#Loneliness adds as the days go by We have to be humans Because we get scars

[polyearthane]

"mama" by EXO is a life series song change my mind also essay coming soon (not)

[prettieinpink]

MAKING FRIENDS ♡

Friends add so much value to your life. Especially ones that you like, and there is a positive healthy exchange of support and love in between. However, some of us do struggle to create meaningful friendships that last. To start this post, I will start by talking about how friendships are essential to becoming the best versions of ourselves. 

Friends help us in many ways, even if they don’t even do it directly. We discover new things about ourselves just by talking to them, we have a sense of belonging and build our self-esteem. It’s not impossible to have these things and be alone, though being alone for extended periods can fester feelings of social isolation & loneliness. 

As someone who’s experienced both, usually, these feelings can make us spiral deeper as it is just the tip of the iceberg. Humans need daily communication to feel sane, which has been proven again and again. 

If you decide to invest a lot more time, effort, and energy in friends, there’s bound to be an overflowing amount of rewards. Hanging around the right people can open up new opportunities for yourself drive you closer to achieving your goals and help advance your skills. 

This being said, if you invest in the wrong people or neglect your friends, the opposite will more than likely happen. Remember that the people you allow in your life can influence you, whether for better or worse. 

REDEFINING YOUR MINDSET TOWARDS MAKING FRIENDS 

Your mindset is so crucial to making friends. It can either help you or not. Another thing is that your mindset towards life, in general, can either repel or attract people to be around you. 

Firstly and importantly, do not get attached to people you barely know. Don’t overthink about them, change yourself for them or get anxious waiting for a reply. Seriously, detach. Little things like replies or if they’ll like you, should not bother you. The concept of it bothering you should not even exist in your mind. 

Secondly, do not think of humans as assets to support your growth. This is just so icky and once you get that materialistic perspective on friendships, it just becomes harder to create meaningful ones. While friends can help you grow and achieve your goals, they will drop you once they realise they’re being taken advantage of. 

Thirdly, stay true to yourself. A bit of common advice, yet not widely followed. Never, ever, make the effort to change yourself for someone to like you a bit better. If someone doesn’t like you for just who you are, they’re not meant to be in your life, forcing it causes unnecessary & avoidable circumstances.

Fourthly, quality over quantity always. When you get older especially, it shouldn’t be your priority to gain masses of friends. Most likely, not all of your friends like you because it’s harder to invest in all of them and causes you to neglect them. 

However, having quality friends who help you grow and succeed will never stop serving you in life even if that friendship falls out. Plus, you are too busy achieving your goals every day to entertain everyone you know. 

Lastly, do not allow disrespect just because you’re friends. They will test the waters to see how much you can tolerate, then you allow them to, they’re just going to get more extreme with it. Identify disrespect in ‘jokes’ or casual conservation and call it out. These people are praying for your downfall. 

That being said, just because it is not happening to you, don’t allow it. Once you establish yourself as only wanting respect, you’re going to get treated like it. 

DEFINING YOUR INNER AND OUTER CIRCLE 

Your inner circle consists of people whom you are close to, and have healthy and positive relations with them. These are the kind of people who you’d go to for emotional support or to celebrate great successes in your life. 

Then, you have your outer circle. These can be people who you’re close to, but they’re not the closest. It consists of people who you talk to regularly, but there’s still that distance. Distance is not a bad thing at all in friendships, not everyone is meant to be your closest friend.

Now those two terms are established, I want you to visualise how you want those two circles to look. These can be people who you want to be friends with, wanting to cut anyone off or just people who you hope to meet one day. 

Then define how you want to feel with those two circles, like a loving or caring circle, or a growth and learning circle. This is completely up to you, about how those circles feel and look like as it is for you. 

I recommend writing your visualisations down and putting them somewhere you can see regularly. This is just to help us get into the energy of making meaningful friendships every day.

STANDARDS + CRITERIA IN FRIENDS 

The heading is a little bit off-putting, I understand. However, it is essential to establish a set of standards once you start making friends. This is to make sure you’re making quality friendships, and not attaching to just anyone. 

This is a bit of individual advice, you have to curate your standards by yourself. A personal example is that I’m Christian myself, I believe in God and I’m devoted to him. 

So, in that case, I won’t allow other religions or non-religious people into my inner circle. While they can be in my outer circle, I would prefer having most of my friends believe in God and uphold his values. 

Standards and criteria in friends can either be a must quality (they must have this quality) or a preferred quality (I prefer if they did, don’t mind if they don’t). You decide which qualities are which, and if they apply to your inner or outer circle. 

Can’t say much, but to help you, I advise looking into yourself internally and once again, visualising what those friendships look like daily. To help, I’ve gathered a few journaling prompts!

 What do you think are the responsibilities of friendship?

What is the nicest thing a friend could ever do for you? 

What do you think friendship is?

How do you expect the aftermath to be after an argument with a friend?

How can someone become a part of your inner circle? 

What behaviour makes you want to cut someone off?

Who were your favourite friends in the past? What did they do to become your favourite?

How would you like to be shown appreciation daily? 

Do you like banter or prefer showering each other with compliments? 

Then, extract from your responses to these prompts, some characteristics or traits that you look for in friendships. 

BECOMING SOCIALLY ELOQUENT The first tip i’m going to give to you is to read. Not just in your head, but out loud reading. Read, and see if you’re going too fast or too slow, you’re pronouncing words clearly and know when to pause. Bonus points if you record yourself reading, then rewatch it to see your progress. 

Search up any words you don’t know and how to pronounce them, and to test yourself, think of a way to use those words in an everyday sentence. 

While this helps to expand your vocabulary as well, really keep in mind the setting of the conservation. If you’re at a science and math invention fair, more advanced language is suited. However, you wouldn’t use that same way of speaking casually at a party. 

The second tip is to get rid of all filler words in your vocabulary. 

Like

Um

Uh

so

Unnecessary when speaking and it can make you an unengaging conservationist. Just take a pause when thinking, and if you forget what you were talking about, tell your listener or just change the topic. Sometimes, these words are needed when speaking, but not all the time. 

The third tip is just to do everything slower, while speaking. Move your hands slower, don’t dart your eyes around and take deep breaths before speaking. If not, you seem anxious and jittery, in which your words will not be clear. 

The fourth tip is to pay attention to the listener. Make eye contact with them and ask questions about them too. This makes it a lot more engaging and therefore, easier for the listener to listen. 

My fifth tip, and the most important, is to practice speaking. Whether it is in front of a mirror or with a partner. Use notes as reminders while practising to help you remember what to do. There are even videos on YouTube where you can pretend you’re having a conversation with someone, or you could just make your own. 

However, practice yourself to speak without preparation. Like for example, you strike up a conservation with your classmate and apply the things you’ve learnt. 

Bear in mind, that the whole point of becoming socially eloquent isn’t to make people listen to you, but to make it easier for people to listen to you. 

MAKING FRIENDS + KEEPING THEM

Now everything else is out of the way, let’s talk about what you probably came here for. How to make friends and keep them. Better said than done. 

The settings where you meet someone are important. It allows you to easily connect with people who are similar to you in any way, without actually having to state it. Here are a few places to meet people.

Church/any religious site (same beliefs)

Sports club (like that sport/exercise) 

Any classes (people who like learning/that hobby) 

School or university (you’ve got something to connect over) 

These are just a few examples of where to meet people, however, you do not have to go somewhere else just to meet someone. Sometimes, I go to my nearest shopping mall or supermarket either after school or on the weekend and talk to any girls who look around my age, with whom I’ve gained so many friends. 

While going to a particular setting helps to find people with similarities, it’s not the essential piece to meet people. 

If you struggle to make friends just by striking up a conversation, just make yourself known to others first. Help them when needed, compliment them or greet them daily. They will most likely approach you first and talk to you first as you’ve deemed yourself approachable. Do not rely on this method though, not everyone is willing to approach you. 

Once you find a potential friend and you’re talking to them, make sure it’s an engaging conversation. First, ask open-ended questions. Open-ended questions are ones that someone can expand on, basically not yes or no answers. 

Do you own any cats? -> What’s your favourite cat breed? 

Do you enjoy *activity*? -> What’s your favourite thing to do after school? 

When can we hang out? -> Where’s your favourite place to hang out?

These are the kinds of questions that you get to know someone and are engaging. Remember, do not be overbearing with questions, it can come off as kinda odd. 

Secondly, find any similarities and talk about them. For example, a sport, a favourite book, a hobby, religion. It is so easy for people to connect over their favourite things. 

Thirdly, have open and friendly body language. Smile when they’re talking, maintain eye contact, avoid crossing your arms and legs, and lean in to show you’re listening. People love love, good listeners. 

My fourth point which refers back to being good listeners, is remembering what they say. If they said, oh I love going to the beach, maybe suggest going to the beach together. Or, they said, I hate studying, then the next time they have a test, help them study. 

Lastly, avoid small talk. It becomes awkward and the answers are always the same. If you must, ask them about things that happened in their life. Like, how’s that boy you’re talking to or did you do well on that test? 

Most people also hate small talk. So, if every single conservation is just small talk, they would not want to talk to you. 

These little things that you remember can make people like you and therefore, want to be your friend. I remember stuff about people by just writing it down and occasionally referring back to it. 

Now, let’s say you’ve got your friend now. However, you don’t have a way of talking to them every day. They don’t live close by nor do they attend your school/uni/any place. So, how do we keep them?

Easy, invest in those friendships. Talk to them via messages or phone, schedule days to hang out, check up on them to make sure they’re doing well, be honest with them, remember important dates of their lives etc. 

Keeping friends is just about being a good friend to them. Just think about how you would like to get treated by your friends and treat them like that. Even if they don’t reciprocate, putting out those positive actions, will come back to you one day. 

[midnightsnyx]

girl at home | mat barzal | part 8

pairing: mat barzal x fem!reader

warnings: angst, mentions of alcohol and pregnancy word count: 1.7k authors note: so marlee, stella & evan are some oc's!! i mentioned that i was gonna add a new character so that mama would have a friend. as always, HUGE thank you to @barzysbaby for her support and help on this story 💙 enjoy and thank you all for the love and support <3 we still have lots coming!

masterlist masterpost askbox requests are open🫶🏻

After graduation, you didn’t have many friends. Most of them moved away for university and the few that did stay, you quickly learned, were only friends with you because of your relationship with Mat. Once he was gone, they acted like they didn’t know you. 

The whole teen pregnancy didn’t help either.

Your mom was the only one you had in the delivery room and when visiting hours were over, and you were in your room with Nora alone, that was when the loneliness kicked in. It was when you realized that you were alone, that you were responsible for an actual human being and that realization scared the crap out of you. Things only got worse throughout the night when Nora wouldn’t stop crying and you had no idea what to do. You’d been to all the classes, read the books and watched unrealistic movies but nothing could compare to what being a mom actually felt like. You were sure you would lose your mind but then shift change happened, and you met Marlee. 

Marlee was your nurse for 12 hours, and in those 12 hours, she became a new friend. She was a mom to a one-year-old named Stella so she had just been through the difficult infant stage and she spent every single of her breaks that day with you, giving you advice and helping you. When her shift was over, she gave you her number and told you that if you ever needed anything, to call her. You didn’t plan on calling her, not wanting to impose but on a bad night, when your mom was working a night shift and Nora just wouldn’t stop crying, you caved and called her. She didn’t hesitate to come over and help you, assuring you that her husband was home with Stella. She spent the entire night helping you with a crying Nora who turned out to have colic. 

After that, a beautiful friendship was born. Nora and Stella grew up together like two peas in a pod, and you made a great friend. 

A great enough friend that when she got home from vacation and learned what was going on with Mat and Calista, you had to talk her down from going and “taking that bitch out”. 

You weren’t sure if she was kidding or not. 

“I need a drink,” she mumbles after you manage to talk her down. You’ve never seen her so angry so you follow her to her kitchen, politely declining a glass of wine.

“It’s three o’clock in the afternoon,” you explain when she raises an eyebrow at you. 

“Honey, it’s five o’clock somewhere.”

“True,” you agree. “I’ll still pass though.”

She shrugs and walks back to the living room, flopping on the couch and groaning. 

“I do not want to go back to work tomorrow.”

You sit next to her, knocking your shoulder against hers and smiling. “You get to go help a bunch of new mama’s,” you remind her and she smiles sheepishly.

“Yeah,” she agrees. 

The two of you watch a couple episodes of Yellowstone before the door opens and you hear giggles and a man trying to wrangle two kids inside. You tilt your head back and see Marlee’s husband Evan, helping Nora and Stella take their shoes off before they run into the living room and jump on the couch with you and Marlee. 

“Mama!” Nora shrieks, bouncing up and down on the seat next to you. “Can I please have a sleepover with Stella?” 

You pretend to think about it, even though you and Marlee had planned for Nora to stay the night anyway. She was supposed to spend the day with Mat tomorrow, but she’s refusing to see him. You tried talking to her about it, but she threw a fit and you decided not to push her. Besides, you haven’t heard from Mat since you talked the other day so you’re not even sure if he would want to see her. 

“Well, I guess you can stay the night,” you finally say and she squeals and hugs you before running off with Stella. You smile at them and then turn back to Marlee who’s doing the same. 

“Evan will drop them off at camp tomorrow,” she says and you nod. 

“I’ll head out,” you tell her, standing up and grabbing your keys off the table. “Liana wants to see me tomorrow. Wouldn’t say why.”

Marlee frowns. “Do you think she knows?” 

You hesitate, not having considered that. It’s possible Liana wants to see you in person if she knows about Calista. The thought makes your stomach go in knots. You don’t want to lie to her that you knew, but you don’t want her to be mad that you didn’t tell her. 

“Maybe,” you say. “I’ll let you know.”

“Alright, have a good night.” 

“You too,” you reply before going to say goodbye to Nora. She’s distracted but hugs you and smiles when you tell her you’ll see her tomorrow.

“Bye mama,” she waves as you leave and you can’t help but think about how quickly she’s growing. It feels like yesterday you were sitting on your bathroom floor, staring at a positive pregnancy test and now she’s becoming her own little person. You shed a few tears on the way home, but they’re happy tears which is a change considering lately the only time you’ve cried is when Mat does something stupid, like brush off Nora’s feelings because of his girlfriend. 

You’re still waiting for a call or text from him, not wanting to crack first and reach out to him. When you were dating, he would always come to you after an argument. You both hated fighting, and it was something that wasn’t common in your relationship. 

But six years and a life changing secret changes a lot. 

. . .

Liana insists that you meet up at your apartment, not wanting to be at the Barzal household. It makes you feel like she probably does know about Calista’s pregnancy. 

She shows up at ten o’clock on the dot, bulldozing into your apartment the minute you open the door. 

“Um, hey?” you say, closing the door and turning to see her standing a few feet away from you, arms crossed and scowling. 

“Did you know?”

When you don’t say anything, she starts pacing. 

“Why didn’t you tell me? You knew I was worried!” she cries, stopping to look at you. There are tears in her eyes and your heart breaks. You feel like all you’ve done since Mat got home and you brought Nora into their lives, is cause pain. It wasn’t right of you to keep her away, you know that but you’re only starting to realize just how hard it must have been on them. 

“It wasn’t my secret to tell,” you say but she shakes her head.

“No, you owe me this. I didn’t get mad about Nora but you knew that Calista is pregnant and you didn’t tell me! I was worried sick about Mat but you knew the entire time.” 

It was rare that Liana yelled, but you’re sure your neighbors can hear her. 

“Liana-”

“No,” she snaps, cutting you off. “You should have told me.” 

“Does Nadia know?” you ask quietly and Liana pauses, as if she’s considering not telling you. 

Eventually, her shoulders drop. “No. Mat wants to keep it that way so don’t say anything,” she says. “Not like you have trouble keeping secrets.”

She leaves before you can reply, leaving you standing in the middle of your apartment. It was a low blow, but you know you deserved it. Liana didn’t necessarily have a right to know about Mat’s situation, but she was right about Nora. 

You should have given them a chance.

. . .

“It’s not too late, you know,” your mom said. She was holding a copy of your sonogram, smiling softly. You were lucky how well your mom took the news when you went to her and told her you were pregnant. She promised to support you no matter your decision and when you told her you wanted to keep the baby, she was there every step of the way.

The only thing she didn’t agree with was your decision to keep Nora out of the Barzal’s lives. She tried to say that maybe they would be able to keep Mat from finding out, but you couldn’t take the chance. You knew that Mat would eventually find out somehow and that was exactly what you didn’t want. 

“I’ve made up my mind,” you told her and looked at your own copy of the sonogram. “He can’t know.”

. . .

When you go to Marlee’s the next day, you’re surprised to find her home early. She was supposed to work until eight but it’s four in the afternoon when you go to pick Nora up and she’s sitting at the kitchen table, reading something. 

“Hey,” you say and her head snaps up so quickly you hear a crack that makes you wince.

Her face is white as a ghost, and she’s gripping the papers in her hand tight enough that they’re starting to buckle. 

“Where are the kids?” you ask, walking over and sitting down. She shoves the papers to the side and attempts to smile at you but it’s forced. 

“Evan took them for ice cream,” she says.

“That’s nice,” you reply, trying to figure out what’s going on. “Was Nora good? Didn’t give you any trouble?” 

“Of course not,” she reassures you. “Angel as always.”

You watch her shift in her chair and glance at the papers. You’re tempted to just take them so you can figure out why Marlee’s so nervous but obviously it’s private so you don’t push. You’re opening your mouth to ask her when Evan will be back so you can take Nora to see your mom when words start tumbling out of her mouth.

“She lied,” she says quickly. “She lied, and I took her file and I’m probably going to get fired but I couldn’t just let her get away with lying about something so important when it can affect-”

“Who?” you cut her off. “Who lied about what?”

Her face pales more if it’s even possible. 

“Calista. She lied about being pregnant.”

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[vasito-de-leche]

Could we have some Zima relationship headcanons :]

;R1999 ZIMA - Relationship Headcanons

Compilation of headcanons about Zima in a romantic relationship.

ofc you can nonnie, ty for the request! Zima was the other character that got me into the game so he's very dear to me

also also, I'm not sick anymore so I have some steam to work on requests, hehe <3 still working on the sleepy fics though, don't worry yall!

I haven't done a proper analysis/HCs post on Zima yet, so as usual I'll be talking a little about his character before getting into the whole relationship aspect of things!

The portrayal of Zima as a stereotypical, shy introvert feels extremely reductive to me, especially when it's all attributed to his speech pattern - the pauses, the stuttering... None of it is an indication of timidness. We have to remember that Zima's native language, like many other characters, is not english and he struggles when speaking it. That's the reason he speaks in such a way, there's a language barrier he's constantly fighting against in order to communicate with others and yet he's clearly trying.

There's an emphasis on loneliness, isolation and avoidance in his character that is impossible to ignore, which seems to add to the whole portrayal of Zima as a "shy baby". But again, this is something that comes from an important part of his life - the exile he went through. Him being socially inept is a result of a punishment, years of being alone with no one but animals to keep him company. It doesn't come from a sense of inferiority or insecurity such as Charlie, but an absolute lack of human contact.

When examining his voicelines, we also see that he's opinionated - criticizing the Tsar and the poor living conditions of the people, speaking of the beauty of nature and so on and so forth. He explicitly writes poems on any surface like trees, rocks and snow, even if he knows they'll be washed away overtime.

I understand that it's extremely easy to dismiss Zima when it comes to romance because of all of these details, his isolating ways and all, but he's a poet first and foremost.

While he may not be romantic in the more traditional sense we're used to, he's extremely insightful and takes a lot of care to appreciate the small details that often go overlooked, but that make life feel more lively and rich. In the context of relationships, given his age and his lifestyle, Zima would bring a completely different type of vibe - for comparison, most of the characters I talked about already lean towards high emotions, the fun of discovering love for the first time, etc etc...

Pavia's love is a whole rollercoaster on his own because there's always the chance of either getting hurt or having the time of your life, Forget Me Not's feels exactly like being hungover in the morning. But Zima's love is more like coming home after a long trip, knowing there's a warm meal waiting for you. It's familiar and calm.

On the subject of Zima falling in love.

Zima is used to introspection, so I genuinely believe he has a strong sense of self and a good grasp on his emotions. He quickly realizes when he's fallen for someone and he accepts it easily, despite the lack of romantic interactions in his life. This is because the object of his affections is, most likely, someone he already cherishes, and who puts the effort into maintaining a good friendship with him - so the idea of being in love with them feels natural!

I can't see Zima pursuing romantic relationships with strangers and/or those outside his close circle, not even a surface attraction beyond artistic appreciation for someone's looks. He strikes me as the type who can only fall in love with those he trusts and knows.

And even then, his behaviour wouldn't change much!

It's obvious that he lacks friends, so the very few people he does have are extremely important to him - even so, Zima does not need to constantly orbit around them and will gladly spend days (and weeks if you don't actively seek him out) without seeing them, content to catch up with them whenever their paths cross. He shares what little he has to offer with everyone, practical things and knowledge. Zima is 100% that friend who disappears for months and returns as if nothing happened.

When it comes to you, it's the same. Sure, if you ask him to stay a little longer then he'll oblige you. And if you're the chatty type or find his work interesting, then he'll put the effort into having a conversation with you despite the language barrier. But that's about it, the changes aren't noticeable no matter how much he loves you, because all of that happens when no one is looking.

If you happen to stroll around in the wilderness, getting lost in the forest and all, then you might find your name carved on trees along with many, many poems. If you don't speak or read russian, then all you'll be able to recognize is your name - the very first thing Zima taught you in his native tongue - but these are all declarations of love.

The animals are kinder to you, curious even. They follow and treat you like an old friend, as if they knew you, because everything they've heard from you comes from Zima himself. They speak about everything and anything with him, after all.

Zima lacks the initiative to confess or even consider being in a proper relationship with you - I insist, he's genuinely content with being a close friend - but he also lacks the restraint to keep his feelings to himself and thus puts them on display in the only way he knows how: as a poorly kept secret between himself and the nature that surrounds him.

Not many think of him as a romantic because of how stoic he is, but when Zima is in love, he sees you in every flower, in the snowflakes that fall and kiss his nose. You're the gentle summer breeze and the crystal clear rivers once winter ends. You're right there beside him in spirit when he sees little chicks take flight for the first time, or when all the other forest critters wake up after hibernating. Zima finds beauty in every aspect of nature, and he sees you everywhere he looks.

That said, there's no way he'll take the first step. That's entirely up to you, to pick up all these things and confront him about it - that's the only time he'll be open and direct about his feelings. Because you already know how much you mean to him!

Zima would love to teach you his native language.

This is partially me projecting because english isn't my native language either, but I do like to think that Zima's english is all self-taught. He understands when others speak english, but isn't as fluent when speaking himself. And that's why it's sooo infuriating and frustrating for him, as a creative person and poet.

Not only because it's harder to communicate with others, but because his work and poems - the most important part of himself - can't be fully understood. Therefore HE can't be fully understood. Some translations, while good, can't even come close to their original meaning. As his partner, Zima wants you to understand the full depth of his affections and thoughts.

I do think that the process of learning would also be quite organic, starting with Zima simply pointing out at things and teaching you the way they're named in russian, basic stuff he does unconsciously. If you pick up things on your own from his work and his translations, Zima will be over the moon and would ask you to repeat yourself to make sure your pronunciation is right and because he loves the way his language sounds with your accent.

But if you approach and ask him to properly teach you? He's gone, instantly overwhelmed with emotion and thoughts racing in his head, trying to organize a million different things - what would be the best way to teach you? Should he start with the alphabet? You want to learn this brand new language to understand him better, that simple gesture is a huge deal for him.

Once you have a pretty good grasp on the language, at least enough to have basic conversations with him, it will feel like Zima has gotten a little bolder - addressing you with pet names, being generally more blunt and talkative... But in fact, he's just finally able to express himself in his totality.

This also goes the other way around - Zima would love to learn your own native language, whether it's english or something else. It's yet another language he can use to express himself, so it's a win-win. And I know that it's common for us multilingual people to start confusing and mixing all the languages we speak, but I think Zima would have an easy time keeping them apart, so to speak!

On the subject of Zima and how he acts when he's in a relationship.

You two were close friends before you were lovers, so Zima doesn't feel any sort of pressure to live up to some dating standards like fancy dates, gifts or grandiose displays of affections - once again, it's all about what feels natural. You two know each other more than enough to simply fall into a comfortable routine that works out for both.

He does make the effort to drop by more often, to find a middle ground until he feels more comfortable and used to being around large groups of people. But he would also insist that you accompany for his walks in search of inspiration for his work!

When it comes to showing affection, I think Zima might be a little touchstarved - casual physical contact such as someone hugging or patting him on the back as a greeting still catch him by surprise, but affectionate gestures with those he trusts and loves is a novelty that leaves Zima starry-eyed.

He has a lot of things that he needs to slowly get used to again now that he's not exiled in the middle of the woods, but having you shower him with affection is something that he grows to like rather quickly. When you pet him, pepper his face with kisses, hold his hand when walking or hug him - it doesn't matter, Zima will always stand there, fascinated with the way you make him feel, so very warm and safe.

He would appreciate a warning before being touched, and he always makes sure to ask before initiating anything himself - it doesn't matter how many times you tell him that you're fine with this sort of contact, he's going to ask for permission anyway. Just out of politeness. Personal space is important, after all.

I think Zima would try to stick to a routine he can follow without overwhelming himself, especially if you're the type to need more attention (again, Zima will literally disappear for weeks if left to his own devices). It's more of a short list of things he needs to remember to do before the day is over, the two most important ones being greeting you in the morning and wishing you goodnight.

As for more general aspects of a relationship, I don't think there's much to say! Arguments with him rarely happen because he's patient and careful with his words, he communicates his needs and boundaries as well as he respects yours and all. Zima isn't that talkative, but his more "eccentric" traits are something you're probably used to on account of that initial bond and trust.

[ofoceansandtombsanew]

Sorry: I thought of another Makima comment/question. But before I bring that up, I am very excited to see that you are writing something for JJK!!!! I know it's going to be so perfect and give me all the feels!!!

Okay so I read your response to my question, (I'm the one who asked about character study), and I just wanted your thoughts/opinions on the jealously issue that arises with Himeno. I know you mentioned Makima being jealous of Himeno's relationship with reader, and I want to know how much of that you think is nature or nurture. It's obvious she is possessive of reader due to her nature as the Control Devil, but do you think that is equally due to nurture? i.e. what she has learned from movies or from other humans' interactions with their significant others? I love the moment when she catches Himeno with her arms around reader's shoulders. I cannot imagine the range of intense emotions and inner turmoil she felt seeing that!!! And do you think that was a recurring feeling she experienced when someone got a little too close to her beloved? I feel that is a trait that will carry on to Nayuta and all other reincarnations (as possessiveness does in the Canon!)

Thank you so much for your time once again!

Hi again, I love talking about character studies and motivations so keep 'em coming if you ever have another question \^o^/

(As for that JJK fic... it is certainly going to be a grand ride and it is going to be a bit of stray from what I typically write. I'm having fun working on the draft, it's going to come with a surprise I hope people appreciate when it's finally up and posted!)

I think that as far as Makima's jealousy though, it's a mixture of both. It's in her nature to be possessive as one who is the physical embodiment of the fear of being controlled but I attribute her behavior to nurture as well. If you're someone who has been deprived of affection your whole life, you're bound to be possessive of whatever affection you receive. That's essentially how Makima's jealousy works as far as my fics goes.

When she has a shift in how she views the reader and their relationship changes, that affection is something she prefers to have to herself. But Makima is someone very patient and we see in the canon, she has no problem playing the long game to get what she wants. She won't lash out out of her emotions even if she wants to. So during the moment where she saw the extent of the reader's friendship with Himeno, there were quite a bit of ideas she had concerning Himeno and making her disappear entirely.

But at that point in time, Makima views the reader a beacon of light for the sort of relationship she can hope to have with someone one day. The reader has, at this point, never succumbed to Makima's abilities. The reader has recognized Makima's loneliness and reached out to comfort her even though at that point, the reader's opinion of Makima was quite low. Add to the fact that Makima and Reader's relationship has improved exponentially by that point, it's something she doesn't want anyone impeding on. Not even someone who was there first as "your friend".

And yet, Makima doesn't lash out despite how much she would like to. Because the key thing Makima has always desired is being able to have a relationship with someone built on equity rather than fear and control. She doesn't want to mess that up having a jealous fit. She is afraid of losing that affection she receives from the reader, but she is more afraid of there being a day the reader succumbs to the influence of Makima's powers.

So she relies on intimidation in the moment Himeno encroaches on someone Makima claims as her own. And when she feels that is failing, she decides to rely on good old-fashioned communication when the reader prompts her to be honest as to why she is upset during their date.

But when their relationship is solidified as a couple, I see Makima making it more apparent when she is feeling jealous or needy. Lovers should be honest with one another, after all. Especially after she reveals her true identity and it didn't scare the reader off. They have their contract, marriage in Makima's eyes. It's the ultimate insurance of their relationship. So it does increase a bit from then on.

Kishibe encroaching on their peaceful life.

The reader's death at the hand of the Rat Devil, destroying precious life Makima held so dearly to her heart. It's an unforgivable crime to take that away from her.

I feel that jealousy would even extend to your family as well. Your family is her family now, something she's always desired. A family that she didn't need to make her own through force. So I feel if the reader has any siblings or close family childhood friends, Makima would feel some type of way about it.

It never makes it into the final draft, but there was a small joke in my outline about how Makima would view the reader making a contract with another devil as cheating. It was something I was only planning on being some sort of gag, but I don't think it would be too far from the truth. Makima would prefer to be the only devil the reader ever has a contract with.

And when it comes to her future incarnations, they definitely have varying degrees of possessiveness regardless of the quality of their lives. Nayuta doesn't showcase it during the sequel mostly due to the fact that for an indiscernible amount of time, it's only ever been just her and the reincarnated reader. So I imagine that when the two of them begin interacting with other people on the regular from schoolmates to even Power, it begins to come out more.

But Himeno, fun as she is, is strict about that. So Nayuta isn't allowed to let those feelings run rampant no matter how much she would like to.

[teecupangel]

Hello. You're one of the best fanfic writers on tumblr since I come. Your writings are just masterpiece. I like when you send Desmond back in time but It would be great to send his ancestors to moderday. Mabey before Desmond geting kidnaped. Ir happened like this:

Master assassins were always watching. Desmond. The one that they sacrificed themselves for. Altair and Connor were quite alright with this fact but Ezio… The emptiness he felt inside in the vault… He could never forget it. It was actauly obvious that he hated Desmond for it. But he always wanted the prophecy go as it was writen and the day Desmond ran away from the farm. He couldn't help but getting mad. Altair always tried to make him undrestand Desmond. The weakness he felt in the farm how he was treated by his father… Ezio could undrestand but his family, his love, his happiness, they were all gone because of that stupid kid. So he wanted to make everything go as planned. What if they could protect him from Abestergo? But not from here. The grey was a strange place. All illusions could come real. So he used this to make himself strong enough to protect the chosen one. The creation he chose to shift to was a khanivore!!! A creation made to kill. And with the power of shapeshifting he could always be there for Desmond.

So we have a khanivore keeper for Desmond that can shpeshift to a human. A white khanivore with red lines all over his body like the robes of a mentor. I was thinking it would so cool a Desmond with one badass khanivore by his side. They could destroy templairs together. And in the way of it they will learn how to get along with each other or mabey romance. And it will be funny to see Desmond trying to teach Ezio how to use modern tech. Can you add details. I love the way you give life to these characters. I love youuu❤❤❤

Thank you! ❤❤❤

For those unfamiliar with a khanivore, it looks like this:

So in this scenario, Ezio has complicated feelings for Desmond. He knows he shouldn’t hate him, Desmond was also a victim of ‘fate’ as Altaïr would sometimes say whenever he sees Ezio’s frustrations bubbling beneath the surface while they were in the Gray.

Ezio understood that.

But sometimes he just doesn’t get Desmond.

He wasn’t like Ratonhnhaké:ton who had a complicated relationship with his father just as Desmond had.

He wasn’t like Altaïr who had a similar isolated upbringing as Desmond had.

It was times like these that makes Ezio wonder why he was even Desmond’s prophet.

Altaïr or Ratonhnhaké:ton would have been better.

They would have understood Desmond more than he could ever had.

He didn’t understand it.

And that feeling of his is what turned to frustration, to hatred.

He always tried to stomp it out but sometimes, it would just flare up whenever he sees Desmond wasting his time just… doing nothing.

Staring at the sky.

At the woods beyond the Farm…

Ezio was tired.

So tired.

He spent his life as an Assassin being a puppet dancing to the tune the Isus created for him.

As an opening act to Desmond’s story.

And when he finally died, he was transported here instead of being with the people he loved.

All because of Desmond.

So when Desmond ran away from the Farm, Ezio was furious.

Ratonhnhaké:ton tried to calm him down, tried to remind him that Desmond was still sixteen.

Altaïr kept quiet.

The only time he spoke during that time was to say that he understood Desmond’s choice.

And that they should honor his decision to live his life the way he wants to live it.

But Ezio couldn’t agree with that.

Altaïr and Ratonhnhaké:ton had always had a soft spot for Desmond, had always been more forgiving.

He couldn’t understand why Altaïr could think that way. Ratonhnhaké:ton had been with them since his death, he’s only been stuck in the Gray for more or less three centuries. He probably still doesn’t feel that bitter loneliness that Ezio feels.

But Altaïr?

Altaïr had been stuck here longer than Ezio had been.

Maybe that was what was different between them.

Altaïr had the patience that Ezio no longer possessed.

So Ezio planned.

And creates a body he could use to get out of the Gray.

To drag Desmond back to the Brotherhood.

Unorganized Notes:

Ezio has been so focused on creating the khanivore that he hasn’t seen how Desmond is doing after leaving the Farm.

When he leaves and goes to the modern time, he’s floored by how much Desmond had grown and becomes conflicted when he realized that this was the first time he had ever seen Desmond smiling in a very long time. No. It was the first time he had ever seen Desmond happy for a very long time.

Ezio uses the khanivore as his body but can shapeshift to a human form. He visits Desmond in the bar but don’t talk to him. Contemplating on his next plan.

Desmond thinks he’s super sus but his coworkers think he’s just shy and might have a crush on Desmond with the way he keeps staring at Desmond then looking away whenever Desmond turns to face his direction.

Altaïr and Ratonhnhaké:ton remain in the Gray but they try to contact Ezio at times, usually hijacking radios and any other electronics nearby. After a while, Ezio gets a phone so they could just… call him. (like the phone rings and they can talk for a few seconds, maybe a minute, before it drops because signals sucks in the Gray)

Ezio spent a lot of time not sure of what to do now because he’s not an asshole who would just yank someone away from their happiness but, at the same time, Desmond needs to become an Assassin to save the world. So yeah, he’s torn. It doesn’t help that Desmond started talking to him and… well, they’re talking. Nothing serious but it gives Ezio an excuse to ask Desmond how his life is and…

He can’t help but be happy for Desmond for having a life he finds happiness in but also he can’t stop that bitterness that keeps whispering to him that Desmond needs to do his duty. His responsibility. The fate of the world depends on it.

That’s when Cross tries to kidnap Desmond.

And Ezio saves him in his khanivore form.

Cue a story of Desmond and Ezio (in khanivore form) running away from Abstergo, trying to get into contact with the Assassins because they have no choice. Ezio starts to understand Desmond more because Desmond lets his guard down with Ezio’s khanivore form.

And then… I don’t know. Desmond gets kidnapped anyway while Ezio barely manages to escape? That’s when he finally gets to talk to Altaïr and Ratonhnhaké:ton who informed him that if he wants to keep the timeline intact, for Desmond to save the world, he has to let Desmond stay in Templar custody ‘until the time is right’.

Which only serves to make Ezio think about how he truly feels with Altaïr and Ratonhnhaké:ton subtly pushing him to confront his real feelings (maybe with Altaïr even reminding Ezio that this is what he wanted, isn’t it?)

In the end, Ezio says fuck fate and goes to save Desmond before Desmond could finish reliving Ezio’s memories.

That’s as far as I got XD

[jellyfisharesatan]

Okay so I've spent the last three days almost exclusively playing portal 1 and 2, and I've so many thoughts.

First off, portal 2 is literally a perfect sequel. Expands on the first game not only in terms of game play, but also lore. There's a huge amount more game to play, and a far stronger element of exploration to the game, which adds to the out of the box thinking the game loves to promote. Portal 1, while I love it, really just sets up the basic idea of how to use portals and boxes, it's portal 2 that truly goes ham, not only expanding on these two basic elements, but also inventing more complex materials to work with.

Portal 1 also has very scarce lore; Rattmans caves, Glados having killed everyone else in the facility, and the sentience of the turrets/companion cube being the main few points. In comparison, portal 2 is chock full of a story that is paced beautifully.

Second, the theme of loneliness in the story is so heart wrenching when you think abt it for more than a second. Portal 1 is lonely in the sense that (as far as you know), you are completely alone in a testing facility because of a recently gone-rogue AI. (Yes ik Rattman is in fact alive throughout the first game but there's no way for the player to know this given that he never physically appears. It's only through the comics that we learn abt him properly).

But portal 2 drives the loneliness factor to the Max. Not only are you still trapped in the place you fought so hard to escape, you are now in a future you don't recognise. You're fighting to escape more on principle than anything else by now, because what is there to escape to? The outside world isn't your home anymore, nowhere is. The closest thing you have left is a testing facility in which you will certainly be killed if you stay too long.

You have no one truly on your side, ever. Wheatley is the closest the game ever comes to giving you an actual companion, and he immediately betrays you the first chance he gets. You're forced to work alongside your worst enemy, knowing she will probably destroy you immediately upon victory over Wheatley. Even when she doesn't, you only survive because of her mercy, she could easily have killed you a thousand times over, as the final few scenes of the game prove.

And then there's Cave and Caroline. A lonely man who's dying voice has been left to play through the abandoned salt mines turned testing facility. His original work lies discarded, centuries of science rest destroyed in layers all the way up to the surface.

Caroline is held in your hand most of the way through the salt mines, though neither you or her have any way of realising this until halfway through. Caroline, one of the few humans Cave loved, has become inhuman in his death, through his orders. Caroline doesn't even remember herself, let alone the man who preserved some level of her essence.

One thing I think portal 1 does better is the way in which the structure of the testing chambers emphasise your loneliness. The windows through which you are so clearly meant to be observed, the abandoned mad man's dens hidden in the walls. The absence of people is felt to keenly

Third, the expansion of the relationship between Chell and Glados in portal 2 is so profound. Portal 1 establishes that Glados hates your guts, but she's clearly intrigued by you in a way she just cannot let go of. So many of her decisions are irrational regarding you. Yes, it is built into Glados to want to test, but portal 2 proves that she can build robots capable of doing so, and was in the process of doing just that even in portal 1. Keeping you around to test on is inviting problems to her doorstep, and she does it anyways. And even after you attempt to kill her, her final act before collapsing herself is to preserve you in a cryo chamber rather than destroy you.

And portal 2 makes it even more clear that Glados is drawn to Chell in a way she cannot help or deny. She keeps Chell around to test on even after she's proved herself to be a borderline unstoppable nuisance, she attempts to spend her precious few facilities to talk to you while in potato form, and again, she doesn't kill you at the end, but let's you go.

Her insults in this game have a clearly fond edge to them, and her greeting of you when you both meet again is so full of emotion.

Fourth, the continued theme of AI intelligence is so fascinating. The oracle turret, the defective turrets, Wheatley, and all the funky weird little cores at the end are such fascinating additions to the game. The first portal introduced the concept of the turrets (and potentially companion cubes) being sentient, but didn't do much with it apart from making the turrets creepy (and also hauntingly sad) with their limited dialogue. But portal 2 opens up so many new pathways by making exceptions to this in the previously mentioned defective and oracle turrets. Even Wheatley is a fascinating addition, he's so full of personality in a way that is diametrically opposed to Glados.

Fifth, the continued presence of Rattman and his obsession with Chell is so haunting, especially if, like me, you only read the comics after playing both games. I thought this man was still alive until fairly recently when first playing the game, and some of the artwork by him at the start of the game does seem to imply this.

Just. Ugh. Portal strings together the bare bones of narratives so perfectly. The history of every character is so long and completely not fleshed out, all we ever see is the briefest glance of any of them. We see the most of Chell and Glados, but even then it's clear we're meeting them after a long life filled with god knows what. Perfect

Anyways. No one's gonna read this, let alone see it, but I needed to get this out and document it somewhere so here I am

[roylustang]

hiiiii HIIII I loved your response and I was so very compelled by your ideas about why keith finds being dirty comforting and it seized me with the thought about how the castle is so Clean and Pristine. and I was thinking about your post about how the Dirt becomes part of you & your environment and I was like ohhh Keith’s shack was probably sooooo fucking dirty and then he gets this castle room that’s sleek white metal and clean nnnn and I think that is extremely unsettling. also also I see your thoughts about keith associating dirtiness with Importance and I would love to add: he was also dirty all the time during a time in his life where there was nobody around. I think for keith “peace & quiet” and “loneliness” are very intertwined (I hc he got bullied a lot at the garrison so while he found so much love in his relationship with shiro he also struggled a lot.) So the desert is this horrible grief but also this profound emptiness and not having anybody to impress or interact with. which I think is in a way comforting. the image of him coming back to the castle covered in dirt and blood and just sitting down in the lounge like that while everyone scrambles to shower is so vivid

also PLEASE tell me about your daddy kogane thoughts you can’t just bait me like that and not tell me. also you are so entirely right. Our combined power can turn keith into the saddest wettest rat ever. The keith suffering between us is powerful . I need to do my job now but yeah thanks for sharing

IM GOING INSAAAANNEEE okay okay okay i guess i mainly have two major thoughts about this.

The first is what you said about peace & quiet and loneliness. Highly believe Keith was getting bullied in the garrison (and even if it wasn’t bullying we all know he had beef with a lot of people/people had a lot of beef with him. He’s not a people person, obviously. He much prefers to be by himself because it’s safer and less stressful). So if we assume then that Keith is happier when there’s peace & quiet that means Keith probably also associates loneliness with happiness which FUCKS ME UP. And I can totally see how this would make his relationship with shiro more difficult, especially in the beginning. But mostly I’m dying thinking about the fact that, grief notwithstanding, Keith ultimately /believes/ he is happier in his lonely shack of sadness (whether or not he actually is). But I also think you’re definitely right that he takes comfort from the idea that there’s no one around to impress or put on an act for. There’s no pressure on him to perform (whether that be as a pilot or just as a normal human being, moreso the latter esp if we’re taking your hc’s into account) WHICH IS IMPORTANT because living like this, Keith feels less encumbered. He feels, perhaps, that living like this (constantly in the desert, constantly in the DIRT, constantly alone) is where he Belongs. This is arguably the most ideal living situation he’s ever been in, at least when there’s no one around to care about him (which has been the majority of his life).

Which leads me to my second thought that not only is suddenly being forced into the immaculate castle with all its sleek and clean furnishings unsettling, it is also signaling to Keith that this is a place where he does Not Belong. This is a place where he will have to continue to put up some kind of facade, especially considering he’s now living with 5 practical strangers (excluding Shiro), one of whom already seems to dislike him for no reason, like most people. And not only that, but especially in the first few days/weeks that they’re living there, Keith is constantly getting things dirty just by existing, which is very hard on him mentally bc it just makes him feel like he’s ruining everything. Because he Doesn’t Belong here in this nice clean place. He is once again a fish out of water.

[lightlycareless]

Chapter 37 - thoughts.

Heya everyone!

Here are chapter 37's notes!! The long awaited continuation of the Naoya's sick saga hehe.

As required of me, I highly recommend reading the chapter first, unless you want out of context spoilers 😂 which you can read right over here!

Without further ado, spoilers underneath the cut, and happy reading!

Now chapter 37… let’s start with the things that were not supposed to happen.

Y/N and Naoya getting along hahahah

I intended his whole sickness to be nothing more than her just pushing through it, not talking to him, not even looking at him—nothing. Tend him and then NEXT.

But when I got down to writing the chapter, it happened. I couldn’t keep Y/N and Naoya apart. And I don’t think I wanted to honestly.

My main worry when writing their dynamics was making it appear as if Y/N moved on so quickly from all that occurred with him. Like, just one situation that she’s forced to be in and now she’s forgiven him and back to being buddies—but I’d like to think I managed, and if anything, we got to see her perspective of this marriage.

I plan to expand more on it in the future, but for now I think I can say is: Y/N wanted the marriage to work. She wanted to see Naoya treat her nicely for a change, desperately so, that you can briefly read in the chapter how she’s trying to excuse his behavior just because she doesn’t want to be proven wrong again.

The way she goes on saying things like “well, if he didn’t have it in him, then he wouldn’t, right?” just to hold onto the hope that she’s truly going to see her family soon (and a brighter future for their union), and not his words being just a side effect of his sickness 😭 that ending scene was really, really sad. But very satisfying from a writer’s pov lol I think I managed to convey what I wanted to write in the end.

The other thing I wanted to show is the contrast between the two, and how ironic it seems to be. Like, Naoya is the heir, right, he’s essentially the next leader of the clan and is bound to get all them goods in due time, but the moment he makes a mistake he’s quickly dethroned, stripped of all those commodities as a way of punishment.

While Y/N, who has destroyed her reputation with most, is treated way better than him. We’ve seen them, how they act and whatnot. They don’t have alliances, not even with themselves. All of this must be so crazy for Y/N lol considering how close her family were, but oh well, different upbringings.

In the end I suppose Y/N never thought she’d actually find some similarities with Naoya—or anything outside of him being an absolute monster. Seeing him act like an actual human was baffling to her, MORE SO WHEN HE SEEMED TO TAKE THEIR MARRIAGE SERIOUSLY? I mean, only on the ring part, which took her by storm because Y/N didn’t believe him to be actually loyal to her.

And let’s not even get into the loneliness factor. (more on that later) Y/N can’t wrap her head around the fact that Naoya, as revered as he is, is completely alone. Like, throughout the days she’s been there with him no one has bothered to visit him outside of the staff doing their job. Not even Ranta! (Although he’s working—I was planning on writing a scene with him but I decided it was too much and doesn’t really add to the story; but yeah, he’s still a good friend, probably visited when she’s not around)

Anyways, someone of my readers commented that they were shocked Naoya was loyal, and I’m going to be real with y’all: Naoya might cheat, it’s like, super likely, HOWEVER, I like to think that with his one and only that is out of the question.

Also, he grew up seeing his father actively cheating on his mother, and we all know he does NOT like Naobito. So, he might engage into multiple relationships, but never formalize them, or keep them like one-night stands…. Soooo technically he’s not cheating?

This part of him is really intricate. In the way that even when he already set his eyes on Y/N he was going out with other women? But they weren’t together so there’s that. It’s just his need for affection motivating him to do that, once he was married, everyone else ceased to exist.

Either way, these things really opened her heart to be sensitive to him.  She’s taking these changes as an omen for the best; the light at the end of the tunnel. Let’s pray he doesn’t break that trust again.

Also, I took this opportunity to briefly mention what happened in the honeymoon hahaha I felt like I skipped over that part so quickly, it’s like it almost didn’t happen. But yeah, Y/N remembers that alright, although I don’t think she wants to 😅 I’m still considering whether to write more of it or not… I shall decide on it later hehe.

From there, their scenes together omg the fluffy ones I mean, my favorite one has to be the hand holding one. It was so cute!!! Or feeding him, or dressing him up in general; I really, really want to see more domestic stuff between the two, and fortunately, there’s a bit more in the next chapter :> heheheh (also I wanted to give y’all something sweet after chapters of angst. I was over the moon when yall told me you liked it 🥺❤️)

P.S. I wanted to reveal this later, but when writing this chapter my playlist just kept on putting this song, coincidentally, the one that reminds me the most of Naoya and Y/N.

There’s one more chapter left for the Naoya’s sickness saga and then… that chapter I think idk I gotta see how the plot line goes lol but yeah, we’re very close to something I’ve been wanting to show for the longest 2.0 I swear all was pointing to that!!! Kfgvakjsgajkgsajkgasjgaj oof. I just hope I played all my moves correctly.

And that’s it for this chapter’s notes! I don’t really have much else to add, since I think most of it was in the chapter anyways, but if you want me to go deeper into something I’ll be more than happy to do so! ❤️

Thank you so much for coming back for another update!! This story is my absolute joy and I can’t wait to go through the rest!!! Majkgkagjka I hope everything is satisfactory ❤️

Once again, thank you for your support ❤️❤️❤️ Take care, and hope to see you next update!!

[rphelperblog]

An Ember in the Ashes Quote Rp Meme

feel free to change pronouns or wording for rp purposes. A book series written by Sabaa Tahir

“Fear is only your enemy if you allow it to be.” 

“As long as there is life, there is hope.”

“Don’t you see? So long as you fight the darkness, you stand in the light.” 

“Don't make vows when you don't know the cost.”

“You are an ember in the ashes. You will spark and burn, ravage and destroy. You cannot change it. You cannot stop it.” 

“All the beauty of the stars means nothing when life here on earth is so ugly.” 

“This is no band of thieves. It’s the Resistance.” 

“Life isn't scary enough for you, girl?” 

“We never had much, but whatever we did have was made with love, which I now know transforms simple fare into a feast.” 

“Once, I'd have wanted that. I'd have wanted someone to tell me what to do, to fix everything. Once, I'd have wanted to be saved.” 

“Your fear is good. It makes your story real.” 

“Just because he's a good leader doesn't mean he's a good person.” 

“I'd rather die than live with no mercy, no honor, no soul.” 

“You are full. Full of life and dark and strength and spirit. You are in our dreams. You will burn, for you are an ember in the ashes.” 

“I don't need to believe in the supernatural, not when there's worse that roams the night.”

“Life is hard enough without having to avoid entire rooms in my own head.” 

“Duty first, unto death.”

"They took our souls a long time ago,”

“Also, he’s shorter than me. Considerably shorter. Half a foot, at least.”

“Slavers catch lies the way spiders catch flies.”

“I recognize the smell—his smell—spice and rain.” 

“The thought appears in my head, but I hardly know what I means.”

“You will be chained to the darkness within yourself as surely as if chained to the walls of a prison cell.” 

“So my choices are to stay and be evil or to run and be evil. Wonderful.”

“Seeing the enemy as human. A general's ultimate nightmare.” 

“Safety is an illusion never to trust.” 

“Come on, I want to add. But doing so would be like tattooing “I am up to no good” on my forehead.” 

“I swear it to the skies, to the stars. You’ll pay.” 

“But he never seemed to focus on what could turn out wrong. He only ever thought about how things could turn out right.” 

“Draw a line in your mind. Never cross it again. You have a soul. It's damaged, but it's there. Don't let them take it from you”

“The field of battle is my temple. The swordpoint is my priest. The dance of death is my prayer. The killing blow is my release.” 

“Nan always said that as long as there is life, there is hope.”

“In the night, your loneliness crushes you, as if the sky itself has swooped down to smother you in its cold arms.”

“You’ll never forget them, not even after years. But one day, you’ll go a whole minute without feeling the pain. Then an hour. A day. That’s all you can ask for, really.” 

“Your kind doesn’t need to read.” 

“I realize in that moment that I cannot be afraid of something if there’s no chance it could ever occur.” 

“But I’m not strong. I’m weak, and I’m sick of pretending I’m not.” 

“All evil here. Monsters. Little monsters and then big ones.” 

“So many bleeding, stupid questions. Do girls think like this all the time? No wonder they’re so confusing.” 

“You really should run, You’re just going to die.” 

“It will get better. You'll never forget them, not even after years. But one day, you'll go a whole minute without feeling the pain. Then an hour. A day. That's all you can ask for, really.”

“The best lies come from the truth.” 

“I'm too hot to care.” 

“Life is made of so many moments that mean nothing. Then one day, a single moment comes along to define every second that comes after.”

“Life is made of so many moments that mean nothing. Then one day, a single moment comes along to define every second that comes after. Such moments are tests of courage, of strength.”

“You—you were like me. You were a child. A normal child. And that was taken from you.”

“Look at me, do not make me face this alone.”

“I don't need to believe in the supernatural. Not when there's worse that roams that night” 

“Beauty's a curse when one lives among men”

“Rage colors her every movement. Rage that has nothing to do with her so-called bodyguards and everything to do with me and her and the confusion rolling around inside the both of us. 

This should be interesting” 

“Exhaustion is temporary. Pain is temporary. But her dying because I didn't find a way to get her back on time—that's permanent.” 

“I do not doubt, I do not hesitate. I am the Lioness's daughter, and I have the Lioness's strength.” 

“I realize that some naiive sliver of me hoped that he was better than this. Not good, necessarily. Just not evil.” 

“She's still clinging to the side of her mountain, just like I'm still wandering lost in my battlefield.” 

“My brother is still fighting, and his screams slice right through me. I know then that I will hear them over and over again, echoing in every hour of every day until I am dead or I make it right. I know it.” 

“She has no idea how pretty she is—or what kind of problems her beauty will cause for her at a place like Blackcliff. The wind pulls at her hair again, and I catch her scent—like fruit and sugar.” 

“Shadows will bloom in your heart, and you will become everything you hate.”

“I throw her over my shoulder” 

“When the fear takes over, use the only thing more powerful, more indestructible, to fight it: your spirit. Your heart.” 

The swordpoint is my priest. The dance of death is my prayer. The killing blow is my release.”

“She feels out the melody the way a blind man feels his way forward in an unfamiliar room.” 

“You killed my mother, who had a lion’s heart, and my sister, who laughed like the rain, and my father, who captured truth with a few strokes of a pen.

“There will be so much more in between. So much uncertainty. I don't know if we'll survive the catacombs, let alone the rest of it. But it doesn't matter. For now, these steps are enough. These first few precious steps into darkness. Into the unknown. Into freedom.” 

“I look up at the stars hanging low in a sky that makes me think I'm seeing the infinite. But beneath their cold gaze, I feel small. All the beauty of the stars means nothing when life here on earth is so ugly.”

“There are two kinds of guilt. The kind that's a burden and the kind that gives you purpose. Let your guilt be your fuel. Let it remind you of who you want to be. Draw a line in your mind. Never cross it again. You have a soul. It's damaged but it's there. Don't let them take it from you.” 

Well, it certainly makes you harder to hate.”

[unolvrs]

piece of media that made you cry/affected you the most ?

the first things that keep popping in my head are anime movies / series, so that's what i'm going with. but to be fair, i cry over everything. so there's that...

sayonara no asa ni yakusoku no hana o kazarô (2018) ━━ drama, fantasy

Maquia is a member of a special race called the Iorph—mystical beings who can live for hundreds of years and remain separate from the lives and daily troubles of mankind. However, Maquia has always felt lonely despite being surrounded by her people, as she was orphaned from a young age. She daydreams about the outside world, but dares not travel from her home due to the warnings of the clan's chief. One day however, the outside world finds her, as the power-hungry kingdom of Mezarte invades her homeland. They already have what is left of the giant dragons, the Renato, under their control, and now their king wishes to add the immortality of the Iorph to his bloodline. The humans and their Renato ravage the Iorph homeland and kill most of its inhabitants. Caught in the midst of the attack, Maquia is carried off by one of the Renato that has gone berserk. It soon dies, and she is left deserted in a forest far from home, now truly alone save for the cries of a single baby off in the distance. Maquia finds the baby in a destroyed village and decides to raise him as her own, naming him Ariel. Although she knows nothing of the human world, how to raise a child that ages much faster than her, or how to live with the smoldering loneliness inside, she is determined to make it all work somehow.

as someone with severe mommy issues and as someone obsessed with writing about mothers, this ruined me. i literally recommend this to every person i have ever met. i'm pretty sure i watched this, like, 1231081291 times already and every single time i watch it, i end up bawling my eyes out. my favorite character is leilia. you'll know why when you watch it. the complexity of leilia just made me wow, holy shit.

there was this one time i watched this with a friend. it was my second time watching it but it was my friend's first... and we ended up crying halfway into the movie.

colorful (2010) ━━ drama, slice of life, supernatural

Upon arriving at the train station of death, an impure soul is granted a second chance at life against his will. Reincarnating into the body of Makoto Kobayashi, a 14-year-old boy who recently committed suicide, the soul is tasked to identify the boy's greatest sin in life within a time limit of six months. Although it remains reluctant toward continuing life as Makoto, the soul soon begins to notice the complexities of people's emotions and actions.

when i watched this when i was a pre-teen, this destroyed me. istg who told me this was a good movie to watch bc i was a child. there are actually a fair share of criticisms this anime had because it 'didn't delve into the characters deeper' but imo, that's the point of the story because at the end of the day, the main character is just a fourteen-year-old, and they're looking at the world in a way a child does. anyway, this made me cry a lot.

shinsekai yori (2012) ━━ drama, horror, mystery, sci-fi, supernatural

In the town of Kamisu 66, 12-year-old Saki Watanabe has just awakened to her psychic powers and is relieved to rejoin her friends—the mischievous Satoru Asahina, the shy Mamoru Itou, the cheerful Maria Akizuki, and Shun Aonuma, a mysterious boy whom Saki admires—at Sage Academy, a special school for psychics. However, unease looms as Saki begins to question the fate of those unable to awaken to their powers, and the children begin to get involved with secretive matters such as the rumored Tainted Cats said to abduct children.

before you ask, no. this didn't make me cry. this just fucked me over and affected me so deeply i didn't know what to do after i watched it. another anime i watched when i was wayyy too young because i googled 'underrated animes'. i was, once again, a pre-teen. this messed me up a lot. i had no idea what was going on most of the time and one moment, nice things are happening, and the next, everything's messed up. still part of my top ten animes though. to say this is unique is an understatement. peak japanese anime.

little busters (2012) & little busters: refrain (2013) ━━ comedy, drama, romance, slice of life, supernatural

As a child, Riki Naoe shut himself from the world, thanks to a diagnosis of narcolepsy following the tragic deaths of his parents. However, Riki is saved when, one fateful day, a boy named Kyousuke recruits him into a team who call themselves the Little Busters. Accompanied by Masato, Kengo, and Rin, these misfits spend their childhood fighting evil and enjoying their youth. Years pass, and even in high school, the well-knit teammates remain together. Kyousuke decides to re-ignite the Little Busters by forming a baseball team as it will be his last school year with them. They have a problem though: there aren't enough members! The tables have turned, for it is now Riki's turn to reach out and recruit new friends into the Little Busters, just like Kyousuke had once done for him. Then, an omen surfaces—Rin finds a strange letter attached to her cat, assigning them the duty of uncovering the "secret of this world" by completing specific tasks. Just what is this secret, and why is it being hidden? It's up to the Little Busters to find out!

this is one of the few animes that i can proudly say: the second season was better than the first. of course, that doesn't mean the first season was bad. in fact, it was good, but nowhere near as great as whatever the hell the second season was. until now, i still think about the ending and how much it made me cry, and the foreboding presence of "the secret" that was everywhere but nowhere at the same time.

adaptations back then hit different, man.

doraemon: stand by me 1 & 2 (2014 & 2022) ━━ comedy, sci-fi

Nobita Nobi is an elementary student who hates studying, is bad at sports, and does everything half-heartedly. He is a pushover, unlucky, and fearful of many things. His personality makes him a failure in life, even affecting his progeny. This causes his great-great-grandchild, Sewashi, to take control of the situation. Sewashi travels back in time from the 22nd century to the 20th century to meet Nobita, who is shocked to see him appear out of his drawer alongside a blue robotic cat. The robotic cat calls himself Doraemon, who claims to have been pressured by Sewashi to assist Nobita, with their ultimate goal being to provide Nobita happiness. Frustrated after seeing Nobita's hopeless state, Doraemon decides to go back to the future. However, Sewashi activates a program within Doraemon that prevents him from doing so. Forced to stay, Doraemon helps Nobita using futuristic gadgets through his four-dimensional pocket—a bag containing anything inside it. Can Doraemon bring Nobita happiness and return to the future?

STOP. I LOVE DORAEMON OKAY. THIS MADE ME CRY SO MUCH. anyone who disses doraemon will be blocked.

sajkdajdah idk what else to put... i'm probably gonna wake up tomorrow thinking i should have put other movies but for now, this is all i have. i cry over everything okay

[crjupdates]

How Carly Rae Jepsen Found Strength And Freedom With New Album 'The Loneliest Time': "It's Surrendering To Everything"

On her fifth album, 'The Loneliest Time,' Carly Rae Jepsen dances her way through the "hard-hitting lessons" of life — celebrating growth as both a person and an artist.

Grammys • Lior Phillips • Oct. 20, 2022 • Photos: Meredith Jenks

"Rather than free falling, I'm free-flying," Carly Rae Jepsen says, the warmth of that untethered freedom radiating in her smile. That artistic liberty fuels the pop star's fifth studio LP, The Loneliest Time. 

The album weaves in and out of pure danceable joy, but with the lyrical prowess of a pop artist who has fully embraced every emotion she feels — even if it doesn't spawn a feel-good earworm. With a catalog full of delightful hits like "I Really Like You," "Run Away With Me," and "Call Me Maybe," Jepsen felt it was time to stop trying to figure out her place in the greater pop landscape and just chase the songs that felt right in the moment — and that felt true to herself.

But thanks to Jepsen's pop genius, The Loneliest Time still brims with memorable hooks and candid emotional resonance. There's the sweet and earthy "Western Wind" and the sincere soft folk of "Go Find Yourself or Whatever." Add in the epic title track's expansive disco strings and sloping melody, and it feels as if Jepsen has explored the full spectrum of both pop music and human nature.

"I feel a little less constrained by this idea of what type of pop I'm making," Jepsen says with a calm certainty. "My loneliness made me do some of the bravest and craziest and wildest things of my life. And I loved the reactions that it caused, because they're so dramatic, and I felt it was worthy of an album." 

With The Loneliest Time, Jepsen isn't denying or rejecting her past, nor is she ignoring it. This isn't Carly Rae Jepsen reinvented, it's Carly Rae Jepsen in this moment. That's a powerful step for any artist in pop, a genre prone to pigeonholing stars, especially after a runaway hit.

Ahead of the album's release, Jepsen spoke with GRAMMY.com about the emotionally empowering process of The Loneliest Time, maturing as a pop star, and building genuine longevity.

Do you have any tricks for keeping yourself focused and healthy on tour? Personally, I now judge my day by how much water I've had.

So funny, this age that we're in. We've started so many different clubs on this tour. One is Book Club, where we all get ourselves scooched together reading on the bus. We wanna read Dracula for Halloween month!

We also started this thing with me and Josephine, my glam girl, Scott, our merch guy, and Chris, our tour manager, called Water Club. When we see each other we're like, "Have a water". We literally are just helping each other stay hydrated on the road. What does that say about touring in your thirties, that we started a group called The Water Club? 

I can only imagine that reflecting on and comparing to how you toured in your twenties is an interesting experience for you. 

I've always felt a little like I'm floundering in the good graces of some luck that came my way. That "Where am I?" energy is always with me. But I do feel like this era, being 36 now, and almost 37, I do feel more confident and excited and a little less shocked all of the time. It's kind of registered that this is my life. Which is great. 

If anything, I just feel a little bit more purposeful with every decision. A little bit more confident, even with our stage show. I play it like a little boss lady within the group dynamic that we have, where I used to ask questions like, "Why do we do it that way? Could we do it this way?" Having enough meetings to get to the bottom of things that always were big question marks for me. That part's really empowering and exciting.

Lyrically, there is this acknowledgement throughout The Loneliest Time that the softer, gentler version of you is still accessible, even when you're tapping into larger, more powerful emotions. You alluded to intention earlier, which is so appropriate.

Definitely. This album is very much about taking away the things that Scorpios love, the controlling factor or whatever. It is surrendering to everything — whether happiness, love, hardships or grief, taking on the full experience of life and not trying to avoid any of the hard stuff, or fast forward to the good stuff. It's feeling all of the things. 

This is what this album really was for me, but that's also very much in line with what my life experience has been over the last few years while working on this. It's a lot of hard-hitting lessons about all of that growth.

Carly Rae Jepsen via Instagram: THE LONELIEST TIME 💌 Oct 21. I’m quite fascinated by loneliness. It can be really beautiful when you turn it over and look at it. Just like love, it can cause some extreme human reactions. Preorder now. 💖🖤🌛🍇

I love that you started the album with "Surrender My Heart". When moments are intense and you surrender to it, things are just so much clearer.

Absolutely. It was a very true sentiment when I first started going to therapy — for a lot of reasons. My whole family had dealt with a ton of tragedy all at once. You know that thing, when it rains it pours. I felt like that really happened to us, and my solution to it was so pragmatic. "I'll go to therapy, she'll tell me how to be tougher in life. I will leave with an extra layer of skin and armor and I'll just know how to handle things because life's gonna get harder. I fell apart, let's fix me." And it was just so enlightening to be there in the room. After one session I was like, "Here, take all my money." [Laughs]

She said, "Maybe you need to soften up. Maybe you have to feel all the things." It's so funny, because I'm sitting there being like, "Wait, I wrote an album about being in touch with your emotions. I should be in touch with them." But no, it's still hard to take it in all the time. 

I was kind of avoiding some of the experiences of life. And I don't think that's how you get to feel any of the highs or the lows. Being less frightened of both of those things can make you feel a little bit more stabilized. You continue on without denying any of the highs or the lows as they happen. That's a really huge part of it for me. 

I see other people who walk through life just doing things that I admire so much. I have a girlfriend right now who's going through some big grief and every time I hang out with her she's just like, "I'm sad." And I'm like, "Cool, well be sad with me. Let's be sad and have a sad day together." Just seeing her being brave enough to do that makes me feel braver when I'm having an off day. 

There's power in not wanting to fix everything at every point. And while I don't necessarily think it stems from control, it can stem from this sense of perfection and ideas that we've all been sold, which you cover a lot in your music — of how things are meant to be, how love is meant to be, and sometimes it isn't.

Yes! I think that tension between how it's "supposed" to be and what it is, there's some real dissonance in there that gets to be worked out. But if you can let go of how it's supposed to be and just be really accepting of how it is, I think you're off to a good start.

Emotion was about fusing together everything you had learned on Kiss and Tug of War, and Dedicated started going into heartbreak and creating that new story. Now that you're on your fifth studio album, where do you feel like you're at now? What was the guidepost for you while writing the album?

Rather than free falling, I'm free-flying! I feel a little less constrained by this idea of what type of pop I'm making. Is it '80s? '70s? '90s? Am I sad or happy? What am I emoting as a message? It's like, screw all of that. At this point, being 10 years into the business and change, I am a woman. There are many different things I feel. I can be very playful, I can be hurt and resentful and confused, and I can also have a disco ballad that's five minutes long, and indulgent, and is my opus. And all on the same album, because I contain multitudes. 

I believe that people are ready to expand this pigeonholed idea of what a pop artist can be, which is a genre that's very tricky to break out of the mold of. You can be all of the things. And I've felt that desire in this genre that is so playful in the types of music that you can do. 

But I wanna also break the perception of, "Am I the sexy pop artist?" I just don't wanna have to fight that fight anymore. For The Loneliest Time, the main theme of it is just loneliness and how that can cause such extreme reactions within you. Because my loneliness made me do some of the bravest and craziest and wildest things of my life. And I loved the reactions that it caused, because they're so dramatic, and I felt it was worthy of an album. 

I was less concerned with, "Are they all gonna fit?" and a little bit more excited that they would be as diverse as they were meant to be — and to let the songs speak for themselves.

There's this intriguing blend between pure fragility and super confidence. You just sound like you're having the time of your life. 

Thank you. I really overwrite. Even last night I was with my A&R talking about what we could potentially consider if we were to do a B-side [record]. And we were laughing, like, "Let's bring up the folders again." 

So much thought goes into these things. It's a little bit of a Beautiful Mind mapping. By the time I'm done I'm like, "Oh my God, I seem insane." But it was a method to the madness, and I swear I feel that way every time. When I know it feels done and the order feels good, it was some puzzle I had to unlock. But as much as I'm like, "This is not cohesive," it, to me, is meant to be together. 

Maybe I rebel because of having a song like "Call Me Maybe". I've just so desired to be [putting] all of my attention into being an album artist since then, not a single artist. And that's maybe why I put out B-sides that aren't even counted at the label. They're just gifts.

There's something of a gift with The Loneliest Time, too — people are really coming to understand that you want to be understood. I like the immediacy here. 

Thank you. You know how you can only gush to certain people about the things that you're secretly really excited or a little proud of? I almost feel guilty saying that word, like it should be shameful. But I'm embracing it. Like, "What am I happy about?" I said it to my boyfriend last night, because we just did the final cut and color [for a video], and I'm like, "It's so lovely." 

You can look back on a career with nostalgia, and like Björk said once, "I don't wanna be a nostalgic artist." I really loved that. I love that we're constantly pushing forward, especially for a woman in pop music. 

There was a time where I thought, "It's a young woman's game." So for me to be 36, almost 37 and feel like I'm about to put out my favorite video of my career? It's not so much about anything other than the growth. I've learned how to communicate. And to have the trust of a team at the label now.

It took me a long time to have that confidence, but also to feel like I have a team of people who trust that we can do this together. We can find the right pieces. For the first time in a hot minute, I was like, "Well, I don't wanna be stale. I don't wanna just be putting out music because I'm chasing a thing that was a dream when I was a teen. I'm just as invigorated and as excited now. Why not take all the lessons I've learned and keep growing?" 

For pop artists that I look at — there's a few, like Cyndi Lauper — but I would love to be a part of that catalog that gets to have some longevity with this thing. That'd feel fantastic. That's my secret goal and I'm saying it out loud to you.

I appreciate that, and when you are having fun — the raw, pure, sugar-rush fun — even in a song that covers really wobbly moments, your artistry has legs. It makes the listener excited for what's to come. 

You're so right. Joy is the spot. I had a child come into a VIP Q&A session, and she asked, "Do you write when you're sad or when you're happy?" And I was like, "It's interesting because when I'm sad, I wanna eat a tub of ice cream and do nothing." But I know that there are artists that go to those places they wanna emote to get through. When I get out of my sadness is when I might be able to start talking about my sadness. Then there's a spark, a curiosity I have about it. 

I think that's where "Bends" came from. I think that's where "Surrender My Heart" and "Go Find Yourself" [came from]. My creativity is sparked around a really limitless possibility, a free-flying feeling where you're like, "I'm here to catch this feeling in a way and document it." And it does feel quite joyful.

You have this ease and comfortability because you use pop as an escape, to a degree, but you're also not running away from these feelings.

Oh yeah. I think that's a real difference with even how I'm looking at shows lately. It was, "Come to my show. We're gonna forget how scary the world is for a night. I'm here to help you." And now I'm looking at it in the way that I experience the best shows that I go to. 

I recently saw James Taylor and I said to my boyfriend, "Just so you know, I grew up on James Taylor, and he's this link between my divorced parents. I'm gonna cry a lot, Maybe I'll be fine." He hadn't seen me cry, so I was thinking it was gonna be super embarrassing if it happened. 

I make it through the first half of the set dry-eyed. And then [James] comes out and he's like, "Fire and Rain," "Sweet Baby James," "The Secret of Life." And my neck is wet. It was just a wet neck situation. [Laughs]

[My boyfriend] was putting his arm around me, and James was telling these stories, and by the time it was done, I was like, "I'm so sorry. I can't stop." There was clearly some stuff I needed to feel. 

"The Secret of Life" is the last song that my mom heard in the car the day my grandmother died. I wasn't there because of COVID, but I knew that experience. So I got to feel some things in a safe place that I needed to feel, really safely, really comfortably. And it felt wonderful. I had been needing that night. And it was so cathartic that when I left, I felt 10 pounds lighter. 

That's what the best, most joyful experiences can make me feel. When I saw David Byrne's "American Utopia," my brain got twisted about what a concert could be. Holy s—, I felt better about life. I thought, "God, I've been looking at this all wrong. I've been thinking my job is to help people escape, but what if my job is to help people feel whatever it is they need to? Or a little bit of both?" 

That's where I got the idea for the moon mascot who comes at the beginning of our show on this tour and goes, "Tonight is for you to feel what you need to in a safe place, to escape if you need to." Hopefully it can be that for some people. 

Feeling the confidence that you can be the type of artist that you look at and are inspired by, that's the ultimate achievement, right?

It is the best feeling. That's the dream, the goal. Some joy, some happiness, but also some real in-touch-ness with yourself, and maybe some sadness too — all in a cathartic way.

[piceuscelus]

do it right (monday) by piceuscelus

Chapters: 1/1 (7,726 words) Fandom: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types Rating: Explicit Warnings: Underage Relationships: Cirilla Fiona Elen Riannon/Dara Characters: Cirilla Fiona Elen Riannon, Dara (The Witcher), Minor Original Characters - Character Additional Tags: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Age Difference, Sex Pollen, Fuck Or Die, Magic, Vaginal Fingering, Vaginal Sex, Multiple Orgasms, POV Multiple, Knotting, elves have different anatomy, Kissing, Hen Llinge | Elder Speech (The Witcher), Discussion of Pregnancy, Discussion of Abortion Series: Part 1 of ciri week 2022 Summary:

“Now, are you still willing?”

He gapes for a moment. “Willing?” he asks, and then he catches up. Can we help her? We can, if there is anyone willing.

 Sweet fucking Melitele.

 “Yes,” he answers.

An elvish ritual has an unintended effect on Ciri, and it falls to Dara to help her.

full fic also below the cut! (the italics didn’t copy over, though, as usual, so it’ll probably read a bit more smoothly on ao3)

Ciri is…a little uncomfortable amongst the elves. 

Of course, she’s grateful that they’re letting her stay – sheltering her alongside Dara, keeping her hidden from the Nilfgaardian forces combing the countryside. After everything with the doppler, it’s a relief to know that at the very least they’ll have some warning from the camp scouts before any further chaos.

She knows that at least part of the discomfort is just the background human-elf tension, that no matter how long they stay most of the group will always keep her at arm’s length and out of circles. And that – it’s fine, really. Mostly, at least. It leaves her feeling unmoored and unsteady, if she thinks too hard on it, but it’s not…it really can’t be fixed, least of all by her alone. Add in that the elves know who she is – because she and Dara had been found bickering while burying the body of a doppler, and the camp had, rightfully, had some fucking questions – and she knows that the basic level of civility she’s treated with is more than a gift.

Still, though, it’s…awkward, is probably the best way to describe it. And it’s particularly noticeable on nights like this, when she’s left alone in the tent she and Dara share with a few other strays this camp has taken in. She’s the only human in the camp – or at least, the only full human in the camp, and tonight the elves are out in the woods doing…something. A ritual, is all Dara had said, and it had been clear that the vagueness was on purpose, so she hadn’t pressed.

And it’s not really that she feels left out so much as she’s not really sure what to do with herself. Earlier in the day, while most of the camp was still preparing, she’d kept to herself and done laundry, and then helped gather water with some of the other refugees. But by now, dark has fallen, and unlike during the day, the loneliness feels…more real, now.

There’s an irrational part of her that thinks they might have abandoned her, but she knows full well it’s irrational; if they were going to abandon her they’d send her out to forage and be gone when she got back, or they never would have let her stay. They wouldn’t plan for a ritual, let Dara tell her that it was happening, and let her help gather water for it. It’s just not practical.

All the same, she feels unsettled in her skin, and the longer she stares out into the darkness of the empty camp, the worse it gets. Finally, she can’t stand the feeling anymore and stands, intending to…well, she doesn’t know – she’s intending to do something about it, but standing outside the tent and listening to the moths buzz around the last sputtering candle lanterns isn’t terribly inspiring.

And then she hears singing.

It’s faint, at first, and then louder, and she realizes that it must be coming from the elves, deeper in the woods – wherever they’ve gone to do their ritual, whatever it is. For a split second she considers going back into the tent and maybe trying to sleep, but that thought it gone nearly the moment it comes, and she realizes that she’s…moving toward it. The sound, the elves.

She shouldn’t, she knows. She should stay at the camp, should leave them to whatever they’re doing, because if they wanted to include her, Dara would have told her that. She’d be there, if she was welcome – but she’s not, so she isn’t.

All the same, her feet keep moving without her permission, and soon enough she’s seeing the light in between the trees, soft and golden and flickering but bright, and large – a bonfire, maybe, she isn’t certain. All she can see right now is the light, and the trees, and when she steps a little further, the silhouettes of the elves. 

Finally, she’s able to force herself to stop moving, to not go any further and actually interrupt, crash their – whatever this is. Party feels…disrespectful.

This – it’s magic. She can feel it in the air, the faint buzz and crackle; Mousesack’s magic was different, but similar enough. The longer they all sing, the louder they get, and the stronger the charge in the air. She knows some of the words, but she can’t piece them together, and as she watches the light gets somehow brighter, and her head starts to spin. 

She squeezes her eyes shut against the glow, but finds she can’t escape it; the brightness glares through her eyelids, and bringing her hands to her face barely helps, either. She stumbles back, then, turning until she can face away, but it’s like the light follows her, and the singing is even louder now, as if the elves are shouting. She scrapes her hand on bark as she stumbles again, but she doesn’t stop moving, just keeps trying to stumble away, the light and the noise following along, as if it’s chasing her. 

Soon enough it’s not just the light and sound, either, it’s heat, and she collapses to her knees, moss and rotting leaves under her hands. She can just see the outline of her fingers, splayed on the ground, but barely, and soon enough she’s squeezing her eyes shut again as if it could help her escape the burn. 

It’s like a fever and a sunburn and standing too close to a hearth all at once, sharp, prickling heat with no sweat to cool her and no cover to protect, and soon she’s shuddering, even the veined red shadow of her eyelids starting to spot and swim.

She faints.

– – – – –

Dara can’t say what leads him away from the ritual, why when the priestess stops their singing he turns and stumbles into the woods, but he knows it’s important. It’s like there’s a hook in his gut, and the line attached has started to pull, and then, when he’s far enough he can only barely hear the priestess speaking, it yanks.

Of all the things he expects to find in the woods, Ciri is not one of them.

At first, he’s angry – it had been clearly implied, he thought, that she was not to follow them, that she was not welcome. That this was theirs. That he and his people have already given her so much, she ought to let them have at least something to themselves. 

But then he actually sees her – how she’s collapsed into the undergrowth, fingers pressed into furrows they must have dug there, cheeks scarlet while the rest of her skin is near translucently pale, and his anger is immediately dashed away by fear, bloodcurdling and cold.

“Ciri,” he calls, but she doesn’t so much as twitch. Her chest is barely moving. His heart skips. “Ciri.”

Still nothing, and when he goes to his knees beside her prone form, he can feel the heat pouring off of her, hotter even than the fire the priestess had been feeding. Touching her almost hurts, but he has no choice; she’s as limp as a corpse as he gets his arms around her shoulders and under her legs and lifts.

It’s not the first time he’s carried her, but it is the first he’s realized just how small she really is. His heart skips painfully again, and he turns back toward the faint light of where his fellows are finishing up the ceremony. 

They’ve broken apart and are gathering things, when he stumbles back into their midst, and he feels how the air seems to freeze along with them.

“I found her,” he says, and doesn’t bother trying to explain how or why, “something’s wrong.”

“She’s just dh’oine,” someone scoffs, and Dara’s panicked enough he can’t even pin their voice, “she’s probably fallen ill. Take her back to camp.”

“This isn’t sickness,” he insists. “I’ve seen her and other humans sick – this is different.” 

He pushes through their loose gathering to reach the priestess. Farryn, is her name, and he already knows that she’s the sole reason he and Ciri had been allowed to stay with the camp; he’d have been allowed, possibly, but without her say, Ciri would have been shunned. He doesn’t know what reasons she had for convincing the others to let Ciri stay, but he hopes that whatever they were, she’ll help her now, too.

Farryn’s eyes sharpen when he’s near enough that she can see Ciri properly. “Where?” she asks, and then steps back, gesturing to the stone dais they had used for their offerings. It’s still wet with wine, but he doesn’t hesitate to place her on it, cradling her head against the rough surface. 

“Between here and the camp,” he answers, finally, tearing his eyes away from Ciri’s deathly pale face to look at Farryn. “I just – I left, something called me, and I found her lying there. Is this a fever?”

Farryn steps closer and passes her hand over Ciri’s face, then down her throat and to her sternum. She’s frowning in concentration, and Dara holds his breath as if he might shatter her focus. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see the others forming a bubble around the dais, slowly inching forward to stare. 

“It is,” Farryn says, softly. “But not one I’ve ever seen myself.”

“Can we help her?” Already, Dara is wondering how close Nilfgaard is, or if maybe they’ve moved on from the area by now – he knows there are healers in nearby towns, and if he has to carry Ciri to each one individually, so be it. 

As far as anyone gathered here is concerned, he and Ciri are the same age; his years count barely thirty, and while hers are less than half that, his kind live for so much longer. When they met, he hadn’t stopped to consider that she may consider it differently, and now that he thinks about it, he’s not even certain she knows. If he covers his ears, he looks very much like a human teenager.

But he’s not that, and as he cradles Ciri’s head and feels the heat rolling off of her, heart rabbiting, he feels…responsible. Whatever has happened to her, whatever this fever is – the others have no obligation to help her, but he does. He brought her here, and as much as he’s always considered himself at her same level, he’s lived many more years, and more of them in the shadows and mud; between them, he’s the one with any kind of experience.

Farryn hasn’t answered his question, though.

“Can we help her?” he asks again, and Farryn looks up at him. Her expression is sad, and her eyes are a little haunted.

“We can,” she says. “If there is anyone willing.”

Dara frowns. “Me,” he says, because he’d thought that would be obvious. “Of course, me.”

Farryn’s frown deepens. “We’ll see,” she says, softly, and then she’s turning away and barking orders at the others. They all startle and scramble, some heading back to camp, some deeper into the woods, and others begin unpacking the things they’d begun packing up. 

Dara can barely make himself listen or watch, he’s so focused on Ciri. Her breathing is still quick and shallow, her chest barely rising, and it feels like the fever is worsening, though he’s not certain if it actually is or it’s just the contrast of the cold stone against them. 

Farryn returns to them after a moment, carrying a curved blade. “Het ichaer,” she’s muttering, “I never should have done it with her here.”

“What?” Dara asks. “What about blood?”

Farryn barely glances at him as she sets a bowl next to Ciri’s limp arm. “Hers,” she answers, as if that explains anything at all. He watches with his heart in his throat as she picks up Ciri’s hand and uses the blade to draw blood from a fingertip.

“Her blood?” he asks, once he snaps his attention from watching the bright red drip into the bowl. “Never should have done this? Farryn, what’s going on?”

“She’s – different,” Farryn murmurs, and turns to grab something that one of the others has brought from the woods. It goes into the bowl with Ciri’s blood. “I’m not certain what it is. Or, well, I have a hunch, but it’s so far-fetched I won’t say it to you.”

“Would you speak plainly, please?”

Farryn finishes doing – something, Dara doesn’t know what, with the mixture she’s got in the bowl, and then she looks up at him. “The ritual,” she says. “The blessing. It was just meant to be a call for fertility, to help us when we struggle so much to conceive.”

“I know that.”

Farryn shakes her head. “You think you do,” she mutters, but before he can ask about that, she’s continuing. “She’s…something else, though, and I think it’s had the same kind of reaction a curse might.”

“Something else? A curse – what kind of curse?!” Dara tries not to panic audibly, but all the same his voice raises and cracks, just slightly, on the inflection. 

“She’s human,” Farryn says, “at least mostly. It’s her blood that’s different, her lineage. As far as the curse, well – you’ve heard of the foilé minne geas haven’t you?”

Dara blinks, and if he weren’t so highly strung and shocked all at once he’s certain he’d be flushing with embarrassment. “It’s – a…sex curse.”

“Except that a curse implies intention, and there was no intent behind this, yes.”

“...except there was!” He doesn’t really mean to shout, but he can’t help it. “Tonight, the ceremony, the offerings – the intent was fertility, conception. So you – ”

“Do you think I would have actually done it if I knew she would end up like this?” Farryn asks, cold, and Dara’s teeth click painfully as his mouth snaps shut. “I thought it might have an effect on her, too, like it hopefully will the rest of us. I thought it might even be a little stronger. But if I had thought, even for a moment, that she would end up dying from foilé minne, I wouldn’t have done it. Not without sending the two of you away first. Humans have nothing but my contempt, but she’s barely more than a child, Dara.”

Dara swallows the lump in his throat and nods. Ferryn nods back, a sharp, decisive thing. 

“Now, are you still willing?”

He gapes for a moment. “Willing?” he asks, and then he catches up. Can we help her? We can, if there is anyone willing.

Sweet fucking Melitele.

“Yes,” he answers, as steady as he can get it, because what else can he say? 

This was never Farryn’s fault. It’s because of him that Ciri is here.

“Good. Now, sit her up. She’ll only be lucid for a few minutes – you’re going to have to explain quickly.”

“Why not – ”

As if reading his mind, Farryn cuts him off with a, “Because if the both of you make it out of this, it’s not me who is going to have a half-elf bastard out of it.”

Sweet fucking Melitele.

– – – – –

The first thing Ciri registers is that something thick and gritty is sliding down her throat, and that her mouth is filled with the taste of blood and crushed herbs. She chokes, coughing, but there’s a hand on her mouth as soon as she does.

“Swallow, girl, you need it,” a voice says, and she pries her eyes open to find her vision swimming. Slowly, it stills out into still-blurry focus, though, and she recognizes – 

“Farryn?” The name is muffled beneath the priestess’ hand, but when it doesn’t move, she swallows pointedly. The elf squints at her for a moment, then removes her hand. “Wha’s….”

She’s suddenly shifting, and she lets out a yelp. 

“Sorry,” Dara says, suddenly in front of her. It’s him holding her up, she realizes, though she can’t really parse how. She just recognizes the feeling of his hands on her. He looks…scared.

“Dara?”

“I’m sorry,” he says, softly.

Ciri frowns, because what could he be sorry for? She…doesn’t know where she is, or what’s happening, but she remembers following the sound of singing and then heat, and…. Dara wasn’t there. Not with her, at least. She…must have fainted. Yes, she fainted, she sort of remembers her vision swimming, but….

“What?”

“I’m sorry,” Dara repeats, but she doesn’t think it’s because he thinks she didn’t hear. “Look, I don’t – there’s not a gentle way to tell you this. The ritual we were holding, the ceremony – it was a fertility blessing, and it…. Something happened to you. Is happening.”

Ciri frowns harder. “What?” she repeats. Her skin is starting to crawl with heat again, but at least this time there’s sweat, too, though the adding tingling in…uh. That’s…unexpected and a little uncomfortable. 

“It’s a sex curse,” he finally says, sounding a little pained. “At least, more or less. You – we. We have to have sex.”

“...what.”

Dara’s laugh is even more pained. “You’re dying,” he says. “The ritual, it – something reacted, in you, your blood.”

Suddenly, violently, Ciri is thrown back to an open field and mangled bodies – the Time of Madness and the Time of Contempt: Tedd Deireádh, the Time of End. The world will die amidst frost and be reborn with the new sun. It will be reborn of Elder Blood, of Hen Ichaer, of the seed that has been sown.

A seed which will not sprout but burst into flame.

“Dying?” Ciri whispers, vision swimming again.

“I won’t let you,” Dara says, sharp and firm. “I won’t, Ciri, I just – I have to, we have to – to save you.”

He’s asking, she realizes, in a sort of distant way as heat and tingling continue to crawl up her spine, through her body, til her head is spinning again. He’s asking, and she thinks if she says no, he’ll…let her.

Let her die.

Her breathing is labored, and she finds the only thing she can really focus on is Dara’s hands; they’re cold against her overheated skin, and his palms are smooth but his fingertips are callused. Like a string player. For a split second she’s distracted, wondering if he plays an instrument, but his voice calls her back.

“Ciri, please.”

She trusts him. Despite all of their bickering, the horrible things he said about her and her grandmother, she trusts him, because – because he’s earned it. He came back, after the doppler, and saved her where she was helpless and tied up. He helped her kill that monster masquerading as Mousesack. He helped her chip into the frozen ground deep enough to bury the corpse, even as he spewed vitriol the whole time.

He said he wouldn’t leave even if the elf camp turned her out. That he’d stay with her, like he did when she left Brokilon. 

“Okay,” she says. “Yes.”

“Thank you.” And then he’s – kissing her.

It feels – incredible. And it’s not just pleasure, the illicit thrill of it, though it’s that, too, it’s…she’s so hot, skin crawling with the fever, and his hands on her back and her face and his mouth on hers is like being dunked in cold water. Like the time in Skellige that she jumped into the sea along with the rest of the clan, sharp-stinging cold that jolted her into a new kind of awareness.

There’s no jolt into awareness, here, but she feels like she might be swimming toward it, finally. 

She’s clumsy, as she tries to kiss Dara back, but he doesn’t seem concerned. She vaguely notes that he seems – confident. Smooth, like he knows what he’s doing, and for the first time she wonders how old is he really? but then Dara drags his mouth from hers and to her ear and she’s distracted from considering it.

“I think – I think I can feel it, too,” he murmurs. “It’s – not the same, not what happened to you, but….” 

If he has anything more to say, he doesn’t continue with it; instead, he drags his mouth down her throat. She gasps at the zing of pleasure that strikes her core, and he seems to notice, kissing back up the stretch of her neck and then back down, letting his teeth scrape across the sensitive skin. 

Now she’s whining. It’s an embarrassing sound, but she can’t stop; she barely has any control of herself, really only enough to cling to the stone she’s sitting on and Dara’s thigh. She can’t seem to figure out what they’re sitting on, or how he’s positioned in relation to her, but he distracts her once again by dropping kisses further down, along her collarbone and even further.

She remembers, suddenly, that she’s only in her nightclothes. She wonders, distantly and vaguely, why that hadn’t occurred to her when she left the camp, that she was hardly dressed, but it doesn’t matter now. 

Mostly, it’s lucky, because it means Dara only has to shift a little and tug at the large, scooped neck to bare her breasts, and his mouth is following along quickly. 

The pleasure of all of it has been shocking, really – his mouth and his hands and how well her body responds to him, how slick she is between her thighs – but this is something else entirely. The noise she makes is broken, caught in her throat as she tries to writhe, nails scraping rough and painful against the stone. 

Dara shifts again, and this time when her nightgown moves it’s because he’s pulling it up, uncovering her thighs and belly and then her breasts again. She struggles to help, letting go of his leg when he tugs at the sleeve on that arm, and then lifting the hand she has braced on the stone to let him pull the whole thing off, finally. Her hair is in her face, but that hardly matters when he kisses her again, still moving but in a way she still can’t seem to figure out. 

Until, of course, she’s suddenly being lifted. She yells, heart jumping to her throat, but Dara’s grip is sure and he’s murmuring soothingly as they move. Her vision is still too blurry to make anything out, never mind the fact that it’s dark and she doesn’t know where she is, but she thinks he turns them. She can tell he only takes about a dozen steps before he’s lowering her again.

It’s…a fur, she realizes. A smaller one, as her legs rest on moss and undergrowth, but a fur all the same, soft even where it sticks to her tacky skin. As soon as she’s laid out on it, Dara is laying over her, his hips pressed between her thighs and his elbows on either side of her face.

She…expects to feel his cock, expects him to tip her hips up and just – get on with it, really, but that doesn’t happen. His cock does press against her hip, blood-hot and hard and…a little oddly shaped for what she expects, actually, but she can’t really focus on that when he’s kissing down her throat and murmuring.

“So beautiful,” he breathes, “wish it wasn’t like this, that I could do it right.”

“Right?” she asks, feeling marginally clearer with so much of his skin pressed to hers. He responds to the way she rolls her body up against him by dropping a little more of his weight onto her, pressing her further into the fur and the soft ground beneath. 

He chuckles against her throat, but it’s strained. “I – you’re a princess, Ciri,” he says, and she…kind of gets what he’s saying, there, but also….

“Not anymore,” she reminds him, pretending it doesn’t make her chest go tight, and he shakes his head, though he doesn’t actually disagree.

“Even so,” is all he says, and then, after a momentary detour to mouth at her shoulder, “This is – something like this is…a gift, at the least. Sacred, at best. Having to do it like this…you deserve better.”

And she’s still hazy, still sort of trailing behind him, but that – it hits her and she snorts.

Dara leans up to give her an incredulous look.

“It’s a chore,” she counters, echoes of a dozen maids in her childhood echoing in her head. “Not – not always, but….”

He just sort of blinks at her, and then shakes his head. “Not for us,” he says, finally, and then he’s ducking back down to kiss her again, and this one feels…different. Softer, hotter. She whines into his mouth, and he sucks gently at her swelling bottom lip before he pulls back and puts his mouth back on her chest. She almost doesn’t catch how he murmurs, “Not to me.”

Something about that is….

Too much, she decides, unsure what to do with the myriad of emotions swirling in her gut and her chest, on top of the way her body is screaming a new, unfamiliar need at her. 

“Please,” she murmurs, entirely unsure what she’s even asking for. She knows the fundamentals of bodies and the basic mechanics of sex – her grandmother was protective, but not shy – but that’s all, really. It seems clear to her that Dara at least knows those and a bit more, so she ignores the way her stomach is twisting with uncertainty and gods know what else and just…trusts him.

He nuzzles against her breast and hums, the same sort of soothing as when he lifted her, and then he’s shifting his weight to balance on one arm instead of two. It pulls his weight off of her, mostly, and she whines, but he just kisses at her sternum and hums again. His freed hand trails down, over her shoulder and across one breast, pausing for just a moment to circle a fingertip around her nipple as she shudders helplessly, and then over her ribs and to her hip. Once there, he circles the touch in with gentle strokes, until he’s resting his palm over her mound, fingers held lightly against her folds.

Just as helplessly as the shudder, her hips buck, and that movement seems to be what he was waiting for. His mouth finds her nipple, and then his fingers are spreading her gently before just sort of stroking over the slick flesh there.

The sound she makes is close to a wail, loud and sudden and then choked, when he just sucks at her nipple and that stroking touch turns into his fingertips gently circling her entrance. Her hips buck again, and his fingers move back up, until that gentle circling is at her clit. 

Her skin feels electrified, and the heat is worsening but it’s good, now, it feels right. Dara’s mouth moves to her other breast, and he presses his fingers just a little harder against her, sending a shock of pleasure through her so intense that she jerks, the leg she has bent around Dara’s tensing and forcing him a little closer. 

With the way he shifted to touch her, his cock is pressed between his belly and her thigh, and he grunts when her leg forces him tighter to her, his own hips rolling and grinding his erection against her. This time, she can sort of pin what seemed odd about it – it’s more tapered at the top than she’d expected, and she can’t really tell if it’s just that feeling is different than seeing, or if his cock is actually oddly tapered.

…or maybe that elves have slightly different anatomy than humans, because now that she’s thinking about it, she’s fairly certain none of the scholarly writings and sketches she’d seen ever talked about elves at all. 

The movement of his hips doesn’t stop, either, and she can tell there’s – texture, almost, though that’s…not quite right. His skin feels just like any human’s, but it’s underneath the smoothness of skin. Soon enough, though, he’s shifting his fingers and thoroughly distracting her by holding her spread open with two while a third strokes directly over her swollen clit. 

She loses her breath, and then her vision goes, too, everything spinning and black-white-starry. She’s trembling, but Dara isn’t stopping, isn’t moving away; instead, he’s just firming the touch against her clit, moving faster, starting to bite messily at her breasts in between panted encouragements.

“Like this, just one, I promise I’ll give you what you need, but this first – ” he rasps, still grinding his cock against her thigh, the movement growing slicker with sweat or maybe precum, she doesn’t know which. He keeps murmuring, some of it choked, but she loses track quickly, the trembling turning into quivering into shaking, until the jittery tension finally snaps and she’s coming.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, the small part of it that isn’t drowning in heat and pleasure and somehow worsened need, she realizes oh, so this really is why people do this so much.

There’s knowing, objectively, that orgasms are enjoyable and that people like them, and then there’s feeling it – the spiraling heat and seeping tension, how her heart hammers and then settles alongside a sudden lassitude in her limbs. She lets out a sigh she’s almost embarrassed of, it’s so – wanton.

“Gorgeous,” Dara is whispering, forehead pressed to her collar as he rocks his hips against her. “Gods above, look at you, want to do this again, later, when I can take my time and give you everything – “

Her stomach twists again, much more pleasantly this time, but already the heat is coming back with a vengeance to steal the afterglow, her hips cramping as they jerk up against his stilled hand. 

“Please,” she breathes, and her voice is startlingly raspy – she wonders if she was screaming, and pretends that the heat flooding her face is just more of the effect the ceremony had on her and not a blush. “I think it’s – I need….”

She knows what she needs, now; she needs him to fuck her, properly, but the words stick in her throat. She swallows against them, opens her mouth to try again, but still nothing comes out.

Dara says something she doesn’t catch, Elder Speech, she thinks, but his hand is moving then. “Okay,” he says. “Just, first – ”

His fingertips circle her entrance again, but this time instead of just being an electrifying tease, one of them is sinking slowly inside her. She makes another incredibly wanton noise, but can’t even bring herself to care about it, angling her hips up as if she could force that single digit any deeper. 

“Please,” she gasps again. 

“I know,” he murmurs back, kissing from her sternum to her mouth. “I know, I have you, just – let me, just for a second.”

She makes a vaguely assenting noise against his mouth, clenching down on the finger he’s rocking in and out of her. He grunts, and then there’s a second finger singing into her, and it’s – a stretch, one she can feel, like when she reaches above her head too far, but there’s no pain. She moans. 

“Fuck.” Dara sounds almost pained, but he kisses her again before she can try to ask, and his fingers are moving faster now, pulling almost all the way out before he sinks them back in, and it’s – good, it’s so fucking good, better than she ever though possible, but it’s not enough.

“Dara,” she pleads, voice pitchy, “Dara, please.”

He curses again, in Elder this time. His fingers slip out of her with an obscenely wet noise, and she whines in loss even as she realizes he’s moving to give her what she needs. It takes more effort than it rightly should, but she manages to lever herself somewhat up on her elbows as he settles on his knees between her thighs, wanting to actually see him now, at least as much as she can in the blurry dark as clouds pass over the moon.

She loses the thread of her thoughts, though, when she does look. He’s – handsome, even pretty, she knows that. She’s known that since the first time  she saw him anything resembling cleaned up, the first time they had to bathe together in a freezing river after the Cintran refugee camp had been attacked. But she realizes now that it had been purely objective, then, seeing his chest and the cut of his hips and his fine bone structure and knowing that he was conventionally attractive. 

What she’s experiencing now, watching him breathing hard where he’s poised between her legs, his cock in his hand, is anything but objective. Especially once her eyes land on his cock. 

With everything so shadowed, only the occasional beam of moonlight to highlight edges and base colors, it’s hard to really see, but she can get an idea – and she was right, earlier, with the assumption that maybe elves’ anatomy is different than humans.

It’s not unrecognizably different, the same basic shaft and head shape, but his cock is much thinner at the top than the sketches she’s seen of human men, and the whole shape is more tapered. Also, along the sides and bottom, thrown into more relief as he strokes himself and his fingers shift, are some sort of – ridges. The texture she’d felt, earlier. 

She swallows, and even if she feels a little unsure, the longer they sit in this sort of tableau the harder it gets to breathe and think so – she shoves it aside. 

“Dara,” she says, again, less of a plea but still very much a request.

His eyes drift up from where he’d been staring between them, and at least he looks as off-kilter as she feels.

“Yeah,” he says, as if his name had been a proper question, and then he’s shuffling closer and leaning over her again, their hips still separated but only just. Ciri gasps at the feeling of his cock twitching against her belly and lets him steal the breath right out of her with a kiss, the most desperate of them so far. 

“Please.”

– – – – –

He really doesn’t know what to do with how hearing Ciri plead makes him feel, so he shoves it pointedly aside and instead focuses on the here and now, the fact that no matter what trepidation he feels he cannot back out and risk her life.

Especially since he’d really rather like to give this a shot when it’s not life-or-death, if she’ll have him.

It’s easy, really, to slot their hips together, feeling the heat radiating from her cunt. She pants into his mouth when he kisses her again, and then whimpers when he shifts and drags the head of his cock over her folds. She’s so slick he has to keep a grip on himself to control the movement, and his heart hammers in his chest, wondering how much of that is the ritual, the effect on her, and how much of it is just her natural response. 

“Please,” she whispers again, lips still against his, and he kisses her again, shuddering at the sensation as he rubs his cock over her hole. 

“I have you,” he murmurs back, when he has to pull back to breathe. 

She just whines and hooks her legs around his waist properly, knees at his sides and feet crossed against his lower back. The movement rocks him forward, pushes just the tip of his cock inside her cunt, and they both freeze for the space of one rapid heartbeat.

“Dara,” she moans, outright moans, like the neediest whore, and any real control he was trying to exert is gone.

“Ciri,” he murmurs back, biting at her jaw as he sinks inside her with one smooth thrust. The searing heat and pleasure must scramble his brain, too, because the next thing he whispers is, “En'ca minne, yeá elaine.”

He has no idea if she even knows enough Hen Llinge to understand that, and he also doesn’t know if yes or no is the worse answer, so he bites his tongue and focuses on moving. Slowly, at first, at least as slowly as he can manage with his instincts beating at his chest to just take, to move faster and rougher. 

Needing to do something with that urge, he leans his weight to one side and drags his opposite hand between them, plucking at her nipples for a moment before he moves down, until he can get his fingers on her clit. She jolts and clenches so tight around him he’s afraid for a split second that he’s going to flare at just that, but the moment passes and he’s able to concentrate on moving his fingers and his hips in tandem. 

Beneath him, Ciri falls apart beautifully, seeming to melt everywhere except where she’s gripping onto him, hips tilting so he can shove just a little deeper. He hisses and bites at her throat, knows he’s leaving livid purple marks on the fair skin, and resists the urge to bite harder. 

Encouraged by the way she’s rocking her hips in tandem with his rhythm, how she’s gasping his name and please and arching into him, he moves faster. When she just whimpers and asks for more, he finally lets go, stops worrying so much about the pace and instead fixates on making her come on his cock. 

She’s so responsive it’s almost easy, and each new pleasure seems to overwhelm her in the best way, so he sets to it; rubbing consistent, tight circles on her clit, tilting his hips so his cock grinds against the sensitive front wall of her cunt, and when he can get his back bent the right way, sucking at her nipples until she wails. It only takes a few minutes of that dedicated attention for her to shatter, her wails turning into breathless screeching as she clenches down so hard he’s forced to stop thrusting.

Instead, he just grinds against her, struggling to breathe as his knot starts to swell – not to the point of a flare, not yet, but so close, and he doesn’t want it to happen yet, wants to make her come again first, really let her wring all of the pleasure out of this possible.

It takes several minutes of deep breathing as she comes down to get a grip on himself, but he manages, and soon she’s rolling her hips against his in a wordless demand. It makes him laugh, as strained as it is, but he moves.

“You’ll be the death of me,” he murmurs, and Ciri makes a noise in response, but he couldn’t say what it means. He doesn’t worry about it, instead just rolling his hips a little faster again, until he’s fucking her properly once more. 

He knows that even if he wants to he won’t be able to control himself this time; he’s going to come right with her. He shifts carefully, until their hips are more properly aligned and he can get his arm under her shoulders; she helps, unintentionally or not, by throwing her arms around his shoulders and pulling herself up to cling. 

“One more like this,” he murmurs, lips pressed to her ear since she’s buried her face in his throat. He can feel more than hear the way she’s still whining, clearly overstimulated but still needing. “One more for me, en'ca minne, just like this.”

“Dara,” she mewls, and just like that she’s coming again, barely anything more needed than the steady roll of his hips and a little gentle pressure against her clit. He bites down on her shoulder to keep in a vicious noise, sliding his hand up her belly and then to the side, til he can curl his fingers around the space between her waist and her hip and steady her frantic movement as she trembles through it. 

“Fuck, Ciri,” he practically growls it against her throat as his knot finally flares, and he grinds as deep into her cunt as he can get, entire body jolting and head starting to spin when he feels how she squeezes around the intrusion.

Human women don’t lock properly, not like elves, but it’s as if their bodies know to try anyhow. All the same, bodily instinct or not, the sensation is clearly enough of a shock that Ciri’s mind objects.

Luckily, the grip he has on her is enough to keep her from jerking away and hurting either of them. 

“Shh,” he soothes, “it’s okay, minne, it’s alright, shhh.”

“What is – fuck,” Ciri whines, voice cracking, and seemingly without her input her hips are rolling against his, cunt clenching even tighter around his knot. The sensation of her squeezing like that, and the way she’s trembling as she grinds his cock deeper inside herself, has him shivering and whining himself, fingertips pressing little point bruises into her soft skin.

“Knot,” he says, shorter and sharper than intended as she squeezes again. “Just – don’t try to pull away.”

“I – fuck, yeah, okay,” she mutters, clearly distracted. He can sympathize. 

It takes a bit of effort, but he’s able to sort of scoot his knee higher on the little fur Farryn had laid out for them and then twist, lifting Ciri off of it so he can continue to turn and drop back on it. Unfortunately, the movement means that his knot just presses deeper, almost to the point that he knows he would be locked because of the shape of her pelvis.

She gasps and then mewls, and with a mind-bending little movement of her hips, comes on his knot.

He loses his breath, hips jerking as if he could ever get any deeper than this, with all of her weight pulling her to the very base of his cock. She just makes a cut off little noise, almost a sob, and sort of collapses down onto his chest, still shaking through the aftershocks. 

It takes a long moment for him to regain any of his thoughts, but when he does, he notices that she’s cooled off considerably – in fact, she’s shivering now, the sweat they’re both covered in probably chilling her something fierce. He tugs her down, grunting at the shift, and wraps his arms around her. He can’t do much else, pseudo-locked and out in the woods. He’s sure Farryn probably left more than just a single fur for them before she started herding the others back to camp, but he would have to look for that, and that just circles right back to the fact that Ciri is still caught on his knot. 

At least the fever is gone, and as her breathing settles, he can practically feel her overactive thinking returning.

“Shh,” he hushes, preemptively, but she isn’t deterred.

“Dara,” she says, softly, and her voice is serious enough that he surrenders and lets her sit up a little. He hisses at the movement, cock twitching inside her, but they both ignore that. 

“Mm?”

“...you said fertility ritual. Before.”

“Mm.”

“Dara, I – I have a cycle. I can – this is….”

His stomach drops out. Because if the both of you make it out of this, it’s not me who is going to have a half-elf bastard out of it.

He had known, of course, that it was the risk he was taking in saving Ciri’s life. But she hadn’t, not really.

“Elvish fertility isn’t great,” he offers, and it must sound as weak as it feels, because Ciri whacks his chest.

“With other elves,” she says, and she’s unfortunately right. Human-elf pairings are so much more likely to create offspring, and everyone knows it.

“It’s still possible you won’t take,” he says, and catches her hand before she can hit him again. He can’t resist the urge to kiss her fingertips, though, and he watches as her frown softens. 

“But if I do?”

He swallows. “If you don’t want to carry my child,” he says, carefully, refusing to acknowledge the emotional reaction to that that rises in his chest, “then we’ll go to the temple, or one of the healers in the cities. As long as we go early, they can get rid of it.”

Her eyes go wide, at that. 

“You would – ” she starts, and then cuts off, looking away. “I know half-elves are frowned upon, but – ”

“Children are…revered,” he interrupts. “And mothers the same. I told you, this, this act itself –  it’s a gift, a sacred one, and….”

“...and?”

“And I wouldn’t make you carry a child you didn’t want.”

No matter how desperately I want it, how much my people need children and hope.

She pulls her hand from his, just to turn it and cup his face. Her palm is small and smooth, her skin the kind of soft that tells of her origin. Her thumb strokes over his cheek while she looks at him. After a moment, he can’t take the intensity of the stare, and she doesn’t say anything when he closes his eyes and turns his face into her hand. 

Finally, though, she moves, and first he feels her lips at his temple, and then on the bridge of his nose, before her mouth finds his. The kiss is chaste and soft and sweet and his chest aches over it.

“Look at me,” she whispers, against his lips, and he goes cross eyed at first when he obeys, but she just leans a little back and smiles. 

“What?” he asks, after another moment of silence where she just smiles softly at him.

“No temple or healers,” she murmurs. “...at least, not for several months.”

Her meaning takes a long moment to sink in, and then he feels like he’s been punched in the sternum. 

“You – Cirilla.”

“That’s my name, yes.”

He laughs, then, even as tears gather in his eyes. “Ciri,” he breathes, and tugs her back down into another sweet kiss. “Really? Even if it means that a half-elf has a right to the throne of Xin’trea?”

Her smile widens into a grin. “Better than Nilfgaard, isn't it?”

The tears are spilling over, then, as well as the laughter again, and she shakes a little as she starts to giggle, and he can’t possibly do anything except roll them back over, her back in the undergrowth, and kiss her until the sun comes up.

[homesick-heart]

My best friend says we're still best friends, but I have now sadly come to consider us merely acquaintances. It absolutely breaks my heart. Our friendship was the most important thing to me, but I don't have the strength to continue to be disappointed and heartbroken by him. Ours has become a very one-sided relationship. I message him and it takes him days to message me back. He's always "too busy" to call or facetime, while I have always been of the opinion that you decide what your priorities are and make time for them. It's incredibly insulting that he continuously claims to not have five spare minutes to put into our relationship. When I try to talk to him about it, he whines to me, "please don't make this an obligation, I'm so stressed!" Referring to our friendship as an obligation adds further insult to injury.

I can't keep setting myself up for disappointment by continuing to put put 100% into a relationship he considers an imposition, only getting 10% back. It has to be 50/50, not 90/10. I've been extremely reluctant to let this friendship go, because he was my first best friend, and we've been through a lot together. I love him, you know? It's like disowning a sibling. I also think a big part of it is that I don't actually have any other friends. And maybe it's my fault that he's pulled away. Maybe I put too much pressure on us. That's probably also part of why I'm so reluctant to give up on us. I'm terrified to return to the loneliness that very nearly killed me before we met (and that's not hyperbole). So I'm clinging to the idea of us, the way we used to be. But our friendship is just a vacated shell now.

He became incredibly distant very quickly once he got a boyfriend. That's when it started. He told me he was no longer comfortable with "love you"s between us that had always signed off our chats before. When flew out just before covid specifically to see him, I expected him to be happy to see me. Instead he seemed inconvenienced. He was no longer okay with spending time together without his boyfriend, claiming it might make his bf uncomfortable, though his bf had made no such indication. Certain topics were suddenly off limits, whereas before we had been able to talk about anything. He developed seemingly arbitrary boundaries, for example I was no longer allowed to hug him; he considered it "inappropriate." He freaked out once when I said his new cologne smelled nice. "Would you say that to (mutual friend)?!" I told him I actually had, and that (mutual friend) had said thank you and moved on like a normal human.

That visit was the trip that I retrospectively think broke us beyond repair. We've since taped our friendship back together, but the cracks are still there. I can't seem to get any solid footing; any sense of where we stand. He doesn't seem to have space for me in his life anymore. Honestly, I feel kind of used. Disposable. Like I was just a place holder until his boyfriend came along. I was always there for him, and I feel like he still expects me to be but only on his terms. I don't know where to go with this anymore. This emotional roller coaster is so draining. I feel like I've tried to meet him halfway - even three quarters of the way - and he still keeps leaving me hanging. Like I'm nothing but another chore on his to-do list. I know it's time to let go. I unfortunately also know I probably won't until he's eclipsed every last inch of my waning faith in him.

[hollymbryan]

Blog Tour + #Excerpt: VAMPIRE WEEKEND by Mike Chen! #HTPbooks

Welcome to Book-Keeping and my stop on the HTP Books in-house blog tour for Vampire Weekend by Mike Chen! I’ve got all the book and author details for you below, along with an excerpt from the book.

About the Book

title: Vampire Weekend author: Mike Chen publisher: MIRA release date: 31 January 2023

About a Boy meets What We Do In The Shadows in the next fun genre-mashup from Mike Chen, featuring a punk-rock vampire learning to connect to the world again when her surly teenaged grand-nephew needs her, and her music, to get him through a tough time.

Louise knows first-hand that vampire mythos is all a lie. After all, she IS a vampire, and it doesn’t involve glamour, speed, flying, or anything Anne Rice wrote about. Instead, it’s actually pretty boring and quite lonely -- the best part about it is the longevity, which Louise uses to go to see as many cool bands as she can. But all that changes when Louise’s estranged brother Stephen arrives at her door with his 12-year-old grandson Ian.

Ian’s father has recently been killed in a car accident and his mom is battling late-stage cancer. Stephen and Ian have taken a road trip while Ian’s mom receives treatment, and while they thought they’d find a long-lost relative, they get Louise -- who explains her youthful appearance with a story about her relation to theme. Louise empathizes with the young boy and invites him to stay for a weekend. Together, they bond over their love of music, playing guitar late into the morning. But when Ian learns her secret, he asks for something more than guitar lessons: He asks her to make his mom a vampire to cure her of cancer.

Problem is, Louise doesn’t wish this loneliness on anyone. And a bigger problem -- she can’t turn anyone. Only rumored elder vampires can do so, and she doesn’t even know where to find them. In an act of defiance, Ian runs away. As Louise pursues him, she comes across a path to these elder vampires -- and a secret that could change how vampires view life and death forever.

With Ian missing, vampires on his tail, and a possible family squabble to finally reconcile, Louise hits the road to set things right -- and discovers that caring about someone else is the most punk rock thing in the world. Especially for a vampire.

Add to Goodreads: Vampire Weekend Purchase the Book: Bookshop | B&N | Amazon | Indiebound

Excerpt

CHAPTER 2

VAMPIRE POWER MYTH #2: We can bite into anything.

In movies, veins pop like a balloon hitting a nail. But in reality? Kids constantly bonk into sharp objects and get light scrapes. Construction workers work around nails and metal, but somehow buildings go up without anyone bleeding out. I worked in a hospital, so I saw this firsthand.

In practical terms, biting someone for blood was not easy. Newly turned vampires don’t exactly have functional teeth. A gradual sharpening takes place over the course of a week, but we’re not the instant kill machine from movies.

The so-called “vampire attacks” in the news? Sounded like algorithm-driven clickbait to me. And that was exactly how I thought about it—or didn’t think about it—when I got to work.

Because today was a blood day. And blood days were liter­ally life and death for me.

Not that I gave off that vibe. Instead, I went about my busi­ness, pushing my janitorial cart into the blood bank of San Francisco General Hospital. The automatic door shut behind me, my cart’s squeaking wheels announcing my arrival to Sam, the department’s night manager, and some staffer who looked more on break than actually working. They leaned over a monitor, attention pulled away by whatever was on the screen. Which worked to my benefit.

Some vampires worked with blood volunteers—usually fe­tishists who gladly let someone feed off them, likely thinking it was a kink or a new obscure fad diet rather than real vam­pire sustenance. That still involved the wholly unhygienic and socially awkward process of drinking from a live human. Un­derground dealers also existed, pumping blood from their arms into a bottle for an in-person transaction.

Me? I went with blood bag theft.

Which, to be fair, I held zero guilt over. Did you know that hospitals waste about 25 percent of blood bags every year? Thus, my weekly pickup during my janitorial rounds hardly made a dent. It all fell within the normal range of lost, misplaced, or expired. In fact, the managers viewed me as helpful for bring­ing the soon-to-expire bags to disposal. If some happened to make it into my backpack along the way, no one was the wiser.

This, of course, assumed that there were actually blood bags to take.

Today, the usual inventory of expiring blood bags was empty.

As in, nothing on the shelves. Nothing to deliver. Noth­ing to steal.

Nothing to feed from.

In fact, even the main storage units for in-date blood bags appeared low.

Any stress from the Copper Beach audition evaporated, as things do when food sources suddenly disappear.

I paused the music on my phone and pulled the earbuds out. Some things required a little more professional behavior. I began scouring the other storage possibilities when I overheard the words the vampire community feared the most.

“I swear, it’s a vampire.”

Eric constantly preached that if humans did discover us, rac­ists would find new reasons to fearmonger, while scientists would capture us for all sorts of poking and prodding. Given that we’d all managed to abide by this for centuries, it seemed like a pretty good suggestion to follow.

My hands squeezed the cart’s handle tighter as I listened.

“That’s ridiculous,” Sam said, shaking his head.

“No, think about it.” The man turned, the tag on his scrubs revealing the name Turner. “After everything we know about viruses these days, who would actually drink blood? Only vampires.”

“Okay, look,” Sam said, rubbing his cleft chin. “You’re as­suming someone drank this guy’s blood—”

“Police said he’s missing about ten ounces of blood. Same as the other two attacks.”

“Alright. Let’s assume someone—or something—drank ten ounces from that poor guy. They said his neck looked chewed, dozens of stitches needed. If you’re gonna believe something ridiculous, go with a werewolf.”

Suddenly, that headline didn’t seem like simple clickbait. Ten ounces. Roughly the same amount my body needed daily, though half that offered cranky survival. So that was the typi­cal amount a vampire needed to sustain until the next feed­ing. And the chewed neck like a werewolf bite? That was a real concern, not because werewolves were real (they’re not), but because biting into a human was not easy.

In theory, you first had to properly locate the carotid artery, then make sure it was easily accessible by positioning the head and neck the right way. Then you needed a well-placed bite—millimeters of accuracy here, from an angle where things are hard to see. I challenge any human to try and bite precisely into a piece of Red Vines stuck on a loaf of sourdough to gauge its difficulty. This was in addition to the fangs’ fairly mediocre ability to puncture.

Biting humans was messy. Factor in an especially scared nondonor human and tools to make the process smoother and, well, the result could easily be mistaken for werewolves.

With the hospital’s blood shortage, their conversation ratch­eted my anxiety enough for me to mutter, “Oh shit.”

That little phrase pulled Sam and Turner away from the screen. Their desk chairs creaked as they turned my way, the headline—San Francisco’s Latest “Vampire Attack” Victim Stable In Hospital—now clearly visible on their monitor.

If there was a fixer working in the community, they weren’t doing a great job.

“Oh, hi, Louise,” Sam said. “Need anything?”

Blood bags. A safe community, one without rogue vam­pires possibly revealing ourselves to humans. While I was at it, someone to play in a band with—human or vampire—though right now neither seemed to be working out.

“No pickups today,” I managed as I pushed the cart through. “What pickups?” Sam asked, his thick eyebrows furrowing. “Expiring blood to pick up on second Fridays. You know,” I said, switching to a very bad generic European accent, “because I’m a vampire and I need to drink it instead of biting people on the neck.” That joke always worked, but doubly so today. Both men laughed, and I almost held up claw hands for emphasis. But no, that joke belonged only to me and Marshall. “I knew it,” Sam said, “you’re the vampire attacker.” “I thought you suspected a werewolf,” Turner said, an Irish lilt to his gravelly voice. “Sorry, boys. It’s a little more boring than that. Management tallies these and I don’t want to piss them off.” That was a lie; I knew they didn’t because otherwise I’d never get away with my theft.

“Right, right. Let me go check in on that.” Sam stood and went to the computer on the far desk, his leg catching his chair enough to kick it over a foot. “You’re right, our last delivery was low. Must not be as many donors. There’s a note saying this might be a thing for a few weeks but it doesn’t say why.”

Just like that, my food supply went from “comfortably fed” to “empty.”

“Cool, cool, no worries,” I said despite the onslaught of emerging worries. I built my whole life around a job that provided blood—and that dried up? Maybe in a parallel universe, I might have my own recording studio with session time paid in blood bags. But here?

I loaded my email as soon as I stepped into the hallway. My fingers mashed over the virtual keys, autocorrect pulling all the wrong words and constantly changing blood to brood, which I supposed was fitting for a vampire. The message went to the local Red Cross chapter’s volunteer manager, a request for shifts as a Volunteer Transportation Specialist.

Basically, someone who drove donated blood around.

I’d actually trained for the role when I was in between hospital gigs, but never took any actual shifts since most of them were during the day—which wasn’t impossible with proper precautions, but still uncomfortable, and required a lot of extra effort, in addition to messing up my sleep cycle. Circadian rhythm still applied to vampire life.

But this was different. If the supply saw shortages, I’d need alternatives just like the early days when I first started and had no clue what I was doing.

Which really wasn’t my fault. Because no guidebook existed for this life, and the woman who made me only came around a few times to check on me before disappearing forever. Despite the physical transformation to vampiredom creating several months of fuzzy memories, I still clearly pictured her during that last visit: a tall, pale woman with long brown hair in peak late-70s punk styling.

She’d brought weekly bottles, introduced me to a few Southern California sources for no-questions-asked back-alley blood, gave a very uncomfortable primer on feeding off farm animals in emergencies and offered a very dramatic lecture on the importance of not revealing ourselves to humans in any way. Yet, all of those came during surprise drop-ins and sudden departures, and even her final visit was nothing more than a quick hello before “You’ll figure the rest out. You’ll be fine.”

In fact, she never bothered to tell me her name. Or maybe she did and I just forgot it in my fugue state. Whatever the case, I’d have to rely on those lessons now, to ride out any shortages. I spent the rest of my shift trying to recall how many bags remained in my fridge, and how best to ration them. Hours came and went, a low-level panic setting my night to fast-forward all the way until I stepped into an empty parking garage.

Then my phone buzzed. Multiple buzzes, actually. Though I hoped it was something about the Red Cross volunteer gig, that seemed impossible, given the late hour. No, a quick look showed another text from Eric. And this time, I bothered to read it.

I’ve received a few notes tonight about tomorrow evening’s agenda. I share your concerns, but there is a plan to address this. Nothing is more important than the health and safety of our community.

Something was definitely up. A blood shortage, someone attacking humans in the wild, texts about “health and safety.” A second message loaded up, words pushing the first message off the screen.

If you want to learn more, please come to the event. In the meantime, I encourage you all to download our new community app to stream the discussion. Do NOT discuss the media’s ‘vampire attack’ headlines with anyone, not even jokingly. Blood will be served. Reply to RSVP for in person attendance.

Did I want to learn more? Of course. Did I want an app that both invaded my privacy and knew I was a vampire? No. Did I want to get involved with the vampire community?

Not really. Especially given my history with Eric. But I needed blood, and this was a source, however fleeting.

Besides, maybe Eric had forgotten about our last encounter. Still, I refused to download his stupid app. On principle.

Count me in, I typed in a reply text, complete with a little white lie. By the way, I had trouble downloading the app. Maybe later.

On most work nights, I came home just before dawn, changed from scrubs to sweats, let my dog out, and drank blood. Today, that last part remained a sticking point. Lola greeted me as usual, a pitter-patter that told me she needed a potty break. I left the back door ajar for her to go into the small backyard, then checked my blood bag supply in the fridge.

If I’d been more responsible, thorough, careful, and whatever other descriptions my parents threw at me decades ago, I’d have a managed stockpile. Instead, three bags remained, a supply for about four or five days. I could stretch it to a week, though I’d be a grouchy, tired mess. After that? Movie vampires went on killing rampages when they needed blood, but in reality, it meant fatigue and delirium.

And if that went on long enough? Death by starvation.

No wonder someone got desperate enough to bite humans.

I grabbed a mug from the cabinet, white ceramic with a faded photo of a white schnauzer printed on it; Aunt Laura’s old teacup, now used for blood. Mostly empty shelves stared back at me from the fridge, daring me to make a choice.

Did I take one now? Did I really need to drink or could I wait?

Lola returned from the backyard, hopping over the threshold with her short corgi legs, and her nails clacked on the floor as she ignored my mood and waddled past. The jingling of her collar faded as she went down the hall, and I told myself to do the smart thing. I shut the fridge door and left Aunt Laura’s mug on the counter, then followed my dog.

Light flooded the space in my music room as I flipped the wall switch, illuminating everything from the guitars hanging on the walls to the drum kit and keyboard rig sitting in opposite corners. But no dog waited for me. Instead, her collar jingled from across the hall.

The bedroom.

The hour or so before bed normally saw me noodling on a guitar, playing with different pedal effects combinations or trying to work out a lingering melody while Lola stayed at my feet. But as I stood between the two rooms, a crushing fatigue washed over me, something that I knew had nothing to do with appetite.

I peeked in on Lola, the hallway light showing enough that I could see she’d skipped the circular dog bed on the floor to leap straight onto my spot. Usually she’d wait till I fell asleep to pull that off, and perhaps she took advantage of my vulnerable state today. She stretched her little legs into the air, then craned her neck to look at me with ears up, yawning before settling back down.

Maybe she just knew what I needed today.

Instead of going back into my music room, I stepped inside and shut the door, leaving the bedroom in a complete UV protected blackout state as I crawled under soft sheets. I stayed still, the quiet silence of a moment without vampires, without humans, without blood shortages, just a happy corgi resting against my stomach and worries in my head.

Excerpted from Vampire Weekend by Mike Chen, Copyright © 2023 by Mike Chen. Published by MIRA Books.

About the Author

Mike Chen is a lifelong writer, from crafting fan fiction as a child to somehow getting paid for words as an adult. He has contributed to major geek websites (The Mary Sue, The Portalist, Tor) and covered the NHL for mainstream media outlets. A member of SFWA and Codex Writers, Mike lives in the Bay Area, where he can be found playing video games and watching Doctor Who with his wife, daughter, and rescue animals. 

Connect with Mike: Website | Twitter | Instagram | Goodreads

Thanks to HTP Books for having me on the tour!

[towardfatherhood]

I've decided to start writing again because of a draining and persistent loneliness. Every day seems destined for it, drenched in it. For months now, if I plan coffee with a friend, it falls through. If I plan to go out dancing with my wife or skating, plans are invariably interrupted by a sick child or holiday outing or family birthday. And I'm ok with it! I'm always ok with it...but the loneliness mounts. Persists. Imagine your home is beautiful...but you're always in it. Your children are lovely...but they're always there, every hour of every day your only company. I need to speak without filters, to spout, to vent, to use strong language, and then laugh too loudly about it.

But I've forgotten how to write, it seems. I used to sit for a moment and thoughts would pour out, and an hour would fly by, and then another half hour, and as time ran out I'd finish my edits and throw in some relevant (or potentially relevant) photo, and rush away to my office job, feeling refreshed. Relieved. Unjumbled. Solved.

I want rediscover my writing self, but I just keep shorcutting instead. Virtual reality gaming is my pseudo-social release. I get to talk to other adults while accomplishing a team-oriented task. The task is only shooting zombies while carrying what on any planet would be an ungodly burden of guns and ammo, and also some volume of rockets and bombs purchased from repurposed IED vending machines made from old arcade machines. And we talk. From vantage points across the globe we encourage and despair, and yell at our kids in the background DON'T YOU EAT THOSE CHIPS IT'S ALMOST DINNER TIME! And we go on shooting, faces hidden in stupid-looking VR helmets, which the more dedicated of us may have tethered to ceiling-bound extension cords above computer desks and custom gaming chairs. After the best of interactions, we laugh and thank one another for their company and camaraderie, and quietly add our favorite teammates to our personal friends list.

It isn't enough though. Like a soft drink on a hot afternoon, it only prolongs my thirst. I long to say words, to convey ideas of importance, to hear I'm not the only one experiencing the trials common to this phase of parenting young humans. So I'm going to try writing again. Interrupted, incomplete, rusty old writing. Dust off those typing fingies, you tired, drooping, middle-aged young man!

There is life still to grasp!