly. “He’s in the hospital because a pillar fell on him. Trapped him in...in a burning house.”

Obi-Wan inhales sharply. If he hadn’t been sitting down already, he would have fallen to the ground. “But I--” I just talked to him, he thinks. As if it matters.

“He’s not critical anymore,” Ahsoka tells him. “But he’s still in surgery. Invasive, but. Not overly risky is what they told me.” She sniffles.

“I’m twenty hours away,” he says faintly.

“I know,” Ahsoka says into the phone. “I know. You’re almost on the other side of the country. But...they didn’t know to call you and I thought you needed to know.”

“I’ll be there as soon as possible,” Obi-Wan hears himself say. He needs to move. He needs to catch a plane. No matter expensive. He needs to get to the airport, get to Anakin.

Anakin’s hurt. Anakin needs surgery.

It’s Quinlan that finds him in the hallway, guitar slung over his back.

“Obi-Wan?” he asks, offering a hand out without explanation.

“Anakin’s in the hospital,” he says blankly, staring straight forward at the other wall. “He got hurt in a fire.”

“Then let’s get you there,” Quinlan replies instantly, pulling Obi-Wan up. “Come on. We’ll get you straight to the airport. I’ll tell the fans of the next concert.”

“We need to give them a refund,” Obi-Wan says distantly as he lets himself be led out to the tour bus. There are screams of fans, but it’s like he can’t even hear them. He’s underwater. Nothing matters as much. Nothing matters at all. Anakin needs surgery. Anakin’s in the hospital. Anakin’s hurt. He’s in the hospital. He needs surgery.

“We will,” Quinlan reassures him, leading him onto the bus. He tells the driver something harshly, quickly, and then not even a minute later, the wheels are in motion.

Anakin is in the hospital. Anakin had been hurt. He’d been in a building when it’d collapsed. How had Obi-Wan never even thought to worry about this? He worries about everything, but he’d never even thought of Anakin, of what Anakin’s career means. Sometimes he doesn’t get out. Sometimes Anakin doesn’t save the day. Who saves him?

Obi-Wan only realizes he’s making a weird noise with his throat when Quinlan clasps his hand. “We’re going to the airport,” he says with absolute surety. “We’ll get you to him, alright?”

Obi-Wan nods. What else is he supposed to do? He just talked to Anakin. He was fine then. How can someone go from fine to needing surgery in less than three hours?

He calls Ahsoka within the next fifteen minutes, as soon as it sinks in that this is happening. It doesn’t make sense, he can’t wrap his head around it, but it’s happening anyway. He’s ten minutes from the closest airport. Quinlan’s already got him a ticket. He’s coming. He’s almost there. He just...he needs to know Anakin is….that Anakin is……

“He’s still in surgery,” Ahsoka tells him softly. She sounds so small, so unsure. He’s only met her a handful of times, but he knows this tone does not belong anywhere close to her. “I don’t know, Obi-Wan. Please get here.”

Around the sixth hour after his concert ends, Obi-Wan cries. He leaves the official announcement to Quinlan, because he’s a coward. But he loves Anakin enough to type out a tweet anyway. It’s nothing too dramatic, nothing too honest either. There’s been an emergency. He’s sorry. He’s not sorry enough to not go, but he’s sorry enough to talk to fans. There’ll be a refund, maybe a rescheduling.

His entire life feels up in ends, but he talks about rescheduling. He doesn’t know what else to do. When the flight attendant tells him to turn his phone off, he puts it down until she’s passed by.

He looks out the window of the airplane and he can feel his tears soaking into his beard. Anakin is alright, he keeps telling himself. Anakin has to be okay. He doesn’t know what he’ll do if Anakin isn’t okay.

It’s suddenly so amazingly clear to him that if Anakin were to--to not be alright--Obi-Wan’s life would never, ever be the same. Never. They’re intrinsically linked together. Why wasn’t he contacted when Anakin was first brought to the hospital? He needs to know this. He needs to know as soon as Anakin is hurt. He can’t stand the idea that Anakin had been injured halfway through his set, maybe at the end, maybe before it even started.

He needs to know as soon as it happens, if it ever happens again.

He never wants it to happen again. He never wants Anakin to be hurt, to be unresponsive, to be so far from him that Anakin’s sister has to let him know what’s going on.

He needs to be something different, something more. Something that makes everyone understand that he needs to be informed immediately when anything happens to Anakin, his Anakin. His….

Husband. Husband would work. If Anakin were to marry him, Obi-Wan would get preference to every medical incident experienced. Obi-Wan could be there. Yes. Husband

Husband.

Obi-Wan wipes the tears from his eyes slowly as he stares at the backside of the seat in front of him. Husband. If he were to be Anakin’s husband, he’d never be third in the information chain. He’d know immediately when something happens to his...to his husband.

Anakin could be his husband. Obi-Wan would ask him. It would make everything easier. It would mean Obi-Wan would know anything wrong as soon as it happened. He’d be the first in the chain of information.

He wants that, he decides as he cries into his airplane food napkin somewhere over the Great Plains. He wants to be the first. He wants to know. He wants to be there everytime Anakin wakes up from an injury. He wants to hold his hand.

Nothing else will ever make him feel any better. He needs it.

[druidicart]

It’s... Ariel!

Who: Ariel and Art

Where: In the astral plane above Beacon Hills

Rated: PG

What: Art astral projects in hopes of speaking with his father, but instead meets Ariel Hale. Ariel puts the pieces together and comes up with a theory on who they are to each other. Also: Art cries a lot, and Ariel has messages for everyone.

Art sat in the middle of his room, hands resting neatly on his lap as the scent of sandalwood permeated the air. It took a lot longer to ground himself than usual because his mind was in so many different places, but he knew he needed to talk to his father and soon. There was so much he needed to ask Arthur Senior, not only about what to do with the Horsemen and the Nemeton, but on what to do with girls. He’d missed out on that conversation with his dad and he was so lost, he felt like it was worth it to try and make it through the astral plane and find him. He’d never done something like this, before. From what he read, he needed to hold a piece of rose quartz in his left hand and some malachite in the other and think of the blood in his veins. It should, theoretically, direct him to his closest blood relative should the projection work. Art took a deep breath and let it out through his nose. By the time he counted to thirty, he felt weightless and when he looked down, he could see his body sitting below him. The world around him flowed into itself in a maze of colors until they blended together so much, the world became black as night. He was vaguely aware of some trees below him, but it was the inky expanse of the sky that held his attention—that, and the feeling that he wasn’t alone. He searched around him until he saw the culprit: a young woman he didn’t recognize floating with him above the trees. She wasn’t his father at all and he frowned. “H-hello?” he called out, testing his voice. “Who are you?”

 Ariel absentmindedly kept watch over Beacon Hills whenever she could, there was so much that she had learned over everything that had happened post-her death and so much that she wanted to say to her friends, but as she continued her journey through the town, an unfamiliar voice caught her attention and she jumped back from where she had been hovering, a little yelp escaping past her throat. "Oh, sorry about that, didn't actually notice you there, although if I had, obviously I would have not screamed of course." She says with a snort and grin. "I'm Ariel Hale, and you are? Wait, are you a Ghost too? Hopefully not, you look rather young to die, although I guess I can't say much.." She mumbles and looks down at herself for a moment before sticking her hand out for him to shake, a bright smile still on her lips.

 Art shook his head, dumbfounded. He hadn't expected her to be so friendly, even though she looked like it. Since she wasn't the person he came to see, his mind immediately thought she was some kind of ghoulish monster or the astral plane... police. Art had no idea how any of it worked. "No, I... I'm not dead. I thought I would test out a theory I read in an old druid journal and came to talk to someone, but I don't see him." He swallowed thickly and tried to find signs of her being a ghost. He didn't know what it would look like. She seemed normal aside from the floating. "Are you a spirit? Did... did you die?"

 Ariel tilts her head to the side as though observing him due to the fact that he seemed to have gotten lost in his thoughts and the werewolf was still confused as to who this person was. "Well, that's always good to hear, you never know when you'll kick the bucket when it comes to Beacon Hills." The blonde states with a scrunch of her nose. "Oh, you're a Druid? Cool! Who were you looking for? Maybe I've seen or heard of him, I've met a lot of people here and spend time with my brother often, not that it's information that you probably care about or anything, but it makes me happy to say!" Ariel responds with a laugh, but it quickly dies down at the next question as she fiddles with her ring and nods. "Yeah, I died in December..saving Lydia from a guy that was influenced by Famine. My dad, Peter later on killed him but..that part isn't as much of a surprise but yeah..I'm a Beacon Hills native, I was a Werewolf here because it runs in the Hale genes and all."

 Art thought that if he wasn't going to see his father, at least he found someone very helpful. "Yeah, I'm a Druid. I'm looking for my dad... he um... has sandy hair and big nose and he died when I was 11 and I'm not sure if he um... hangs around here. I don't know where ghosts go and all that. My name is Art Murphy. It's short for Arthur. My dad's name is also Arthur Murphy. I'm sorry about... you know," he shrugged a little to show he meant her death, but instead of answering his question, she gave him a million more. "That means you've died recently. Famine... he's still in Beacon Hills and Lydia... she just... lost her mom." He wondered if she came by here, too, but the thought was cut off entirely when she mentioned that Peter was her father. "You're a Hale," he said as if it wasn't already obvious. He couldn't sense her lycanthropy like he could when he was in the corporeal plane, but he was glad she told him. "I've heard of you. Peter stopped coming to the shop for a while and my mom said he was in mourning. That was you..." he stared, dumbfounded. From what he knew, Peter didn't care about anyone, and yet he'd been shaken by his daughter's death. "I can still see his sadness sometimes. Even after he became an alpha."

 Ariel frowns a little as she shakes her head. "Sorry, I haven't actually heard of him yet, but if I do..well I actually don't know how to contact you, but I may be able to give hints if possible with my own ways and then you can contact him again, but how did you test out your theory? Using what kind of druid spell because it seems as though you were asking for a blood relative and that's not me, I don't think of course." She muses and shakes her head. "You're adorable though! And it's..not exactly okay, but er, I've been alright up here I guess, I know what's been going on around Town, I've kind of been watching over it and I wish I was there to hug Lydia a thousand times and tell her how sorry I was and that despite what she may think, she does not deserve this pain, or tell Talia that I am so proud of her, and that I'm sorry for all of our arguments because it was awkward the last time we saw each other before I..but anyways, there is so much that I want to say to so many people." Ariel admits as she licks her lips. "That would be correct, I'm Peter's oldest." Bright blue eyes stared down at the other's as she points. "If I didn't think any better, I'd say that you actually look a little...like..my dad, did you say that he stopped going to a shop that your mom works at?" She questions as eyes slowly widen at a realisation that wasn't impossible, but still something that was hard to take in. "You can?" She asks as eyes tear up a bit and she clears her throat for the tight knot feeling to go away. "Want to know the worst part? I didn't want to go." Ariel admits with a nervous laugh. "I mean, I've accepted death since I was a kid, but that doesn't make it any less scary but..I just wanted to save my friend, she deserves life and happiness."

 Art sighed and looked out over the treetops. "I was supposed to meet a blood relative. I used crystals to get here instead of herbs and herbs are more my forte. I probably messed up. I should only have as long as it takes the incense to burn up." He looked at Ariel again. "Do You want me to tell that to Lydia and Talia? I can if you want... Let them know. They need a lot of good news right now." When she looked at him with such scrutiny, he wanted to look away, but couldn't. It was important to him that he not back down. "I don't look like him" he said immediately. "We own a soup shop but he always came to get herbs from us. Not soup. Always business. But I can see emotions as color although not now." Art squinted. Ariel appeared so clear. "But he gets hit with sadness every so often and I thought it was from the fire. He refuses to say. Most people do. I can only guess it was because of you. I know what you mean about death. In Beacon Hills, death is everywhere, figuratively and literally. Many of us have accepted it but... We still have that drive to fight. It's weird." He wanted to hug her which was strange because he didn't know her and he only hugged Rosie and his mom.

 Ariel furrows her eyebrows slightly as she nervously chews on her lip, wondering what else could have gone wrong for her to appear, but the same thought kept on wandering around and she didn't know how to tell him, nor did she know if he would want to accept it since it was Peter that they were talking about here. "You could have messed up..but er, there's also other..reasons why a blood relative could have been called and oops, I'm..here." Ariel whispers in a calm tone. "Please? Tell Lydia that despite what happened, I am so proud of her too and if you can, tell my dad and Derek that I love and miss them." She adds, taking in a shaky breath at the thought of her family as she pulls a strand of blonde hair away from her face. "I'm sorry, I've never had much of a filter.." She quickly apologises, even though it was true. "Always business." She repeats although her tone sounds more questioning than anything else. "It could still be from the fire too, I just..I feel terrible that he would still be upset, but I also can't blame him for being sad, it's only been months..but I hope he knows that this wasn't anyone's fault but famine's." She explains, making a face. "Exactly, hopefully none of you guys do pass or I'm not gonna be happy because you guys deserve way better than this." She responds in a somewhat firm, but incredibly caring, tone. "Has your mom and my dad..always been close?" Ariel can't help but ask, shutting her eyes for a moment before peeking with one eye open because of how cringey the question really was when she thought about the reasoning behind it.

 Art thought about it for a moment. "The Hales and my family are really old Beacon Hills families. There's every chance we have a common ancestor," Art stated. While he thought his father was closest, perhaps his father wasn't available. Ariel said she watched over the town, after all. He nodded at her requests, repeating them in his head so he wouldn't forget. He thought it must be so hard for her to watch people in silence. It was the least he could do. "Peter doesn't talk about himself so I'm not sure who he blames, but hearing from you... Maybe I'll be able to find something out about him." He just hoped Peter believed in not harming the messenger. He shot her a confused look when she asked about their parents. "Not really. She used to check her reflection whenever he came by but she does that with the Sheriff too. Now that Peter is an alpha, she's been distant. She doesn't trust alphas. He walked me home the other night and my mom threw a fit, but she stayed outside talking to him for a long time." He remembered feeling his mother's sadness when she came in that night and it confused him. It was the same sadness he felt when Rosie spoke about Jake. But no. Art shook his head. She was upset Art came home with an alpha. That was all.

 Ariel chews nervously on her bottom lip as she thinks about it, wanting to believe that there was a good and reasonable explanation behind this that didn't involve one that made her feel grossed out, not because of the person in front of her being a relative, but her dad still finding ways to charm women. "I mean, you aren't wrong, but unless you were asking for a recent relative, I don't understand why else I would be chosen out of any other possible relative..not that I don't like seeing you or anything! You're absolutely adorable and it's nice to not be wandering around, lonely after so long so to temporarily see someone here is nice." She admits with a warm grin on her lips. "Yeah..he doesn't talk much about himself or his family, everything about him is personal and the only way that I could really figure out what was going on with him emotionally wise, was when it was already too late." The werewolf says as she sits herself down, although she was still casually floating around where she had been standing beforehand. "If there's anything that you want to know, I'm more than happy to help out and answer as best that I can." Ariel offers as she swallows hard and thinks about what he was saying, continuing to connect the dots. "Blood relative..I'm here, your mum and my dad.." She whispers with furrowed eyebrows as eyes scan the other, realising that they kind of looked alike, maybe if she had brown hair, there would be more similarity but the eyes and the nose. "You don't think..I mean, considering my dad it's not uncommon and oh god, I'm sorry, you may not believe it, but I kind of do? And if I have another.." Pausing at that, tears appear in her eyes as she squeals and hides her face for a moment. "Sorry, it would just be..really cool, but I can't get my hopes up, it's really nice to meet you though, Art."

 "I can come back... If I found you once before, who is to say I can't find you again. I’ve never done this before and I'm surprised it worked this well." What she wad implying was starting to dawn on him and he refused to believe it. Peter couldn't be... But that would mean he was named for someone else entirely. The logic certainly pointed in that direction. Art shook his head furiously. "You're nice Ariel. It's weird how much I like you immediately but I can't... My dad is Arthur Sr and I'm Arthur Jr. That's how it is. I... I'm an only child." He couldn't think about this. Not now. It made sense as to why his mother never let them stay in the same room for very long. Why would she keep it a secret? She robbed him of a very different life. Before he knew it, he was crying. He sniffed and rubbed his nose with his sleeve. "I'm sorry. For so long it's been me and my mom. I would have loved to have a big sister to help me like I need help now."

 Ariel nods her head at his words, a warm smile starting to appear upon her lips. "Yeah, that is very true and I would like that, thank you." She muses, although the smile quickly falters when she notices that he is starting to realise what she is trying to imply here. "Trust me..the thought of my dad having been with yet another person grosses me out so, it ain't all rainbows and sunshine, but another sibling..that's incredible." Ariel admits the last words with a small laugh. "I don't think it's all that weird, not that I'm saying that I expect people to like me immediately or anything! Oh gosh, no, but I like being nice with people and I can only hope that they do like me." She explains with a small shrug. "I personally always knew about my half-siblings so..I can understand where it would be frustrating and confusin-oh no." She whispers the last part when she sees the tears and her immediate reaction is to wrap her arms around him in an embrace. "I'm sorry! I'm so sorry, I really didn't mean to make you cry, and I'm also sorry for not asking if I could hug you, I usually do, but I feel so bad now and I would have loved to have spent time with another younger brother."

"It takes me a long time to warm up to someone, but I felt so calm with you right from the start," Art admitted, his voice shaking from the revelation. If anything, that had to be a sign. Art believed there were no coincidences after all. He was meant to meet Ariel here for a reason. "If... if this is true, this means my family just got a lot bigger." He hadn't expected to become a part of the largest werewolf family in Beacon Hills. It was a bit too much. He was just trying to hold himself together when he felt her arms around him. Hugs always made things worse and soon his was full on crying. He loved his father, the man who raised him. And didn't want him to think that Art didn't appreciate him now that this new life was a possibility. He sank into her shoulder, his shoulders shaking with sobs. "D-don't... don't be sorry," he tried to say, but it was unintelligible. "I came here to see my dad and I still want to see him. I miss him but... but now it feels like he's really gone." he had no idea what his life would be like from here on out, but his first step was to talk to his mother. He held onto Ariel for another moment, trying to calm his breathing.

Ariel blinks as shoulders relax a bit. "I felt the same way, although I like to see the good in people so, I tend to warm up to them quite easily, but the moment that they try to harm me or my friends, then that's a side of me that you don't want to see." Ariel explains before shrugging her shoulders. "Yeah..there's more and more Hales each day." She jokes although sometimes it was true..like right now with her finding out that she had another half-sibling. "I just wish that I had known of you whilst I was still alive, but I'm glad to have met you now." She beams. Once he starts crying more, tears well up in Ariel's own eyes as she rubs his back comfortingly. "I really do wish that I could have been of more help, Art and if you ever want to talk, I am one spell away, always just..keeping watch of this place."

 Art nodded, swiping at his eyes. It felt good to cry. It unleashed a lot of built up stress because what he felt was overwhelming him. "I'm glad I met you, too. I'm sorry I'm not very good company right now. I need to talk to my mom. But... Ariel." He pulled away so he could look at her. "If you can watch over the whole town... if you ever happen across a soup shop near old Main. It's... it's called Soupernatural. That's where my mom and I work. It would be nice to know... that you were looking out for us there." He got his bearings a moment and pointed in the right direction of the shop. "I can only stay as long as the incense is burning and it doesn't burn for long. I might start fading soon... but I'll come back. I'll tell the others what you said and I can bring back messages... unless you happen to see their reactions anyway." He sniffed. His head didn't hurt out here as a spirit, but he knew he'd have a headache once he returned to his body. "Doesn't it get lonely up here? Do not a lot of people stay behind to watch over the town?"

 Ariel smiles warmly down at him as she waves a hand around awkwardly. "Oh shh, that is not true at all, you are perfect company because I..don't get a lot of it anyways so, you also don't have much to go up against." She jokes with a light laugh before clearing her throat. "Sorry, but anywho, yeah, I would love to go and look out for the both of you guys there, that's an amazing shop name, by the way." Ariel muses and stands up a bit more, frowning slightly since she knew that he would be leaving soon, her hopes high though at the thought of him getting to come back again. "I figured that it didn't, but please don't be a stranger. Thank you so much for doing that, and don't worry, I will go and check up on them when you go in hopes to see their reactions because thinking of them makes me happy so hopefully I make them happy too." She responds in a sweet tone, sniffling a bit too. "It does and there are some people here, yes, you can say that I have some..unfinished business, I tend to stay more to myself and get lost in my thoughts, even check up on the lab, I was a Bio-Engineer so leave it to me to still think about work even whilst dead." Ariel states with a snort. "But I do hang out with my brother a bit, he's fully passed on but we can still communicate, it's hard to explain."

 Art was glad that Ariel would look out for him. Even though he wasn't sure what she could do, he was glad that her presence would be there. And he secretly hoped she would haunt his mother, but he doubted she would. He got a good vibe from her. When she complimented the shop name, he responded immediately with the response he always did: "Thanks. My dad named it." But as soon as the words were out, his face fell and his throat seized up in another shuddering sob. He needed to learn how to control himself. It was easier to concentrate on Ariel and her need to make people happy. Just being in her proximity was soothing. He knew he would be in a much worse state if it weren't for her. "Lydia and the others could use all the happiness they can get. It'll be nice to help you spread some of it around. I'm glad you have someone else to talk to here." The fact that she was a Bio-Engineer piqued his interest. He liked trying to combine the science side of medicine that Aurora knew with the holistic side he was used to. He thought maybe he could pick her brain about some of the active ingredients in various herbs and right when he opened his mouth to ask her, the world began to fade in and out of view. "Ariel!" he cried out, reaching for her. "I think I'm going back!"

Ariel always wanted to help out in any way that she could so to simply watch over Art and his mother gave her a little task to do and it was a comforting one for probably not only Art, but also for Ariel too because it meant that she could get to know her half-brother from afar, even if he could come back so that the two could chat. The moment that he mentions his dad, her eyes widen as she hides her face. "Oh god, I'm sorry! I didn't mean to make you cry..again." Ariel muses and scrunches up her nose slightly, guilt washing over her once more, walking back closer to gently wipe off any excess tears that would be on his face after having released sobs yet again. "That is very true, they deserve so much happiness and love. It's what I always did back when I was alive, I would spread positivity despite how the town often was, in wrecks, but someone had to keep their spirits high...hah pun." She mumbles with a snort, raising her eyebrows a bit when she sees him open his mouth to say something but soon he's fading away and a frown etches itself upon her lips. "It's okay! I'll see you again! Remember that you can always come back, Art. I'll be here!"

[still-finding-our-way]

W11, W12, W13

30/12/2020

Waking the dead, life, love and gossip

Flakey, flake, flake flake. I admit it, I let myself down and my nearest and dearest. Oh, the fucking self pity. Despite the ever changing rules and regulations over lockdown, we had planned to get out and walk with our respective menfolk during Christmas and New Year. We set a date and located a route. The forecast looked splendid—crisp and clear—it was going to be amazing. The day came round. I got up late, too late for my early morning climbing session with my daughter. I got dressed in my walking gear, and half an hour before leaving I couldn’t do it. I just could not walk out the door. So I cancelled and went back to bed. Yup, the diary of a depressive. Jen was her usual sage self and pointed out it was ‘twixmas’ and everyone was feeling shit, upside down and the wrong way round, and I should stop beating myself up about it. As Jen and A were already on route they continued on and later sent a breathtaking photograph of the high moor with the sun setting in one direction and the moon rising in the other. Studying the image on my phone in bed, I might have been peering into another world—a martian landscape, the light from the setting sun scattering a Persimmon glow across the moor grass—bronze and gold, molten lava, heat and searing passion. Dear Persephone, Queen of the underworld, you should eat all the seeds. These are winters treasures. Am I looking at a take from an African plain or perhaps a still from the film Dune? No, this is Dartmoor in searing clarity. The sky divided, storm grey cloud drawn low on the horizon and above an endless cyan—a blue to swim in. I could breath the freshness, feel the cold stinging my skin. Oh, the guilt and longing. So, I went out for a run to try and temper the physical yearning, and the next day messaged Jen to see if she could squeeze in another Dartmoor visit, with the promise that I wouldn’t bail this time. Two seconds later—a ping back with ‘Hell yes’. 

This time we kept our sights local, and though not a long walk we were going to colour in three whole squares on the 365 map: W11, W12 and W13. It felt like an accomplishment, nearly a full house—a line of colour beginning to emerge on the southernmost part of the map. The proposed route bypassed our previous walk to Western Beacon and headed for Ugborough Tor. The day arrived and clearly Santa Claus had been kind to Jennie. She cut quite a dash in her new walking gear, all booted and suited with military style walking shoes and thermal clothing. We exchanged gifts. From me to her a pair of essential gaiters—or ‘garters’ as Jennie likes to call them, and from her to me, some stylish ultra retro sunglasses. We agreed walking on the moor does not mean having to leave aside fashion. We parked up in the tiny hamlet of Harford and headed straight for St Petroc’s church, a Grade 1 listed building dated to the late 15th / early 16th century.

On this grey mizzly day at the very end of the year, the church looked bleak and unwelcoming. It wasn’t helped by the metal grill shuttered across the porch with a blunt no entry notice. We mooched around the graveyard at the rear of the church. Neglected and overgrown, it had a definite gothic air. We read the gravestones and pondered over the groupings of names and families. New to the term, I find out we are quickly becoming ‘tapophile’s’ or ‘grave stone tourists’—a person whose hobby or pastime is visiting cemeteries, graves and epitaphs; not to be confused with ‘necrophile’ and the perversion of showing a sexual or physical interest in the dead!  Not so much a morbid past-time, but one that is curious about past lives. Anyway we are apparently in good company as Shakespeare was supposed to have been a ‘tapophile’, and the related study of ‘taphonomy’ investigating processes of decay in archeology sounds fascinating and important. The hierarchal order of a graveyard is telling. Usually the bigger the slab the more powerful, influential and wealthy the incumbent, closely followed by the decorated memorials of war heroes protecting the former, whilst the women and children and those that had to live out the consequences of the deeds of the big slabs are marked by simple headstones. With this in mind when we came across a large plot encircled by low iron railings, containing a headstone marked John Jeffrey Dixon, 1756-1828, and surrounded by several smaller plaques, engraved with initials and the year of death all listed as 1855, we were intrigued. What could have happened? Were these children? A family tragedy, disease or perhaps a virus or infection?

I should not be surprised to discover that I have leaning towards taphophilia. Death came a blunder-bussing down my family’s own door a few autumns ago bringing with it a tsunami of destruction that took away three loved ones in a matter of weeks. In our highly polished antiseptic 21st century lives, tragedy is supposed to happen elsewhere, on the telly or as macabre titillation on news feeds. Having seen the havoc caused by the sweep of death at such close quarters, I seem to have developed an ear for the hidden tragedy that lies behind the bureaucratic recording of birth and death dates. One such story came with the accommodation that Al rented in the early days of our relationship. He lived in what was part of a 15th century manor house, in the quarter that would have housed cattle whilst the servants lived above. It was basic and cold—think rickety immersion heaters, cranky plumbing and layering up to go to bed—it was also delightfully romantic and we found our own ways to keep warm. Sometime in the mid 19th century the resident family, farm-workers, lost all 9 children in a matter of months to either cholera or diphtheria, the parents surviving probably because they drank mead and not the contaminated water. Some of our friends said they picked up prickly vibes in one room, but we never did, though there was the one time when I woke up in the night to someone blowing gently on my leg dangling out of bed. It was so focused, like someone blowing through a pea-shooter on skin, and then it was gone. It definitely wasn’t Alex, he was snoring contentedly next to me, nor were there any drafts in that particular area, and so overcome was I by my  primordial nighttime terror that I dare not look under the bed. I could never find a rational explanation for it, other than a waking dream, perhaps? I like to think that if there is any paranormal phenomena out there, spirits or otherwise, they would be up for having a laugh and hiding under the bed playing ghoulish peek-a-boo. Never mind wailing ghosts and ghouls, the universe seems set up for tragedy and comedy, see-sawing together, tempered with a dose of absurdity to keep the balance.

But how to imagine the desperation and hopelessness of loosing all your children, of not being able to do anything—no mercy forthcoming, from god or layman, through prayer or witchery. Heart wrenching, gut wrenching, unrelenting grief. The stuff of nightmares and surreal in the telling. A tragedy, they say. Indeed, a tragedy that reveals the limits of knowledge, failing systems and medical bungles. Death can tell so much about a time, and I needed to find out what had happened to this family in 1855. 

I found limited information online so I contacted the church secretary and swiftly received a response that explained that a memorial existed inside the church to the Dixon family. The Dixon’s had been a local family, the father John Jeffrey Dixon dying in 1828 leaving behind a family of six daughters and one son. The daughters never married or had children and continued to live with their mother Mary Romeril Dixon. The son married and moved away. The eldest daughter Sophie Dixon (1799-1855) was a poet, of the Romantic tradition, and had had some of her work published. Maintaining a household of seven women and living the life of a published female poet in the early 19th century suggests a level of education, cultural knowledge and financial comfortability, however I could find no further detail on the fathers preoccupation. Instead I was delighted to find copies of Castalian Hours. Poems by Sophie Dixon (1829) online, alongside two travelogues she had written about walking on Dartmoor: A Journal of Ten Days Excursion on the Western and Northern Borders of Dartmoor (1830) and A Journal of Eighteen Days Excursion on the eastern and Southern Borders of Dartmoor (1830). 

I find an online copy of the two journals bound together with an unauthored handwritten note that describes how the ‘two journals are seldom found together, and in this state are exceedingly rare’. The unauthored note instructs the reader not ‘to despise the untutored writing’ instead recognise that Dixon recorded what she actually saw, and ‘that she really saw a great deal more than most people’. Written nearly 200 years ago, the journals read anything but ‘untutored’ instead they present a style ahead of their time, combining acute observation with opinion that covers a range of subjects from education, poverty and religion that would not be out of place amongst the current plethora of travelogues and writings about place today. Nor was Dixon a faint heart—she was an endurance walker, with Donna Landry writing in The Invention of the Countryside how Dixon was not averse to enduring ‘incredible discomfort and fatigue’ walking up to 28 or 30 miles a day, and that she wrote to ‘expend feeling as much to capture or contain it’ (2001: 239). This is an impulse I can relate too. She was 30 years old when these works were published and was writing at a time that saw the countryside shift from being seen, at least by the middle classes, as a dangerous and impoverished place, to becoming appreciated for its leisure and therapeutic value. Despite Sophie’s passion for Dartmoor and poetry, little is recorded of her life unlike her male contempories—the walking poets—Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth, nor are her writings given due acknowledgment in the round up of important historic literature about Dartmoor. A woman writing about walking across Dartmoor—a harsh and unforgiving landscape at the best of times—and being published at a time when women weren’t allowed to go to university is no mean feat. Sophie’s poetry and writing reveal a sensitivity, of trying to capture the immensity and rich diversity of the moor; an artist, creating through doing, striding out in all weathers, feeling the raw elements, being buffeted by the wind on the high tor’s. And all in Georgian attire, heavy skirted, possibly with pantaloons and with no GORE-TEX or triple layered waterproof performance technology in sight. Despite her absence in the text books Landry observes that ‘the slightness of Dixon’s oeuvre is no measure of the significance of her achievement’ (239). My impression after reading her works, is a writer who is capable, forward thinking, engaged in current affairs and confident in communicating her thoughts, yet I have so many remaining questions about Sophie that perhaps a historian will give the time to uncover. She deserves to be more than just an initial or a footnote in history.

But what of her death and her family? In her preface to Castalian Hours Sophie writes about the loss of her father and subsequent grief and illness effecting her writing, however further tragedy was to come. According to the GRO death certificate her mother died of heart disease on the 14th December, 1855 aged 80. Three days later her younger sister, Emma Romeril, died of Peritonitis, and ten days after that, on 27th December, Sophie herself died from what is recorded as Typhus at the age of 56. The two other sisters, Cora and Lucy, who are listed on the church memorial and on the grave stones as dying in 1855, actually died two weeks apart in 1876 at the age of 69 and 70 respectively of Bronchitis and exhaustion, a contagious illness undoubtedly spread through close contact. How they all came to be listed as dying in 1855 is a mystery, with the assumption given that the memorial was erected when the brother Clemsen Romeril died in 1893, and that somehow the dates were conflated or misremembered. 

***

Wide, open moorland, away from the clutter and noise of modern life where we are constantly ‘ON’, hyper-stimulated, reading the codes, the signs, the subtext. Classification and analysis, polish the mask and smile ‘ta da', who do you want me to be today? It is exhausting. From my studio, I used to watch my chickens scratching and busying—pre bird flu lockdown—and envied their freedom, whilst I was penned in, tied to a screen and working 10/12 hours a day. Sometimes I forgot to move, going hours without drinking or eating. I had become a battery hen and no matter how many golden eggs I laid it was never enough. Putting in numbers and words that churned out more numbers and words until one day the machine broke. Now I have become frozen, a glitch in the matrix, stuttering and locked in. I have to rebuild, start again, set a new framework but to do that I have to first find a way to reboot the frozen system.

We marched up the hill chattering eagerly, airing and giggling over the silliness of families and Christmas frivolities. Despite the chill in the air we warmed up quickly and had to stop to strip off layers, breathing heavily and taking in the sweeping view. It stopped us in our tracks, the vastness of the rolling landscape calming us down, bringing us back to rights. Body and earth, right here, right now. We were heading for Spurrell’s Cross, a medieval stone cross that marks the crossing of two old tracks, one running from Plympton Priory to Buckfast Abbey and the other from Wrangaton to Erme Pound, but we had been too cocksure on setting off, wrongly assuming we were on familiar ground. As a result of our cocksurety we had missed the path and, as is becoming routine on our walks, we once again found ourselves stomping over tussocky ground. The lesson learnt from this walk is that perspective changes everything—so obvious in hindsight but familiarity, as they say, breeds contempt, which in our case was for the map. We were walking on the east side of Western Beacon and though only a few miles into our walk we had quickly become disorientated. The ground undulated unexpectedly hiding the tors previously used as landmarks and we realised that we hadn’t quite got to grips with distance on the map, and as a result could not work out whether we were too far north or south? Scanning across the moor, and with better long distance eyesight than I, Jen spotted a shape partially camouflaged against the moor grassland. With nothing to lose, except our bearings, we ploughed ahead and thankfully hit base, laying hands on the cold stone of the old cross in gratitude. Back on track, we were able to stroll comfortably up to Ugborough Tor.

A space to decant—we talk about all sorts, everything and nothing, from work to children, to ageing and sex; to clothes, cooking, cars, consciousness and ex's—the ex's are most fascinating, the other women, they are set up as the opposition that we share so much in common with and who you can never, ever, know too much—to fungi, lovers, philosophy and death. It is not so much Sex and the City but Sex and the Moor. Everything gets emptied out and overturned. Nothing is trivialised, it all has its place—the worries, the niggling anxieties, superstitions; the casting thoughts that might dissolve into nothing or rankle away and fester without the ear of a trusted confident. Our grandmothers were right all along, a good airing, whether clothes, houses, babies, people or thoughts, makes everything feel better. Men and children so often fascinated by what women talk about… and no wonder, women talk about the under belly of life, paring back the fat and gristle, sifting the wheat from chaff. The talk that unites, strengthens social bonds and builds trust—what social psychologists refer to as cultural learning. In the stone age, this chatter was crucial for sharing information that would enhance survival, and whilst we no longer have wild animals to fear, sense checking about who’s who and what’s what remains essential for our well being. 

As children, Jen and I used to be fascinated by our mothers afternoon chats, tongues loosened by a dab or two of sherry. We’d quietly linger in the kitchen, turning the tap ever so softly to get a glass of water, or sit on the stairs ostensibly playing, all the while zoning in on the hushed tones, regularly punctuated by raucous laughter, our eyes widening at what we heard. Rogue men and wildish women, the drawn out agony of someones death, money—the lack there-of; clothes and weight gain, diets, boobs, hot flushes and farting. When they caught us listening they’d call us elephant ears and the conversation would drift to more mundane matters. On occasion the conversation would lower to a whisper, to more darker talk. We’d strain hard, catching snippets of a violent man and a vulnerable child. The school bully, the blond and pretty girl, always with shiny new things turned out had a not so happy home. This was a grown-up world that was somewhere else, far more entertaining and scandalous than watching an illicit late night episode of Dallas or Dynasty huddled together under the bed clothes.

Today out on the moor we find ourselves talking, amongst other things, about the origins of cellular life—as you do. Where once life was understood to have started at a particular point in time and from there on in evolution began spiralling outwards in a chronological timeline from A to Z. We’ve all seen the poster, some of us have the T-shirt—cell blob, lizard, monkey, ape-man, human, Trump. Then some clever spark asked the question, if life started at A—assuming it was down to 'abiogenesis'—where life emerges from non-living matter through natural processes as opposed to counter theories that posit life came from outer space, then surely life must have emerged previously, and continues to appear at point B and C, and so on and so on? Between huffing and puffing up the hill, it is not so much the biology but the shift in the question that fascinates us—alter the boundaries and framework of the question and a whole different perspective opens up, revealing the wood and not just the trees; the whole picture and not just the jigsaw piece. No surprise that Jen and I have dabbled in statistics—she in teaching the subject and I by presenting different sets of data, coloured pie-charts illustrating how the Arts can change lives, which is very difficult to prove in evidential terms but ask a slightly different question and the coloured pie-charts will look ever so pretty, so give us some money, please. It is all about the questions, the scientists and statisticians cry. If only we could step outside of ourselves we might understand so much more. But it is hard to shake off our human skins. 

Keep turning the stone over and take a walk around the hill. Anything and nothing. Our conversation continues to spiral upwards and outwards. We bat around ideas, snippets of information snatched from radio, social media, books, conversation—finding relevancy, knitting them together. It feels like moulding and sculpting, work in the studio with most falling to the floor as detritus. The artist Paul Klee said drawing was like ‘taking a line for a walk’, and so it is with conversation—take it for a walk and give it a good airing. Walking in the time of viral contamination is vital. It has become the new 18th century coffee-house, the place renowned for scintillating conversation (if you were a man of course); it is George Seurat’s glistening Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, minus the fancy pants and with walking boots, purpose and pace. It is the city flaneur but without the pomp or privilege. It is Piet Mondrian's Broadway Boogie Woogie, but without the boulevards and pulsating lights. It is our mother’s sherry and Sophie’s journals. Hitch up your skirts and put on your garters and take a walk on the Wild Side. A walk in the park. An escape. Let the words wander or wonder, drawing shapes, hitting dead-ends and taking u-turns.

From the origins of life, depression and death our drawing circles around to the language of love, with Jen telling me how the ancient Greeks had several words for different kinds of love: love for children, love for god, sexual love, self love, whereas in the English language ‘love’ is pinned to its romantic roots—the all or nothing kind, of passion and intensity, valentines cards, red roses and the impossible happy ever after. We find ourselves wondering what is the word to describe the love between old friends? 

We reach Ugborough Tor, the temperature has dropped and we think it might snow. In truth, this is the southernmost tor as Western Beacon is not classified as a tor. There are four rocky outcrops: Creber’s Rock, Eastern Beacon, Beacon Rock and Ugborough Beacon; several cairns and a tumulus—an ancient earth burial mound. The view to the East is striking, what is known as Beacon plain slopes gently away then suddenly descends steeply into a valley, so abrupt is the descent that we can’t see the bottom from our vantage point on the tor. The effect is dizzying; the fields and houses rising upwards on the yonder side of the valley look like play mobile houses. We are 378 metres high (1240 feet) above sea level and can see the A38, or the Devon Expressway, snaking northwards. Jennie points out a prominent landscape feature, what looks like a Drumlin, a large teardrop shaped hill probably caused by the receding ice flow of the last ice age some 11,700 years ago. It was previously understood that Dartmoor lay beyond the ‘Quaternary glaciations’ however recent research of the landscape has challenged this notion. We amble our way back and it starts to snow; big heavy flakes, some the size of coins come down thick and fast. We are alone in this vast landscape and run and whoop like children. Back at our cars, as we turn to say good bye, we shout ‘I love you’ to each other. I think we might have always said this, but now we know somewhere it has a name.

Later, I look up Aristotle’s definitions of ‘love’, in particular ‘philia’ which is usually translated as friendship love, or ‘brotherly love’, denoting an altruistic loyalty between equals. This research takes me on a journey that considers what Aristotle defined as ‘good’, and ‘diakaios’, meaning what is ‘fair’, ‘just’ and ‘right’ in accordance to the laws of the universe—laws that draw on the ancient Greek idea that there exists within the universe an order. According to Simon May in ‘Love: A History’, Aristotle elevates ‘philia’ above all other forms, including romantic love and the virtuous love of god. May then goes on to explain how self-knowledge, a virtue much prized by the Greeks, is essential to becoming a well-balanced human being, yet Aristotle understood that ‘it is hard to know ourselves’, we are masters of our own deceit and that we need the aid of a ‘second self’, a person who holds similar values but serves as a mirror reflecting back to us who we are. May goes on to explain that it is not so much that our second self tells us who we are, but that we see in them a part of ourselves, quoting Aristotle directly ‘… with us [humans] welfare involves a something beyond us, but the deity is his own well-being.’ Of course, for this to work the second person has to be the right person—a person who has similar virtues, or values, as ourselves, then ‘philia’ becomes ‘diakaios’—‘when it is in accordance with the laws of the other person’ nature … If love isn’t in such accordance it is inauthentic and hollow’. (67)

How does this analysis of love, nearly 2400 years old, relate to my life long friendship with Jennie? Without a doubt Jennie is suitably different in character to myself—more gregarious and outgoing, her humour is deliciously wry and observant; she is clever, astute and canny, her readings of people and situations are always spot on and she is open-minded whilst still being firmly rooted in reality (the latter being a virtue that I cannot always say about myself); she is a fierce and protective mother, committed to family; ambitious and tenacious. Equally, she is interested in ‘self-knowledge’, if not ‘self-love’, which our deferent Englishness finds a little too gushing, however, she has never been afraid to look in the mirror and face her demons, to own up, reflect and rebuild. Her honesty about our lived contradictions—how we say one thing and do another, that we self sabotage to avoid shattering our fragile self-image and so on—is so refreshing in a time when you might be socially hung drawn and quartered for taking thoughts and words for a walk that do not directly fit the current view. Some of these characteristics I share, others extend my world view. If she serves as a second self, then hell, I need to learn to love thyself! I can count on three fingers the friends I share this type of relationship with, though I’d argue that we are constantly shaping ourselves against our interactions with others—whether children, parents, the shop-assistant, the teacher or colleague. Perhaps I need to be more discerning in my choice of lovers and husbands, as when it comes to the language of love I am clearly better at ‘philia’ than the ‘eros’ kind. In the meantime I’m going for a walk.

SC

Reading

Crossing, William. (1888) Amid Devonia’s Alps; or, Wanderings & Adventures on Dartmoor Plymouth: Simpkin, Marshall & Co. Online, 05, January, 2021: https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Amid_Devonia_s_Alps/lfoVAAAAYAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1

Dixon, Sophie. (1829) Castalian Hours. Poems. London: Longman, Orme, Hurst, Brown, and Green, Print.

Dixon, Sophie. (1830) A Journal of Eighteen Days Excursion and Dixon, S.(1830) A Journal of Ten Days Excursion on the Western and Northern Borders of Dartmoor. Online, 05, January, 2021:https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=d_4GAAAAQAAJ&hl=en_GB&pg=GBS.PA2

Evans, D.J.A. and Harrison, S. and Vieli, A. and Anderson, E. (2012) 'The glaciation of Dartmoor : the southernmost independent Pleistocene icecap in the British Isles.', Quaternary Science Reviews., 45 . pp. 31-53.

Landry, Donna. (2001) The Invention of the Countryside: Hunting, Walking and ecology in English Literature, 1671-1831. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

May, Simon. (2011) Love: A History. London: Yale University Press.

Sampson, J. ‘Women Writing on the Devon Land: The Lost Story of Devon Women Authors up to circa 1965’. August 13, 2018. Online, 05, January 2021: https://newdevonbookfindsaway.blogspot.com/2018/08/on-ways-to-old-literary-roads-around.html

[theninjamouse]

I wanted to do a little something for Halloween, especially after I got asked if I was planning on a Halloween chapter for Ocean on Fire. This is kind of a stand alone thing, not really canon to the OoF story but…

Hey, there’s no reason this wouldn’t happen in OoF :)

Getting Grillby to agree to take an early night from the bar is a feat all by itself. But the town is decked out in orange, blacks and reds, paper bats and skeletons adorn shop windows and today, on this particular Halloween, you’ve decided to finally muster up the courage to visit the self proclaimed ‘Nation’s Scariest House of Horrors’ after refusing to go for years. 

The problem is, you don’t have quite enough courage to go by yourself. And your usual group of people you would ask are either too chicken to go, or would honestly probably make the experience ten times worse. And then there was Undyne, who was absolutely thrilled at the idea of going, but she had already planned a romantic/spooky movie date night with Alphys who gave you a firm not on going. You did ask Sans, as much as you get the feeling that he would just prank you to add to the spooks but he said he was working. Probably got a gig somewhere as a spooky scary skeleton. He was actually the one who suggested that you ask Grillby. You have to admit the idea is appealing. Not only because of his calm demeanor and natural light to help stave off the creepy darkness a bit but you can’t imagine he’ll complain about you holding onto his arm for courage if you have to.

 It had taken a bit of begging and a lot of persistence, but he had finally agreed to close up an hour early. You head to the bar just a few minutes before 11, passing a fair amount of patrons in varying degrees of costumes and drunkenness as you do. Grillby himself steps outside just as you arrive. His flames brighten in greeting, though when you frown at him, he dims slightly.

“Where’s your costume?“

He looks at your outfit, a mismatched wizard’s outfit and a button that reads ‘Sizzle It Up With Taako’ and glances down at his usual bartending look. “Is that required?” 

“Absolutely. Fortunately for you-” You grin and dig into your bag, pulling out a black cape. “I came prepared.” You motion for him to bend down slightly and swing the cape around him. The flames of his face tickle your hands slightly as you tie the strings into a fancy knot. Simple, yet elegant.   “Ta-da!” You step back to admire your work. “Now…speak in a Transylvanian accent!”

 He blinks at you, bewildered. “A what?”

“Never mind. Come on Dracula, let’s get going!” You take his hand and pull him along. The haunted house isn’t far and fortunately is open late, given the day. There’s a fairly long line filled with a variety of monsters, humans, humans dressed as monsters and people who look like the last thing they want to be doing is going into a haunted house.

Grillby looks at the decorated house, eyeing the dark aesthetics with something akin to hesitation. “So people go into these houses to be scared…on purpose?”

You nod gleefully but not without a touch of nerves. “I’ve wanted to go to one for a while but I’ve been too chicken. So thanks for coming with me.”

He nods and then it’s your turn to go in. The bored lady at the ticket counter is snapped out of her stupor at the sight of a literal man on fire. Her jaw drops as her gaze shoots to you and back to Grillby and you feel a small surge of you might even call smugness at her wide expression.

“Um, that’ll be fifteen fifty,” she whispers and Grillby pays for both of your tickets before you can even grab your wallet. Beyond the ticket booth is a short walkway that leads to a pair of double doors manned by a guy in a butler outfit. His expression stays neutral as he opens the doors and gestures you inside. The rush of cool air makes Grillby’s flames sputter. The pair of you step into a dark corridor lit only by candles on the walls and now Grillby’s flames.

The doors slam shut with a loud clang and you jump, pressing against Grillby’s arm. With the outside noise cut off, you can now hear the sound of whispering voices and a deep thudding that you rattles your bones and makes the hair on your skin rise.

Grillby looks around, his flames dimming slightly, perhaps in an attempt to maintain the dim lighting. He follows as you release your grip on his arm and begin walking down the hall. A thin layer of fog hisses out from some hidden machine, making it a little hard to see where you’re going. For what feels like forever, you simply walk. The building dread is starting to become unbearable.

“Heh, just you wait,” you say to Grillby in an attempt to calm yourself. “There will be a jump scare at any moment!”

A sudden creak makes you grab onto him again, but you don’t see anything. The lights suddenly flicker and die but thanks to Grillby, you can still see well enough.

“That’s worrying,” you mutter.

A flash of movement out of the corner of your eyes makes your head whip around and you just barely catch a dark face staring at you from a hole in the wall that promptly vanishes.

Then, from the exact spot in the opposite wall, a section drops away and an actor backlit by a sickly green light and dressed in ghoulish make up lunges at the two of you, snarling loudly. You shriek and pull at Grillby as you break into a run.

The hallway turns a corner and you almost run into another actor holding what looks like his severed arm in his remaining hand as he slumps against the wall. Very realistic looking blood drips from the stump.

“Get out!” He moans, lurching towards you. “Leave while you still can!”

Screaming, you dodge him, and jump at the sound of something heavy slamming against the wall. But once you round another corner, you’re finally given a moment to breathe.

“Whoo!” Your heart is absolutely racing. You pad at your face with your sleeve. “Wow that was a lot all at once!”

Grillby doesn’t say anything. In fact…he’s been utterly silent ever since you walked in. You look up at him, eyes widening at the erratic sputtering of his fire and the honestly sickly hue they’ve taken on. “Are you okay?”

He simply nods but now you notice that under your hand, he’s stiff as a board.

And just like that, your own racing heart calms. You lick at your dry lips, glancing down the hallway. You have no doubts there are more spooks ahead but surely it’s not much longer, right? You release his arm and instead take his hand. He jumps just a little, tearing his gaze away from the direction you just came.

“Man, did you see that guy? Was he even trying?” You roll your eyes. “I thought this was supposed to be the scariest house around! I’m not even spooked a little, are you?”

Grillby takes in your sweaty face and a flicker of a smile crosses his face. “Not at all.”

A low moan rises from behind you and you both jump, your hands tightening around each other. “B-but you know, maybe we should move on,” you squeak.

He nods quickly. “Good idea.”

The two of you move at a fairly fast pace through the rest of the haunted house. There are indeed several more spooks but now that you’ve got Grillby’s hand wrapped tightly around yours, you find yourself laughing more than screaming. He’s still fairly quiet, though you can feel it every time he jumps. And he never once loosen’s his grip on you.

Finally, after what feels like well over an hour, even though you know it’s only been a few minutes, you see the glow of the exit sign. Grillby spots it too and takes the lead, pulling you forward when-

A hatch in the ceiling pops open and an upside down skeleton drops down right in front of Grillby, glowing slightly in the black light. He lets out a startled yell, jumping back and you crash into him.

The skeleton starts moving, waving it’s arms. “boo or whatev-oh hey guys.”

The two of you stare at Sans, dressed in torn black reaper robes and hanging upside down for a moment before you laugh wildly. “Seriously? You work here?”

Sans shrugs. “gotta do what you gotta do right? plus it’s fun to see gushy couples on dates scream like babies.”

Grillby taps Sans on the head. “For that, your tab is now due tomorrow.”

“aw c'mon grillbz!” Sans whines as Grillby pulls you around him and to the exit. You give Sans a wave as the fresh night air washes over your sweaty face. You release a breath, adrenaline making you shake a little.

“How many jobs does that guy have?” you ask Grillby.

“I’ve learned not to ask,” he mutters, rolling his golden eyes.

You laugh and then you become aware that you and Grillby are still holding hands. It’s nice. “Did you like it?” You gesture back to the house. “Now that it’s over I mean.”

“Well, I certainly wouldn’t go back on my own,” he says dryly. But his gaze is soft as he looks at you. “But I guess it wasn’t so bad with you by my side.”

You grin bashfully. “Same to you.”

“Still, you humans have really odd tastes in entertainment.”

“Says the guy who does nothing but work! Do you even know how to have fun?”

Grillby leans closer to you. Your heart, which had finally started to slow, races into overdrive again. “Believe me, I know how to have fun. I’ll have to show you sometime.”

You match his smirk. “I’m holding you to that, Mr. Bartender.”

[stelliscripture]

20. spangled is the earth with her crowns

finally poking at those sappho prompts again! granted, i never officially signed up or anything--they're just for fun. so while i'm cool w/celicalm (they're p cute imo), maelica was tailor-made to pander to me, anise "lucisevluvr69" astrogeny. as i get accustomed to writing mae, i can easily see her getting up there w/severa as one of my fav narrators. in any event, this is set midway through act iii, based on some dialogue celica actually has if you examine the jugs in the desert stronghold. i like the idea of mae and celica having a strong comfort w/one another, even if they don't tell each other absolutely everything ever, if that makes sense? while things get a little tense in act iv, imo it's pretty easy to read mae and celica crushing on each other. i'd like to explore the way they might navigate the lady-retainer -> girlfriends transition, but that's for future fics!

also on ao3!

---

"spangled is the earth with her crowns"

Mae's had a pet theory about Celica for a while now: that she sometimes does mysterious-looking things just to look, well, mysterious.  Is there some kind of code of conduct for being a secret princess?  One where you've got to stare wistfully across the horizon at least once a week, or make a cryptic remark in every conversation that leaves the other person wondering what you're really talking about?

Celica's mysterious act for today seems to be peering into a series of waist-high jugs in the foyer of this desert stronghold.  She goes down the line, lifting the lids to peek at the contents of each, considering whatever she finds with a pensive sort of expression.  Curious, Mae saunters on over to join Celica in her inspection.

"Find anything worth yoinkin'?" she asks.

"What?  I--no," Celica starts, hurriedly jamming the lid of her current jug shut.  "At least, I'm not planning on pilfering anything for myself, even if I could somehow carry one of these off."

Mae wonders aloud, "Would that even be stealing?  Like, if we're taking back stuff that was taken to begin with, does the whole double-theft thing cancel out?  What's the word on that from Mila?"

Celica braces her hands against the jug like a general at a war table, looking way too solemn and poised for the situation.  Mae knows she's genuinely chewing on this choice piece of theological jerky, so the answer's likely to be good, at least.

"The Mother has no set stipulations for such a situation," Celica admits, "Though nor would I say it's in her nature to leave us with no room to make our own judgments.  No one divine mandate can fit every little human circumstance, after all."  

Every little circumstance, sure, but the big ones--those are the ones Mae knows Celica prays for guidance about until her legs fall asleep.

"Then we're good, right?  We can just, uh, 're-appropriate' the stuff we need in order to keep on meting out some sweet holy justice," Mae declares, framing the word "re-appropriate" with a conspiratory wiggle of her fingers.  A smile tweaks at Celica's lips, and sweet Mila's scaly tail is she pretty when it reaches her eyes.

"Honestly, my motive here was pretty selfish--I was wondering if I could sneak a moment to wash my hair with some of the water in one of these jugs.  I don't want to seem fussy about something so trivial in front of the others, but..."  Celica gives some of her curls a dismayed little push to illustrate her point.  Ah, Mae thinks.  Not so mysterious a motive after all (for once).  If she looks closely, she does have to admit that Celica's always-immaculate hair is maybe a smidge less immaculate than usual.  Only a smidge, though.

"Go for it," Mae offers.  "It's not selfish to want to look good!  I mean, you always look good, but, like, gooder than usual.  More good.  Besides," she hurries to add, "If any of Grieth's bozos come back here after we're gone, you can leave some nice sand in their drinking water for 'em."  Not that Mae wouldn't have laughed at the thought anyhow, but Celica laughing with her makes it that much better.  At least, assuming Celica's laughing at the sand in the water thing, rather than the painfully obvious crush thing.  Mae's really banking on the former, here.

Even if Celica's picked up on Mae's interest in her good looks that goes a bit beyond the realm of maidenly friendship, all she asks is, "Would you mind keeping an eye out for any of the men--well, anyone else in general, really?  I'm sure it'd look more than a little weird if someone walked in to see a priestess dunking her head in a jug of water."

"Sure thing!" Mae chirps.  

She savors the giddiness at Celica's trust--what's more intimate than admitting you can do weird things around someone?  The foyer itself isn't exactly intimate, coated with sand as arid walls of wind occasionally blast in from the wide-open entryway.

"Some 'stronghold' this is," Mae remarks a little too loudly.  She whips around to stare real intently at said entryway the second Celica begins to remove neckpiece.  Celica's bare neck and shoulders, Mae thinks, could end wars.

"Hmm?  Oh, the doorway?  There should be a way to close it if need be.  ...At least, I hope so, if we end up having to defend this place ourselves."

Mae stands arms akimbo, shifting her weight from one tapping foot to the other, trying not to listen too closely to the soft chime of Celica's earrings as she (presumably) unhooks them and lays them on the ground beside her neckpiece and headband.  There's a rather unceremonious splash, and Mae realizes that Celica really has gone and just dunked her whole head into the jug.  She peeks over her shoulder just in time to see Celica reemerge, now-wet hair hanging over her face in a rather ghoulish curtain.  

Yet, there's something beautiful about it, even with Celica stooped over and looking like a swamp monster.  Mae's long since stopped even trying to pretend that her feelings towards Celica are envy, rather than attraction, so she indulges in the sight of Celica wringing out her hair.  The water spills at first in staccato lashes across the sandy floor, before slowing to trickles of droplets that spangle the area around where Celica stands.  

Celica catches her gawking (not that Mae's ever been good at hiding it), and the fingers in her hair curl with self-consciousness.

"Mae," she begins.  Her voice is so warm that the desert suddenly feels frigid in comparison.  "Do you...want a go?  Washing your hair, I mean."  In an impressive feat of athleticism Mae hadn't realized any part of herself was capable of, her heart's taken a running leap right up her throat.  Is she kidding herself, thinking that maybe Celica was going to ask her something else for a moment there?  "Uh, not in the jug I just swilled my dirty hair around in, that is."

Mae considers her own hair, flyaway and full of tufts like the fairy floss an indulgent merchant once let her and Boey sample at the greatport.  She'd brought some back for Celica, who'd eaten her portion with evident delight, despite how sticky and shapeless the stuff had become in the summer heat.  Though she knows she hasn't been such a fool for Celica forever, it sure feels like it, sometimes.

"I'm good," Mae says instead.  "D'you want me to go get Boey so he can dry your hair with his wimpy fire magic?  It'd make him feel useful for once, I bet."

Celica can't hide her smile at Boey's expense, for all that she tries to stay impartial in the neverending volley of one-upsmanship--but nor can Mae hide the way her eyes follow the last traces of water that leave faint trails along the skin of Celica's collarbone.  She'll let this be her own mystery for Celica to ponder, she tells herself.

[singt0me]

Ammonia | 2,183k | 1/1

She sees the woman with no eyes in her dreams that night.

(Or: Brenda dyes Teresa's hair blue)

on ao3

1.

She sees the woman with no eyes in her dreams that night.

Predominately, Teresa dreams often of women: the ones from her past and her present, ones she has not met and others she wishes she hadn’t. She sees herself surrounded by an ocean of women, and they are all staring at her, their expressions mostly blank. Sometimes they look sad, while other times they look furious. Once they were holding guns, each of them raised and pointed at her, locked onto her forehead. That night Teresa had woken startled and gasping. Afterward she climbed onto the balcony, stealing one of Brenda’s cigarettes until she had calmed down enough to return to bed. She doesn’t smoke; the burning and smell is simply a comfort. She likes to watch it fizzle out into nothing. Sometimes she even allows it to scorch her skin until she remembers that she is human.

She doesn’t always see them – She dreams of trees sometimes. Oceans that stretch for miles, long, white sands that match. Ivy covered walls that stretch for eternity. There are off nights where Teresa does not Dream at all. Just a black, beautiful void. Asleep one minute and not the next, and warm, morning sun shining upon her face coupled with the faint buzz of her alarm. That is probably the biggest comfort of all. It tells her she’s made it through another night.

Last night had been no exception. The woman had been there. She had sat in the centre of a room that resembled a shack, rocking back and forth and humming to herself, a tune which Teresa finds familiar. It sends shivers up her arms, like little tiny spiders crawling about beneath her skin. Her hair is always long and black like the night sky, and trailing down all the way to the unclean floor, where Teresa fights back the urge to scoop it up to stop it from getting dirty.

The woman’s head turns then, turns further than it should, to face Teresa. She has seen this same image a thousand times and yet it is still a struggle to hold back the scream which fights desperately to escape from her throat.

“You,” the woman says, voice high and floaty, “My sweet girl. You will save us. Save me.”

Teresa begins to speak but finds her throat dry. She clears it and tries again, “I don’t think I can. I’m sorry.”

The woman speaks still. Her blood, black and ghoulish, falls down her face and into her lap, staining the white dress she wears, “You will. I know you will, my precious girl. My chosen one.”

“I’m not,” Teresa is shaking her head, “I’m not. I can’t.”

“You will!” And the woman shouts, she always shouts, and Teresa always backs away. She screams the same two words over and over and Teresa covers her face with her hands and struggles to breathe. When she opens them she is small, smaller than she is now or ever remembers being, folded into the arms of a different woman, one with eyes that gape into Teresa’s, frightened and afraid. She calls her Deedee and they hide in a refrigerator until the shouts of the bad people stop, the smell of ammonia burning her eyes.

Then she is still small but standing on her own two feet. She feels the sharp sting of a pin piercing her skin as a man attempts to fasten it to her chest with shaky hands. He has deep, striking eyes, swimming with a type of madness which leaves her feeling empty, and Teresa off hand thinks he looks like Thomas.

And then they’re gone. And Teresa is in her bed, gasping words she does not understand.

2.

Teresa has secrets she has never said aloud. The first is the cigarettes. She buys Brenda a new pack every day after work to compensate for the ones she’s wasted, and covers her burnt fingertips with bandages and blames it on cooking. Brenda gives her looks but never says anything. The second is she isn’t always Teresa in her Dreams. She is mostly that, however sometimes she is Deedee, or Danielle, or Tess or Tessa. Sometimes she is the hero and sometimes she is the villain, or sometimes she is nothing at all.

The third are the spiders. She still feels them crawling beneath her skin in the waking world, specifically after a particularly bad Dream. She scratches at her skin, always itchy, always irritated, and wears long sleeves to cover them up when she can. Her nails chip as she gnaws at them with her teeth. She repaints them often, though this doesn’t stop the concerned looks Thomas either doesn’t know he is making or thinks that Teresa cannot see them, when they’re together. He never asks. He gives her her space, as Brenda does. She loves them for it.

The fourth is it sometimes happens to her, almost becoming lost. The fourth-and-a-half is that she does it herself, getting as close to the edge without stepping off of it, just to see how it feels.

3.

It happens in front of Thomas one day, and the gig is up. The corners of her vision swirl and fade, starbursts erupt behind her eyes and images that do not belong to her flash before her, like a broken film reel. This time it is not on purpose. She had been asking Thomas about his mother, if he thought of her often, and then it happened and the woman with no eyes had screamed at her, they all were screaming at her.

She wakes to Thomas calling her name and shaking her aggressively, shouting at her to wake up. She thinks she hears him call her Tessa but isn’t completely sure if she imagined it or not.

(A smaller Thomas, with crocked teeth in the process of being realigned with bright yellow braces, who can’t quite pronounce Teresa.)

They fight, or rather Teresa fights him, and they lay in silence for a while. She falls asleep to the sensation of Thomas playing with her hair, and wills herself not to dream.

4.

“You’re not touching my hair,” Teresa tells Brenda one day.

Brenda sips her tea and levels Teresa with an innocent grin, kicking her heels against the door of the cabinet she is sat atop of, “Not even a little?”

Teresa turns back to her book, reading but not reading the letters on the page. “No,” she says, “I like my hair, thank you. So no one touches it.” It’s true. She does like her hair. It’s shiny and it’s soft and she likes how it feels, likes how Brenda’s fingers feel when she’s running her hands through it. It is the right length and cut that she prefers, and that’s not changing. No matter to magnitude of Puppy Eyes Brenda shoots at her from across the kitchen.

“Are you sure?” Her heels bang bang bang against the wood. Teresa bites her lip, “I could shave it on the sides. It’ll feel really cool to touch.” To fully accentuate this Brenda points to her own head, where 1/5 of it is buzzed above her left ear. Teresa gazes up at her intuitively.

She’d recently cropped her long brown hair to just below her chin, and while Teresa sadly misses the long, silky locks, she must admit that the short bob is cute and nice to tug, and the shaved portion does feel really nice …

Still, “Nope.”

Brenda groans, “Ugh, fine, no cut. What about dye?”

Teresa sighs and marks her page, slamming the book shut with more force than necessary, “Brenda, please, I really don’t want –”

“Not the whole thing, Muñeca, just a little bit,” Brenda jumps down off the counter and comes to join Teresa at the table. Pushing a lock of Teresa’s hair behind her ear, gently, softly enough not to spook a small animal, she says, “It’ll be a good reminder.”

A reminder. That Teresa exists here and not anywhere else. She can’t fault that logic, she really can’t. And Brenda is looking at her with those damn fucking eyes again and, honestly, is she ever allowed to say no to this girl about anything? Even just once? That would be nice.

An eternity later but never long enough for Brenda to actually believe that she’s lost this round, as if that would ever happen, Teresa sighs and says, “Fine, princess. But I get to choose the colour.”

Brenda grins broadly, her smile brighter than the mid-morning sun, “Of course.”

5.

Teresa’s hair is blue two hours later. Just a small amount, a lock the width of two fingers, but there had been bleach involved (which, truthfully, nearly made her change her mind and lock herself in the bathroom, the ammonia scaring her the most) but as she looks in the mirror, touching the electric blue strands peeking out under her hairline where it could be neatly tucked away or peek glamorously out from the rest if she so wishes, Teresa smiles.

Brenda is still grinning like she’s won the biggest prize of her lifetime and Teresa, competitive and petty by nature, fights to urge to brush her off. But as her arms settle comfortably around the curve of Teresa’s waist and her grin stretches wide of its own accord, Brenda says, “You love it.”

Teresa cocks her head, watching the blue disappear and reappear among her inky black locks, “It’s alright. You did okay.”

Brenda pokes her in the hip, earning a yelp, and she repeats, “You love it,” lower, into Teresa’s ear.

She does.

6.

When Teresa wakes now, panting and frightened, tears leaking from her eyes, she sees blue in her direct line of sight. When Thomas comments on it she feels her hand move to it protectively, and informs him of its purpose. Thomas’ expression grows warm and he tells her it matches her eyes. She catches herself touching it all the time; she plays with it in the car as she listens to Thomas yammer on about whatever he is yammering on about, twirling it and braiding it unconsciously. She chews it at her desk during work – a nastier habit, but she’ll learn. Maybe. Possibly – and when she pulls her hair into a ponytail she is always careful to be sure to isolate it so it is visible.

When her vision swirls and she is seeing stars and women surrounding her, threatening to smother her in their endless ocean of Too Sad or Too Angry or Too Nothing At All, she reaches for the blue, pulls it so that she can see it, and thinks, None of the others have this. This is mine. I am this, this is me. I am blue.

The visions fluctuate and disappear within the minute. She tells Brenda how it’s helped, when they’re lounged lazily in Teresa’s bed, both not motivated to leave the warm confides of the blankets and each other and begin the day. “That’s good,” Brenda smiles, “I’m proud of you.”

Teresa asks her if she ever dreams. They’ve had this conversation before though not properly, Teresa’s skin always beginning to crawl when they get too deep. Brenda says that she did, in the beginning. After the Time Jump, when everyone had begun to wonder about something more, “But no,” she concludes, “I don’t need anything the Others have. They have their lives and I have mine. I’ve got everything I want right here.”

They kiss under the light of the morning, frost casting shadows across the bed as it floats gently from the sky. It’s a nice Wednesday, and gentle one, if there could ever be one, Teresa had been seriously beginning to doubt.

7.

The woman with no eyes – not her mother, Teresa tells herself, just a broken woman she does not know or will ever know – appears in her dreams still, for quite some time. Teresa still dreams of women, that part does not change. But now instead of standing frightened and crumbled up like a paper ball against a wall with no hope for escape and no light in sight, just a cold, dark ocean of void and despair, she does not cry. She does not flinch when the woman calls her ‘her chosen one’, because that is not her. She looks the woman in the face and replies, simply, “Maybe. Maybe not. Let them figure it out.”

She stares each woman down until they lower their guns, every last one of them. She wills the spiders to leave her skin and find someone else to bother. She wears that piece of paper pinned to her chest like a badge.

It doesn’t come quick, the freedom, nor does it come easy. It takes time, like most healing does, but when she slips her feet under Brenda’s ankles and pulls her closer to her, holds her to her heart, she feels Brenda thread her fingers through Teresa’s hair, feels her monopolise the blue stands and twirl it around her ring finger, and Teresa thinks, This is all that I need.

[theliterateape]

Book Club Made Me Read It | Sophie's Choice

By Kari Castor

I’m a member of a small, informal, friends and friends-of-friends book club. We try to read one book every five weeks or so. The rules are simple: Everyone gets an opportunity to pick a book for the book club to read. Each member must pick a book that they have not personally read before and each member is responsible for leading the discussion after we read their selection. Sometimes the books are good. Sometimes they are not. I review them here regardless of their quality.

I’m a bitch and don’t care about ruining the experience for you, so I’m going to include spoilers whenever I please. That’s your only warning. Proceed at your own risk.

Sophie’s Choice by William Styron

Sophie’s Choice is dense and complicated. It is a bleak and tragic story told by a naive, egotistical narrator preoccupied with getting his dick wet. William Styron’s writing verges on the Faulknerian, if only Faulker had been a bit more interested in describing the curves of a fine woman’s ass. 

I enjoyed it a great deal, and most of the rest of my book club hated it. It is not an uplifting, feel-good sort of book. Should you read it? That depends. How hard do you like to think about your reading, and how meandering can you handle your prose being?

In lieu of an actual review, I offer a brief synopsis followed by a half-assed academic paper about the book.

Synopsis: In 1947, a young southern man, the narrator Stingo, moves to New York and takes a room in a boarding house, where he hopes to write his first novel. He becomes close friends with two other residents of the boarding house, Nathan Landau and Sophie Zawistowska, who have a volatile romantic relationship. Nathan is prone to flying off into jealous, violent rages. Sophie, a Holocaust survivor, is beautiful and gentle and infinitely forgiving, and Stingo, of course, falls hopelessly in love with her. The present-day action of the book follows the relationships between these three characters over the course of a summer. During this time, Sophie tells Stingo about her past, including her time in Auschwitz and her efforts to save her son, who was brought to the camp with her. It is eventually revealed that Sophie also had a daughter, but that upon arrival at the camp, she was forced to choose which of her children should be sent immediately to the gas chamber. When Nathan accuses Sophie and Stingo of having an affair and threatens to kill them both, the two flee New York together; Stingo plans to bring Sophie to a farm owned by his family and marry her. Sophie instead goes back to New York, and she and Nathan commit suicide together.

Lit Nerd Blither Blather: Sophie’s Choice has some marked similarities to one of my favorite books: Wuthering Heights is a tale primarily about two compelling, damaged people who are drawn to each other obsessively, who cannot find happiness together but cannot bear to be apart. Styron trades the British moors for Brooklyn in his story, but the magnetism and destructiveness of the relationship at the core of Sophie’s Choice certainly bears some distinct parallels to Emily Brontë's only novel, which is centered on the passionate and ultimately doomed love affair between Heathcliff and Catherine, and on the fallout wrought by their savage feelings. Styron’s version of Heathcliff is Nathan — magnetic, brilliant, and a drug-addicted schizophrenic; his Catherine is Sophie — a gentle, beautiful, and guilt-ridden Auschwitz survivor. Lockwood, the wealthy gentlemen seeking a quiet retreat from the city, becomes Stingo, the poor aspiring author hoping to broaden his experience; neither is entirely reliable as far as narrators go and both filter parts of the story through their own biases and beliefs.

If Sophie’s Choice is in some ways a Wuthering Heights analogue, though, it is without the “happy ending” of sorts that Brontë's novel offers. Heathcliff and Catherine are destructive forces that threaten to (and sometimes do) consume everyone around them, but in the end their passing allows new growth to bloom in the form of a romance between Catherine’s daughter and Heathcliff’s ward. Catherine and Heathcliff’s deaths are a necessary part of the healing process for the small world on the moors, but Sophie and Nathan just die. There is no healing, no regrowth, just senseless grief dulled eventually by time.

This sheer meaninglessness, is one of the key overarching themes of Sophie’s Choice. It’s a book that seems frequently to yearn towards meaning and yet has strong undercurrents of nihilism. “I don’t have any answer. Do you have an answer?” laments Nathan’s brother Larry after he has revealed Nathan’s schizophrenia diagnosis to the narrator. “Sometimes I think life is a hideous trap” (466).

Narrator Stingo constantly strives to make meaning out of the events in his life. He receives an unexpected financial windfall, which allows him to take lodging and focus on his writing his first novel — the money, recently unearthed in the basement of an old family home, represents the proceeds of the sale of a 16-year-old slave boy named Artiste, owned by the narrator’s great-grandfather. Stingo fancies himself an enlightened southerner, and feels significant angst over using this blood money to pay his rent, but he comforts himself that he needs the money “as badly as any black man” (34). He refers to Artiste as his “young black savior” (562) and thinks of him with a sort of guilty reverence. Rather than confront the simple truth — that he is benefiting from his family’s legacy as slave-owners — Stingo mentally reframes Artiste’s sale as a sacrifice, made for his benefit.

The novel that Stingo begins writing during his summer in boarding house is inspired by the suicide of a young woman, Maria Hunt, whom he’d had a crush on as a schoolboy. His father writes to tell him of Maria’s death and sends him a newspaper clipping, and Stingo immediately becomes morbidly preoccupied with the tidings, despite the fact that he hasn’t seen her in years, knows next to nothing about who she actually was as a person, and didn’t even know that she was also living in New York City. “Reading the article over and over again, I verged very close to a state of real upheaval, and found myself moaning aloud at this senseless story of young despair and lass. Why did she do it?” (47). It’s not long, though, before his agony turns to “a fabulous sense of discovery” (119). Why, Stingo realizes, Maria’s death needn’t be simply a meaningless tragedy — it can be the impetus for his first great novel! “It was perfectly marvelous, a gift from the sky!” (119). (This is a particularly ghoulish turn of phrase, given that Maria Hunt jumped from a window to her death.) Again, Stingo is benefiting from someone else’s tragedy, but he reimagines it as a blessing from the universe, laid upon himself.

Stingo constantly shies away from the idea that people simply do cruel things because they can, or that bad things just happen for no good reason. When Sophie tells him the story about her arrival at Auschwitz, which culminates in her daughter’s death, she does not speculate about the motives of the doctor who forced her to choose which of her children should go to the gas chamber. She doesn’t know the man’s name, let alone his inner life. But Stingo, who cannot abide a meaningless tragedy, spins a tale to make sense of these events for himself. He bestows the man with a name and a backstory and a motive of sorts. The doctor, Stingo speculates through rather tortuous logic, is a formerly devout Christian, struggling to reconcile his faith and his awful work as a member of the SS. He has conceived of forcing someone to make this awful choice in order to restore his own belief in God by proving to himself that sin exists. “This is the only way I have been able to explain what Dr. Jemand von Niemand did to Sophie when she appeared with her two little children” (532), Stingo tells the reader. With all the naive arrogance of youth, Stingo layers his own version of the story atop Sophie’s truth. 

Sophie herself avoids these philosophical contortions. “Suppose I had chosen Jan to go... to go to the left instead of Eva. Would that have changed anything? …Nothing would have changed anything” (539). She has lived through incomprehensible horror and remains tormented by guilt, but she tries to move forward as best as she can. It is Stingo who feels the need to rationalize the past, to force it to make sense.

In the end, though, even Stingo is forced to admit that some things are simply incomprehensible. “No one will ever understand Auschwitz” (560). Despite Stingo’s attempts to refashion the legacy of Artiste into something meaningful, Artiste himself still died in brutal slavery. Despite Stingo’s attempts to make meaning out the Auschwitz doctor’s behavior, Sophie’s daughter Eva is still dead.  The fate of her son Jan is unknown. Despite Stingo’s desire to save Sophie, despite his attempt to fit her into the narrative of his love-struck fantasy, she and Nathan are dead by their own hands. There is no analysis or reimagining that Stingo can do to change anything. In the end, all he can do is rise with the morning and keep moving forward.

Styron, William. Sophie’s Choice. 1976. Vintage International, 1992.

MY RATING: 4.5/5 stars

POSITIVE REINFORCEMENT FOR: Lush, if occasionally labyrinthine, prose. Plus a fair bit of unexpected dry humor re: the narrator’s own youthful arrogance and foolishness.

PLEASE NO MORE: I could probably do with a few less meditations on the beauty of Sophie’s ass.

SHOUT-OUT TO: Sophie herself, who, despite the narrator’s preoccupation with her body, is an interesting and fully-realized character. The sad, beautiful survivor of tragedy, the victim of an abusive relationship, Sophie could easily have been a blandly cliche damsel, but Styron make her much more than that, even if he does also spend a lot of time describing the curve of her hips.