#LOHLDOW

[c-e-d-dreamer]

Have you ever seen a cuter family? Super stoked to share this piece I commissioned for Day Four: AU Day for @nessianweek! 

As everyone knows, I had a blast writing my Kid!Fic, Let Our Hearts, Like Doors, Open Wide, so I absolutely had to commission a piece of Nesta, Cassian, and Mellie. 

Thank you so much to Jade (_jadee.art on IG) who perfectly captured how I imagined this little family. 

[c-e-d-dreamer]

Y'all didn't think I forgot WIP Wednesday did you? How about some nice juxtaposition between what I posted yesterday and back to kid!fic fluff? Although maybe this snippet isn't as fluffy (you may have to read between the lines). I think we can all agree LOHLDOW featured a lot of big, dumb boi Cassian, and well, now it's time for big, dumb gurl Nesta.

A high pitched scream has Nesta's head snapping up, her eyes darting around the playground looking for the source. She finds Mellie and a little girl with a mop of blonde hair yelling at each other, both girl's faces scrunched up and feet stamping in annoyance. Nesta can't hear what Mellie shouts in the little girl's face, but the little girl gives Mellie a shove in response, causing her to go tumbling hard against the mulch.

Nesta is on her feet in a second, abandoning her book and rushing toward Mellie. She can already see the big, fat tears sliding down Mellie's cheeks, the way her shoulders shake as she cries and clutches at her knee. Every wail that tears from the little girl's throat has a crack ricocheting through Nesta's chest.

"I want my Mommy," Mellie cries out, the words spearing straight through Nesta.

Nesta's feet stutter to a stop, the declaration giving her pause. She can feel a lump trying to lodge itself firmly in her throat, her mind reeling and spiralling. For the first time since she'd met Mellie all that time ago, she feels... unsure, out of her depth. She knew what had happened with Mellie's mother, with Lea, but she'd never heard Mellie speak of her before, ask for her. And now the little girl wants her?

[c-e-d-dreamer]

I just reread Let Our Hearts Like Doors Open Wide recently and with it being mother's day today, all I can think about is Mellie doing something special for Nesta

Okay, first of all, lovely Anon, I am honored that you love LOHLDOW enough to re-read it 🥺

Second of all! Can confirm that in that Universe, Cassian and Mellie absolutely woke up early and made chocolate chip pancakes that they brought to Nesta to have breakfast in bed. And the kitchen got a bit messy but it was worth it! And of course Mellie also gave Nesta a homemade card that she drew herself declaring she's the best Mommy ever 😌

[c-e-d-dreamer]

Wahey! I didn’t forget WIP Wednesday this time! Look at me go! My cousin is getting married this weekend, so I might not be able to update LOHLDOW until Sunday unless I’m magically able to finish writing before I need to leave for the wedding Friday. Sorry :( But I hope everyone enjoys this snippet! It’s more fluff :) 

Cassian has his whole heart all in this one bed. Sure, it’s a bit of a tight fit, Mellie’s knee dangerously close to his stomach and Cassian needing to hold his legs at an awkward angle so as to not accidentally kick Mr Tumnus, but he wouldn’t have it any other way. He’d happily take it every night for the rest of his life. And in this moment, Cassian wants to fully commit every second to memory, bury it close to his heart for safe keeping. 

“Go to sleep, you weirdo. I can feel you staring,” Nesta’s mumbled voice comes from the other side of the bed. 

Cassian snorts softly, but he shifts to lay more comfortably back against the pillow. He reaches across the bed so that his arm is resting across Mellie, his hand settling on Nesta’s hip. He lets his eyes fall shut, that exhaustion from earlier creeping back in, and when he finally gives in to sleep, it’s with a smile on his face.

[c-e-d-dreamer]

Okay so I was re reading your kid fic (which I absolutely adore) and I was wondering would Nesta, Cassian, and Mellie ever meet with mellie’s birth mom again? Whether it be a chance encounter or like something set up, would they ever cross paths?

Hello, lovely Anon! Thank you so much for sending, and thank you for liking my fic enough to want to re-read it. That really does mean a lot to me. I feel so honored 🥰

But to answer your question, I will let you in on a secret: there actually was an iteration of my outline that included Lea, Mellie's birth mother, returning. I was in an angsty mood and planned the whole chapter and even wrote some of the dialogue, but it was super angsty, and I wanted LOHLDOW to remain a mostly cute and fuffy fic, so I nixed it and just wrote an angsty drabble that week instead to get the angst out of my system. But I've included more info about what I had in mind if you're curious :)

Basically, what was going to happen was Lea had moved on. She had met someone new and actually gotten married, but for whatever complication reasons, the two of them couldn't have children, so they decided they wanted to be part of Mellie's life now. But Lea moved out of Velaris after she gave up custody to Mellie so that means she and her new husband live far away and it's like a logistical nightmare in terms of visitation so it ends up becoming a bit of a nasty custody battle.

And the scene I had sort of started writing was Mellie talking with a judge and psychologist at the court house as part of said custody battle. She doesn't fully understand what's happening and when they ask her about her "mom", Mellie of course assumes they're talking about Nesta (since at this point, it was after Nesta and Cassian were engaged). Then Mellie wrongly assumes from what's being said to her that this discussion is happening because someone wants to take her away and it obviously upsets her. She keeps asking if she can leave yet and when they finally open the door for her, she goes running crying back to Cassian.

I didn't really plan past that, so idk what the resolution may or may not have been, but yeah, it was so so angsty and got the bucket. Ha ha

[c-e-d-dreamer]

That was so good! Like someone else said can we have an epilogue with the baby? That would be awesome!

Thank you so much for sending, lovely Anon! So originally, I was going to write an epilogue set 6 years after the wedding. So Mellie would be starting her first day of high school and her little sister (yes, they have a girl) would be starting her first day of kindergarten. But it felt less like an ending and more like a beginning of a new fic, and I really wanted Nesta and Cassian's love story and family to end here. So all that to say that while I may revisit this universe in drabbles, this is where I want the story to end.

But for some funsies....

The baby is a girl. And then after, Nesta and Cassian have another baby, a boy. So three kids total.

Feyre and Rhysand obviously have Nyx.

Gwyn and Azriel have twin girls because you know Gwyn has that twin gene.

And Emerie and Cresseida adopt a little boy.

So family holidays and get togethers definitely get crazy! Lol

[c-e-d-dreamer]

Girlllll when is the next chapter,I can't wait♥️♥️♥️♥️���️♥️♥️

Hi hi! Thanks for sending. I'm hoping to have the next chapter of LOHLDOW up later today! I'm currently finishing writing it right now while I watch the Descendants movies (because I'm a piece of garbage) so fingers crossed

[c-e-d-dreamer]

What did happen to Mellie’s birth mom? I don’t remember

Honestly? Fair. Cassian explains it allllll the way back on their not-date-fair-date in Part Three.... But basically, Mellie was unplanned, and Cassian and Mellie's mother, Lea, tried co-parenting, but she hadn't planned on being a mother then, wasn't ready to be a mother, so she took herself out of the picture and gave Cassian full custody

[c-e-d-dreamer]

Oof, if you added that super angsty piece about Mellie’s mom, I wouldn’t have minded Nesta going all death goddess on their asses (I know technically that couldn’t have happened, but I wouldn’t have minded like at all). But I’m so glad we got a cute fluffy Nesta, Cassian, and Mellie family fluff instead. But plainly out of curiously, how would it have resolved itself? Like would Cassian and Nesta remain with full custody of Mellie? I do hope they do. I’m pretty sure they did. Anyhoo, I loved that fic so much, I love them so much.

Wasn't it just soooo angsty? Sometimes my brain really is just in an angst mood and I have to reel it back 😂

But in terms of resolution, in my mind at least, they absolutely would have kept full custody. It would have been messy, for sure, but Lea had been out of Mellie's life for five years at that point and she had signed away her rights when she left, so the court would have sided with Cassian and with keeping Mellie in a home she's familiar with and all that jazz.

[c-e-d-dreamer]

hiiiii, hope you're alright. Will you be updating your nessian kid fic?? I LOVE IT

Hello, lovely Anon! Yes, I will be updating. Today in fact! My cousin's wedding this weekend just so thoroughly threw off my writing schedule in that I worked on the chapter Thursday and then didn't have time to open the Google Doc again until yesterday. Weddings, man! But the chapter is done. I just need to read it and make sure there's no egregious errors, so I'm hoping to do that on my lunch break today

[c-e-d-dreamer]

With SJM Romance Week only 10 days away, we're into the crunch time! Which means, it's time for me to prioritize all the fics I originally planned for the whole week and pray for the best in terms of how many I actually write/finish 😬 Sooooo... Help a girl out!

[c-e-d-dreamer]

And 40!

40. If someone were to make fanart of your work, what fic or scene would you hope to see?

Now this is a fun question! I can't lie, I feel like the obvious answer is IPB Cassian. I would like to see that man as a hunky blue alien. Or Hockey Cassian? I would like to see that too. Both those fics aren't published though so if I'm going published... Hmmm... Maybe the scene in LOHLDOW where Nesta braids Mellie's hair and Cassian is watching all simpy heart eyes from the doorway? That would be cute 🥺

Send me a fic writer ask!

[c-e-d-dreamer]

Welp, my brain’s gonna be on FIRE 🔥.

ULTIMATE RANDOM QUESTION TIME PRT. 2: Do you know those pictures/moon boards that you have on your fanfics? Like the pictures at the top of the titles? I’ve always loved those and I wanna know, how do you make them?

Ooooo what a fun random question! 🥰

So, for a while, I did banners for my fics. And for those, I would use Google. So for LOHLDOW, I searched "little girl reading," and for OMG Roommates, I think I first searched "roommates," but I didn't like the results, so I think I ended up doing "couple moving." But I would always add "Twitter header" to the end so that way Google would pull images that had that more banner sizing.

Then, I would open up the PicsArt app, and sometimes, I would mess with the sizing more, maybe crop it. But I'd add a filter over the image using the "effects" option until it was to my liking, and then I'd add the fic title as text. Sometimes, I had to use the blur tool and blur the image beneath where I want the text just so the text is more legible (I did this with the Wonderland banner), but yeah!

But, of course, recently, I've made the switch to fic moodboards, and for those, Pinterest is your best friend. I usually just search for things related to the plot of the fic and then collect images. So for Regency Cassian, I searched "Regency romance aesthetic," and got all the pictures I wanted from that. That was probably the easiest moodboard I ever made. Lol. But for one of my new WIPs (a little peek behind the curtain here), I searched "werewolf aesthetic," "witchy aesthetic," "werewolves," and because Nessian are magically bound by marriage in this fic, I also searched "handfasting."

You can also search for the couple too! Like "Nessian," "Nessian aesthetic," and even "ACOSF aesthetic" to get like Nesta and Cassian and couple type photos. I have a whole heap of those saved for moodboard use, and you'll definitely notice a lot of the same ones used across many a fic author's moodboards lol. There's just not that many long haired men aesthetic photos, ya know?

But anyways! You want at least 9 images. If you have more, then you can swap as needed if you decide an image doesn't work the way you hoped.

But then it's back to the handy dandy PicsArt app! I use the square collage feature, and I have my border set to 3, but do whatever makes your heart happy. I add all my images, and usually, there's one or more images that are a bit too HD or the colors don't quite match the rest, so PicsArt lets you add filters to individual images in collages and I'll use that to sort of soften and get it to feel more cohesive.

When it comes to arrangement, I personally like to mirror. So, for Werewolf Cassian, I have the handfasting photo in the center then "Cassian" in the top right corner and "Nesta" in the bottom left corner. I have wolves bottom center and witchy top center. I have Nesta's magic top left corner and Cassian's claws bottom right corner. I just like how that composition looks that way. But you find what works for you and makes your heart happy!

Then to finish it up, I usually like to add a filter to the whole finished collage. Nothing crazy, but it just gives that final cohesiveness of all the images in my opinion. Save that final image and bam! You're done! And if you're anything like me, you'll probably waste hours laying in bed and making these 😇

Sorry this is a whole ass essay, but I hope this helps! 🥰 also, just for you, enjoy the werewolf Cassian moodboard below the cut for reference 😘

[c-e-d-dreamer]

Commissioned Art

Hockey player Cassian and figure skater Nesta

Cassian, Nesta, and Mellie (from LOHLDOW)

Pirate king and queen Nessian

Witchy Nesta

Valkyrie Nesta

Gargoyle Cassian

Regency Cassian

God of War Cassian

Nessian at Starfall

Nessian taking a nap in the sun

Nessian relaxing at home

Nessian in matching tees

Cassian teaching Nesta to cook

Stained-glass Nesta

Nesta character portrait

Nesta showing Cassian who's in charge ;)

Cassian character portrait

Nesta reading

Cassian carrying Nesta

Valkyries celebrating Nesta's birthday

[c-e-d-dreamer]

Let Our Hearts, Like Doors, Open Wide: Chapter Masterlist 

Main Pairing: Nesta/Cassian

Summary: 

One day, at the bookstore, Nesta meets Cassian and his daughter, Mellie. Mellie loves to read and instantly adores Nesta. Will she play mini-matchmaker? 

(aka Nessian kid!fic featuring single dad Cassian) 

Read on AO3

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Fanart for this fic

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Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

Part Five

Part Six

Part Seven

Part Eight

Part Nine

Part Ten

Part Eleven

Part Twelve

Part Thirteen

Part Fourteen

Part Fifteen

Part Sixteen

Part Seventeen