#Shutter Spring Wheel

[mourningdasies]

AFTER THE STORM

A Jamilton fanfic featuring two broken old men in the modern era

Word count - 3.6k

CHAPTER THREE

The sky was the kind of gray that felt like it might never change—thick clouds stitched across the horizon like a closed wound. The air smelled like damp pavement and rotting leaves, the kind of Southern winter that didn’t quite commit to being cold. Thomas Jefferson pulled into his driveway, headlights briefly illuminating the pale shutters of his house before dimming to silence.

He sat in the car longer than necessary, engine off, fingers still wrapped around the steering wheel. Another day done. A long one. The spring concert was two months away, and middle schoolers had the collective focus of moths. He’d spent an hour trying to get the brass section to stop laughing every time someone squeaked.

When he finally made it inside, the familiar creak of the wooden floors greeted him. His house was always quiet. The kind of quiet that used to needle at him when he first moved in. He used to play music just to fill the silence, to keep from thinking. Now he’d gotten used to it. Grown into it like a second skin. The rooms didn’t echo so much as hum with his routine. Keys in the bowl. Shoes by the door. Jacket over the stair banister. All neat. All controlled.

He rounded the corner into the kitchen and froze.

“Jesus Christ!”

His voice ricocheted off the cabinets.

Standing there, by the fridge, was a woman he hadn’t seen in three years.

Anna.

His youngest sister.

She stood with arms crossed, eyes narrowed, and an anger that was far too loud for the silence around them.

“Didn’t mean to scare you,” she said, voice flat.

“You—” Thomas ran a hand over his mouth. “You broke into my house?”

“You leave your back door unlocked. Still paranoid of alarm systems?”

He didn’t answer. Couldn’t. She was the last person he expected to see standing in his kitchen on a Thursday evening.

“You gonna offer me something, or just stand there looking like I slapped you?”

“You did just appear in my kitchen like a damn ghost,” he muttered, walking past her to grab a glass of water. His hands were shaking slightly, but he hid it.

Anna didn’t move. Didn’t blink. Just stared at him like she’d been carrying this moment in her back pocket for years.

“You didn’t come,” she said finally.

He turned slowly, the glass still half-full in his hand. “Come to what?”

“The funeral.”

The word didn’t land. Not immediately.

“What…funeral?”

She stared at him. Not like she was surprised, but like she was disgusted. “Don’t act like you don’t know.”

“Anna,” he said, a slow realization settling behind his eyes. “Are you telling me…Dad’s dead?”

She didn’t answer. Just let the silence confirm it.

Thomas blinked once, then twice. His stomach didn’t drop. His heart didn’t race. There was no immediate surge of grief. No nausea. Just the sharp crack of something old and hollow.

“When?”

“Three days ago.”

He put the glass down. “No one told me.”

“Oh, sure,” she snapped. “Because no one in this town knows where to find Thomas Jefferson, right? No idea how to get ahold of the Great Music Teacher of Lexington, Virginia.”

“I changed my number, Anna.”

“You changed more than that.”

He looked at her. Really looked. Her coat was still damp from rain. Her hair was shorter now, chin-length and darker. Her cheeks were pink from the cold. But her mouth—the way it pulled down at the corners, clenched like she was biting back the real words—was the same.

“You could’ve called the school,” he said weakly. “I would’ve come if I’d known.”

“You didn’t come when Mom left.”

“That wasn’t the same.”

“You didn’t come when Louisa had her baby.”

“I sent a gift.”

“You didn’t come to the hospital when Carrie had her miscarriage.”

Thomas winced. “I didn’t know about that either.”

“Bullshit.”

Her voice was louder now. She took a step closer.

“You think because you ran away and play piano for teenagers that it absolves you of the name we all still carry? You think buying a house with inheritance money and sipping whiskey alone every night makes you anything but his son?”

“Stop it.”

“No. You don’t get to do that. You don’t get to stand there and pretend like you didn’t make a choice to leave us.”

“I had to leave.”

“Why? Because it was hard? Because staying meant facing what we grew up with?”

“Because I was suffocating!” he shouted. “Because every room in that house made me want to rip my skin off. Because I couldn’t breathe there without hearing his voice in my head. That’s why I left.”

Anna blinked, startled.

“I didn’t run because I didn’t care,” he said, quieter now. “I ran because if I didn’t, I wasn’t gonna survive.”

Silence.

Thomas leaned on the counter. His knuckles were white around the edge of it. His breath came heavy, but even.

Anna’s voice was smaller now. “He left you everything.”

Thomas looked up. “What?”

“In the will. The house, the land, the stocks, all of it. No mention of us. Just you.”

Thomas laughed, bitter and short. “Of course he did.”

Anna said nothing.

“He always wanted to shape me into him,” Thomas muttered. “The next politician. The prodigy. I was the only one who ever…did what he said. Until I didn’t.”

“He thought you’d come back.”

“He was wrong.”

A long, heavy silence settled between them. Anna crossed her arms tighter, her face unreadable.

“You live a stupid, perfect little life here,” she said finally. “And you pretend it isn’t all built on Jefferson money. You act like you’re some enlightened, better man. But you’re still him.”

That hit.

Thomas’s eyes snapped to hers. His jaw clenched.

“Get the fuck out of my house.”

Anna blinked.

“I’m serious,” he said, stepping toward her. “You wanna come back and yell at me for missing a funeral I didn’t know about? Fine. You wanna say I abandoned you? Fine. But don’t come into my house and call me him.”

Anna didn’t move.

“You don’t get to say that,” he hissed. “You don’t know what he did to me.”

Her mouth opened, then shut again. Her expression faltered.

Thomas pointed to the door. “Get out, Anna. Before I make you.”

She turned slowly, eyes glassy with something that wasn’t quite tears. Maybe it was disappointment. Maybe just exhaustion.

She didn’t slam the door behind her. She didn’t yell anything else.

He watched from the window as she walked down the street toward a silver rental car parked under the streetlight. She didn’t look back.

When the taillights disappeared, Thomas closed the curtains and sat down on the couch.

It was quiet again. The kind of quiet that wasn’t peaceful—just empty.

His father was dead.

And he could care less.

The echo of Anna’s footsteps had long faded into the night, but her words clung to the walls of the house like smoke. His breath came in shallow waves. He stood in the darkened entryway of his home, one hand on the door handle, the other limp at his side.

“She said I’m just like him,” he muttered aloud, to no one.

The silence didn’t disagree.

His mouth was dry. His chest felt too tight. And there, underneath all of it, was the brittle edge of something else—something he didn’t want to name. Not grief. Not anger. Something older.

Thomas grabbed his coat, shrugged it over his shoulders, and left.

He knew where he was going.

—

By the time he reached the edge of town, the streets were cracked and uneven, dotted with broken streetlights and closed storefronts with metal shutters pulled down. Neon flickered in the distance—half-lit signs advertising pawn shops, liquor stores, and twenty-four-hour diners that never looked clean enough to risk.

Thomas drove with the windows down. The air was thick with the smell of exhaust, fried food, and something musty, almost damp. It wasn’t the kind of place most people in Lexington knew. Hell, most people in his circle didn’t know it existed. But he’d found it years ago. In his twenties. A different life.

He parked in the alley behind an abandoned laundromat. There were no lights except the faint glow from a cracked red bulb hanging above an unmarked metal door. No sign. No name. Just the dented steel and a rusted buzzer.

He pressed it once. Then twice.

The door clicked open.

The inside smelled like sweat, old smoke, and perfume that was maybe two decades out of date. But it was warm. The walls were a deep plum, covered in old posters and faded event flyers: Lipstick Revolution, 2003, Kings and Queens of the Night, Open Mic Queer Voices. One corner still had glitter stuck to it.

There used to be more drag shows. Before the town cracked down. Before the “concerned citizens” held their damn rallies. One night, a protest turned violent, and a few of the queens moved away. A few didn’t.

Thomas had been here that night.

Now, the place was quieter. More low-key. The stage was still there, though it hadn’t seen a real show in months. The music was low—Prince’s “When Doves Cry” crackled through the speakers—and a few patrons were slouched at booths, nursing cheap drinks and dreams too heavy to carry home.

He slipped inside like he belonged there. Because in some ways, he did.

No one looked twice at him. That was the comfort of this place. Everyone had their own ghosts.

He sat at the far end of the bar.

A heavyset bartender with lavender eyeliner and chipped silver nails raised an eyebrow. “Whiskey?”

Thomas nodded. “Neat.”

The glass landed in front of him with a quiet clink. He didn’t sip it right away. Just stared at the brown ripple of liquid. His reflection shimmered in the curve of the glass, fractured.

“Rough night?” the bartender asked.

Thomas gave a low laugh. “You could say that.”

He didn’t offer more, and they didn’t ask.

That was the other comfort of this place—no one pressed. You could be whoever the hell you needed to be for one night. Just another shadow in the dark.

He finally took a sip. It burned, but the burn was welcome. Grounding. It gave him something to focus on besides the dull weight sitting behind his ribs.

He leaned back against the worn leather of the barstool and glanced around.

Two men were whispering at a table near the stage—one wearing too much cologne, the other wearing army boots. A trans woman with long curls and a denim jacket sat at the jukebox, flipping through the song list with a bored expression. A cluster of friends laughed in the back corner, loud and unapologetic, their joy like a middle finger to the world outside.

Thomas closed his eyes for a moment.

This place had saved him once. A long time ago.

He had been twenty-one and fresh out of college when he first stumbled through that rusted door. Back when he was still pretending to be straight. Back when his father had just announced his Senate run and needed his son to look “polished and traditional.” He was supposed to go to law school. Join a campaign. Date a nice girl. Make speeches.

Instead, he’d kissed a man in the alley behind this bar and cried about it for an hour afterward.

Now here he was again. Older. Still hiding. Just… better at it.

He finished his drink and ordered another.

It was past ten now. The place filled up a little more. Soft laughter. A shuffle of heels. The low thump of a new song on the speakers—Sylvester, “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real).”

The music was like a balm. A gentle reminder that joy was still possible. Even here. Even now.

“Mind if I sit?”

Thomas opened his eyes.

The speaker was a man, maybe thirty-five, in a corduroy jacket and too-tight jeans. His eyes were kind, and his body language relaxed.

Thomas shook his head. “Be my guest.”

The man slid onto the stool next to him. “You new?”

“No. Just haven’t been around in a while.”

“I’m Jesse,” the man offered.

“Tom.”

“Good to meet you, Tom.”

They shook hands. Jesse’s fingers were warm.

“Rough day?” Jesse asked.

“You have no idea.”

“I can listen. If you want.”

Thomas gave him a crooked smile. “Thanks, but I’m not sure I’m good company tonight.”

Jesse shrugged. “Then I’ll just keep you quiet company. I’ve got nowhere else to be.”

Thomas didn’t argue.

They sat like that for a while, drinks in hand, the kind of silence that wasn’t awkward. Just… companionable. Like they were both clinging to the same rope in different storms.

Eventually, Jesse excused himself to go to the restroom.

Thomas stayed. He let his gaze drift to the stage again. The lights flickered above it, casting shadows that danced like ghosts. He remembered a queen named Mona Devine. She used to perform here every Friday. Had a voice like thunder and lips always painted crimson. She once told him, “You can’t outrun yourself, sugar. You just end up getting tired.”

He wondered where she was now.

He downed the rest of his drink and felt the buzz start to warm his chest.

It was nearing midnight.

He didn’t want to go home.

Not to the empty house. Not to the silence. Not after tonight.

Anna’s voice still echoed in his ears.

You’re still him.

Thomas shook his head, as if that might dispel the thought.

He wasn’t.

He was a music teacher. He wore lavender cologne. He helped twelve-year-olds tune their flutes and taught them to love Stevie Wonder. He went to therapy now. He drank oat milk. He wasn’t Peter fucking Jefferson.

Right?

A slow song came on—Brandi Carlile. “The Joke.”

Thomas stared at the stage again. Something in his chest cracked.

He stood up, threw a twenty on the bar, and made his way to the back exit. He needed air. He needed to remember who he was.

Outside, the alley was quiet.

He leaned against the brick wall and closed his eyes.

The night was cold against his face. But it didn’t feel punishing. It just… was.

Thomas stood still, back pressed to the brick wall, the smoke from his cigarette curling lazily into the air. The sounds from inside the bar had dimmed, replaced by the occasional gust of wind or the distant hum of a car on the highway. It was quiet out here. Private. This alley was a barrier between two worlds—the chaos of the bar behind him and the bitter quiet of the rest of the city. It was a sliver of space where he didn’t have to choose who to be.

He let the cigarette burn low in his fingers, his thoughts stuck in a loop—Anna’s face, the rawness in her voice, the echo of her anger. It clung to him, made his clothes feel heavier, like grief that didn’t quite fit.

He heard footsteps too late.

At first, he thought it was someone from the bar, maybe Jesse coming out for a smoke, or the bartender tossing something into the trash bins—but the stride was too measured. Not stumbling. Deliberate. The hairs on his neck stood up as he turned his head—

And froze.

There, just a few feet away, half-lost in the shadow of the narrow alley’s entryway, stood Alexander Hamilton.

Thomas blinked.

Alex’s posture stilled just as fast, like someone had pressed pause. His eyes widened, hazy in the low light, brows scrunching as he adjusted to what he was seeing. The jacket, the sharp lines of his face, the permanent set of exhaustion in his shoulders. It was unmistakably him.

“…Jefferson?” he said, voice low and wary.

Thomas instinctively pushed off the wall, cigarette falling to the concrete and extinguishing under his heel. “Hamilton.”

They stared at each other.

Neither of them moved.

The awkwardness hit almost immediately, sharp and uncomfortable. It didn’t help that the alley reeked faintly of piss and whiskey, or that the door behind Thomas was humming softly with pulsing music—music Alexander would absolutely recognize if he got too close.

“Didn’t expect to see you here,” Alex said after a beat. His tone wasn’t accusatory. More… confused. Curious, even.

Thomas’s mouth opened, then closed. He had to say something. Anything but the truth.

“I was—just getting some air,” he offered, too quickly. “Needed to clear my head.”

Alex squinted slightly. “Out here?”

“Sure,” Thomas said, leaning into his practiced casualness. “Some of us have taste for sketchy alleys, you know. Gets the blood pumping.”

Alex didn’t laugh, but his mouth twitched like he almost did. “Could’ve picked a better part of town for that.”

Thomas shrugged. “I’m not as fragile as I look.”

Alex gave him a look that didn’t quite say “bullshit,” but wasn’t far off. He tucked his hands in the pockets of his jacket and took a slow step forward, eyes scanning the space, the surrounding buildings, the flickering red bulb above the door.

Thomas tensed subtly.

Please don’t ask about the door. Don’t recognize the place.

“Didn’t think teachers from Ruary strolled down here after dark,” Alex muttered, but it felt more like thinking aloud than accusing.

“I could say the same to you,” Thomas said quickly, redirecting the spotlight. “What are you doing here? Looking for a fight? Or just your next bad decision?”

Alex snorted under his breath, tired but not irritated. “Neither. I just wanted a drink.”

Thomas raised a brow. “In an alley?”

“No, jackass. There’s a bar down this way. At least, I thought there might be.”

Shit.

Thomas’s pulse jumped. He shifted his weight, half-blocking the door behind him as casually as possible. “Most places don’t stay open past ten around here.”

Alex gestured toward the cracked neon sign on a building nearby. “Yeah, I figured, but…” He trailed off. His jaw flexed. “I dunno. I was hoping. had a bad day.”

Thomas tilted his head, studying him.

Alex didn’t elaborate. His shoulders were hunched slightly, like something was weighing on him—not physically, but emotionally. There was something brittle behind his eyes, something barely held together.

“You okay?” Thomas asked before he could stop himself.

Alex looked at him for a long moment. “You ever just… want to be somewhere no one expects to find you?”

Thomas smiled bitterly. “Yeah. I’m familiar.”

Their eyes met.

It was a fragile connection, nothing spoken outright, but Thomas felt something stretch between them. A kind of mutual understanding. Two people who lived most of their lives pretending to be whole in front of others.

The silence hung there, dense with things neither could say.

Thomas cleared his throat. “You won’t find anything open here this time of night. You should probably head home.”

Alex looked up at the sky. The streetlights cast orange shadows. “Yeah,” he muttered. “Didn’t really expect to find anything anyway.”

“Still,” Thomas said, folding his arms over his chest, “not the safest area.”

Alex raised an eyebrow. “I fought in a war, Jefferson. I can handle an alley.”

Thomas chuckled despite himself. “Alright, soldier. Whatever you say.”

Alex finally cracked a small smile.

It didn’t last long, but it was real.

He turned slightly, glancing down the alley toward the street. “Well. Thanks for the public safety announcement.”

“Don’t mention it.”

“I won’t.”

Alex paused again, hand on his keys, like he wanted to say something else but didn’t have the words.

Instead, he offered a half-wave and said, “Goodnight.”

Thomas nodded. “Night, Hamilton.”

And just like that, Alexander turned and walked off, the sound of his boots echoing against the concrete.

Thomas watched him go.

He waited until Alex was gone from sight, his figure swallowed by the dark curve of the street corner, before he allowed himself to breathe.

His hands were shaking again.

He leaned back against the wall and looked up at the red light above the door, still flickering. Still untouched.

God.

That could’ve gone worse.

It could’ve gone so much worse.

He’d managed to avoid mentioning the bar. Managed not to give away anything. But it had been close. Too close. If Alex had gotten just a little closer… if he’d heard the music, caught a flash of someone walking out in fishnets or stilettos—

Thomas shuddered.

He didn’t know how Hamilton would react. The man was an ex-soldier. Tough. Burned around the edges in a way Thomas still didn’t fully understand. Would he be disgusted? Would he pull away? Would he tell someone?

No. That last one didn’t feel like Alex. But the others?

Thomas didn’t know.

He pressed his palms against his face, trying to force the heat from his skin.

The worst part?

He’d wanted to talk to him. For months.

And now that they’d crossed paths—accidentally, out of nowhere—he still didn’t know how to talk to him. Didn’t know how to stop treating him like something sharp and distant.

He pulled his coat tighter around himself and turned toward the bar door.

Then hesitated.

Instead of going back inside, Thomas walked to the edge of the alley, stared down the same path Hamilton had disappeared down.

He watched the empty street for a long time.

Something about that interaction had left him hollowed out. Not in a painful way. Not like Anna. This was different.

Lonelier.

Because in that moment, with their eyes locked and their walls still up, he realized how similar they were. Two men shaped by silence. By expectations. By the terrible things they didn’t say.

And now Alex was walking away again, like always.

And Thomas let him.

He didn’t know what he was protecting more—his secrets or his pride.

But it didn’t matter now.

The bar door buzzed behind him as someone stepped out for a smoke.

He turned back into the dark, swallowed by the lightless part of town, wondering when, if ever, it would feel safe to tell someone like Alexander Hamilton who he really was

[whoreforcowboymatt]

first look.

matt found himself behind the wheel of his red pickup, cruising down the backroads on the edge of town. he wasn’t leaving—just heading somewhere on the outskirts of town. his phone GPS guided him in that robotic voice. “in one mile, take a left. your destination will be on the left.”

that’s when matt saw it, a white house with red shutters, a big red barn, and a bunch of trees. he pulled off into the side of the road, so if anyone were to drive by, they could get past. but let’s be real, no one really notices that people that lived down here.

matt got out of his car, the cool spring air hitting his face. he fixed his cowboy hat that rested on his head, he fixed his red flannel’s cuffs and put his phone in the pocket of his dark blue levi’s jeans. he sighed before walking up to the white house, his brown boots hitting the gravel as he walked up to the door.

he could overhear some things, a young girl and an older man’s voice. “but why? why don’t you trust me?” the girl’s voice asked, “i just wanna be nice.” she said and the older man spoke up after a short pause,

“don’t you realize girls your age are out there gettin’ pregnant and doin’ drugs?!” the gruff voice said, “but i’m not like that… you know i’m not like that!” the girl whined slightly.

another voice groaned and started to speak, “can you two please, for the love of god, shut up.” and suddenly the girl gasped, “i told you to—“

matt knocked, cutting off the conversation. the older man told them all to shush before opening the front door, “hello. matthew correct?” and matt was nervous, so all he did was nod.

“im hank, but you know that. uh…” hank thought about it, “i’ll show you around, tell you the ground rules and then talk about your pay.”

finally, matt found his voice, “alright.” he smiled and hank closed the door behind himself, starting to walk toward the barn as matt followed him around like a lost puppy.

“so here’s the barn,” he started before opening the doors, “there’s cows, horses, pigs. what you’d normally find in a barn.” he explained before walking out and walking toward the chicken coop.

“the chickens. that’s all i really ever need you totake care of. my youngest daughter usually takes care of the plants.” hank looked at matt, remembering one of his rules, “so i’ll tell you rules now. no gettin’ here late unless you call and say you have to miss or if you’re gonna be late, you work from six thirty o’clock to three. i’ll pay you at the end of each day.”

matt nodded, everything seemed fair for now, “no goin’ inside my house unless you ask, and the only reasonable reasoning is if you need the bathroom or a drink. and last one, stay away from my youngest daughter. she’s the only one who even tries to help around the farm, and i don’t want her thinkin’ the new cowboy is cute.”

matt swallowed hard at the rules before nodding, “yes sir, i won’t break any of the rules.” he smiled slightly, “good.” hank said before telling matt what he’ll be paid.

“i won’t let you down sir,” hank smiled, “you better not. you start tomorrow, six thirty sharp.” he told him and matt just smiled more with a slight nod.

just then, the front door of the white house slowly opened, a short blonde girl with emerald green eyes emerged. matt saw her outfit. he saw she had on a white tube top with short denim overalls over the top, with pink cowgirl boots. god, she looked absolutely gorgeous.

a/n: btw guys this is like set up kansas cuz the age of consent is 16 and reader is 16, and matt’s 18 haha🤗 also this is bad so don’t judge thank😈

tags: @zenithsturniolo @sturniolos67 @mattscoquette

[birgittesilverbae]

hitched fic, a moment for either/both of them where they look at the other and think 'hmm, maybe i won't mind being married to that goober', not that big italicized Oh, but that tiny little ...huh

"You disappeared," Ava calls out as she picks her way carefully down the stairs to the dock. The treads are still damp with the prior day's rain and fallen leaves lie slick on the wood. 

Bea glances back towards her from her spot at the very edge of the dock, shrugs a sweater-clad shoulder. "I just needed some air. You didn't have to come down."

"What, and stay up there with a solo front row seat to Ms. and Ms. Disgustingly In Love? No, thank you." She comes to a halt at the path curving along the lakeshore, eyeing the dock distrustfully. No handrails to grab onto there; she'd need to mention that to Mary when they returned to the cottage. 

"Have you stayed out here with them before?"

Ava shakes her head, then realises Bea can't see the movement. "Just on day trips, I used to bartend part-time and I'd pick up shifts on long weekends. Never worked out that I could stay overnight."

Bea hums to herself, tucks her hands in her pockets. "The last time I was here it was with Lucia." 

"Ah. No wonder you needed to step away. Do you want me to leave you to it, or…?"

Bea turns fully towards her then, her breath clouding in the air with every breath. "No," she replies, striding back up the dock towards her, "I always appreciate your company."

Ava ducks her chin towards her chest, her face growing hot. She doesn't know that she'll ever get used to the ease with which Bea just says things like that, or to how clear it is that she doesn't understand the effect it has on Ava. She clears her throat and kicks at a clump of leaves. "Yeah, well, the only other option is third-wheeling them while they talk about colour schemes with Yas, so…" 

"Are they still pretending they haven't already decided on navy and sage?"

"Mary was going on about coral when I made my escape."

Bea laughs softly. "She does know how to push every single one of Shannon's buttons." She proffers her arm to Ava, nods towards the path. "Would you be up for a turn about the lake?"

"Gladly." She clasps Bea's forearm, turns in time with her to start down the path. Her thumb strokes absently across the thick weave of Bea's sleeve. "I like this sweater too," she remarks, "but I'm appropriately dressed for the weather this time, so don't even think about offering it to me."

"I wouldn't dream of it. I'm glad to hear you've figured out how to check a forecast."

"Didn't want to risk another round of mockery."

"It was gentle ribbing, if anything."

"'Oo, Ava, you're going to freeze your nipples off'."

"I absolutely do not sound like that, and I definitely did not say 'nipples'."

"You might not have said it, but…" Bea's arm stiffens beneath her hand, and Ava scrambles to backtrack. She gestures up at the trees, limbs skeletal in the cool air. "Ironic, don't you think, that we're here looking at this as a wedding venue when everything's in the middle of dying off for winter?"

Bea tips her head back to follow the direction of Ava's hand. Her face goes a bit shuttered, cheeks pink with the chill, eyelashes fluttering. "It'll be beautiful come spring, though," she replies softly.

Gaze locked on Bea, on the gentle fall of loose strands of hair across her cheek, on the constellation of freckles scattered over her cheeks, Ava can't help but agree. 

[perennialsoft]

Tumblr literally crashes every time I try to answers this ask lmao so have a screenshot. This response is very late but it did arrive eventually!! Also less prompts than last time but I just want this out of my drafts. Please accept these humble offerings (if you use any of these, credit is unnecessary but appreciated <3 I'd also love if you tagged me so I can read it!):

Group of friends go out drinking together and very responsibly have a designated driver. Unfortunately, said DD feels worse the more the night goes on... Do they stick it out, driving their friends home even as they sniffle and sneeze and cough all over the steering wheel? Do they insist on the group calling a car? If so, sure do hope the driver doesn't have any problems with germs!

A darkroom for developing camera film. Something about the dark, about the intense focus on art, about the crowded space because who can afford a big darkroom? Picture ducking into a shoulder to protect the photos, or missing and sneezing right into the boxes, sending the photos swaying in the liquid solution or fluttering on the stung up line. A red glow over everything, softening flushed noses and bruised eyes all into one hazy moment.

At the ocean at the time of year that bridges between spring and summer. The sun is baking the characters' skin at the same time as a shuttering wind blows through from the water. Does applying sunscreen to the nose spark something? Does the glare of the sun tickle? Is the chilled wind bothering anyone? Perhaps a character doesn't want to ruin their companions' day out by leaving early. Perhaps a character is absolutely willing to ruin a day out but no one is willing to drive them home.

A litter pick-up and invasive plant-pull event at a river. Fun thing about rivers: not only is the water cold (which you will absolutely find out if you're one of the waders going for trash in the water), which is miserable when you're not feeling well, but rivers also tend to be surrounded by all kinds of green things. Things someone might be allergic to, even. A character might even be allergic to the invasive plant being removed! What a shame that would be. What a shame it would be to avoid helping the environment just for a few sneezes, too. Surely the characters have to stay until the work is done, right?

A character is determined to fall ill in order to get out of an event. There are so many options for how they might do this. Stalk some sick people? Ask for help from a friend? ...Ask for help from a lover? There's no reason to make the experience unpleasant, after all. Might as well have some fun with it if they're going to get sick.

[clementineskesh]

Transcript:

I have heard those cursed words, and said them, too. Again and again, appropriately, but to deleterious effect. Those three words which haunted me well before I was a phantasmal whisper in anyone's ear. Those three words which served as inescapable burden and catalyzing challenge and easy alibi: the wheel turns.

Their appeal is immediate and unsurprising. We live in a world of wheels, of circles, of cogs, and cycles. Across countless worlds, seasons may differ--the long misty summers of Artemisios, the thrice-returning autumns of Tanden 12--yet each is a division in time, repeating so steadily that we shape ourselves to them. And even on those worlds without air, without differentiation, there is that old blessed thing: the orbit, and the rotation, and the sphere itself, and thus the day, and thus the routine, round like a clock, complex yet simple, like clockwork. There we are, day by day, trapped under the axle.

And I do not deny the power of this centripetal force. How could I, a being alive and dead and alive again twice? The wheel does turn. The daylily shutters under frost then breaches anew come spring. Schools of resonant minnows entangle themselves on the spinning rhythms of the pulsar wave. But none of this is eternal. None of it is endless. If only it were, then we would not need to face the truth: that we turned wheel first. We set the gears into the watch body. We took the stars, irregular and boiling and jagged, and carved until they were round in our minds. We pressed the pencil to the page and summoned the circle.

And know this, Figure: one day we will draw a different shape. We must.

.

mostly transcribed by @violentandmagnificent

[kaywavy]

transforming soffits reorganizing keys formalizing immersion joints justifying kick extractors advising aggregates managing elbows recasting connectors achieving aluminum trowels officiating disks exhibiting absolute spigots progressing coil hydrants jerry-building reflectors informing casters inventing rubber hoists performing wrenches judging chalk adapters upgrading ignition paths

regrowing flashing recommending ratchets approving barriers sweeping impact fillers sewing mirrors detailing collectors enforcing measures distributing systems presenting plugs interwinding registers piloting ash diffusers gathering cranks supplying eave pockets undertaking scroll stops accelerating straps designing fittings protecting diamond boilers logging downspouts correlating shingles uniting mallets qualifying electrostatic lifts sharing clamps obtaining circular fluids ranking foundation gauges sensing miter brackets originating space networks translating drills regulating guards selecting gable padding utilizing pellet dowels reconciling artifacts altering pulleys shedding space filters determining vents representing mortar remaking flash rakers supporting funnels typecasting rotary chocks expressing junctures resetting auxiliary vises professing strip treads inlaying matter trowels questioning drivers forming edge fittings sketching blanks overshooting spark breakers rewriting controls playing tunnels inventorying buttons enduring joint handles effecting ratchet bibbs unwinding couplings forsaking vapor conduits defining sockets calculating heaters raising grids administering tiles measuring resources installing ignition remotes extracting corners manufacturing ventilators delegating consoles treating mounting stones enacting jig deflectors intensifying alleys improvising cargo pinpointing bobs prescribing arc masonry structuring metal chucks symbolizing lathes activating plumb kits adapting coatings fixing channels expediting cordage planning compressors enlisting hangers restructuring keyhole augers shearing ridge hardware collecting reciprocating bolts maintaining corrugated dimmers whetting hole collars conducting mandrels comparing assets compiling sealants completing paths composing equivocation wheels computing dampers conceiving electrostatic treatment ordering cotter grates organizing ties orienting ladders exceeding materials targeting thermocouples demonstrating emery stock expanding latch bases training wardrobe adhesives overcomming[sic] fasteners streamlining storm anchors navigating springs perfecting turnbuckles verifying gate pegs arbitrating arithmetic lifts negotiating outlets normalizing strips building surface foggers checking key torches knitting grinders mowing planers offsetting stencils acquiring bulbs adopting rivets observing avenues ascertaining coaxial grommets slinging wing winches instituting circuit generators instructing wicks integrating pry shutters interpreting immersion lumber clarifying coils classifying wood bits closing cogs cataloging matter strips charting holders conceptualizing push terminals stimulating supports overthrowing shaft spacers quick-freezing connectors unbinding ground hooks analyzing eyes anticipating gateways controlling proposition rollers converting power angles coordinating staples correcting benders counseling joist gaskets recording gutter pipes recruiting drains rehabilitating rafter tubes reinforcing washers reporting guard valves naming freize sprues nominating rings noting straps doubling nailers drafting circuit hoses dramatizing flanges splitting framing compounds refitting stems interweaving patch unions placing sillcocks sorting slot threads securing mode cutters diverting catharsis plates procuring load thresholds transferring syllogism twine directing switch nuts referring time spools diagnosing knobs discovering locks dispensing hinges displaying hasps resending arc binders retreading grooves retrofitting aesthetics portals seeking stocks shrinking wormholes assembling blocks assessing divers attaining lug boxes auditing nescience passages conserving strikes constructing braces contracting saw catches serving installation irons recognizing fluxes consolidating fuse calipers mapping shims reviewing chop groovers scheduling lag drives simplifying hoists engineering levels enhancing tack hollows establishing finishing blocks

[seventeen02]

favorite movies !

a moment of romance

in blow

scarface

life is beautiful

death in venice

purple noon

mr and mrs smith

hackers

leon

girl interrupted

in the mood for love

days being wild

fallen angel

the beautiful person

the apartment

fuyajo

bobby deerfield

the black swan

the godfather 2

my own private idaho

two lovers under one roof

the scent of green papaya

vertical ray of the sun

stealing beauty

teorema

call me by your name

bonnie and clyde

fight club

kill bill

city of the rising sun

wheels of ashes

fruit of paradise

floating clouds

ghosts

inception

x movie

ley lines

the brown bunny

american psycho

platonic sex

last night in soho

emma

pride and prejudice

red lights

the dreamers

the wind rises

closer

six in paris

mermaids

garden state

on the occasion of remembering the turning gate

the doom generation

the girl on the motorcycle

open house

the place without limits

ratatouille

twin peaks

before sunrise

malèna

possession

all about lily chou chou

bride for rip van winkle

the lover

amelie

rebels of the neon god

as tears go by

a moment to remember

the hot spot

less than zero

edward scissorhands

eyes wide shut

un homme et une femme

the story of adele h

the last mistress

billboard dad

metropolitan

the pillow book

singles

la la land

mirrored mind

fatal frame

and then we danced

dear ex

tune in for love

one fine spring day

reality bites

running on empty

millennium mambo

lost and found

who's the woman, who's the man

mulholland drive

Jess + Moss

swallowtail butterfly

dorian gray

durian durian

hana & alice

40 days and 40 nights

l'amour braque

picnic

to each is own

guilty of romance

vagabond

city of madness

three times

mary is happy mary is happy

comet

sleepless town

like someone in love

hausu

house

46 okunen no koi

2046

l'enfer

cloud atlas

old boy

mystery train

the odd one dies

kedi

l'amour l'apres-midi

fire on the black hand side

le bonheur

fantastic planet

mirror

belladonna of sadness

daisies

lost highway

sweet movie

pearl

heathers

moulin rouge

suspiria

the rich man's wife

requiem for a dream

the others

return of the living dead

dracula

interview with the vampire

wir kinder vom bahnof zoo

le mepris

chi-n-pi-ra

chungking express

ashes and snow

shuttering island

the grand budapest hotel

the young girls of rochefort

the florida project

the edge of love

irreversible

crash

gone girl

bullet ballet

of love and shadows

minari

galaxy express 999

audition

lan yu

silsila

belle de jour

taal

dead or alive

videodrama

lost in translation

washington square

soulmate

summer lovers

barbarella

snake of june

a woman under the influence

mysterious skin

red eye

happy together

the walk

brick

l.a. confidental

love & pop

linda linda linda

swing girls

nana

the lover

hirugao

helter sketler

suzhou river

kaili blues

kamikaze girls

valerie and her week of wonders

comrades, almost a love story

naked lunch

endless love

whiplash

taxi driver

vivre sa vie

la collectionneuse

dog day afternoon

night in paradise

my mister

my name

better days

himizu

first love, letter on the breeze

split of the spirit

one million yen girl

juncchi mori

la belle

ITSAY

mermaid legend

blue spring

badlands

marie antoinette

aftersun

brokeback mountain

portrait of lady on fire

nostos: the return

shiki-jitsu

farewell my concubine

constantine

never let me go

bones and all

paris is burning

trouble everyday

memories of matsuko

pierrot le feu

taipei story

blue velvet

a woman is a woman

buffalo 66

the love witch

valley of dolls

the rocky horror picture show

[hannahssimblr]

Chapter Twenty

Yiorgos, our taxi driver, chugs up the driveway with his boot stuffed full of cases and bags. It is hot already, even though he told us that the winter drew on longer than normal this year, but now the summer seems to have come early, completely swallowing up the spring. The Cypriot heat is bone dry today, and when we step out of the car and take our cases with us, a haze of dust from the path rises into the air and leaves a thin film on my sandals. The sun is sharp edged on the stone of this old building, and a scallop shaped bird bath in the garden has dried up. I run my fingers through the ridges of warm stone as Yiorgos hauls all of Claire’s bags out onto the ground, and gaze out towards the horizon from this vantage point, high enough to see the pale slash of Coral Beach to the west and the blue ridges of the Cedar Valley in the distant east, yellow sun glancing off their inclines. The wind does not blow. It is perfectly, silently still. 

“It’s hot.” I declare, fanning myself with the paperback book I packed for the plane, and Jude pushes his sunglasses onto his face. “Is it?” He says vaguely. He is wearing long trousers and a sweatshirt, and Shane has the decency to look irritated on my behalf. “Some of us would find this hot, man, yeah,” He says. “We weren’t all dragged up in the Chihuahuan Desert, or whatever it’s called,” He wipes sweat from his brow and begins hauling some of the bags up the steps to the worn wooden doors at the entrance of the house. There is an arc of sweat on his back, and hair at the nape of his neck is damp with it. He was never all that great in the sun. 

When Claire throws open the doors she does so with great flourish, and then flits through the house and does the same to all of them. I spot her up on the balcony above the pomegranate trees as I carry my things inside, like a Disney princess with her long, thick hair swishing around her shoulders, the look of complete and utter bliss fixed upon her pretty face. She was so excited about this holiday, and now being here, seeing how beautiful it is after all of the meticulous planning, I feel like I can relax. 

The house, with its smooth plastered walls is cool inside, as though the thick stone has held onto the damp of winter, but still, I go to the sink in the kitchen to get a palm full of water for my hot forehead. The shutters there are thrown open to a sea view, and far to the north east of the bay where the white sand meets the cliffs, a huge, top heavy rock juts out of the sea. I am squinting at it when Jude comes up behind me to wrap his arms around my waist. 

“It’s Aphrodite’s Rock,” I tell him. “I read about it in that guide at the tourist office. The myths say that she was born right there at that very spot.”

“She’s the Greek’s answer to Venus, right? Goddess of Love and beauty.”

“And marriage and prostitution and all of that fun stuff.”

“I bet she was a wild gal back in the BC days.”

“You know that the guide also said that that portion of the beach was voted the top place in the Mediterranean to have sex,” I don’t know why I just said that, and stiffen awkwardly in his arms, quickly adding, “It’s also a nudist beach,” as though that will save me somehow, but actually it only makes it worse.

“Oh,” He teases with a ticklish kiss on my cheekbone. “If you feel like heading down there at any point I wouldn’t be totally opposed.”

“Yeah, you me and a bunch of creepy old men, I bet, and anyway,” I twist around to face him “I’m already competing for time with your bloody thesis, I don’t really fancy wasting a precious day hiking all the way down there just to get my pasty baps out for a crowd of strangers.”

He throws his head back and groans, arms falling limp at his sides. “Please, we just arrived, don’t mention the ‘T’ word.”

“Get it done early,” I warn him with a stiff finger in the chest. “I’m not spending this whole holiday third wheeling it with Claire and Shane because you can’t stop procrastinating.”

“I’m like, 95% there. I swear, it’ll be like, one evening, max,” he whirls around and starts plucking bags from the heap on the terracotta tiles with a sudden burst of efficiency. “I’ll do it tonight, it’ll be over. For now we have to unpack and pick a room, and then I think we should take a walk and see if we can find somewhere to swim so we can get that sticky aeroplane feeling off us.”

“A room?” I echo, fixated on that part, “You think we should share?”

“Well, I don’t know,” He says, standing still with his arms full of cases. “Would you absolutely hate that?”

“I wouldn’t hate it, I just, you know…”

He nods, “We can sleep separately, I don’t mind.” 

“I’m sorry,” I add quickly, “It’s nothing personal, I just don’t want to feel kind of, situation-ed into something we’re not ready for.”

“Is that a word? Situ-”

“No.”

“Well, okay.”

“You’re not offended?”

“No!” He says, and rightly enough, he doesn’t sound it, but maybe he’s just a good actor. “It’s not like that with us, we’re going slow.”

I chew on my lip, “Well I feel like you’re just saying that.”

“Evie,” He sighs. “It’s different with us, I know that you’re anxious, and it doesn’t bother me. Actually, it’s nice, I’ve never done the waiting thing before, and I’m enjoying it, because I’ve been appreciating everything else that we’ve been doing.”

“Back when I was at school the waiting period was about eight months,” I tell him, and it’s just an innocent anecdote but I swear his face drains a bit. “Girls would go out with their first boyfriend for ages first, and if they made it as far as eight months then they’d get the ride. Usually like, in a car or at someone’s house party.”

“Sounds romantic.”

“Yeah, right. That was just a stupid story, by the way,” I say hastily. “It’s not like that’s the pattern I want us to follow or anything, it just popped into my head there, and like, eight months is ages to wait, and it’s not like we even know where you’re going to be in eight months, sure you’ll be long graduated by then and you could be off anywhere in the world…” I trail off because his smile has faltered and he’s starting to look miserable. “I’ll come with you now to look at the rooms,” I seize a few more of the bags and follow him up the stairs to a creaky landing with shuttered windows that still block out the light. 

I insist that Jude take the double room out of pure guilt, even though he seems perfectly fine again, but mostly I choose the small box room because it has that very same beautiful view as the kitchen beneath it. Instead of unpacking anything I sit upon a painted wooden chair by the window and gaze out at the stillness of Pissouri, the azure blue of the sky and the brittle sand coloured stone of the cracked roads that wind up and down the hills. Once again I look for Aphrodite’s Rock and find it, as though a flickering torch of twisting flames was transformed into stone in an instant. The sand at its base unfolds into a meadow of Neptune seagrass, and I imagine I can see the goddess there, standing boldly in her nakedness amongst the cliffs. Somehow she sees me too, and she smiles up at me, her gaze unwavering, insistent and sure. I stare back until she dissolves to nothing in the blink of an eye. 

Beginning // Prev // Next

[soursherbat]

Sensation; Chapter One

Graveyard Shift

A Springtrap x OC fanfic

Word Count; 2,390

This job was seriously taking years off of my life. I’d started as a night guard a few nights for the new horror attraction opening up in town soon, and honestly? I’m not sure if this pay is worth it. Especially not after the last two nights...

My shift had been going fine, nothing out of the ordinary. I mean, aside from everything wrong with this place. I could deal with the hallucinations from the piss poor ventilation, I was already used to it before starting here, but a visit from my superiors made the mood deteriorate entirely.

It was nearly time for me to clock out when they showed up, wheeling something in on a hand truck. I nearly jumped out of my skin when I saw them wheel it past me while I was sitting in the office.

It was a large animatronic, a Spring Bonnie model from what I could tell. It was badly damaged and looked incredibly dirty and disheveled, but its outward appearance wasn’t what had scared me.

Its eyes were following me. They were looking directly at me, its gaze staying focused on me as they wheeled it past the window.

Their eyes had a look I couldn’t place. It didn’t feel like the typical eye contact mascot suits would make with you, their eyes designed to create the illusion that they were looking at you when they simply weren’t. No, this thing had been staring at me, studying me intently, its eyes containing a liveliness behind them that made me squirm in my chair.

It was difficult to disguise my discomfort when they told me before clocking out that it would be staying here in the building, as they had plans to incorporate it into the attraction. I left without a word, driving home in silence as I ruminated on what that would mean for me going forward.

Sleep eluded me that night. I was hoping it was just another hallucination, but every time that moment played itself over in my head, I became more certain that I hadn’t imagined it. It even haunted my dreams, stalking through the dimly lit hallways of the building to find me.

Oh, how I wished that dream hadn’t come true. My next shift had come quicker than I would’ve liked, barely functioning from my sleepless night and surviving off of energy drinks and espresso shots for the first two hours or so.

The first time it appeared on the cameras I felt my skin crawl, my hair standing on end as I locked eyes with it once again.

It... it felt like it could see me through the cameras. I felt sick to my stomach as long buried feelings of panic and worry crept back into my mind, reminding me of events forgotten ages ago. My hands shook as we stared at each other, my breathing shallow and ragged when it started to move.

It shambled toward my location like a reanimated corpse, one of its joints clearly locked at the ankle. I realized quickly that it was drawn to the audio lures, following them mindlessly as I tried to make it move as far from the security office as possible.

I noticed it wasn’t just mindlessly following them after a few uses, when it... seemed to become confused that nobody was in the room it heard the sounds coming from. It was hard to tell, but it seemed to look around like it was searching for the source of the noises.

Its gaze always returned to the camera in the end, like it knew that I was watching it limp through the empty hallways. When it eventually reached camera ten I got a good look at it, my eyes wide with shock when I noticed exposed bone and old, decayed flesh and sinew visible in the tears in the suit.

Just what was I dealing with here? I wouldn’t find out until the next night, as the... creature didn’t move from that spot in the corner of camera ten for the rest of my shift. It just stared into the camera, its unblinking gaze burned into my memory at this point.

I left the moment my alarm beeped, punching my time card and leaving the building as quickly as I could. I closed the shutters and locked up, fleeing to my car without looking back.

I almost didn’t return to work the next night. I don’t know why I was even here, staring at my hands in the empty parking lot outside the building as I questioned my life choices up to this point.

Something was drawing me back here. That machine, that thing- there was something more to it. It didn’t seem particularly hostile, though the most interaction I’d had with the thing was a staring contest when they first recovered it.

However, once I got into the building, I had to question if that was true. Was it looking for me, or was it hunting me? I can’t tell- but it seemed particularly desperate to find me tonight.

I’m watching it move toward my desired spot for it- the room furthest from mine- when the entire system shuts down.

I panic. I flip the maintenance panel up, frantically resetting everything at once. I sit there anxiously, a pit forming in my stomach when I hear it dragging its metallic body through the vents.

Before I can react and long before any of the systems have reset, it shows up outside the window, looking at me. I feel the color drain from my face, my hands cold and clammy as we stare at each other through the glass once more.

“You... aren’t the one I had expected to find here.”

Did it just speak to me? A silent terror overtakes my rationality, making me freeze like a deer in the headlights. Not only was it a walking corpse in a rabbit costume, but it could talk as well? Its gravelly, strained voice was slightly muffled by the glass, though it... sounded like a person, more or less.

“But you still came back... why?”

I feel my throat tighten, constricting my breathing and making me tremble like a leaf. I’m still too stunned by the fact that it can speak to even consider responding, just waiting for it to lunge at me.

It tilts its head as it gazes at me, perhaps realizing that it had scared me. We both stay silent for a time, its eyes never leaving mine. It... he? They? They don’t seem intent on hurting me, though I knew from experience that not everyone let their violent intent show so easily.

“I... I don’t know.”

It’s the only response I can muster, still not sure why I’m here either. The longer I stared at it, the more it seemed like it was alive. A bio-mechanical abomination stood before me, asking a question like it was a concerned parent fretting over their child.

“May I come in... please?”

The question hits me like a ton of bricks. Every judgment and assumption I had made about this thing- this... person? Felt like it had just been thrown out the window.

They sound so desperate, so earnestly polite that I felt terrible for even considering being afraid of this... creature. I still don’t exactly know how to address them...

I can’t even form a response, just choking on what I want to say before I finally just give up and nod. They seem to perk up at that, making their way into the office. I recoil a bit, though I feel terrible about it.

They... they smell like a musty carpet that’s been left to rot, making me force back a gag. It makes sense, they are a corpse inside an old, ill-maintained suit...

It’s especially clear to me that this person is dead now that they’re standing directly in front of me, cracked bones wound with wires and desiccated muscle visible in the holes in their chassis.

I felt terrible for them, their past completely unknown to me, but their suffering was evident. I had still been hoping all of this was just a hallucination, a manifestation of my paranoia made worse by this place’s terrible ventilation, but the crushing weight of this strange reality was demolishing that idea entirely.

“Who... who are you?”

The question finally leaves my mouth, I’d been wanting to say something, anything, but until now it had felt like I was being choked.

They finally look away from me, the question was obviously a bit of a loaded one. They... chuckle, softly. It catches me by surprise, further humanizing this creature in front of me. They- he seems to be considering the question, as if he didn’t know how to answer.

“A dead man. No one... has called me by my name in a long time.”

He was obviously avoiding the question, acting as if he was stalling for time while he tried to make something up.

“Just call me... Springtrap.”

My brow furrows upon hearing his name. It was obviously bullshit, probably something he just now thought of. I could tell he was in a Spring Bonnie suit, remembering long-lost Polaroids of my parents visiting the old Fredbear’s Diner before it was shut down.

I’d heard from the recorded calls about the multiple springlock failures that happened around that time, wondering if that was the same fate that... “Springtrap” had met. God, what a silly name- I could hardly take him seriously now.

“Okay... Springtrap. You said you expected someone else- but who?”

He seems to tense again, avoiding looking me in the eyes as he answers my question.

“Nobody you should concern yourself with. You... were a pleasant surprise.”

I feel conflicted upon hearing him say that. The way he’s speaking, it sounds like I would have been much less fortunate if I had been the one he was expecting.

Before I can really consider that line of thinking, I notice that he’s been slowly inching his way closer to me. I wonder if he’s drawn to my voice the same way he is the audio lures, or if he’s planning something else.

No... he wouldn’t attack me at this point, right? The paranoia lurks in the back of my mind, my shoulders tensed when I see him take another step. I look up at him- suddenly feeling incredibly tiny, he was towering over me at this point- his eyes are focused on mine again.

Now that he’s this close, I can see an obvious longing in his expression. How could a suit even form an expression? It vexes me, nothing about him makes any sense to me- though I suppose not everything will.

“You... you are real, aren’t you? Please...”

I’m pulled from my thoughts by his voice, he’s leaning down toward me now, his mouth open. My eyes widen as I see the gnarled and twisted flesh underneath, his tattered remains still inside the head of the suit as well.

I flinch away from him, instinctively reaching out and pushing my hand against his face, as if I was pushing an overly eager kitten away from my plate of food. He freezes as my fingers make contact with his grime covered fur, the texture of which is making me sick just from brushing against it- let alone placing my hand firmly against his cheek.

We stand there for a long moment, both of us stunned into silence. I only just now process his original question, my expression softening as I start to move my fingers, scratching his molded faux fur.

It feels terrible against my hand. I can tell it was soft, once. Now it was rough, coated in a thick layer of dust and splotched with blood, a lot of it matted up and tangled.

“I... I’m sorry. You surprised me...” I finally manage to say, apologizing for pushing him away. “How... how long have you been like this?”

He’s leaned into my touch, a soft, warbling purr emanating from his chest cavity. His eyes have softened significantly, looking as if he’d been relieved of a heavy weight.

“I... wouldn’t be able to tell you. It... feels like an eternity.”

I feel stupid for even asking, realizing that he’d been boarded up in a room for god knows how long. My sympathy for him is growing rapidly, unable to pry my hand away from his disgusting fur.

Both of us jump when my alarm sounds, forcing me to tear myself away from him. I silence it, staring at the clock. I had been dreading coming in here today, and now... now I didn’t want to leave. This poor man, all alone in this death trap of an attraction, surrounded by the remnants of destroyed animatronics...

“You... need to leave now, correct? It’s... okay. You should go.”

I can tell he’s forcing himself to be polite at this point, his desperation for human contact thinly veiled by his urging for me to leave. I nod my head in understanding, sighing heavily.

“Yeah... I’ll... I’ll be back tomorrow.”

He seems a bit put off by the notion, as if he didn’t want me to come back. He obviously didn’t want me to leave, but... he looked conflicted.

“An unwise decision... but I can’t stop you. I’ll see you tomorrow... Hawk.”

I’m left shocked as he slinks out of the office, until I realize that I had been wearing my name tag this entire time, making me breathe a sigh of relief. Everything else about this situation was odd enough, I didn’t need any more weirdness tonight.

I locked up the building, sitting in my car and just... staring at the exit door for a while. The thought that he was just sitting alone in there, waiting for me to come back made my heart ache. I knew nothing about him, but... I couldn’t help but sympathize.

It took me a while to finally start my car, lingering a bit longer before actually driving home. He was the center of my thoughts during my drive, parsing through my complicated feelings as I headed home.

I couldn’t stop my racing thoughts, heading straight to bed to try to sleep it all off. I’d figure out what to do about this when I was able to get some real rest...

Next Chapter

[bugbitesandblisters]

2. Storm Chaser by Grazia Curcuru

My winter semester is coming to a close, and between the chaos of studying for finals, tutoring others for finals, spring cleaning, and household drama, I’m still feeling restless. I need to get out of this house. It’s the kind of itch only a road trip can satisfy. I only had 5 days between winter semester and the start of my spring/summer classes, so I had to plan this strategically. Adam’s birthday is coming up, and he is obsessed with storm chasing videos, and tornado season is upon us. I have a reckless idea to go to Tornado Alley during peak tornado season so he can use his storm radar and we can hike some trails. 

I pick up some doubles to pay for my part of the trip, and slog through finals. Once I ace pathophysiology and my other finals, I’m all set. We load up my old Jeep full of hiking gear and a cooler of potato salad to feed us along the way. Adam recently gifted me a 50lb sack of potatoes as a “joke,” and he is going to suffer through the ramifications of that gift and help eat them. 

On the first day, we leave at dawn and drive 17 hours to Lawton, Oklahoma, fueled by potato salad, bananas, and dreams. As I drive into Tulsa, a huge storm rolls in. Crashing thunder, bolts of lightning. It looks so different out here in the Great Plains, no trees for miles and miles, the open sky ahead. When lightning hits, the whole sky illuminates, brighter than I’ve ever seen. The thunder reverberates, like haunting laughter. Gusts of wind are so strong that it's hard to stay in the lane. My knuckles ache from how tightly I’m gripping the steering wheel. Normally, I hate driving during storms and at night, but Adam gets to sit in the passenger seat and track the storm on his radar. This is my gift to him; he looks so happy. This was just a thunderstorm, but I’ve never seen anything like it. 

We crawl into the motel late that night, load the contents of the cooler into our motel fridge, and await the next day’s adventure. 

In the morning, the first stop is coffee. Medicine Park, Oklahoma, is a beautiful little cobblestone resort town nestled in the Wichita Mountains. We stumble into Mrs. Chadwick's Bakery for coffee, drawn in by the bright blue shutters, and wander around by the river, sipping our caffeine and taking in the view. Yesterday we were in Michigan, and today we are out West. 

Adam drives us up Mount Scott while I stick my head out the window like a dog, so happy to be in the mountains. From the top, it overlooks the Wichita Mountains, Medicine Park, the Wildlife Refuge, and sparkling blue lakes. The Wichita Mountains are full of enormous boulder fields. Our hike today explores these massive boulders up close, as we adventure to Charon’s Garden, requiring us to scramble strategically over boulders. The object of the hike is to find these apple and pear-shaped, house-sized boulders.

I’ve never done anything like this before. As we set out on the hike, I realize why it’s referred to as a scramble, and not a hike, since I’m often using my hands just as much as my feet. The trail is marked with blue paint up until a certain point, all the trail marks mysteriously drop off around the large gap where I must leap between two boulders, with a deep trench in between. I just know if a paintbrush was dropped here, there’s no getting it back.

It’s much more difficult to find the trail without the blue marks, but I notice some stacked-up rocks and recognize them as cairns. These are stacks of rocks used as trail markers. I first learned about them when I backpacked on Isle Royale. The problem I’ve noticed is that some people like to build them for no reason, and if cairns are not directing the trail, they’re more confusing than no trail marker. 

The sun beats down, and although I wanted to protect my skin from the sun with protective clothing, that feels less and less important as I begin to overheat. I’m a notorious overpacker, always want to be prepared, but this is a day hike with a high level of activity, and I brought a big bag full of nonsense. 

“There they are,” Adam calls out, pointing up ahead. Nestled atop slabs of rock are our house-sized boulders, the apple and the pear. But from here, it’s hard to imagine they are house-sized. They sit so meticulously on a cliff’s edge, as if they could tumble over from a gust of wind. In actuality, they are massive, heavy, and not going anywhere. I snap a picture of the big rocks we worked so hard to see, and we scramble our way back, eventually seeing the blue paint marking proximity to civilization yet again. 

Adam and I hang out in the parking lot to stuff our faces with potato salad. I made a lot of potato salad, but after a grueling hike, I’m grateful for carbs. In this heat, I’m glad I didn’t make it with mayo. I was being healthy and made a vinaigrette with herbs, which was refreshing. I also made some chopped cabbage/kale salad with chickpeas, all of which holds up well in a cooler, assuming the lids are tight. We learn that blocks of ice don’t melt as quickly as bags of ice, less surface area. Ice blocks are just harder to find.

After eating our weight in potatoes, we drive to the Tiny House we are staying at outside Palo Duro Canyon, Texas. The drive takes us through a weird part of Oklahoma, where the roads are all named “country road 2050, country road 2052, etc,” all laid out on a grid, as if no one bothered to name anything except the next number in a sequence. As we cross the border into Texas, I’m immediately met with a foul odor. Not the best first impression, I realize we’re passing a giant factory farm, so I’m not loving my first moments in Texas. 

We pull up at the tiny house. There’s a cluster of tiny homes nearby with a shared fire pit and grill area, and fairy lights strung up overhead. We make dinner on the grill burner and eat under the stars, before retreating inside for the night.

In the morning, I make coffee and breakfast and start packing up for the day. I’m not sure where Adam went when I hear him call from outside.   

“Grazia! Can I keep this?” he yells, and I walk outside to see what he found. He’s holding a ginormous tumbleweed. 

“Where are you going to put that?” I laugh. 

“Oh yeah, it probably won’t fit in the car,” he says, throwing it behind him. I watch as it picks up in the wind and starts rolling across the field, lost among the other tumbleweeds. What is this place?

Our hike today is at Palo Duro Canyon. As we drive in, everything is bright orange canyon dust. I wear a white shirt to keep the sun off my shoulders, which will be forever stained with canyon dust. We hike the Lighthouse Trail up to an iconic rock formation that stands tall and mighty like a lighthouse, with a long slab leading up to it like a runway where people pose and take pictures. Adam talks about the geology of the area, the sedimentary rock, and points out the light banding as a layer of gypsum that formed when a body of water evaporated. Adam’s a big rock guy, full of rock facts. Meanwhile, I’m very entertained by the dung beetles pushing around pieces of poop, and this is the moment I realize that’s how they got their name. I laugh at the dung beetles for way too long. 

When we get to the top of the Lighthouse, I’m astonished by how massive it is. The scenic runway drops down into the canyon on both sides. I wonder how nature forms such a masterpiece, as I sit against an adjacent rock in the shade, eating a banana. Families and couples saunter up to pictures, strut the runway, and leave. And I sit in the shade, and watch the towering rock, and people watch, and think. It’s May of 2021, and this is the most people I’ve seen since the world shut down. My classes are online, I tutor on Zoom, I work in a small group home, and I see the same few people every day. But I am deeply isolated and unsatisfied with my life and relationships. I’m so bitter and jaded when I see happy people; I’m jealous. Adam corroborates my resentment. We feed off each other.

We travel to another part of the canyon to go up to The Big Cave. It’s easy to get to, right off the road, but there’s a steep path up. Standing in the cave looking out offers a whole new perspective on the canyon. The air is nice and cool inside, protecting me from the Texas sun. The darkness contrasts with the bright, vibrant red rock just outside its walls. I feel at peace in the dark, but people are waiting, and I must return to the bright world outside.

________________________________________________________________

A few hours pass, and my head is throbbing. We’ve crossed into New Mexico, closing in on an elevation of 7000 feet, and I feel queasy. It’s only day 3 of our trip, and we’ve gone from an altitude of 950 to 7000 ft, a recipe for altitude sickness. Adam doesn’t feel a thing. He carries our luggage into the hotel, and I drag my body inside. It’s Cinco de Mayo, we throw together some kinda sad-looking tacos, cooking in the hotel microwave, and I nurse my headache. I do not sleep; the pressure in my skull keeps me awake.

As dawn breaks, I am more exhausted than when I went to bed. I get a coffee, and we decide to take it easy. Today, we’re exploring downtown Taos. I went to Taos Pueblo with my family when I was 13, but we never explored the historic district. 

There’s a shop called Chokola that sells Mexican sipping chocolate. Hot melted chocolate, some with a hot kick of chili, it’s rich and velvety, only a couple of ounces. I wouldn’t think it would be refreshing on such a hot day, but it is. The place is all chocolate – chocolate mousse, cake, bars, sipping chocolate. I perk up at some vegan chocolate mousse cake, and Adam orders us a slice to split. It’s divine. We sit at the patio in the shade, admiring the adobe architecture of the downtown and the cobblestone streets. The Sangre de Cristo Mountains paint a scenic backdrop across a perfectly blue sky. This feels like the kind of town that can only exist in your imagination. 

We tiptoe into several identical tourist shops, gear stores, and little art galleries, buzzing on sugar. I love it here. Eventually, we must say goodbye to make it to our next reservations. A quaint little cabin in the ski town of Red River, New Mexico, is calling our names.

My Jeep will make its way along many questionable paths, but this is the first time Adam will drive it through a flowing river. 

“What are you doing??” 

“I’m following the directions!” The map shows that the road is here, but water flows through it nonetheless. “It’s just the wet season, everything’s melting, so water’s flowing, don’t worry.”

 I’ve never been skiing, let alone to a ski resort, but there’s something peculiar about going to ski resorts off-season. It’s like going to beach towns and dunes in winter, which we have also done. Show me the beauty of nature minus the tourism, let me hear the whispering wind without the chaos of the crowd. Maybe I will find some meaning out here, maybe I will find an answer. 

Red River, New Mexico, sits at nearly 9000 feet elevation. If I wasn’t already altitude sick, I certainly am now. I want to curl up in a ball and watch my comfort show, Gilmore Girls. Adam indulges me, and that is exactly what we do. I fall asleep in a stiff bed, in the Rocky Mountains, while Netflix autoplays Gilmore Girls episodes, 1400 miles from home. 

___________________________________________________________

Adam has an ambitious hike planned for today. He did not account for altitude. He still feels fine. I still have an unbearable pounding in my skull, feel very weak and dizzy. I suggest taking our coffee for a walk in the mountains, while we’re here, even if I can’t do any technical hike. I feel bad, we’re heading home today, just one more reservation tonight in Kansas along the way. 

We’re driving through New Mexico when a tumbleweed rolls across our path. Adam stops the car. 

“What are you doing?” I question.

“Can I have this one? Last chance!” He’s already shoving the tumbleweed in the backseat. 

“Fine, let’s just go before I can change my mind.” He’s already driving away. 

__________________________________________

Our next stop to round out the trip is Joplin, Missouri. We haven’t seen many storms on this trip, not since the first night in Tulsa. The town of Joplin had a devastating Tornado in 2011, and there’s a tornado memorial with a butterfly garden in Cunningham Park. When you drive down the streets, you can see the split down the center where the tornado came through and caused wreckage – a line dividing new builds from older construction. Satellite maps still show the scar left by the tornado.

Wildflowers grow for the butterflies. There are stone panels with testimonies. One testimony was from a young girl, who survived the tornado; she claimed she was saved by a butterfly. The little girl said she was drawn into the tornado, and she tried to clutch tightly onto the grass but lost her grip, when a butterfly held her down and saved her. I’m really glad we didn’t find ourselves in a serious storm. We can save the storm chasing for the experts. I think I’ll stick to hiking.

[gallerygossipgirl]

First Friday Art Walk March

Colorado Springs

Shutter & Strum

True North Art Gallery

Novis Mortem

Surface Gallery

COATI

Auric Gallery

Cottonwood Center for the Arts

Manitou Art Center

Common Wheel Artist Co-Op

Additional Happenings

February 27th Artist Talk at Shutter & Strum

February 29th Rence Fest Lulu's

February 28th Slow Blink Studios art night

Every Monday art night at Lulu's 7-11pm

March 9th drawing workshop at Ephemera

Flora Fest Cottonwood Center May 10th

WOC Open Mic Poetry 719 Stompin Grounds

March 8th Happy Hour Open Mic Poor Richard's Book Store

Community Build at Concrete Coyote March 1st 10am

XOXO

Gallery Gossip Girl

[themarshesbreathe]

- Treebeard Speech -

''But Saruman now! Saruman is a neighbour: I cannot overlook him. I must do something, I suppose. I have often wondered lately what I should do about Saruman.'

'Who is Saruman?' asked Pippin. 'Do you know anything about his history?'

'Saruman is a Wizard,' answered Treebeard. 'More than that I cannot say. I do not know the history of Wizards. They appeared first after the Great Ships came over the Sea; but if they came with the Ships I never can tell. Saruman was reckoned great among them, I believe. He gave up wandering about and minding the affairs of Men and Elves, some time ago - you would call it a very long time ago; and he settled down at Angrenost, or Isengard as the Men of Rohan call it. He was chosen to be the head of the White Council, they say; but that did not turn out too well. I wonder now if even then Saruman was not turning to evil ways. But at any rate he used to give no trouble to his neighbours. I used to talk to him. There was a time when he was always walking about my woods. He was polite in those days, always asking my leave (at least when he met me); and was always eager to listen. I told him many things that he would never have found out by himself; but he never repaid me in like kind. I cannot remember that he ever told me anything. And he got more and more like that; his face as I remember it - I have not seen it for many a day - became like windows in a stone wall: windows with shutters inside.

'I think that I now understand what he is up to. He is plotting to become a Power. He has a mind of metal and wheels; and he does not care for growing things, except as far as they serve him for the moment. And now it is clear that he is a black traitor. He has taken up with foul folk, with the Orcs. Brm, hoom! Worse than that: he has been doing something to them: something dangerous. For these Isengarders are more like wicked Men. It is a mark of evil things that came in the Great Darkness that they cannot abide the Sun; but Saruman's Orcs can endure it, even if they hate it. I wonder what he has done? Are they Men he has ruined, or has he blended the races of Orcs and Men? That would be a black evil!'

Treebeard rumbled for a moment, as if he were pronouncing some deep, subterranean Entish malediction. 'Some time ago I began to wonder how Orcs dared to pass through my woods so freely,' he went on. 'Only lately did I guess that Saruman was to blame, and that long ago he had been spying out all the ways, and discovering my secrets. He and his foul folk are making havoc now. Down on the borders they are felling trees - good trees. Some of the trees they just cut down and leave to rot - orc-mischief that; but most are hewn up and carried off to feed the fires of Orthanc. There is always a smoke rising from Isengard these days.

'Curse him, root and branch! Many of these trees were my friends, creatures I had known from nut and acorn; many had voices of their own that are lost for ever now. And there are wastes of stump and bramble where once there were singing groves. I have been idle. I have let things slip. It must stop!''

- The Two Towers, J.R.R Tolkien

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

It's crazy to me that a person can create a spiel like this, with the steady and unique pace of an ancient being that herds trees, that goes about and through a lot of different things that spring purely from their own imagination. Crazy creativity fr.

[1this1corrosion1]

The Surgeon At 2 AM

by Sylvia Plath

The white light is artificial, and hygienic as heaven.

The microbes cannot survive it.

They are departing in their transparent garments, turned aside

From the scalpels and the rubber hands.

The scalded sheet is a snowfield, frozen and peaceful.

The body under it is in my hands.

As usual there is no face. A lump of Chinese white

With seven holes thumbed in. The soul is another light.

I have not seen it; it does not fly up.

Tonight it has receded like a ship's light.

It is a garden I have to do with —- tubers and fruit

Oozing their jammy substances,

A mat of roots. My assistants hook them back.

Stenches and colors assail me.

This is the lung-tree.

These orchids are splendid. They spot and coil like snakes.

The heart is a red bell-bloom, in distress.

I am so small

In comparison to these organs!

I worm and hack in a purple wilderness.

The blood is a sunset. I admire it.

I am up to my elbows in it, red and squeaking.

Still it seeps me up, it is not exhausted.

So magical! A hot spring

I must seal off and let fill

The intricate, blue piping under this pale marble.

How I admire the Romans —-

Aqeducts, the Baths of Caracella, the eagle nose!

The body is a Roman thing.

It has shut its mouth on the stone pill of repose.

It is a statue the orderlies are wheeling off.

I have perfected it.

I am left with and arm or a leg,

A set of teeth, or stones

To rattle in a bottle and take home,

And tissues in slices—a pathological salami.

Tonight the parts are entombed in an icebox.

Tomorrow they will swim

In vinegar like saints' relics.

Tomorrow the patient will have a clean, pink plastic limb.

Over one bed in the ward, a small blue light

Announces a new soul. The bed is blue.

Tonight, for this person, blue is a beautiful color.

The angels of morphia have borne him up.

He floats an inch from the ceiling,

Smelling the dawn drafts.

I walk among sleepers in gauze sarcophagi.

The red night lights are flat moons. They are dull with blood.

I am the sun, in my white coat,

Grey faces, shuttered by drugs, follow me like flowers.

[alispangles]

The Adventures of Tiffany Faewyf

The Woman

Seasons passed and the farmhouse stood defiant to the weathering. Cracks were patched and holes were mended. Shutters were re-fixed and furniture was replaced.

It was a warm spring day when the woman woke up. She stretched in her bed, her slender arms reaching up and tickling the headboard as her small feet wiggled their toes amongst the sheets.

She sighed. Pulling herself up to sitting, she rubbed her eyes and yawned deeply. Somewhere downstairs she heard the ticking of the old clock, then a whirring followed by the frantic sounds of levers and wheels as it chimed out the sixth hour.

Tiffany pouted then turned on her bum and dropped her bare feet down onto the floorboards. Stretching once more she stood up out of bed and made her way over to a small table and chair.

She began to hum gently to herself as she ran her brush through her long blonde hair, listening to the gentle birdsong outside. Next, she plait her now smooth hair, weaving in a time-worn pink silk ribbon that she then tied into a bow at the end. Dipping her hands into a small basin of cold water, she washed her face.

The room around her was quite empty and she sighed to herself as she stood up again and began to make the bed.

She walked to her wardrobe and took out a fresh shift

Loosing her current one at its neck she let it drop down her body, catching for a moment on her chest, she wiggled and watched the linen fall to the floor. Stepping out of it, she stood for a moment, naked, feeling the morning air on her skin.

Looking in the wardrobe she took out a skirt and a bodice too and laid them down on the bed. Throwing the fresh shift over her head, she wriggled it down over her body, sliding her arms into the sleeves, reaching out her hands and then tying it off at the neck to sit neatly on her.

Next, she stepped into her pink, woollen skirt, pulling it up over her hips and drawing it tight at her waist. Finally, she slipped on her bodice, lacing it tight up her back and tying it off with a neat bow.

She looked at herself in the mirror and, lifting herself up on tiptoe, she twirled, enjoying the swish of the fabric as it spun around her.

It was time to start the day!

She picked up her shift from yesterday and folded it before walking out into the hall and down the stairs. She dumped it into a wicker hamper and made her way to the kitchen. Spotless as she had left it, she made her way to the broad fireplace and began to pile fresh wood in its centre. Fiddling with the tinderbox she sparked it into life.

Soon the flames were crackling as she picked up a large kettle and filled it from a heavy earthenware jug. She hung it over the fire and smiled.

Next, she walked over to a large basin filled with now cold water, floating in it were linens and wools that had been soaking through the night. She took each one out in turn and wrung it out, dripping water onto the stone floor as well as plenty onto herself.

It felt cool and refreshing on her skin as she worked her way through the laundry, wringing and folding each item into a basket then emptying the basin out by the kitchen door onto the earth outside.

Pulling the basket of wet clothes up onto her hip, she sang as she made her way outside.

“Good morning, little friends!“ she beamed as she greeted the chickens in the pen. “Sally, Brenda, Hilda, Penny, Laura, Gemma,“ she named them each in turn, “I'll fetch you your breakfast in a moment my dears, I must do my chores first!“

She skipped along, the fresh air filling her lungs.

“Good morning, Major, you old goat!“ She giggled as she grinned at the billy-goat, snoozing by the barn. “Are you dreaming about battles again?“

On she went through the yard. At last she came to the washing line, strung across a patch of grass between the barn and the gate.

She placed her basked down and proceeded to peg the items out, singing to herself as she did.

“The girl I love has a wandering stare

Keen brown eyes and long black hair

She walks in the twilight as the moon shines bright

And the sound of her laughter is a beacon in the night

The girl I love has a dress of green

A pretty little nose and eyes so keen

She calls to the mountains and she sighs to the sea

And she's never second fiddle to a princess or a queen

The girl I love has a will of steel

A hand that's quick and a heart that feels

She's always chasing terrors and she fights off buzzy bees

Then she comes my way each evening and she calls to me

Oh-ho, my dear-y-oh ...“

“Oh hello, my darlings!“ She broke from her song as she watched a pair of rabbits hopping through the long grass. “Are you hungry too? You're quite right, I should stop my day dreaming and look after you all! Very well.“

She picked up the now empty basket and carried it back to the house. Popping it down carefully, she picked up and bag of grain. She lifted herself onto the tips of her toes and she began to dance and twirl through the yard.

She sprinkled the grain among the chickens as they clucked and pecked and fought one another to eat as much as they could. She twirled further, poising arabesque as she bent down to drop a pile of grain in front of the goat who snorted awake and ate it greedily. She continued her dance all the way to the grass where she began to sprinkle the food for the rabbits too.

She smiled a contented smile as she listened to the animals feeding. Back in the house, she could hear the kettle beginning to sing. Twirling on the spot, spilling much of the grain as she did, she began to walk back to the house.

She stopped. Dropping her pose as her feet fell flat onto the ground.

High above her, she could hear the sounds of bells. A gentle tinkling, almost imperceivable over the sound of the wind in the leaves of the trees, but she could hear it. And, what was more, she knew what it meant.

She ran light-footed back into the house. All of a hurry, she threw the basket and the bag down in the kitchen. Hastily wrapping her apron around her hands, she lifted the noisy kettle off the fire and dropped it down on the floor.

She squealed with pain and sucked at her fingers as, around the edge of the cotton, she felt the hot metal had burnt her slightly.

There was no time to stop though.

She doused the fire and hurried upstairs. Back in her bedroom, she picked up the chair from beside her dressing table and placed it next to her bed. Stepping up onto it, she reached up to the ceiling and pushed at a hatch that folded up into the loft space and came to rest against one of the rafters.

With well-rehearsed ease she held tight to the sides of the hatchway and pulled herself up and through into the loft space. Gently placing the hatch back over the hole, she began to walk, bent low, between the rafters.

The heavy thatch of the roof was warm above her as she made her way to a small, open window set low into one end. Crouching down and peering out, she watched the tree line outside.

Not for the first time, she felt incredibly alone.

For a while, nothing seemed to be happening.

Was she wrong? Had she misheard? No, there was some movement. A figure, stumbling out past one of the oak trunks. Steadying himself and looking about. He was calling out. She shrank down, making herself as invisible as possible.

“Hello?“ The man was calling. “Hello!“

She didn't answer. She just waited.

In time, he drew a canteen from his belt and took a drink. Then, finding no-one answering him, he walked through the yard and off down the track.

Tiffany breathed a sigh of relief.

Her heart was racing though. She felt light-headed. She needed a rest. She grinned to herself, she knew where to go. She always felt better there.

Heading back down, through the hatch into her room, grabbing a cloak and a small, handled, box, she hurried on down to the kitchen door.

Putting her things down just long enough to assemble a pack of bread, cheese and fruit, she turned and looked over the kitchen.

She would be back. She just needed a little respite.

Stepping through the door, her feet feeling the energy of the living earth beneath them, she made her way down t to the tree line, across the brook and off into the forest.

[ofgarnett]

Dorian listens with the stillness of a coiled spring, head tilted just enough to suggest courtesy while his eyes track every sweep of Atlas Jay’s hand. Each correction lands like a pebble on deep water: ripples spread, but the surface soon calms to glass. Astor's pupils contract and flare like shutters fighting the sun, each micro-movement betraying calculations he will never voice. The alchemist’s mouth shapes another silky explanation, but Dorian is no longer listening to the words; he is listening to the voltage behind them, mapping every flicker across the man’s irises to the lattice of motives he carries in his skull.

< Caitlin, is there something between the two of you that you have failed to tell me? > The question unfurls along their shared nerves, cool silk over steel.

No. That’s just him. Her answer lands flat, unembellished. Dorian parses the cadence, hunting for the faint quaver that would betray longing or spite. He hears only steady exhaustion, yet skepticism needles the edges of his certainty. Astor is a kaleidoscope—dazzling, yes, but predictable only until the next turn of the wheel. He tucks his doubt away like a blade beneath a sleeve: unvoiced, provisional, and ready to be drawn if future evidence demands its edge. Inwardly then, he lets calculations spark—he files every barb, gauging whether the alchemist’s critique reveals insight or merely vanity. Pride pricks at the edges of his composure; centuries of mastery refuse to bow to a lecture delivered in sing-song bravado. Yet beneath the irritation pulses a sharper interest: Atlas’s observations align with fault lines Dorian has sensed but not yet named. The acknowledgment clarifies. His thumb strokes the pommel of the athame—an unconscious promise of precision, not violence. When Atlas punctuates a point with a flourish, Dorian’s lips twitch. “Such dramatics,” Dorian says, a scalpel of contempt thin enough to shave silence from the air. Astor’s showmanship reminds him of Mehrzād’s pageants: so much glitter draped over hollow hunger. Ambition should burn white-hot and invisible, not parade itself like carnival fire. Without him and Caitlin there is no crucible worthy of polishing Astor’s ego.

Nevertheless, this is an indulgent tableau—a alchemist arranging glinting shards, Caitlin balanced on boot-tips of discipline, and himself, the unquiet ghost in her marrow, measuring ambition against metallurgy. Astor indeed solves the brittleness, soldering antimony to bismuth in a lattice that chews volatility into orderly channels. Still, cleverness is hypothesis until blood confirms it. Spectacle belongs to lesser appetites; Dorian needs proof.

Dorian rotates the athame and Cait offers her hand without a word. Trust, he thinks, still dazzles him after a millennium of borrowing bodies. A flick of steel, a bead of red—alive, hot, claiming lineage. He lets a single drop fall.

The circle drinks it like parched earth. Mercury snaps from liquid to mirror; antimonide plates fuse, their lamellae knitting with a muted chime pitched to an immaculate F-sharp. No sulfuric spit, no glassy fracture, only a resonance that rings up Cait’s bones and through his borrowed nerves. The alloy holds.

“Correct,” he acknowledges to the silence, and the mercury’s surface stills, reflecting his shared face in perfect, merciless detail. One proof down.

He withdraws, wipes the blade on his sleeve, and turns toward the long workbench where the spell manuscript sits—time to canonize what the alloy has revealed. Laying the athame across the page like a ruler, Dorian begins to annotate, speaking each correction aloud so the room—and Astor—cannot mistake his intent.

“Volatility Channel,” he says, scoring a single line through gradual pour. “We decant with velocity—quicksilver obeys momentum, not caution.” The stroke is decisive, the ink still wet when he moves on.

“Fixation and Re-architecture,” he continues, slashing out sulfuric catalysis. “Stibnite removed, sulfur excised. Lattice integrity rises seventeen percent.” A faint, bitter smile ghosts his lips—memory of a plague doctor’s lungs turned to ash by brimstone.

“Lineage Control,” he announces, deepening Caitlin’s blood-knot sigil until it bites the parchment. “Pulse-anchored braid. Heartbeat held at seventy-two, give or take four.” He doesn’t name the violin prodigy whose arrhythmia once shattered a cathedral of elixirs, but the lesson hangs in the air like spent incense.

“Cosmic Anchoring,” he says, rotating the rune three degrees clockwise. “Align to the ley-line gradient—neutralize phase skew, prevent harmonic drift.” Another host whispers across his memory: an astronomer devoured by an eclipse of his own summoning.

“Phase Tracking,” he finishes, sketching a nested spiral—seven counter-clockwise turns. “Emergency egress. If the alloy backlashes, the charge vents here, nowhere else.”

The fountain pen lifts. “And that is that.” He caps the ink, the finality in his voice as clean and unadorned as the strokes now drying on the page. Dorian slips the athame into its sheath and lifts the manuscript, weighing it in his palm. A spell is never finished, his first master once told him—centuries before he killed that same master to escape a throttling tutelage—but tonight this version feels perilously close, an edge honed fine enough to split futures.

He sets the book beneath a lead weight, sealing ink and intention together, and lets his attention drift once more across the workshop. The mercury, mirror-still, reflects not one face but two—Cait’s and the flicker of every host echoed behind her eyes: kings, beggars, scholars, butchers. He feels them watching the alloy with mingled envy and pride. They will never stand here again, yet their lessons sing in every correction he has inked. “Proof complete,” he announces, voice stripped of flourish.

If Astor is angling for praise, he will leave empty-handed. Dorian has never dispensed gold stars and is not about to cultivate the habit before dawn. The only commendation available is that Astor still occupies the room—that Dorian has not dismissed him and his florid turns of phrase into the street’s predawn chill.

Inside the borrowed cockpit of her own body, Cait skulks behind her ribs like a back-seat driver with no brake pedal. She tastes metal on her tongue, counting heartbeats the way gamblers count cards—hold, hold, hold—while Dorian threads theory into copper-bright reality. If Atlas Jay's clever lattice so much as twitches wrong, the whole circle will eat their shins and her pride in one molten gulp. But then the alloy locks on that knife-sharp F-sharp, mercury stills to mirror, and she exhales the breath she’d white-knuckled, a low, ghosted whistle of reluctant awe. The resonance rings down her spine, a tuning fork struck in a cathedral of bone, and she’s left deciding whether it’s brilliant or terrifying that it feels exactly right.

It strikes her how grateful she is not to be the one speaking—how impossible it would be, right now, to assemble praise into something that wouldn’t taste like surrender. If she had command of her own tongue, she might blurt the obvious—you did it—and shatter the moment’s austere equilibrium. Better, then, that Dorian drives. Better that the acknowledgment stays unspoken, coiled like quicksilver respect in the hollows of her throat where no one, least of all Astor, can hear it. He doesn't need that going to his head. Or elsewhere.

Dorian leafs once more through the amended spell, eyes flicking across sigils and correction marks. “Anything else worth noting?” he asks, tone flat as a ledger. “And the cost—confirm it.” Dorian harbors no qualms about the volume of blood, breath, or bone required, but arithmetic must close cleanly before the first drop is spent.

Caity and her moniker corrections, he knows she loves it. It's part of their banter. A negligence to consider that Astor only becomes worse when the irritations are laid bare; open, irksome spots to poke at. This magic does not rely on using one specific name as a reference to a peer, so there's little effort he'll make in adjusting it. And maybe, it's because he's never quite gotten over the fact that she reads him his name the way it's written on a fucking Wiki page.

Garnett Gal can get over it, because he's about to school her in alchemy.

AJ puffs out a laugh as she surveys his work, he wonders if she's as confident as he is tonight. Daring to pick up the elements with bare hands, tempting poison into her veins because they're prepared to pay costs that they've yet to ever honour.

"What isn't working, is that you've never had me." Matter of fact, because whilst he had sweat over the original ritual, working through kinks in the system, and plucking out the incorrect chemistry. Pulling apart previous attempts like it were a giant puzzle, made a mess of by a student who has no business playing alchemist. He's realised how invested he is in Siltshore, and this project. In Gods and deities. Nobody is as good as I am, Caity. That's all she should take from this.

And then — as ever — mercury gets to keep its reputation for being one of ancients more wild elements, toxic, neurologically destructive; some minds aren't meant to ever play games with channelling its volatility. Always a problem child. AJ likes balling with hydrargyrum because silver-water is everything he hates. He likes watching the colour change, most of all.

Yet Caity's talking his language; a knack, he realises, she's becoming quite good at. He knows now she cannot spot the mistakes in technique, or the absent factors that have been weighing her down this long. The smile carries, perusing her as she stalks the room, assessing, recounting previous instances where they'd fucked the bloody thing up. She doesn't even make it sound fun, all business, no play.

He didn't know she'd been so serious, even when she'd been all teeth and crazed enthusiasm at the dinner table. She provoked a man who is unimpressed by most presentations. Her attitude had been a seller, and tonight, she's a husk of it.

What AJ is really waiting for, is the answer about the medium that they're doing all this for. It's just him, Cait, and their two minds present.

"Look at you, love, keep talking like that, you'll get us both excited," A ridiculous tease, because she pins a stare at him by the end of it all. Demanding explanation. He knows woman and their looks. Pride is a sin that AJ's convinced he and Caitlin share. But he indulges her, because he thrives on the win — on imagining her face when she bitterly realises that he's figured out what she could not. Priceless.

"You're not making it spicy enough —" he starts with, crossing the room, as though this requires the substances to hear him too: "Binary alloys — bismuth, antimony, you missed the hottest step. Foreplay, love. Caress it a little. You went in too cold, allowed it to fleck, and crack. Stibnite likes it hot, but don't breathe too much on the bloody thing, you exude that dioxide all over it, it'll spit at you. Let it suffocate a little and it'll split your sulfide." No gas that messes with the whole thing. "—if its in the right crucible, when the heat spikes, because it's bonded with our delightful bismuth." Child's play. "It'll stop that brittle shit later. Everyone just wants a little chance at being a deadly, insoluble powder that'll choke and torment the everliving out of you, eh?" She gets front row as to why Astor's don't like AJ's toying with alchemy; it's never in the books. "You don't fuck with sulfur, aight? It messes the alchemy up. So we remove it from the equation entirely and you've got yourself a ritual fit for Gods."

A moment of pause, to clarify the results: "No wolf howls. You get your F-sharp. You get the charge across the anisotropic channels and you get to keep all that pretty flesh on your bones."

Whoever Caitlin's last alchemist had been, if there were any, had evidently been too untrained, uneducated. Bismuth antimonide is a perfect scaffold for all the steps Cait wants for the ritual. A structure already flashed, quenched and sitting in amongst the circle. "You've done it all too slow. A pour? What, so you can feed our virulent little friend more oxy than it needs? No. Faster. Quick — Quicksilver, baby. It's in the name. Lock it in tight. You do that, with surgical precision, the lamallae won't caviate. It'll hold."

Does she want the rest? The spark in his gaze is challenging, like he wants her to keep probing; keep hearing how he's fixed all those holes she left open, for all the substances to pool through, burn and shatter, erupting messily like something prematurely ejecting: "Shall I keep going, Caity G, or shall we get this done before brekkie?"

He perches himself against the bench with all his notes and leftover scraps. Careful mapping laid out that they'll follow. It sits besides his own Astor grimoire, stuffed with charcoal scrawlings and in scratchy handwriting; all his notations, and fixes. AJ's buzzing with anticipation; a malignant high of knowing the results in his theorem, against what he knows he'll see in real time when Garnett gets her knickers untwisted.

[tricecomp]

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